The Trump campaign lashed out at a new poll that showed the former president locked in a dead even race with Vice President Kamala Harris in the battleground states.
Former President Donald Trump and Harris notched 50% apiece in the battleground state average, and the vice president scored a one-point lead over the Republican nominee in a national head-to-head matchup, a CBS News/YouGov poll found, garnering 50% to Trump’s 49%.
Republicans haven’t won the national popular vote in a presidential election since 2004.
But Trump’s team quickly cried foul.
“The Fake News Media continue to help dangerously liberal Kamala hide her record of economic failure and soft-on-crime policies. Now, as this analysis shows they’ll even put a finger on the scale of polling to inflate results for her,” senior campaign advisor Brian Hughes said in a statement.
Trump’s campaign disbursed a memo from a data consultant claiming that the poll may have been manipulated. In the memo, a data analyst noted how the most recent poll saw an increase of self-identifying liberals in the sample of registered voters by about 1.7 percentage points relative to a sample used in CBS/YouGov’s poll.
Polls are typically subject to different variations in the exact sample size of those surveyed. The Post contacted CBS News and YouGov for comment.
Nonetheless, the recent CBS/YouGov survey results suggest a stunning reversal from last month when Trump had a five-point lead over President Biden nationally and generally had the edge in battleground states in the CBS News poll.
In the battleground states, Michigan went 48% Harris to 48% Trump, with Pennsylvania (50%, 50%), Wisconsin (49%, 50%), Arizona (49%, 49%), Georgia (47%, 50%), Nevada (50%, 48%) and North Carolina (47%, 50%) all deadlocked at or near a statistical tie.
If the general election broke along those lines, Trump would lead in the Electoral College 261 to 232, but still falling short of the 270 electoral votes a candidate needs in order to win.
Powering Harris’ ascent in the CBS poll appears to be female, younger, and black voters flocking back to the Democrats.
The outlet’s July poll found that 58% of black voters indicated they planned to cast their ballots this cycle. Now that figure has jumped to 74%.
Female voters also had high marks for Harris relative to Trump, with 70% of them feeling her policies would help women, compared to 43% who said the same about Trump, per the CBS poll.
CBS also identified a gender gap between the two candidates — which has also cropped up in a stream of other polls.
Harris was the choice among 45% of men and 54% of women. Meanwhile, Trump was the choice among 54% of men and 45% of women, according to the poll.
When asked about the two candidates’ cognitive abilities, 64% felt that Harris possesses the mental faculties needed to be president, compared to 36% who said she doesn’t. Fifty-one percent indicated that Trump has the cognitive strength needed, relative to 49% who said he doesn’t.
A plethora of polling had previously gauged deep voter angst about Biden’s mental acuity, which underpinned the Democratic revolt against him last month that was catalyzed by his abysmal debate performance.
Sixty-eight percent of voters believed that the country was ready to elect a black woman president, while 32% felt the country wasn’t prepared to do that.
The CBS News/YouGov survey sampled 3,102 registered voters between July 30 and Aug. 2 with a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points.
Across the board, polls have shown a remarkable tightening of the race now that Harris, 59, has replaced Biden, 81. Trump has a 0.3 percentage point lead against Harris in a five-way national race, per the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate.
RCP also pegged a tight race between the pair in the battleground states.
Harris’ campaign has crowed about momentum, including the $310 million haul her aligned committees raked in during the month of July, more than doubling Trump’s fundraising that month, as well as turnout at her rallies.
Trump stumped in Atlanta on Saturday, days after Harris drew an estimated crowd size of about 10,000 at a Georgia rally earlier in the week featuring Grammy-winner Megan Thee Stallion.
The Trump campaign’s top pollster Tony Fabrizio previously warned that Harris would enjoy a “honeymoon phase” in polling over the early days of her abrupt ascension.
“That means we will start to see public polling — particularly national public polls — where Harris is gaining on or even leading President Trump,” he explained in a memo last month.
“While the public polls may change in the short run and she may consolidate a bit more of the Democrat base, Harris can’t change who she is or what she’s done. Stay tuned…” he added.
