Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have a tie neck-and-neck in poll votes ahead of their first presidential debate.
The latest polling confirms that Trump retains locked-in support from about half of voters, despite the Republican’s historic status allegation his role in instigating the unprecedented attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
Read also: Trump, Harris to go head to head in September face off debate
Harris, recently has rapidly transformed herself from just a vice president into a serious contender. However, the polls show she has not made a major breakthrough, leaving the race a toss-up.
A New York Times/Siena College poll suggested that 78-year-old Trump leads Harris nationally by 48 to 47 percent, well within the margin of error.
US presidential elections are decided by tallying the results of state-by-state contests, rather than an overall national popular vote, meaning that a tiny handful of swing states typically determine the outcome, Al Jazeera reported.
The poll suggested that Harris, 59, was narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and tied in four other swing states: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
A CBS News/YouGov poll put Harris ahead by one percentage point in Michigan and Wisconsin and tied in Pennsylvania.
Read also: Harris leads Trump in three key battle states, Times/Siena polls find
The election is already chaotic, with growing fears that Trump will again refuse to concede if he loses in November.
However, the latest numbers confirm that each candidate retains a remarkably stable base of loyalists, almost evenly splitting the country.
One game-changer could be Tuesday’s ABC News debate, the only one scheduled between the two.
Trump will be under pressure to rein in his characteristic use of insults and intimidation as he stands next to Harris who is vying to become the first female president in US history.
Harris will need to use the huge audience to connect with voters in a way that she was unable to as vice president and has had little time to accomplish in her super-condensed campaign run.
With Trump now the oldest presidential nominee in US history, she is pitching an optimistic, forward-looking message in contrast to Trump’s apocalyptic claims that the country faces terminal decline without him in the White House.
But Harris has also been accused of running on vague optimism and unity at the expense of putting out concrete policies.
She finally addressed the growing pressure late on Sunday when her campaign put out a policy page, touching on subjects from unions and cost-of-living issues to healthcare.
“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” Harris supporter and current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told the broadcaster CNN.
The Harris campaign announced it would “barnstorm battleground states” after the debate, beginning in North Carolina, and then Pennsylvania.
On his Truth Social platform, Trump has warned that once back in the White House he would impose “long prison sentences” on all those he said were planning “cheating” in November.
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