Polls Show Tight Race, Trump Pushes for More Debates

Now that the dust has settled from the attempted Trump assassination, the RNC, and Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Trump’s lead in polls has been erased, and the race has returned to nearly a tossup.

For a couple of days, it seemed Harris was going to take a strong lead, as eight straight polls across the heads-up and five-way national RealClearPolitics Polling Average had Harris ahead. Trump went from being two points ahead in the heads-up race to Harris leading by 0.5 points over just one week from July 30 to Aug. 6. Even after the debate, which preceded Biden’s eventual dropout, the RCP Average only moved from Trump ahead by 1.5 points to Trump ahead by 3.1 points. This latest 2.5-point swing in the RCP Average over one week has been the biggest one-week swing in the national heads-up race since January.

However, despite a series of polls that indicated Harris was taking a strong lead, two polls released on Thursday indicate that the race is tighter, as they both had Trump ahead. One of the polls, conducted by CNBC from July 31 to Aug. 4 with 1,001 registered voters, found Trump ahead 48%-46%. The other, from Rasmussen Reports, took place from Aug. 1-7 with 1,794 likely voters and found Trump up 5 points in the heads-up and five-way races.

Taking the streak of Harris polls and the latest Trump polls into account, the current RCP Average for the race has Harris ahead by 0.5 points and 0.8 points in the five-way race. This is much closer than the polls in 2020 and 2016, which had Biden up by 6.4 points and Clinton up by 7.2 points on Aug. 8.

With the tight state of the race, Trump said Thursday that he has agreed to three debates. In addition to re-agreeing to the Sept. 10 debate that Trump had previously said he canceled, he also agreed to a Sept. 4 Fox News debate and a Sept. 25 NBC News debate.

Last week, he said he had “terminated” the debate on ABC because “Biden will no longer be a participant.” In response to Trump pulling out of the first ABC debate, Harris’ campaign said she would still go on ABC whether Trump was there or not, indicating that the vice president will at least agree with Trump to do the ABC debate, although she has not officially said the debate is back on. The Harris campaign has not commented on whether she will participate in the Fox News or NBC debates.

With Harris being a new candidate in the race, additional debates give more time for both candidates to flesh out their policies and argue for themselves on a national stage before the American people. Given the currently tight race, both candidates want to have moments where they can stick out and take a commanding lead instead of leaving the election to chance.