The poll found Harris had widened her lead since a July 22-23 Reuters/Ipsos survey, which found her up 37% to 34% over Trump.
Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 42% to 37% in the race for the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, according to an Ipsos poll published on Thursday.
The poll found Harris had widened her lead since a July 22-23 Reuters/Ipsos survey, which found her up 37% to 34% over Trump.
The nationwide poll of 2,045 U.S. adults, conducted Aug. 2-7, found 4% of those surveyed backed independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., down from 10% in July.
Ipsos conducted the August poll independently from Reuters. The poll, conducted online, had a margin of error of around 3 percentage points.
In a separate poll, Ipsos found Harris leading Trump 42% to 40% in the seven states where the election was closest in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That result did not break out results for individual states.
Harris entered the race on July 21 when President Joe Biden, 81, folded his campaign and endorsed Harris following a disastrous debate performance on June 27 against Trump.
Reuters/Ipsos polls had mostly shown Biden and Trump tied while the president was still in the race, though Biden was performing worse than he had at the same point in the 2020 election, in which he defeated Trump.
Trump reverses position on debating Harris
Trump recommitted to debating Harris after recently backing out, holding a lengthy news conference Thursday in which he taunted his new rival, boasted of his crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and lashed out at questions about the enthusiasm her campaign has been generating.
As the Republican presidential nominee addressed reporters at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, ABC announced that Trump and Harris, the Democratic nominee, have agreed to a Sept. 10 debate, setting up a widely anticipated faceoff in an already unparalleled election. Trump said he had proposed three debates with three television networks in September.
Trump again wrongly insisted there had been a “peaceful transfer” of power in 2021 and renewed attacks on Republican rivals like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump has harshly criticized since Kemp refused to go along with his false theories of election fraud.
In taking questions from reporters for more than an hour, Trump tried to draw a contrast with Harris, who has not held a news conference since President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
Another key moment in the election is set
Trump’s decision to go on ABC sets up a high-stakes moment in an election where Biden’s catastrophic performance in the last debate set in motion his withdrawal.
Just five days earlier, he had declared he would not debate on ABC and said his agreement with the network had been “terminated.” He wrote on his social media site that if Harris wouldn’t appear on Fox News on Sept. 4 instead, “I won’t see her at all.”
On Thursday, he announced a change of heart — and tried to pressure Harris to agree to two more September debates on Fox and on NBC.
Asked what he will do if a Harris only agrees to the ABC debate, he said: “I don’t know how that’s gonna work out. We’d like to do three debates. We think we should do three debates.”
A few hours after the news conference, Harris told reporters she was “glad he has finally committed” to debate her on ABC on Sept. 10, the date that had originally been set for a Biden faceoff against Trump and which her campaign has long stuck to.
“I’m looking forward to it and hope he shows up,” she said.
Thursday’s event was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Trump called Walz a “radical left man.”
“Between her and him, there’s never been anything like this,” Trump said. “There’s certainly never been anybody so liberal like these two.”
He repeatedly suggested Harris was not intelligent enough to debate him. Harris, for her part, has tried to goad Trump into debating and told an audience in Atlanta recently that if he had anything to say about her, he should ” say it to my face.”
Trump grew visibly perturbed when pressed on Harris’ crowds and newfound Democratic enthusiasm, dismissing a question about his lighter campaign schedule as “stupid.”
Trump says he has not “recalibrated” his campaign despite facing a new opponent, a dynamic some Republican strategists have quietly complained about.
When asked what assets Harris possessed, Trump said: “She’s a woman. She represents certain groups of people.”
Trump was asked about Biden’s comments in a CBS interview that he was “not confident” there would be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump were to lose.
“He should have brought this up at the debate if he had a problem. Of course there’ll be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time.”
While Biden was inaugurated on schedule, Washington was on lockdown that day, with the streets patrolled by military personnel and domestic police two weeks after Trump’s supporters had attacked the Capitol. __
Reuters/ AP
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