Investing.com– Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was seen leading Democratic frontrunner Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, a CNN/SSRS poll showed on Wednesday.
Trump held the approval of 49% of registered voters polled by CNN between July 22 and July 23, while Harris stood at 46%. The lead was within the poll’s margin of error.
Trump largely maintained his lead after seeing a boost in popularity in the wake of a failed assassination attempt earlier in July. His official nomination as the Republican presidential candidate also appeared to have buoyed his popularity with voters.
Harris, while lagging Trump, appeared to be polling better than President Joe Biden, who had dropped out of the race this Sunday and endorsed Harris as the Democratic frontrunner. She was polling 3 percentage points ahead of Biden from a previous poll.
Harris was seen swiftly garnering support from the Democratic party this week, and now has enough delegates to be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate. But she will still need to be officially named as the party’s candidate, either during the Democratic National Convention in August, or if the party decides to hold a roll call.
The CNN poll showed that voters were much more optimistic about Harris than Biden, especially after the President’s seemingly disastrous performance against Trump in a June debate.
This had drawn increasing calls from Democratic leaders and donors for Biden to pull out of the race, amid concerns over his health, and whether he will be able to effectively run against Trump.
The CNN poll showed a whopping 87% voters approved of Biden’s pulling out, while 76% of Democratic-leaning voters supported Harris’ nomination.
Harris still needs to pick her running mate, but faces a fairly constrained timeline to do so. Trump had last week picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.
