Kamala Harris is election favourite as 200 Republican aides back her
The Vice-President’s lead represents an 11-point reversal of fortunes for the Democrats since Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.
Kamala Harris is more likely than Donald Trump to win November’s presidential election, according to new polling analysis.
The data comes as more than 200 Republican aides to the former president George W Bush, or two of the party’s previously unsuccessful White House candidates – Mitt Romney and John McCain – endorsed the Democratic Party’s candidate.
Harris, 59, now has a 55 per cent chance of winning the presidential election, analysis by Decision Desk HQ has said. The Vice-President’s lead represents a reversal of fortunes for the Democrats, with President Biden having had only a 44 per cent chance of victory before he withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris on July 21.
Nationwide polls back up the findings, suggesting Harris has an average lead of about three percentage points over Trump, 78. She has also made up ground in the handful of key battleground states, overhauling Trump’s lead in several of them.
The Democrats’ improving chances do not, however, amount to a convincing lead, with most polls showing that either candidates’ lead is within a margin of error. Hillary Clinton enjoyed poll leads against Trump in 2016 all the way to election day, and won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college.
“Neither campaign can go to sleep easy tonight thinking they’re ahead or they’ve got the advantage,” said Scott Tranter, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ.
The Trump campaign suffered another blow this week as a letter signed by former members of staff for Republican grandees condemned the prospect of a second Trump term.
The letter, published in USA Today and signed by people who worked for Bush, his father George HW Bush, Romney and McCain, said: “We reunite today, joined by new George HW Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice-President Kamala Harris and governor Tim Walz this November.
“Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice-President Harris and governor Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”
The Trump campaign brushed off the letter, saying that many of the signatories had junior jobs, with some of them interns doing work experience.
The younger Bush has been consistent in not publicly criticising Trump, although aides refused to deny that the former president, who served between 2001 and 2009, described Trump’s 2017 inaugural address as “some weird shit”. Romney, who lost the election against President Obama in 2012, has been a regular critic of Trump’s, as was the late McCain, who had lost to Obama four years earlier.
It also emerged on Monday that Trump was planning to appoint Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress who ran against Biden for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020, to his transition team.
Gabbard has since endorsed Trump, who is also set to appoint Robert F Kennedy Jr, who abandoned his independent challenge to Trump and Harris last week, to the same team. Both will be honorary co-chairs, along with Trump’s two eldest sons, Donald Jr and Eric.
The New York Times first reported the update.
The Times
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