Harris widens lead over Trump with boost from women, Hispanics, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds

Record ID: 1838218

  • Title: Harris widens lead over Trump with boost from women, Hispanics, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
  • Date: 29th August 2024
  • Summary: WESTHAMPTON, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 29, 2024) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) POLITICAL CONSULTANT AND PRESIDENT OF SHEINKOPF COMMUNICATIONS, DR. HANK SHEINKOPF, SAYING: "Kamala Harris has one big problem, and she's got to fix it as quickly as possible. She's got to explain why people are paying what they think is more at the gas pump and why their bread costs as
  • Embargoed: 12th September 2024 17:39
  • Keywords: Kamala Trump ipsos poll
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: North America,Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA00D019129082024RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: PART VIDEO QUALITY AS INCOMING
    Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 45% to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday (August 29) that showed the vice president sparking new enthusiasm among voters and shaking up the race ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
    The 4 percentage point advantage among registered voters was wider than a 1 point lead Harris held over the former president in a late July Reuters/Ipsos poll. The new poll, which was conducted in the eight days ended Wednesday and had a 2 percentage point margin of error, showed Harris picking up support among women and Hispanics.
    Harris led Trump by 49% to 36% - or 13 percentage points - among both women voters and Hispanic voters. Across four Reuters/Ipsos polls conducted in July, Harris had a 9 point lead among women and a 6 point lead among Hispanics.
    "Part of what's moving the women's vote certainly is reproductive rights issues across the country, the Supreme Court's ruling outlawing Roe versus Wade, the Dobbs decision, motivating voters to turn out to vote for someone who frankly supports what they think is most important," said Dr. Hank Sheinkopf, political consultant and president of Sheinkopf Communications. "As to Latinos, these are probably economic issues. Historically, large portions of the Mexican American community, certainly Puerto Ricans and others, have voted Democratic."
    Trump led among white voters and men, both by similar margins as in July, though his lead among voters without a college degree narrowed to 7 points in the latest survey, down from 14 points in July.
    "The American men are paranoid and concerned about the changing economic system, about the jobs that they can't fill, that they don't know how to fill," said Sheinkopf. "Technology is a threat. And frankly, the fact that the United States, for the first time in its history, more than 50% of the people who live here cannot identify as Europeans going back in their family history. So all these changes occurring at once are threatening lots of white men who are saying, 'Wait a second, I got to do something to protect what I know.' And what they know is what Donald Trump is talking about."
    The findings illustrate how the U.S. presidential race has been shaken up over the summer. President Joe Biden, 81, folded his flailing campaign on July 21 after a disastrous debate performance against Trump sparked widespread calls from his fellow Democrats to abandon his re-election bid.
    Since then, Harris has gained ground against Trump in national polls and those in critical swing states. While national surveys including Reuters/Ipsos' give important signals on the views of the electorate, the state-by-state results of the Electoral College determine the winner, with a handful of battleground states likely to be decisive.
    In the seven states where the 2020 election was closest - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada - Trump had a 45% to 43% lead over Harris among registered voters in the poll.
    "Pennsylvania and Michigan are not what the Democrats think they are, in many ways," said Sheinkopf. "There are large portions and pockets of evangelical Christians in both those states. There's heavily Catholic populations also in both those states who tend to be much more conservative in their voting patterns overall. You have states that have the sense that the industrial life that they know and enjoy is coming to an end. The demographics are shifting in both states, and they're more likely to vote for Trump. These are not places where liberalism necessarily prospers."
    Since formally accepting the Democratic nomination last week, Harris has embarked on a tour of battleground states including Georgia, where Biden had been hemorrhaging support before he ended his campaign.
    RISING ENTHUSIASM
    Some 73% of Democratic registered voters in the poll said they were more excited about voting in November after Harris entered the race. And while a March Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 61% respondents who intended to vote for Biden were doing so mainly to stop Trump, 52% of Harris voters in the August poll were voting to support her as a candidate rather than primarily to oppose Trump.
    But Trump voters also voiced enthusiasm about their candidate, with 64% saying their choice was more motivated by backing Trump than opposing Harris.
    Voters picked Trump as having a better approach to managing the U.S. economy, 45% to 36%, a wider margin than Trump had in another Reuters/Ipsos poll this week.
    "Trump's problem today is that he's behind and he's running out of time," said Sheinkopf. "What Trump will do is he will attack her. He's got to get enough independent voters - those are not registered as Republicans or Democrats - and say, 'Wait a second, we can't take a chance on Kamala Harris. Only Trump can protect the world.'"
    Harris, by contrast, had a 47% to 31% advantage on abortion policy. The issue is salient for Democrats after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down women's national right to abortion. Trump nominated three conservative justices to the court during his 2017-2021 presidency. Some 41% of voters in the poll - and 70% of Democrats - said they were worried the next president might sign a national ban on abortions.
    The latest poll's survey period partially overlapped with the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Harris formally accepted her party's nomination, and it remains to be seen whether the same level of enthusiasm for Harris will continue.
    The poll was conducted nationally and gathered responses from 4,253 U.S. adults, including 3,562 registered voters.
    Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his campaign on Aug. 23 while the poll was still being conducted, had the support of 6% of voters in the survey.
    (Production: Roselle Chen)
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