Harris-Walz lead in new swing states poll, unveil Pennsylvania bus tour

The Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket grabbed the lead in a new poll of swing states on Wednesday and unveiled plans for a weekend bus tour of battleground Pennsylvania heading into next week’s Democratic National Convention.

The surging presumptive Democratic nominee narrowly leads former President Donald Trump in six of the seven swing states in the new poll from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, upending the lead Trump held over President Joe Biden.

Harris leads overall by 46%-44% in the poll, which showed Trump up by 5% in May. She now leads in all the swing states except Nevada, where Trump is clinging to a narrowing edge. The surge includes a surprising edge for Harris in North Carolina, which Trump’s campaign had recently thought he had in the bag.

She is winning independent voters by an impressive 8%, turning around Trump’s 3% edge with uncommitted voters in the spring, the poll found.

Harris has succeeded so far in branding herself as the candidate of change, even though she is the sitting vice president, opening up a huge 54%-to-24% lead among voters who did not want to vote for either Trump or Biden before he dropped out of the race.

“Harris’ ability to quickly and decisively win over those double haters is a reminder that the 2020 Biden coalition was more anti-Trump than pro-Biden,” said Amy Walter of the Cook Report.

Trump was set to address a rally in Asheville, N.C., Wednesday, his second visit to the state in recent weeks in a sign that his campaign is also concerned about declining numbers in the Tarheel State.

The rosy poll numbers came as the Harris campaign unveiled plans for a bus tour across Pennsylvania starting Sunday and leading into the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention on Monday.

Harris will be joined by Walz, her folksy plainspoken vice presidential nominee, who is considered effective at reaching voters in small towns and cities like those they will hit over the weekend.

The former high school teacher and football coach has been a hit on the campaign trail since Harris picked him last week, and coined a new attack line when he told a union crowd that Harris worked at McDonald’s as a teenager but Trump wouldn’t even know how to “make a McFlurry.”

He pushed back hard against Republican efforts to smear him over his military record of 24 years in the Army National Guard: “I’m damn proud of my military service.”

Harris and Walz also plan to hold a rally in swing state Wisconsin during the convention in Chicago, taking advantage of its location in the heart of the Rust Belt.

Democratic strategists hope Harris will continue to ride a wave of momentum through the convention next week because candidates of either party typically enjoy a bounce from voters seeing their party gatherings.

The GOP, on the other hand, hopes that Harris’ bounce will quickly fade and Trump can regain the upper hand going into the fall campaign that starts in earnest after Labor Day.

The two candidates are slated to clash in a debate on Sept. 10, which is shaping up as a potential key moment for the campaigns, especially after President Biden’s poor performance in a June debate effectively forced him to end his reelection bid and hand the baton to Harris.