Let the record show that Kamala Harris pulled ahead of Donald Trump in the race for the White House on Friday after veteran analyst Scott Rasmussen's firm released a survey that showed her with a 5-point lead after trailing by that amount or more in the national polling less than two weeks ago.
The Rasmussen company, RMG Research, found the Democratic vice-president with 47 percent support compared to 42 percent for Trump. That represented a 7 point swing from a RMG poll on July 22-23.
A separate firm that Rasmussen founded - Rasmussen Reports - showed Trump up by 5 points in a poll that it made public earlier this week.
The new RMG Research survey marks the largest Harris lead up to now in polling on the national vote since her elevation to the top of the Democratic ticket after President Joe Biden pulled the plug on his re-election campaign. The latest numbers from RMG Research represent a 7-point swing from a survey that it conducted the week before.
Rasmussen Reports gained a reputation for bias toward Republicans after its debut during the 2000 presidential campaign that Texan George W. Bush went on to win at the U.S. Supreme Court. But the firm was long viewed as the gold standard for polling in the eyes of conservatives.
While Trump and Harris are running even for all practical purposes as she nears the end of her second week as the standard-bearer for a party that's been rejuvenated by her juggernaut rise at a time when the former president has shown increasing signs of unraveling in a replay of 2020.
After predicting that Trump as the eventual winner, the ABC News site 538 showed Harris with a 1.5 percent advantage nationally on Friday in the average of more than 100 polls that have been taken since she emerged as the eventual nominee.
A Capitol Inside analysis of 13 selective independent polls on the Harris-Trump bout found Harris in first for the first time with an average lead of 1 point. Trump was on top by 1.1 percent in the average take before the RMG Research survey propelled Harris over him. A Rasmussen Reports poll that showed Trump ahead by 5 points is one of several surveys on Harris-Trump that were excluded from the equation based on partisan histories. Most of those found their candidate on top.
But the Scott Rasmussen poll could give Trump camp higher anxiety than normal as a pollster who's regarded as Republican crashing the trend with the RMG numbers that gave Harris her first lead beyond the margins of error in a race that's still tied statistically on paper based on the cumulative polling since she took over for Biden. Rasmussen the pollster had Trump up by 2 last week.
538 found Harris leading Trump in Michigan by 1.9 points and half a point in Pennsylvania. The ex-president was up 1.1 points in Georgia. All three are must-win battleground states for both campaigns. 538 showed Harris with 45 percent support nationally while Trump had 43.5.
The dramatic shift in the race is unprecedented - and it's all the more incredible in terms of speed with Harris as the Democratic leader for almost two weeks. What's most amazing - perhaps - is that Trump failed to get a bump from an attempted assassination and the Republican National Convention that began two days later.
Trump was up 1.1 points on average during Harris' first week as the eventual nominee. But Harris led Trump by 1.7 points in the average of a half-dozen independent polls that were taken in the past week.
The numbers are jarring and could get worse with Trump's penchant for rambling and loose cannon gaffes like his claims this week that Harris isn't really Black. Trump and the Republicans are clearly stunned and staggering while Harris owns the momentum going into her third week as the party star.
more to come ...
