Kamala's honeymoon is over at last as Trump takes pre-debate polling lead
Check the calendar, Kamala: your summer of "vibes" is over.
A sobering new poll from the New York Times has Donald Trump in the lead, as the presidential race enters the home stretch.
The poll was released just before Tuesday night's high-stakes debate on ABC.
Kamala falls behind
The New York Times/Siena College poll was full of bad news for Kamala Harris' campaign, which has spent weeks playing a risky game of hide and seek with voters.
Harris has had no press conferences since launching her campaign in July. She has had one softball interview with CNN in which she failed to clarify her murky policy positions.
According to the poll, 48% of likely voters support Trump, versus 47% for Harris. While Trump's lead is in the margin of error, it's a red flag for Harris that the race could be shifting away from her.
In fact, the race now stands where it did just after Joe Biden dropped out in July and passed the torch, the poll found.
The poll sampled 1,695 voters from Sept. 3–6 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
Scary Trump narrative fails...
The Democrats' character assassination campaign is also coming up short. Despite slandering Trump as a convicted felon, he is seen as only slightly riskier for the country than Harris, with 54% saying he's risky compared to 52% for Harris.
All of that Project 2025 talk hasn't convinced voters that Trump is dangerously extreme: 32% say he is too conservative compared to 47% who say "Comrade Kamala" is too liberal.
Trump has a commanding, double-digit lead on two of the top issues: the economy and immigration. Harris has a similar advantage with abortion, however.
Trump the "change" candidate
On the other hand, 53% of likely voters see Trump as the "change" candidate, despite Harris' flailing attempts to claim the title. Only 25% of voters see Harris as a major change for the country.
This isn't a terribly shocking finding, considering that Harris is, you know, the current vice president.
This isn't the only poll pointing to a changing race. Pollster Nate Silver's model has shown Trump's odds of an Electoral College victory increasing to more than 60%.
"A new New York Times/Siena College poll this morning contained excellent news for Donald Trump, showing him 1 point ahead in a head-to-head matchup against Kamala Harris and 2 points up with minor candidates included. This is one of our highest-rated pollsters, so it has a fair amount of influence on the numbers, reducing Harris’s lead in our national polling average to 2.5 points, which would put her in dangerous territory in the Electoral College," Silver wrote.