Former President Donald Trump has regained the lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in NBC News’ latest presidential survey after several weeks of trailing.
In a direct head-to-head matchup, Trump and Harris are tied at 48 percent each. However, in an expanded ballot that includes third-party candidates such as Cornel West and Dr. Jill Stein, Trump’s lead increases to one point, with 47 percent compared to Harris’s 46 percent.
“In the new poll — which was conducted Oct. 4-8 — Harris gets support from 48% of registered voters in a head-to-head matchup, while Trump gets an identical 48%. Another 4% say they are undecided or wouldn’t vote for either option when forced to choose between those two major-party candidates,” NBC News reported.
The latest results indicate a significant shift from September’s poll, which showed Harris leading her Republican rival by five points, 49 percent to 44 percent.
In that same expanded ballot, Trump’s support was recorded at 47 percent, while Harris garnered 46 percent, with an additional seven percent of respondents either supporting other candidates or remaining undecided.
The latest poll also found that both candidates experienced comparable shifts in popularity. In September, 40 percent of respondents had a positive view of the former president, while 53 percent held a negative opinion.
In October, Trump’s overall popularity saw a three-point increase, whereas Harris’s favorability dropped from 48 percent to 43 percent.
The poll also assessed former President Trump’s retroactive job performance approval rating, which stands at 48 percent—higher than it was at any point during his presidency. A majority of respondents, 45 percent, indicated that the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies are “hurting” them, while only 25 percent felt they were benefiting from those policies.
NBC’s poll kept in line with another Sunday release from the Wall Street Journal, which found Trump leading Harris 46 percent to 45 percent nationwide. The Journal found that swing states were too close to call.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said during an interview over the weekend that he believes Harris has not only peaked but is actually beginning to lose ground among the electorate.
His remarks come after many observers believe she had a poor week doing a series of interviews in which she often struggled for responses while also reaffirming that she aligns 100 percent with President Joe Biden’s policies, which many blame for the poor economy and the global chaos.
“My guess is that we are in the early stages of watching her collapse, and that given the objective larger realities that surround her,” Gingrich said. “I just — my hunch as a historian and occasional novelist is that sometime in the last two weeks, Joe and Jill looked at each other and thought, you know, wouldn’t it be a great legacy if Joe’s the only guy ever to beat Trump.
“And I think the stuff he’s done to undermine her in the last ten days is — is pretty amazing, and I don’t think it’s an accident,” he said, speculating that Biden is purposely trying to sabotage her candidacy after being forced to drop his reelection bid.
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Other pundits are starting to believe that Biden is trying to sabotage Harris as well, and there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence to prove the theory correct, The New York Post reported.
