The Indies Shift

Marist poll.

Trump’s +6 edge on immigration is much smaller than usual; this has been the GOP’s strongest issue. Trump +3 on the economy is also lower than usual. Trump dominates among “strong leader” voters. But Harris crushes him among voters who want “honest and trustworthy.” pic.twitter.com/v3yMdZnPvl

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 6, 2024

This is huge:

In a new poll released Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has taken an enormous lead on former president Donald Trump among independent voters.

Harris is up nine points with that group (53%-44%) after being down 14 points with them when she launched her campaign just two weeks ago

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz debut at Philadelphia rallyKamala Harris and Tim Walz debut at Philadelphia rally

In early July, Trump was beating President Joe Biden by four points with independents.

Overall, Harris has built a 51%-48% lead over Trump, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That’s a four-point improvement for Harris, who became the Democratic choice when Biden bowed out. Harris maintains a three-point lead (48%-45%) when third-party choices are included.

Harris leads by 13 points with women (55%-42%), but is losing men by nine points (54%-45%).

Here are other breakdowns, according to NPR:

Fueling her rise are Black voters, white women with college degrees and women who identify as political independents. She is doing 20 to 30 points better with them than when she first got in, leading to improvement in the suburbs and with white voters overall.

On the issues, the negative views of the economy are not sticking to Harris the way they did Biden. Trump is still more trusted on the economy, but only by 3 points over Harris (51%-48%), compared to 9 points over Biden (54%-45%) in June.

Harris is also seeing improvement on how she would handle immigration, though Trump is still more trusted on that topic by 6 points (52%-46%). Harris’ best issue is handling abortion rights. She has a 15-point advantage on that.

Harris has also improved with white voters overall. Harris has gone from 40% with white voters overall to 46% in this survey, which is closer to where Biden was, and that’s very high for a Democrat. In fact, no Democrat has scored that high with white voters in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Biden got 41% in 2020, Barack Obama in 2008 won 43%.