Kamala Harris Surges in Battleground States, Fox News Polling Shows

Vice President Kamala Harris has closed the gap in several critical swing states just over a month into her campaign, according to recent polling by Fox News.
The network released new surveys on Wednesday comparing Harris’ support in four battleground states to President Joe Biden’s polling numbers prior to him suspending his reelection campaign in late July. The results found that Harris is locked in a tight race with former President Donald Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina—states where Biden once trailed the GOP presidential nominee by at least 5 points each.
In Arizona, where Harris currently leads Trump by 1 point (50 percent to 49 percent), Biden was down by 5 percentage points in a Fox News poll in June. Harris also leads Trump in Georgia and Nevada by 2 percentage points (50 percent to 48 percent). Biden, on the other hand, was trailing the former president by 6 points in Georgia back in April and by 5 points in Nevada in June.
Trump was found to be leading the vice president in North Carolina by 1 point (50 percent to 49 percent), per Wednesday’s survey. In a Fox News poll in February, the former president was beating Biden by 5 points.
The surveys released Wednesday are based on the responses of 1,000 registered voters in each of the four swing states and were collected between August 23 and 26. Each poll has a margin of sampling error of 3 percentage points, meaning Harris and Trump are in a statistical tie for the White House.
Trump’s campaign released a memo Wednesday evening in response to the Fox News polling, which it described as “atrocious.” Trump’s team pointed at Fox polling during the 2020 presidential election and argued that the network was “off” by several percentage points when compared to election day results.
In one example included in the memo, a Fox News poll found that Biden was leading Trump by 10 percentage points in the state of Arizona heading into November 2020. Biden flipped Arizona in 2020 and beat Trump by just 0.3 percent (49.4 percent to 49.1 percent).
The former president has ramped up his attacks on Fox News this election cycle, including raging about the network’s polling, which he previously called “fake” in a post to Truth Social.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign for further comment Wednesday via email.
Harris has held tremendous momentum since entering the 2024 race, and other polling has shown her making strides across battleground states for Democrats. Cook Political Report reported this week that Harris has turned the tide in states like North Carolina, which was once classified as “leans Republican” by the polling analysis site. That state is now in the “tossup” category, and states like Minnesota and New Hampshire are now classified as “likely Democratic.”
In Pennsylvania, recent polling by Quinnipiac and The New York Times puts Harris leading by 3 and 4 percentage points, while Biden was once found to be trailing Trump by 4.5 points, per RealClearPolitics. Harris is also polling slightly ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin, although each swing state race is extremely tight with Trump.
As of Wednesday, FiveThirtyEight put Harris ahead of Trump by 3.3 percentage points on average across national polls.