Washington:
Democrat nominee Kamala Harris has extended her lead over Republican Donald Trump in the race to win the November 5 US presidential election, according to various polls conducted after the September 10 televised debate between the two candidates.
Harris, widely perceived as having outperformed Trump in the debate, now leads her Republican rival 47% to 42% in a September 11-19 Reuters/Ipsos poll.
According to the latest Economist/YouGov poll, the 59-year-old leads the White House race by four percentage points among registered US voters. This is reportedly the largest lead any presidential candidate has registered in any weekly Economist/YouGov poll in nearly a year, since US President Joe Biden led Trump by 45% to 40% in the September 23-26, 2023 poll.
Before the debate, Harris – who replaced her boss, Biden, as Democrat nominee – was leading by two percentage points in the Economist/YouGov poll.
Real Clear Politics, which gave Harris a 1.4-point lead over her 78-year-old opponent on September 10, has now increased it to two points (49.3 percent to 47.3) as of September 19.
According to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, the Democrat is now ahead by about three percentage points, which was two points before the debate.
Silver Bulletin also said that Harris is now leading Trump by over three points.
The debate, hosted by ABC News, attracted over 67 million television viewers, according to Nielsen data, topping the roughly 51 million people who watched Trump debate then-candidate Biden in June.
Biden’s disastrous performance in that debate had forced the 81-year-old leader to drop his re-election bid, which he did in July.