Kamala Harris now a threat to Trump in several major swing states, new polling finds

Vice President Kamala Harris has pulled her partyback into contention in several key battleground states aftertaking the reins of the presidential ticket and becoming the presumptive nominee for the Democrats.

A new Emerson poll released on Thursday shows Harris putting an end to the bleeding her predecessor was suffering for weeks across five key states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She still trails Donald Trump in each state, but she’s now within just a few percentage points — ground she has a chance of making up over the next 100-plus days until the general election.

The key bit is her marked improvement over Joe Biden. The Harris campaign didn’t unveil its first ad until Thursday, after the Emerson poll was taken, meaning the numbers are virtually unaffected by anything she has done since taking the wheel.

Her entrance alone has given Democrats a boost in each of those states over Emerson’s poll taken earlier in July. Her numbers were up over Biden’s by four percentage points in Wisconsin and Arizona, three percentage points in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and five percentage points in Georgia. Younger voters in particular were among her biggest gains.

The result comes the same day a Morning Consult poll showed Harris narrowly ahead of Trump with voters nationally, and a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Harris cutting the Democrats’ national polling deficit down from six percentage points earlier this month to just one percentage point today.

The Republican nominee has seen his momentum stallin the immediate wake of the Trumpified Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where he spent four days boosting his profile. Harris, meanwhile, has seen a fundraising surge to the tune of