Kamala Harris: polls, program… Neck and neck results with Donald Trump

The American presidential election is taking place in less than A month later, Kamala Harris is leading the polls, but the score is tight. The campaign promises to be tough in the final decisive days.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are facing off in a tight election campaign with less than a month to go until the US presidential election. According to the latest polls from Siena College for The New York Times, Kamala Harris has a three-point lead over Donald Trump. The Democratic candidate is leading in the polls against her predecessor, Joe Biden, whose health worried voters who preferred to turn to Donald Trump.

However, victory is not yet assured. Kamala Harris and the Democratic camp must resist Donald Trump's various attacks, more or less well-founded. As a reminder, the former Republican president has several times called his opponent “crazy” and even “mentally handicapped”. More recently, he used the consequences of natural disasters to attack the current vice president. “This is someone who is going to steal your fortune and abandon you and your family when the waters rise,” he summed up, as some Americans continue to suffer the consequences of Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people in the southeastern United States in late September, and Hurricane Milton that followed on October 10.

The vice president, a candidate for the White House, visited the states devastated by Hurricane Helene, especially since several of them are among the “swing states” that are so decisive for the election, notably North Carolina and Georgia. If Kamala Harris went there as a member of the presidential team, she was also there as a candidate to counter Donald Trump's accusations, who blames the Democratic camp for not having done enough to prevent risks or to respond to them after the hurricane. Remarks that could leave traces in the minds of voters.

Kamala Harris' candidacy to replace Joe Biden has put the vice president at the top of voting intentions, while the White House incumbent was struggling to assert himself against Donald Trump. According to polls collected by the website 270 to win, nationally, Kamala Harris has a 2.4-point lead with 49.3%, compared to 46.9% for Donald Trump (data dated October 10, 2024).

But the state polls are very close, and that's what counts. Under the American voting system, each state won guarantees a certain number of votes in the 538 electoral districts that vote for the American president. Most of the 50 states are won by a political party, but the “swing states” swing to the right or to the left according to the polls. The latter, which number ten (Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) must be won to ensure access to the White House.

Kamala Harris has been able to have a small lead in some states in recent weeks, up to 3 points sometimes, but One month before the elections, the gaps are slim. Kamala Harris remains the favorite in four out of ten swing states, with a lead of 0.8 points in Nevada, 6 points in Minnesota, 7.6 in New Mexico and 0.4 in Wisconsin, according to pollster 270towin. Conversely, she is slightly behind in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Except in Florida, she never gives her opponent more than a 2-point lead. So anything is still possible for Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris is basing part of her campaign on selected points from her program. The Democratic candidate has made defending purchasing power for the middle classes her hobbyhorse along with abortion rights, always taking care to distinguish herself from Donald Trump's policy. But several political commentators criticize her for remaining on the surface by citing flagship measures without tackling the substance of certain issues. The vice president, proposing a Democratic program, is also campaigning on points already present in Joe Biden's campaign, but must seek to: to stand out, sometimes by being more centrist than the American president.

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• Defense of purchasing power: While the economy is a central concern for Americans, at a time when inflation continues to be felt and weighs on the employment and housing sectors, Kamala Harris poses as a defender of purchasing power. She assures us that she wants to “give money back to middle and working class families” while Donald Trump is fighting “for billionaires and big business”. And to convince, she cites three strong measures: a tax credit for birth, assistance for first-time buyers to housing or even a helping hand in creating a business. It also promises to reduce inflation to 3% and control prices for basic necessities and medicines. For the richest, the situation is different since Kamala Harris plans to tax at 28% the capital gains of households earning more than a million dollars per year. That's higher than the current rate, but lower than the 39% Joe Biden wants.
• Green Measures: the ecological component is not the most substantiated part of Kamala Harris' program, but the candidate is investing in the subject to distance herself from Donald Trump, who broke with the Paris agreements during his presidential term. If she defends “the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water and live without the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”, she does not specify how. At the same time, she is doing about-faces on several measures that she defended in the past: no more question of opposing hydraulic fracturing, a technique that cracks rocks to extract hydrocarbons, and no more banning plastic straws and other replaceable waste. Following in the footsteps of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris says she is in favor of the inflation reduction act (IRA), a set of ecological, economic and social measures.
• Migration policy: immigration is another big issue in the presidential campaign on which Kamala Harris is playing the balancing act. She wants to appear firm to attract the moderate right, but not too firm so as not to scare away the left. However, the candidate has announced a hardening of migration policy involving “consequences” for illegal migrants and investments in physical barriers at the border with Mexico.
• Social measures: Kamala Harris has mainly placed social issues at the heart of her campaign, starting with the right to abortion in the face of a Republican camp at the origin of the tightening of access to abortion in several states. The defense of minorities is also a central point of the campaign.
• International : in terms of foreign policy, Kamala Harris positions herself mainly on Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the latter, she recalled her commitment to the defense of the Hebrew state and specified that she would not suspend American arms deliveries to Israel if she wins, but she also wants to appear less pro-Israel than Joe Biden and has condemned the violence against Palestinian civilians. She has said that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” and called for “a ceasefire.” As for Ukraine, she reaffirms the United States' support for the country after the Russian invasion. Moreover, she pinned Donald Trump on his good relations with leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and assured that she will not make “friends” with dictators.

The momentum gained by Kamala Harris since her candidacy was made official has not suffered from the debate that pitted her against Donald Trump on September 10, on the contrary. While the Democrat's qualities as a debater remained to be proven, and left some skeptical, the former prosecutor did not give in to the Republican and his old-timer looks or his aggressive attacks. She is, moreover, in the general opinion of the American press, the victorious one in the duel that will remain the only one of the campaign.

The Democratic candidate was able to take advantage of her duel with Trump and the constraints imposed, particularly on the closing of microphones, both in form and on the front. If Kamala Harris was serious, solid and active when defending her ideas or countering those of Donald Trump, she also showed a side mischievous without ever being unpleasant or condescending, mocking her opponent when the latter put forward fake news and appeared more grumpy, even annoyed, and multiplying the rumblings undeniably recalling her age, approaching 80 years, compared to Kamala Harris' 59 years.

Kamala Harris' personal journey is impressive and the vice president knows how to remind people of it. “I am empirical proof of the promise of America,” she regularly explains. African-American, with Jamaican origins on her father's side and Indian origins on her mother's, and from an academic background, she became the first woman to be elected district attorney of San Francisco, before becoming California's attorney general from 2011 to 2016. 2017. As a woman, Kamala Harris is likely to get a better score than Joe Biden, but especially than Donald Trump, with American female voters. The Democrats historically record good scores with this electorate and hope to capitalize more on these votes with their candidate.

If Kamala Harris is a pure Democrat from California who convinces in historically Democratic states, she may have more difficulty convincing in the Midwestern states that lean Republican or swing from one camp to the other depending on the polls. To win over this electorate, her running mate Tim Walz could be a good asset. Governor of Minnesota, the politician is so popular in the Midwest that he was appointed to in place of Josh Shapiro, another popular Democrat in this region of the United States. The vice presidential candidate also helps to balance and reassure the male electorate as a white man alongside a female and black candidate.

Born on October 20, 1964 in Oakland, California, to a Jamaican father, a professor of economics at Stanford University, and an Indian mother, an oncologist by profession, Kamala Harris began by obtaining her bachelor's degree in the United States before obtaining a degree in political science from Howard University in Washington, then a second law degree from Hastings, California. Married since 2014 to lawyer Douglas Emhoff, Kamala Harris has two children from a first marriage: Cole and Ella.

In 1990, she joined the California bar and started as an assistant district attorney for Alameda County before being elected district attorney for the San Francisco district from 2004 to 2011. She was the first woman to hold this position in the United States, before becoming California's attorney general from 2010 to 2017. January 3, 2017 marked a turning point in Kamala Harris' political career, when she was elected as a senator from California to replace Barbara Boxer. She then became the second black senator in the United States. A mandate that she would hold until 2021. During these years, she campaigned against racial discrimination, Donald Trump's immigration policy and supported the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of George Floyd.

In the meantime, Kamala Harris was a candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination, but ultimately withdrew before the official start of the primaries. Joe Biden chose her as his running mate and Democratic vice presidential nominee. The duo won and became president of the country in 2020, defeating Donald Trump. Kamala Harris also became the first African-American and Asian-American person to hold such a position. In August 2024, she became the Democratic Party's nominee for the November presidential election, after Joe Biden withdrew from the race for the White House. She is therefore facing Donald Trump, in an attempt to run for a first term as President of the United States.