Major New Poll Raises Stakes for First Trump-Harris Debate

Just ahead of their only scheduled debate on Tuesday, one of the bigger polls—by the New York Times and Sienna College—sees the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as "neck and neck," reports the Times.

• Trump leads Harris 48% to 47%, within the poll's margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
• The newspaper's Nate Cohn sees the result as a "bit surprising," given that it's the first big national survey in about a month to show Trump in the lead, he writes. It raises the question of whether Harris' recent rise in the polls has plateaued. And it makes Tuesday's debate all the more important.

• In regard to the all-important swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona, Trump holds slim leads or the race is tied. Meaning, it's "a tight race that remains either candidate's to win or lose," per the main poll story.
• Also on Sunday, Nate Silver writes in the Silver Bulletin that after adjusting for Harris' convention bump, the race is again a toss-up—"if not slightly leaning toward Trump given the Electoral College bias against Democrats."

(More Election 2024 stories.)