Kamala Harris boosts enthusiasm among progressive voters, survey suggests – US politics live | US elections 2024

New polling indicates Kamala Harris has re-engaged voters turned off by Joe Biden’s candidacy, and is vying closely against Donald Trump in crucial swing states.

While it’s unclear if the vice-president has the overall advantage, the data is a reversal of fortune for the Democrats, who had grown nervous after months of polling had showed Biden at best tied, or at worst trailing, Trump nationally and in the states along the Great Lakes and in the southern Sun belt whose voters are set to decide the election.

The closely watched New York Times/Siena College poll found that among likely voters nationwide, Trump has only a one-point lead. In their previous survey following the Trump-Biden debate, the former president led by six points:

Emerson College found that Trump leads in most swing states, albeit narrowly and with Wisconsin tied:

However, that data was far better than Biden’s numbers in those states the last time Emerson polled voters on his candidacy.

“Harris has recovered a portion of the vote for the Democrats on the presidential ticket since the fallout after the June 27 debate,” said executive director of Emerson College Polling Spencer Kimball. “Harris’ numbers now reflect similar support levels to those of Biden back in March.”

Joan E Greve

Some Democratic and labor leaders from battleground states joined the DNC press call today, and reported genuine and widespread enthusiasm for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

“There’s a lot of excitement on the ground,” said Yolanda Bejarano, chair of the Arizona Democratic party. “We are seeing just a lot of folks coming out, trying to find out what they can do to volunteer, to help get Vice-President Harris elected.”

Ron Bieber, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, described the environment in the battleground state as “electric” and echoed Harris’s message that Americans “won’t go back” to a time of fewer rights.

“Trump was devastating to the auto industry and auto workers here in Michigan. They are not going to go backwards. We’re moving forward,” Bieber said.

“President Biden and Vice-President Harris have been the biggest supporters of union workers and the auto industry here in Michigan, and people are fired up. I’ve been doing this stuff a long time now, and I’ve never seen the energy and excitement as I am right now.”

Joan E Greve

The Democratic national committee held a press call today to attack Donald Trump and JD Vance for their “anti-worker” agenda, after Republicans spent much of their convention pitching themselves as economic populists.

“It’s more of that trickle-down economic fairytale that has never worked. It has gutted so much of our economy. It’s hurt working people; it’s hurt the labor movement,” said Congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania.

“It’s been great for big corporations and billionaires and Wall Street. It is fiscally irresponsible, and we can’t let it happen again.”

Touting the legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, Deluzio argued Kamala Harris would continue the president’s pro-labor record if she wins in November.

“We’re going to take more strong action to bring home offshore jobs, to bring home more manufacturing, to defend the ability and the freedom for folks to form and join the union,” Deluzio said. “That’s the backbone of the union way of life.”

Republican congressman and former White House doctor Ronny Jackson accused the FBI director, Christopher Wray, of making a “politically motived move” when he told Congress that it was not yet clear if the former president was hit by a bullet or shrapnel after a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania.

Following the assassination attempt, Jackson issued a memo offering some details of the wound Trump suffered. Before we get into what he said about the FBI director, it’s worth noting that Jackson denied that Trump had contracted Covid-19 back in 2020, before being refuted by an official in the then-president’s administration.

Anyway, here’s the tweet:

Robert Tait

Donald Trump has moved further to turn his survival of an assassination attempt into mythology by putting the memorable images of the incident on the cover of his latest book, due out next month.

The dramatic news picture, taken by the Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, captured a defiant and bloodied Trump pumping his fist and mouthing “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd moments after the failed attempt on his life by a 20-year-old gunman at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on 13 July.

Now the photo will be used on the front of the Republican presidential nominee’s new tome, Save America, a book mainly of pictures, which goes on sale on 3 September, Axios reported.

Lauren Gambino

The mother of Kamala Harris’s stepchildren, Kerstin Emhoff, has slammed sexist critics who called the vice-president “childless,” saying she is a “loving” and “always present” stepmother.

In the statement to CNN, Emhoff, a film producer and ex-wife to the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, said:

These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.

Ella Emhoff, 25, shared her mother’s statement in an Instagram post that asked:

How can you be ‘childless’ when you have cutie pie kids like Cole and I?

She added: “I love my three parents.”

The post was in reaction to comments made by the Republican vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, who said in 2021 that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies” who don’t have a stake in its future.

Harris has said her stepchildren refer to her as “Momala.”

Kamala Harris remains on the campaign trail, telling members of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston that Joe Biden “showed what true leadership looks like” in his Oval Office address last night, where he elaborated on his decision to end his campaign for a second term. The vice-president has already received the support from the delegates necessary to become the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, but is reportedly set to receive another big endorsement: that of former president Barack Obama. Back in Washington DC, the House passed a resolution condemning Harris’s handling of immigration in her role as “border czar” – even though she never really had that job. Later on today, Biden and Harris will separately meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who controversially addressed Congress yesterday.

Here’s what else happened today so far:

• Donald Trump claims a bullet struck his ear when an assassin opened fire at his rally earlier this month, but the FBI director said he is not sure about that.

• Protesters yesterday burned an American flag not far from the Capitol as Netanyahu visited, prompting condemnation from top lawmakers and the vice-president.

• The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s members are much more enthusiastic about Harris’s candidacy than they were about Biden’s after his debate debacle, according to polling shared exclusively with the Guardian’s US politics live blog.

Kamala Harris’s ascension as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has caused enthusiasm among the party’s potential voters to surge, a top progressive group found in a survey shared exclusively with the Guardian’s US politics live blog.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) reported that in the period following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate against Donald Trump, which led to the president abandoning his re-election campaign, and Harris’s entry into the race, members saying that they were very enthusiastic about the nominee rose from 34% to 78%. Those saying they were not enthusiastic at all dipped from 33% to 5%.

“Our PCCC membership generally tracks with Democratic voter sentiment broadly. This spike in enthusiasm is a key indicator in a year when base turnout could be determinative to who wins the White House,” said Ethan Jasny, a quantitative analyst for the committee.

The poll also found that members considering supporting a third-party candidate fell by about half to 8% in that period, while those very worried Democrats would lose the White House plunged from 66% after the debate to 27% once Harris became the presumptive nominee.

The PCCC regularly surveys about 5,000 of its members for its internal use, but shared these results with the Guardian.

Kamala Harris just spoke before the convention of the American Federation of Teachers, which swiftly endorsed her after she entered the presidential race.

The vice-president began her remarks by commenting on Joe Biden’s speech to the nation last night from the Oval Office, in which he said he was dropping his bid for a second term so that younger generations will have a chance to lead.

“Last night, our president addressed the nation, and he showed once again what true leadership looks like. He really did. His words were poignant,” Harris told the crowd in Houston.

She continued:

He thinks and talks about his work and our country, understanding what it means in terms of what we do now and how that will impact the future. He thinks about our history in the context of the importance of the work we do now. And over the past three-and-a-half years, and over his entire career, Joe has led with grace and strength and bold vision and deep compassion.

And as he said, in the next six months, he will continue to fight for the American people, and I know we are all deeply, deeply grateful for his continued service to our nation.

Lauren Gambino

Though Kamala Harris was never named the Biden administration’s “border czar” that hasn’t stopped Republicans from attacking her.

This week, Donald Trump held a call with reporters to slam Harris’s record on immigration and label her as a far-left liberal on border policy, and congressional Republicans have joined in.

“While Democrats and their allies in the media rush to excuse vice-president Harris’ catastrophic failure to end the crisis she and president Biden created, Congress has shown with this resolution that we want the American people to know the truth,” said House homeland security chair Mark Green.

The just-passed House resolution is pure politics and has no chance of being taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.