Trump Takes Shocking Lead in Top-Level Poll, Completely Shifts Perception of the Race

Election watchers woke up to a shock on Sunday after The New York Times and Sienna College released a poll that changed the perception of the presidential race. 

Kamala Harris, who entered the race in July after pushing Joe Biden aside, has been leading most polls with the conventional wisdom being that she held a slim if not durable lead. According to this latest survey, though, Trump is beating Harris in both the head-to-head and multi-candidate field. 

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ALSO SEE: Scott Jennings Nukes Kamala Harris So Badly That Van Jones Can Only Smile

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No doubt some will try, but anyone who tries to pick apart those crosstabs, which are listed in the second post above, is just going to look desperate. I'm firmly against "un-skewing polls" and crosstab-truthing. I think you take a poll for what it is, add its topline to the average, and move on. When anyone starts to ripping apart crosstabs and trying to "re-weight" a poll, they are playing with fire and setting themselves up for disappointment. 

With that said, if you were looking for realistic crosstabs to believe a poll, it's hard to find one in the last several months that looks more realistic than the above. That's specifically true regarding the voting preferences of whites, blacks, and Hispanics. If this result showed Trump taking 20 percent of the black vote, that might be a reason for pause, but 13 percent is perfectly believable given the strides he's made with black men. The same is true for the rest of the demographic breakdowns. From education to age, everything looks believable. 

So what is driving Trump's rise? It appears that low-propensity voters are giving him the edge. He leads Harris with "did not vote in 2020" respondents 49 to 40 percent. That underscores the importance of Republicans getting out the vote. If those people don't show up to the polls, Harris could easily win.

The stakes for Tuesday's debate have now been raised to astronomical levels. Harris is not going to be able to sit on her hands, which raises the propensity for her to make a major mistake. The opposite is true for Trump, who was more likely to lash out and put up a bad performance before this poll came out. He now has every reason to take the same strategy he took in the first debate: Let his opponent self-destruct.