WASHINGTON - Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 42% to 37% in the race for the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, according to an Ipsos poll published on Thursday. The poll found Harris had widened her lead since a July 22-23 survey, which found her up 37% to 34% over Trump. The nationwide poll of 2,045 U.S. adults, conducted Aug. 2-7, found 4% of those surveyed backed independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., down from 10% in July. Ipsos conducted the August poll independently. The poll, conducted online, had a margin of error of around 3 percentage points. In a separate poll, Ipsos found Harris leading Trump 42% to 40% in the seven states where the election was closest in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That result did not break out results for individual states. Harris entered the race on July 21 when President Joe Biden, 81, folded his campaign and endorsed Harris following a disastrous debate performance on June 27 against Trump. Reuters/Ipsos polls had mostly shown Biden and Trump tied while the president was still in the race, though Biden was performing worse than he had at the same point in the 2020 election, in which he defeated Trump.
The August Ipsos survey found more voters associated Trump than Harris with the word “patriot” - a regular part of Trump’s campaign speeches - as well as with “weird,” a word that Harris supporters have used to taunt Trump in recent weeks.