The launch of Kamala Harris’s campaign has injected newfound energy into her party with less than 100 days to go in the election cycle and raised Democrats’ hopes of winning battleground states that once seemed irretrievably lost to Donald Trump, according to a set of memos exclusively shared with the Guardian.
The memos show that Democratic parties in battleground states saw a dramatic surge in contributions and volunteer sign-ups in the past week, in addition to the Harris campaign’s record-breaking fundraising haul of $200m.
They arrive as a new poll shows Harris has gained ground against Trump in six of the seven swing states since Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Conducted July 24-28, the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of registered voters shows Harris leading Trump in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada, with a two-point advantage in each, and leading in Michigan by 11 percentage points; Trump polled ahead of Harris in Pennsylvania by four points and in North Carolina by two points, and the candidates were tied in Georgia.
The memos, which were shared by the coordinated campaign between Harris for President and the Democratic National Committee, offer further promising signs for the vice-president.
In Georgia, where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by just 12,000 votes or 0.2 points in 2020, more than 1,000 new volunteers signed up in the 24 hours after Harris announced her candidacy, marking the largest single-day total of the campaign. Georgia Democrats also collected $200,000, as donations to the state party increased by 320% compared with the week before.
The show of force is notable given that earlier polls indicated Trump had a solid lead in Georgia. An Emerson College poll conducted earlier this month showed Trump with a 5-point advantage over Biden, 44% to 39%, but the outlet’s most recent survey showed Harris had cut that lead down to 2 points.
“Democrats up and down the ticket are seeing unprecedented support from voters across the nation,” said Abhi Rahman, deputy communications director for the DNC. “We are confident that in these battleground states, Democrats will win at every level of the ballot in November.”
The pattern has played out in other states where Trump’s lead over Biden appeared to be growing in the weeks after the president’s disastrous debate performance. In Arizona, where Biden won by about 10,000 votes or 0.3 points in 2020, more than 2,000 new Democratic campaign volunteers signed up in the past week. The Emerson College polls conducted in the past month show that Harris slashed Trump’s lead in Arizona from 10 points to 5 points.
In the key battleground state of Wisconsin, where Biden won by 0.6 points in 2020, the state party raked in $400,000 over the past week after out-raising its Republican counterpart by a margin of 14 to 1 in the first half of the year.
Wisconsin Democrats also saw 3,500 new volunteers sign up for the campaign since Harris entered the race.