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NBC News’ Kristen Welker couldn’t contain her response to a considerable shift in presidential polling that put all the momentum behind one candidate: “Boy, this is a big one!”

As Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on a media blitz that saw her campaign propped up by “The View,” Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert, many suspected the strategy shift away from a basement campaign was rooted in troubling internal numbers. Sunday on “Meet the Press,” those suspicions appeared supported as former President Donald Trump closed a 5% gap to enter into “a tie game here weeks before the election.”

Joining Welker, Steve Kornacki ran through the latest polling from the network to put the rivals at a statistical dead heat at 48% that left the moderator saying, “Steve, boy, this is a big one!”

“Yeah, Kristen, the numbers say it. It is a tie game here weeks before the election,” he noted as the survey conducted Oct. 4-8 marked a dramatic difference from the results after their one and only debate Sept. 10 when the vice president was found to have a lead of 49%-44%.

“The advantage has, all in the last few weeks in our poll, washed way for her,” Kornacki went on as their findings also found that positive sentiment had grown for Trump while it shrank for Harris.

“As summer has turned to fall, any signs of momentum for Kamala Harris have stopped. The race is a dead heat,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt who, with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, had conducted the survey.

Furthermore, on the expanded ballot that included third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jill Stein, Trump took the lead over Harris at 47%-46%.

Citing a gender gap with men favoring Trump by 16% and women siding with Harris by 14%, he added, “If that happens on Election Day, that’s one for the history books. We’ve never seen it that high.”

“The big headline,” Welker said to journalist Willie Geist during the program, “this is a national head-to-head poll — is that Vice President Kamala Harris had a five point lead in our last poll, taken a month ago right after the debate; that lead has all but evaporated.”

“It underscores what we already know: that this is tight, that the country is sharply divided — one of the other big headlines here,” she went on, “people are viewing the Trump presidency more favorably than the Biden presidency. Why is that significant? We’ve seen the vice president get pressed repeatedly on what she would do differently then President Biden and she’s really struggled with that answer.”

Similarly, while Harris edged out Trump 51%-48% in a CBS/YouGov poll, their survey from Oct. 8-11 found the vice president had dropped a percentage point since Sept. 18-20 in both the national and battleground state polling while the GOP leader held steady. Unlike the NBC News poll, the CBS survey allowed for reactions to the media blitz.

Considering how the president had outperformed polling previously, many considered the messaging of a dead heat to be confirmation that Trump was actually ahead with little more than three weeks remaining before Election Day.

Kevin Haggerty
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