Harris’ approval rating has jumped from 35% to 43% in a week, and Americans are more enthusiastic about her candidacy than former President Donald Trump’s, according to an ABC News poll released Sunday. Her strong fundraising also counters the Republican blitz that has given Trump the edge in the money race.
It’s the latest demonstration of how Democrats are rallying behind the vice president, who launched her candidacy last week after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and endorsed her.
Harris’ campaign said 66% of her fundraising came from new donors. The latest haul comes on top of the $81 million she raised in her first day after Biden left office, which the campaign called the largest 24-hour fundraising haul of any candidate in history.
“It’s just a whole new atmosphere for the campaign,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is on a short list of potential Harris running mates, said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
Biden’s departure has forced the Trump-Vance campaign to focus on a younger opponent with a different ideological profile. Walz sought to project a certain confidence, saying that “there’s not going to be a change of course because they don’t have a new plan.”
The two candidates were on the attack this weekend, with Trump courting the cryptocurrency industry, saying he would fire Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, and calling Harris an “out-of-touch San Francisco liberal” at a rally in Minnesota.
Harris stopped at a theater in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to raise money, calling the rhetoric of Trump and his Republican running mate J.D. Vance “bizarre.” She plans to campaign in Atlanta on Tuesday.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who backed Nikki Haley for president before siding with Trump, said the contest was likely to return to “basically a neck-and-neck race” after a surge by Harris.
“I mean, this is the honeymoon period,” he said on ABC’s This Week. “The first poll that’s really going to matter, I think, is going to be the Wednesday after Labor Day.”
Harris has already secured enough delegate support to clinch the nomination, with one key endorsement, former President Barack Obama, stepping in Friday.
Biden’s debate debacle and the internal party fight over his future have hurt his campaign finances, with donors pulling away from an 81-year-old president facing questions about his mental acuity and ability to beat Trump in November’s election.
Biden’s campaign entered July with $96 million in cash on hand, after a spending spree that burned through about 93% of the money it raised in June. That burn rate far outpaced Trump’s, whose campaign spent just 46% of its June cash and had $128 million in the bank. Biden’s campaign continued to spend, even as some polls showed Trump ahead after their debate and calls for the incumbent to end his campaign grew.
It’s a dramatic turnaround from the start of the campaign, when Biden had built up a sizable financial advantage, helped in part by the lack of a serious Democratic challenger and by Trump’s sometimes bitter Republican primary and multiple court cases that drained his coffers.
Trump’s fundraising has surged in recent months, bolstered by appeals to big Republican donors and support from Wall Street and business leaders attracted to his economic agenda.
Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, said he was “donating” to a super political action committee supporting the former president, though at a “much lower level” than has been reported. People familiar with the matter said Musk was pledging $45 million a month to the pro-Trump group.
Trump and the Republican National Committee raised $331 million in the second quarter, surpassing the $264 million raised by Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
Democratic Wall Street donors are also mobilizing to tap their networks and help Harris close the fundraising gap with Trump.
The Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Biden’s $96 million transfer violated the law. That raises a novel legal question, but many campaign finance experts say the transfer is likely allowed.
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