Polling shows both Harris and Biden tied with Trump
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With doubts swirling about President Biden's political future, so too are questions about how the party might fare without him come the general election in November.
Calls for the president to drop out of the race have only grown in the weeks since his poor debate performance in June, with increasingly high-profile members of his own party urging him to pass the torch.
The latest national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, released last week, found that Biden and Trump remain statistically tied, even in the aftermath of the widely panned debate.
Biden leads Trump 50% to 48% in a head-to-head matchup — but that gap is within the survey’s margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.
The poll also found that none of the Democrats who have been mentioned as possible alternatives — including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — performed any better than Biden when compared to Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris, an obvious candidate to serve as Biden's successor, narrowly led Trump 50% to 49%, in another statistical tie.
"So there is no clear Democratic alternative, though, as Democrats who have called for Biden to step aside would argue, those candidates could all make the case more coherently for themselves and the party," NPR's Domenico Montanaro writes.
And those numbers could look different after this week, since the RNC is expected to give Trump a boost, as party conventions typically do for their nominees.
Biden — who is isolating with COVID-19 as Trump prepares to formally accept the Republican nomination — insists he will stay in the race.
Biden's campaign manager told reporters Thursday that they are "not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket."
