President Joe Biden requested in recent days to take a look at polling his campaign had done on how Vice President Kamala Harris would perform in a hypothetical matchup against former President Donald Trump in an election, MSNBC reported on Sunday.
The polling concerning Harris was very tightly held and only made available to a handful of top campaign aides, according to the report.
However, in NBC News' latest national poll that was made public and carried out more than a week after Biden's dismal debate performance but before the assassination attempt on Trump, both the president and Harris trailed Trump by margins of 2 percentage points among registered voters.
Trump led Biden 45% to 43%, while he was ahead 47% to 45% in the matchup against Harris.
Among Black voters, Harris led Trump 78% to 14%, a margin of 64 percentage points while Biden beat Trump by only 57 percentage points (69% to 12%) in that demographic.
But Trump did slightly better among white voters when matched up with Harris instead of Biden, leading her by 16 points among these voters in that demographic, compared with his advantage of 14 points against Biden.
There was almost no difference between Biden or Harris among other demographics — such as age, gender, or Latino voters.
The NBC News survey also revealed that Biden, Harris, and Trump had almost equal positive-negative scores with the electorate, with Trump at 38% positive, 53% negative (-15 net rating), Biden at 36% positive, 53% negative (-17 net rating) and Harris at 32% positive, 50% negative (-18 net rating).