Christian Datoc writes for the Washington Examiner about the weeks ahead in the presidential race.

It’s been more than a week since the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, and one thing seems clear: Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t seeing a post-convention polling bump typical of most presidential campaigns.

Still, the race remains remarkably tight. Harris marginally improved her numbers before the Aug. 19-22 Chicago confab. She is virtually deadlocked with former President Donald Trump in any number of national polls, with operatives expecting that to remain the case through November.

Patrick Murray, director of the Polling Institute at Monmouth University, told the Washington Examiner that Harris saw her bump before the convention after President Joe Biden ended his 2024 bid on July 21 and Democrats quickly united around Harris as his chosen successor. 

“We have an unprecedented situation here, where we have a candidate who was just announced as the candidate a month before the convention, and quite frankly, that’s when she got her bounce,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “What we’re looking at with polling since the convention is that she held on to it.”

The Real Clear Politics average of national polls on Tuesday has Harris leading Trump in a head-to-head matchup by 1.9 percentage points. That’s virtually unchanged from Aug. 19, when Harris was ahead by 1.5 percentage points. 

A handful of veteran Democratic operatives with close ties to the Harris campaign voiced some anxiety to the Washington Examiner about the state of the race.

“It certainly would have been nice to see a bump,” one such operative stated. “The stakes are so high, you’d hope that the vice president’s message and demeanor alone would be enough to cut through the negative attacks and lies coming from the other side, but that’s just the current state of politics, I guess.”

The next major moment for Trump and Harris to capture a large national audience will be Sept. 10, when the two will face off for their first, perhaps only, presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.