Riding a wave of mostly positive coverage as the presumptive new presidential nominee for Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris has a significant lead over former Republican President Donald Trump in Minnesota, 50% to 40%, according to our new KSTP/SurveyUSA poll.

Another four percent prefer another candidate and five percent are undecided. That 10-point lead is four points higher than our last survey of a Trump-Biden match-up conducted before Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June when Biden had a six-point lead over Trump, 47% to 41%.

“What you’re getting from the media is sort of peak positive coverage for Kamala Harris and that’s reflected in the polls to an extent,” says Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier. “And so you’ve got a little Harris bump here in Minnesota. The question is, ‘Will it last or is it just a temporary sugar high?’”

Harris performed three points better than Biden in our previous poll, while Trump dropped just one point. We’ll never know if Trump would have gotten a bump from the Republican National Convention and the wave of sympathy after the assassination attempt because Biden dropped out of the race.

Schier says had Biden stayed in the race, this poll might have looked much different. “We know nationally Biden’s support was falling after that first debate and in some national surveys, Trump was ahead by high single digits. So I think in Minnesota if Biden had stayed in the race, this survey would have shown either a tied race or a small Trump lead given the trends that were occurring nationally.”

Biden didn’t stay in and that changed the dynamics of the race in many ways. For instance, Harris increased an already big lead for Democrats among female voters. She leads Trump by 27 points among women, 58% to 31%, seven points higher than Biden last month. Trump leads by seven among men, 49% to 42%, about the same as last month against Biden. Harris leads among independent voters, 40% to 30%, five points higher than Biden.

“Independents, women and suburban voters. They have moved to Harris in a very big way,” Schier says.

Schier cautions that poll results this early in the race between Harris and Trump are likely to be volatile. “Right now, Harris is being depicted in much of the media as a shiny new candidate and people like shiny new things, but they also give it a second and third look and that’s what will be happening between now and Election Day.”

He also notes how unprecedented the events of the past two weeks have been, including an assassination attempt on Trump, the Republican National Convention, Biden dropping out and Harris emerging to succeed him as the Democratic nominee.

“We’ve never had four things like this happen in such a concentrated period of time. Given that, it’s going to take voters a while to sort all this out.”

Our poll includes 42% of “likely voters” who identify themselves as Democrats, 37% as Republicans and 19% as independents.

SurveyUSA interviewed 800 adults from the state of Minnesota 07/23/24 through 07/25/24. Of the adults, 725 were identified as being registered to vote; of the registered voters, 626 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the November general election and were asked the substantive questions which follow. This research was conducted online, using nonprobability sample of online adult panelists chosen randomly by Lucid Holdings LLC of New Orleans. The combined pool of survey respondents was weighted to US Census ACS targets for gender, age, race, education, and home ownership.