Harris campaign to spend $90m on August ads as poll finds she bests Trump in most swing states – live | US elections 2024

US inflation has dipped to a level not seen in more than three years, according to the Labor Department’s latest consumer price data released this morning, giving Joe Biden yet another opportunity to argue that his economic policies are working.

“Today’s report shows that we continue to make progress fighting inflation and lowering costs for American households. Inflation has fallen below 3% and core inflation has fallen to the lowest level since April 2021. We have more work to do to lower costs for hardworking Americans, but we are making real progress, with wages rising faster than prices for 17 months in a row,” the president said after the data was released.

Inflation became one of the biggest challenges Biden faced in his presidency, after prices shot up at rates not seen since the 1980s, driven by factors including Covid-19’s impact on global supply chains, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president’s approval ratings fell as inflation rose, and though Biden has declined to seek re-election, his successor as the Democratic president nominee Kamala Harris appears to have the same problem.

Polls of voters have shown her less trusted than Donald Trump when it comes to handling the economy, even though she is generally viewed as having the edge in overall popularity. We’ll see if she can turn that perception around in the months to come.

Here’s more about what the latest inflation numbers mean:

Speaking of polls, the Associated Press just released a new one finding that Donald Trump has the advantage over Kamala Harris on handling the economy and immigration, while the vice-president bests him on issues like abortion and racial inequality.

Here’s more from the survey, which was conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago:

When it comes to comparing the candidates on the issues, the public is more likely to trust Trump to do a better job handling the economy and immigration. Harris is more trusted to handle racial inequality, abortion, and heath care. The public is closely divided on which candidate would do a better job of handling crime or the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

In March, when Trump and Biden were their party’s presumptive nominees, 54% of Republicans said they would be excited if Trump is re-elected in November and 40% of Democrats said they would be excited with another Biden administration. At the time, Democrats were more likely to be fearful or angry about the prospect of a Trump re-election than Republicans were about a Biden re-election.

In the latest poll, a similar share of Republicans remain excited about a Trump victory in the 2024 general election. But Harris is seeing a roughly 20 percentage point boost in excitement among Democrats. Two-thirds of Democrats are excited about a Harris victory, compared with the 40% in March who felt that way about Biden prevailing. And Democrats remain more fearful or angry thinking about another Trump administration than Republicans are about a Harris victory.

Forty-seven percent of Black adults report they would be excited if Harris became president compared with 31% of white adults or 30% of Hispanic adults.

Ever since jumping into the presidential race, Kamala Harris has been raking in donations. Now, her campaign is putting that money to use, with an announcement this morning of $90m in television ads targeted at media markets in the midwest where they say Donald Trump is “ceding the airwaves”.

Here’s more, from Harris’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks:

On the heels of our historic launch, we know that the more voters hear during the month of August about the differences between Vice President Harris’ long-standing history of delivering common-sense solutions for the American people – from her early days as a prosecutor to the present – and Donald Trump’s dangerous, extreme and out-of-touch Project 2025 agenda, the more they will know that Vice President Harris is the only candidate fit to lead our country over the next four years. It is precisely through efforts like this that we will break through a crowded media environment early and make clear the choice and stakes of this election for the voters who will decide it.

In addition to airing in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the ads will air in Ohio, which is expected to vote for Trump in November, but where its Democratic senator Sherrod Brown is running for another term. His victory is essential to Democrats’ hopes of maintaining the chamber.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Ever since she took over as the Democratic presidential nominee late last month, it has been apparent that Kamala Harris has the sort of momentum with voters that Joe Biden never had during his abandoned bid for a second term. This morning, the Cook Political Report released polling showing the vice-president ahead of Donald Trump or tied with him in six of the seven battleground states. It was a reversal from when they last surveyed voters in May, and found that the former president led Biden in each one. Progressive youth voter group NextGen America also found yesterday that Harris is beating Trump among voters under 35, and by a much larger margin than when Biden was in the race.

The vice-president has no campaign events scheduled for today, though her running mate Tim Walz is making speeches in Colorado and Massachusetts. Both are undoubtedly preparing for next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago, when they’ll have a chance to reintroduce themselves to an even bigger swath of voters.

Here’s what else we’re watching today:

• Primaries last night put progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar on the path to continue representing her Minnesota district, and saw voters in Wisconsin reject yet another effort by the GOP to undermine the power of the swing state’s Democratic governor.

• Inflation has continued to fall, reaching a level not seen since early 2021, according to just-released consumer price data from the US government.

• Trump will speak about his economic plans at 4pm ET in Asheville, North Carolina – a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2008, but where the Cook poll says Harris has a small lead.