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After U.S. President Biden, who is about to turn 82, announced his withdrawal from this year's U.S. presidential election and gave way to 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris, Reuters and Ipsos, a world-renowned market consulting company, conducted a joint poll on Harris and Trump's support rates on Monday and Tuesday, and found that Harris was 2 percentage points ahead of Trump.

Reuters also specifically emphasized that a week before Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, their poll showed Trump leading Biden by 2 percentage points.

Not only that, although polls from other institutions show that Trump is ahead of Harris in support, this lead is gradually shrinking. Among them, a poll involving 1,309 people conducted by NBC, PBS and Marist College on July 22 local time, the day after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race and gave way to Harris, showed that Trump's lead over Harris was only 1 percentage point, and there was a trend of being equal.

Therefore, some people speculated that Biden's resignation really had a miraculous effect? ​​Could Harris really reverse Trump and enter the White House with the BUFF of being the first African American woman and Asian American president in American history?

However, according to reports from many Western media, these media do not think Harris' future is bright, and her increase in support may only be temporary. Among them, Reuters, which said Harris is ahead of Trump in the polls, mentioned in a report that election analysts from the Trump camp believe that Harris' current lead may be due to the fact that after Biden withdrew from the election, her media exposure increased significantly, so her popularity also saw a temporary boost, but it will not last long.

The British BBC's analysis pointed out that Harris's major weakness is in governing the country. Unlike Biden or Trump, she has not been tested as the president of the United States. She also did not handle the US border crisis well as the vice president, including a big mistake in a media interview in 2021. At that time, she said "we went to the border to investigate", but she was caught by reporters that she had not actually been there in person.

At the same time, the BBC said that Harris had not been tested in a large-scale election campaign before being nominated as vice president in 2020. Although she won a seat in the U.S. Senate representing California in 2016, her opponent was too weak. In 2019, when Biden had not yet been confirmed as the Democratic presidential candidate, Harris once challenged Biden, but the support increase brought by her identity politics was quickly offset by her lack of clear policy direction, her interview failures, and herand a poor campaign effort.

However, these Western media generally believe that, given that there are still more than three months to go before the November election, Harris's ability to gradually catch up with Trump's approval rating also shows that some fundamental changes have begun to occur in the US election this year. These media all mentioned a word called "reset", that is, Harris versus Trump is a reset of the US election this year.

Because before, not only the public opinion, but also the Trump camp believed that this year's election was Trump vs. Biden. But Biden's sudden resignation was equivalent to the collapse of a series of offensives built by the Trump camp around Biden.

The BBC specifically mentioned that one of Trump's original weaknesses in attacking Biden was that Biden would be 82 years old soon. Once elected, Biden would be the oldest president in American history. But now Harris is only 59 years old, so Trump's offensive is not only useless all of a sudden, it may even backfire on Trump himself, because if the 78-year-old Trump really wins, then the title of the oldest president in American history will be his.

Another advantage Harris has that Biden does not have is that Harris used to be a prosecutor. Because of this identity, she was even attacked by some radical liberals in the Democratic Party, who said that she would condone police violence. However, since one of Trump's previous attacks on Biden and the Democratic Party was that the Democratic Party would condone crime, Harris's resume will also weaken the attacks launched by the Trump camp in this direction.

Moreover, Trump himself is currently embroiled in lawsuits, so how Harris, who used to be a prosecutor, will face Trump will also be a new highlight of the upcoming US election.

In short, based on the current situation, Western media generally believe that it is difficult to predict who will win the November election. However, Western mainstream media that prefer Harris believe that if Harris wants to increase her chances, she must make up for her shortcomings as soon as possible, including who she will choose as her running mate to balance her disadvantages, which will directly determine her election prospects. Media that favor Trump, such as the Wall Street Journal's commentary section, believe that if Trump wants to win, he must control his biggest shortcoming - his big mouth.

Review | Zhou Yang

Editor | Xiang Xinyue

Proofreading | Guo Weitong