Kamala Harris leads Trump in new poll after Biden dropout

Vice President Kamala Harris is narrowly beating rival Donald Trump in a national presidential poll released Tuesday. It is one of the first conducted since US President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign.

Harris holds a two-point lead over Trump, 44 percent to 42 percent, according to the Reuters/Ipsos poll. It was conducted two days after Biden announced on Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing his vice president.

In the previous week's poll, Harris, 59, and Trump, now the elder in the presidential race at 78, were tied at 44 percent.

Harris, the overwhelming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination who is raking in endorsements, donations, and pledged delegates, narrowly trails Republican flag-bearer Trump in another survey released on Tuesday.

Both results are within the polls' margins of error.

The new surveys followed the Republican National Convention, at which Trump formally accepted the party's presidential nomination, and Biden departed from the race.

Harris's poll performance, bolstered by Democratic voters' excitement about the race shakeup, shows her apparently neutralising the bounce a nominee gets in the days after his or her party's nominating convention.

In a Monday PBS News/NPR/Marist poll, Trump edges Harris with 46 percent to 45 percent of US registered voters, with nine percent undecided.

If third-party candidates or independents are included in the contest, Trump and Harris are tied at 42 percent, with the others far behind.

The PBS News survey notably found that 87 percent of all Americans think Biden's decision to drop out was the right move, a view that crossed partisan and generational lines.

A plurality of respondents (41 percent) said Biden's decision increases Democrats' chances of winning in November, compared to 24 percent who said it decreases the party's odds and 34 percent who said it makes no difference.

Both surveys come in the aftermath of Trump surviving a shock assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on 13 July.

Trump maintains a very narrow advantage of 1.6 percentage points against Harris, according to an average of polls collated by RealClearPolitics.