We have new polling showing Harris gaining ground on Trump in some key Sun Belt states. Cnn's senior data reporter, Harry Enton, is running the numbers for us. Harry, we've got some new numbers out today. What do you make of them?

Tight, tight, tight. That's what I make of it. We'll take a look at the four states that New York Times, Santa College polled over the past week. I want you to take a look at the key in the yellow, all within the margin of error. So we got Kamala Harris up by five points in Arizona, Georgia Trump up by four, Nevada Trump up by one. And in North Carolina, where Democrats want to play, you see Kamala Harris up two there. Bottom line is two states where Trump is ahead, two states where Harris is ahead, but all within the margin of error. Tight, tight, tight. Now, what's key here is Who would you rather be in this situation? Who has the momentum? I want you to take a look at these states in the aggregate. This is the Democrat versus Donald Trump, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. You go back to November of 2020, across these four states, Biden and Trump were essentially tied. But in May of 2024, look at that. Look at that advantage that Donald Trump held in these states. He was up by nine points over Joe Biden. Now, in August of 2024, we've got that tied race again.

What we have right now is essentially the same picture in aggregate that we had back in November of 2020. Of course, Joe Biden won that year. The bottom line is Kamala Harris with momentum. You'd rather be her than Donald Trump if we're projecting this out nationally, but it is way too close to call in the Sun Belt states, Jessica.

Harry, what groups are helping Harris close the deficit that Biden had and close this gap?

Yeah, what are the groups? Well, if you know anything about the Sun Belt, you know that Georgia, North Carolina have a lot of Black voters in them. Arizona and Nevada have a lot of Hispanic voters in them. All right, so this is a vote choice across the Sun Belt swing states among likely voters. Look at how much better Kamala Harris is doing now than Joe Biden was doing back in May. She's getting 84% of the Black vote. Joe Biden was just getting 74% of it back in May. How about Hispanic? It's basically the same story. Look at this. Kamala Harris is getting 54% of that vote now compared to Joe Biden just getting 47% back in May. I will note that Harris is still actually somewhat underperforming what Joe Biden did with these two groups back in 2020, but she's doing significantly better than he was doing back in May.

What does the poll tell you about the different ways that Harris and Trump are talking about the economy, which, of course, is the issue Americans say they care about the most?

Yeah, economy, economy, economy. This is rather interesting, all right? This is the Harris versus Trump margin in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina. Look at this. Donald Trump holds an advantage on who voters trust more on the economy. Look at that. He leads Harris by 12 points. But interestingly enough, this is a question that I really don't think posters ask nearly enough, which is, who cares about people more like you? Look at this. Harris holds a five-point advantage on that. You go back to 2012, Mitt Romney won on the economy, but Barack Obama won that election because he won on this question, cares about people like you. Harris right now is leading on this, less of a lead than Trump has on the economy. But right now, I think voters are balancing these two thoughts in their head, and that's why we have such a close race across the Sun Belt battlegrounds.

All right, so let's zoom out now that we have this new data. Where does the race to the 270 Electoral College votes stand?

Right. Last week, the New York Times released polls from the Northern battleground states in the Great Lakes, and this weekend, they released them across the Sun Belt. If the New York Times polls are exactly right, exactly right, of course, there's a margin of error, and we'll get to that in a second. Kamal Harris will get 297 electoral votes, more than the 270 she needs to win because she'd win up here in the Great Lake battleground states. She'd also win down here in North Carolina and Arizona, lose in Nevada and in Georgia. If the polls are exactly right, she's ahead. But of course, these polls come with a margin of error, and this race, in my opinion, is very too much close to call. Why is that? Because if we look within the York Times Poll's margin of error, you could actually find that Donald Trump could get 312 electoral votes, winning up here in the Great Lakes, winning in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. Bottom line is, as we head in the Democratic National Convention, yes, you'd rather be Kamala Harris than you would be Donald Trump. As you see here, this is the median projection, but the bottom line is a Donald Trump victory is well within the margin of error, Jessica.

All right, Harry Enton, as always, breaking the numbers down for us. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Joining me now, CNN Political Analyst and White House Correspondent for CBS News Hour, Laura Barone-Lopes and Stuart Stevens. He's the Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project and also author of the book, The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party is Driving Our Demography Autocracy to Autocracy. Thanks to both of you for being here on a Saturday night with us. Stuart, let's start first with you. Harry just walked us through these numbers. It is a very tight race as we look at those key swing states. We're heading into the D&C next week. What do you think the Harris campaign needs to do to keep their momentum?

Well, look, just one note about this as far as the African-American vote. That's showing an 84% for Harris. Harris is going to get 92% of that vote. In 1964, Goldwater got 7% of the Black folks. In 2020, Trump got 8%. That's one point every 56 years. That's not going to change. So when you're projecting out these numbers, you really need to to factor that in. I've seen this so many times in polling. I can't tell you how many times I've seen my candidates, Republicans doing better with African-Americans before the election. But I can tell you how many times we got north of 9%, and that was never. I think this race right now, the trend is your friend, and you want to be Harris in this race, and Trump doesn't have a message. I think the major challenge for the Harris campaign is not to run It's just like a normal campaign. Donald Trump is a criminal. Donald Trump is a sexual predator. You need to run against him. You can't run against him on the economy or something like this. It was a rematch of Obama Romney. You have to frame this race. Now, you need to talk about the economy, but this isn't going to be a race about the economy, I think.

I think it's going to be a referendum on Donald Trump and who you could look to with pride in the White House, and it's not going to be a guy who's a criminal.

Laura, we know that former President will be holding counter programming next week during the D&C, he's going to have these rallies in Pennsylvania and Michigan, of course, two very key battleground states. How do you think that will go for him? And what do you think the campaign is going to be trying to achieve? What's the best case scenario for them as the Democrats have their big week next week? Sorry, Stuart. I'm going to let Laura answer that one. Go ahead. We'll come back to you.

Yeah, I'm curious to I see what Stuart has to say on this as well. But ultimately, Trump's campaign is trying to blunt Harris's momentum, find anything that they can do to stop it. Because right now, Democrats and the Harris campaign are expecting that coming out of the DNC, they will have another little boost that it'll just add to the momentum that she has. And I'm on the ground here in Chicago already. And a lot of the voters that I've talked to, yes, they're in Illinois, and it's not a swing state, but they just talk all the time about how much the vibes of this election have shifted. It. And it already felt like a vibes election before now, especially since voters didn't really respond to some of the good economic numbers previously. And so it felt like a vibe session to voters. And that's why they were more leaning Trump prior to President Biden dropping out of the race. And so Harris is trying to add to the momentum that she has right now. And Trump, after not being out on the campaign trail for about a week ago, for a whole week, he's now trying to really get out there in those battleground states States and siphon off voters at the margins, whether it is Black voters or whether it is Latino voters.

I take Stuart's point that historically, Black voters vote Democratic, a vast majority of them, more than 80 %. But there is some concern among some of the Democrats that I'm talking to about just at the margins, whether or not Black men, specifically, are still curious about Trump, or if Harris is actually helping bring some of them home.

Stuart, let's get your thoughts on all of that.

Look, if I was advising Donald Trump, God forbid, I would say just stay out of the way next week. I've been in this situation where it's the other team's convention. I don't think there's anything you can do that's going to break through that. You're going to have whatever you create is going to be a bad split screen for you. You can't be in any audience like they're going to have at the convention, any setup like that. Trump is not helping himself when he campaigns now. He has these speeches that are supposed to be about economy, and it goes into these attacks, and it goes on and on. I mean, this guy is like Fidel Castro. That's the problem inside this campaign, that you can come up with all the good strategies. You look at the speech that they wrote for him to give us his acceptance speech. Then look at the speech that he actually gave. That is the problem with the Trump campaign, and it's the candidate. J. D. Vance only reinforced the worst aspects of Donald Trump. He's the ultimate MAGA candidate. I think that this is a problem they have that they have no idea how to deal with.