Asked about their views of Harris since she became the nominee, 48% of 1,000 registered voters surveyed said it was positive compared to 32% in July — the largest jump among politician ratings polled by NBC since President George W. Bush’s favorability rose after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Asked about Trump, 40% of those polled said they viewed him positively compared to 38% in July, the news network said. The poll, conducted Sept. 13-17, has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

A separate CBS News poll also found Harris leading Trump, by 4 percentage points, 52% to 48%, among likely voters, with a margin of error rate of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

The findings are broadly in line with other recent national polls, including those by Reuters/Ipsos, that show a close contest heading into the Nov. 5 election.

While national surveys offer important signals on the views of the electorate, the state-by-state results of the Electoral College determine the winner, with a handful of battleground states likely to be decisive.

Trump, 78, is making his third consecutive bid for the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020, which he continues to falsely blame on widespread voter fraud while facing federal and state criminal charges over efforts to overturn the election results.

Harris, 59, is a former U.S. senator and prosecutor now serving under Biden. She would be the first woman to serve as president in the nation’s 248-year history.

“She’s been able to change this from a race that was a referendum on Joe Biden to a race that is a referendum on Donald Trump,” Amy Walter, publisher and editor in chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In CBS’ poll of 3,129 registered voters surveyed Sept. 18-20, Harris edged up 2 percentage points after a 50-50 split in August, shored by her performance in the Sept. 10 debate and brightening economic news.

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The Republican presidential nominee and former president is heading to Uniondale, on Long Island, an area that could be key to his party maintaining control of the House. His party is trying to protect 18 Republicans in Democratic-heavy congressional districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020, particularly in coastal New York and California, and going on offense to challenge Democrats elsewhere.

Long Island in particular features one of the most closely watched races, between first-term Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito and Democrat Laura Gillen. D’Esposito is a former New York Police detective who won in 2022 in a district that Biden won by about 15 percentage points in 2020.

Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social platform that the GOP has “a real chance of winning” New York “for the first time in many decades.” In that same post, Trump also pledged that he would “get SALT back,” suggesting he would eliminate a cap on state and local tax deductions that were part of tax cut legislation he signed into law in 2017.

The so-called SALT cap has led to bigger tax bills for many residents of New York, New Jersey, California and other high-cost, high-tax states, and is an important campaign issue in those states, particularly among those New York Republicans serving in districts Biden won.

On the Democratic side of the campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to speak at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 47th Annual Leadership Conference in Washington on Wednesday, and has trips planned later in the week to Michigan and Wisconsin.

Latino voters form a critical bloc in swing states such as Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Speaking on the Nueva Network this week with the personality known as “Chiquibaby,” Harris promoted her proposed tax deductions for new small businesses, her experience prosecuting border cases as California attorney general and her support for offering a “pathway to citizenship for those who have earned it.”

On Tuesday, the vice president sat for an interview in Philadelphia with members of the National Association of Black Journalists. She decried Trump’s rhetoric and said voters should make sure he “can’t have that microphone again.”

Trump is attempting to return to his campaign cadence after Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt as he golfed in Florida. On Tuesday, he traveled to Flint, Michigan, and has not appeared to alter plans for upcoming trips to the nation’s capital and North Carolina later in the week.

His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is scheduled to hold an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Wednesday.

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