new poll shows an effective Dead Heat between the two candidates vying to be president it raises the stakes even further for this week's highly anticipated presidential debate let's go now to our North America correspondent Carrington Clark Carrington good morning so what does this new poll show well it might indicate that the honeymoon that's been enjoyed by vice president Carmela Harris since she was elevated to the top of the democratic ticket has finally come to an end this is the first national poll uh taken since her elevation that doesn't show her ahead we had that kind of euphoric August for her uh including um her formal endorsement and ceremonial endorsement of the Democratic National Convention but this poll has Donald Trump just ahead 48% to 47% it's important to point out that is within the margin of error for this particular poll which is 3% and again it's always critical that we point out that polls are just a snapshot in time but given that we are now less than 2 months before the presidential election and even more importantly um we're only now a matter of days before early states allow their uh citizens to start voting including the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania they allow early voting uh from the 16th of September um it is in it is so tight in this election it's impossible at the moment to say who is the clear favorite um and it would indicate though that carela Harris any uh honeymoon that she was enjoying has come to an end and people are increasingly looking at these two candidates to decide who they want to be the president of the United States um so this is a a potentially critical week uh for all both candidates given that we do have this presidential debate it's the only one scheduled between the two a lot of people were questioning the value of debates um in in recent times but as we all know uh it was the debate that spelled the end for former for current president uh Joe Biden the former uh Democratic candidate after his disastrous performance so all eyes will be on how Cara Harris in particular performs at the debate in less in in the next couple of days it'll be critical 90 minutes on stage that's for sure for both candidates Carrington thank you