Vice President Kamala Harris heads into her nominating convention this week leading former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup, bolstered by vast improvements over President Joe Biden in enthusiasm and perceived readiness for the job and sharply better support among key groups including swing-voting independents, according to a new latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll.

Yet Trump retains the upper hand on the two top-cited election issues in the poll — the overall economy and inflation — and also leads on a third — immigration — keeping the race a closely contested one.

Among all adults — relevant since there’s plenty of time to register — Harris and Gov. Tim Walz lead Trump and Sen. JD Vance by 50%-45%. Among those now registered to vote, it’s 49%-45%, a slight Harris advantage given sampling tolerances. And Harris has a 6-point lead among likely voters, 51%-45%.

Roughly echoing these results, this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates with fieldwork by Ipsos, also finds that more people see Harris as qualified for the job, 53%, than say the same about Trump, 47%.

In a five-way matchup, the poll finds Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance at 47%-44% among the general public and registered voters alike, and 49%-45% among likely voters. None of these is a statistically significant difference, suggesting the Democrats would prefer a two-way race.

That said, among all adults, support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (and his running mate Nicole Shanahan) is down to 5%, from a peak of 12% in April. Cornel West/Melina Abdullah have 1%, as does Jill Stein of the Green Party.

These candidates’ ballot access is to be determined; per ABC News estimates, Kennedy currently is on the ballot in 21 states, Stein in 20 and West in eight.

Candidate attributes

Underlying shifts from July are dramatic, particularly in views of some candidate attributes. There also are sharp increases in Democrats’ satisfaction with the presidential matchup and enthusiasm for their candidate.

Among all adults, Harris leads on two measures on which Biden lagged badly. Americans by a wide 56%-26% pick her over Trump as having the physical health to serve effectively as president, reversing Trump’s 31-point lead over Biden on this attribute last month. And Harris leads Trump by 9 percentage points in being seen as having the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively, erasing a 30-point Trump lead over Biden on this measure.

Harris also leads Trump by 15 points on honesty and trustworthiness and by 6 points in better-representing people’s personal values, both roughly matching Biden’s position before he left the race. And she leads Trump by 7 points in empathy — understanding the problems of people like you — an important gauge on which Biden and Trump were essentially even in July.

There’s another characteristic particular to Harris: Thirty-eight percent of Americans say that having a woman serve as president would be a good thing for the country, far more than the 14% who see it as a bad thing. The rest, 47%, say it makes no difference. (Forty percent of women call a woman president a good thing, as do 35% of men.)