One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.
Given that the Democratic campaign has upped the early voting in its favor, then wouldn’t the exit polls show a favorable number of Bush voters on the election day itself in a number of key battleground states? Couldn’t this be used to “spin” the exit polls for the Republicans?
Did you notice the 8 point party ID registration
advantage for Democrats? That’s TWICE what it
was in 2000. Combine that with the Democracy Corps poll which showed Kerry with only 1 percent
less support among D’s than Bush has among R’s,
and with the energized left…well, I guess we’ll see.
Something that just struck me: Suppose Gallup — whose likely voter model we sneer at — were to suddenly revise its judgment on the composition of the electorate, based on Gans’ oft-repeated observations? Would its LV model then be closer to reality? My thought is, perhaps not. The Gallup voter screen would probably operate in much the same way even while opening the window a bit wider — that is to say, they’d let in more voters (getting to, say, 60%), but they’d still use the same criteria in deciding who’s more and less likely. It seems to me that young and minority voters — seemingly the basis of much of the increased turnout — would still be be at the bottom of their pyramid, and still be the ones least likely to make the cut. What if the situation this year is, the least likely voters of all join the party, and (at least potentially) seeming sure-thing voters — lifelong but disgusted Republicans — stay home? Is there any model truly apt to yield the right numbers in that situation?
Tangential observation: is it posible this situation could also create a coattail effect? Coattails are, to me, a misnamed phenomenon: they imply that a president’s numbers are so strong they drag along underdog down-ballot candidates to victory. This was certainly the case in 1964, but I’ve seen two landslide presidential re-elections since — 1972 and 1984 — where the wide margin did nothing whatever for Congressional candidates. On the other hand, I saw 1980, where Reagan got barely 50% of the national vote, but saw his party pick up 37 House seats and a slew in the Senate. It strikes that what 1964 and 1980 had in common was a disgust on the part of the losing party with its candidate, resulting in poor turnout for that party and thus an unusually tilted electorate. Is it possible we’ll get the same next Tuesday, with young and minority voters not only turning out at unexpected levels, bu representing a higher percentage of the total electorate than could otherwise be expected, because a small number of Republicans simply decide their guy’s worthless and stay home? Suddenly, every Dem candidate within range could find him/herself over the top, and the Congressional numbers could shift to a startling degree.
There’s a better way than a survey to track early voting — go to the secretaries of states themselves. You’ll find that the rates are even higher (for the states for which I can find data, double the rate of 2000 a week before election day) than the NAES suggests.
I’m glad to see Curtiz Gans quoted here. He is very reliable and a good, unbiased source for voter analysis.
All the results for higher turnout usually favor Dems. I’m glad many states have gone out of their way to make voting available on more than just one day (even if you are supposed to have a valid excuse for absentee voting in some states like VA). It only makes sense.
Gans in previous years has been a debunker of high-turnout predictions, as I recall. So it’s good to see his thoughts on this year.