Vice President Harris’ Election Odds – July 25th, 2024
Bottom Line: Coming into any Presidential Election cycle with an incumbent seeking reelection, the odds favor the existing president. President Trump became just the tenth to lose a reelection bid (if you include Gerald Ford who was the incumbent president defeated by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 Presidential Election after having taken over for Richard Nixon). Meanwhile, 21 incumbents who’ve run for reelection have won.
What that means is...
- 67% of Presidents who’ve run for reelection won
There is a clear incumbency advantage. A presidential reelection bid is first and foremost a referendum on the incumbent president. History has shown that if people are generally satisfied with the performance of the president – they'll vote to stay with them. Of course, with President Biden having dropped out of the race we don’t have an incumbent president running for reelection. Nevertheless we do have an approval rating to work with for the incumbent vice president who has become the Democrat's presumptive nominee.
In this breakout I've taken the historical approval ratings of incumbent presidents running for reelection tracking the outcomes of those elections. Notably, in my final update preceding the 2020 Presidential election, President Trump’s reelection odds were shown to be just 32%. This method once again proved to generally be predictive of the actual outcome. Also, in my final update preceding President Biden’s exit from the race he was shown with just a 17% chance of winning reelection. Once again, this methodology proved to be predictive of the eventual outcome. Of course we’re now in unprecedented territory with Vice President Kamala Harris having quickly become the Democrat’s presumptive nominee following Biden’s exit on Sunday. While she’s not an incumbent president, she is an incumbent Vice President and has had regular approval polling conducted on her performance. And here’s a hint. It hasn’t been good.
Here’s where Harris’s election odds stand as of today with five months to go before Election Day:
- 12% based on an average 38% approval rating (the lowest of this cycle)
Harris’ approval rating is two points lower than Biden’s was in the previous update. Her approval rating is four points lower than President Trump’s on the same date, nine points lower than President Obama’s and eleven points lower than President George W. Bush’s. What we see, as we’re under four months away from Election Day, is Harris starting this race with historically low performance.
Congruently, former President Donald Trump is showing a head-to-head advantage in a head-to-head matchup with Harris.