Q&A of the Day – Kamala Harris’ Impact w/Independent Voters
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
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Today’s Entry: Hi Brian, thanks for always providing a well-researched and reasoned show. We’ve heard a lot throughout the week about Harris surging in the polls against Trump. Obviously its early in this process with Harris effectively being the shiny new object in the room that isn’t Joe Biden. How much of what we’re seeing so far is an improvement in support from the Democrat’s base as opposed to her winning over independent/undecided voters? Given her record I have a hard time seeing how she would be successful with them.
Bottom Line: It’s a great question that of course we won’t have a finite answer to until after November 5th, but it is one that we have some early data on that could point towards an answer. It was just a week ago today that VP Kamala Harris successfully became the presumptive Democrat nominee by securing a majority support of Joe Biden’s released pledged delegates. While we had a lot of hypothetical head-to-head polling between Harris and Trump before that event, what’s become clear with a myriad of new polls rolling in over the past week is that the hypothetical polling, which generally showed Trump holding somewhat similar leads against Harris as compared to Biden, has shaken the race up quite a bit. I’ll start with a comparison of the hypothetical polling compared to the newest polling.
Head-to-head Harris vs. Trump RCP polling average:
- Week ended 7/20: Trump +1.7%
- With samples taken since last Monday (7/22): Trump +1.6%
Five-way matchup (w/third party candidates) Harris vs. Trump RCP polling average:
- Week ended 7/20: Trump +4%
- With samples taken since last Monday (7/22): Trump +1.3%
There are so many disclaimers to throw out when attempting to analyze this – such as how early it is in Harris’ campaign, etc., however we are seeing one significant shift in the early going with Harris in the race. Notably, as I just illustrated, there’s been a negligible change in the head-to-head polling. The shift however, that’s a potential sea change, if it is held, is with third party candidates added in.
Up to this point, whether Trump was being polled against Biden or Harris, he’d consistently benefitted from the addition of third-party candidates, who figure to loom large this year. What we’ve seen over the past week is a reversal of that trend with Trump’s overall advantage narrower with third party choices than in head-to-head polling. It’s that dynamic that brings us to addressing today’s question.
In the RCP average of polls there were still 7.3% of voters who said they were undecided when Biden was still running. That’s down to 5.9% in the first week with Harris in the race. Effectively, having the option to vote for Harris as opposed to Biden has moved close to one and a half percent of the undecided voters into Harris’ column at the onset of this race. The much bigger move in the electorate comes into play in the 5-way race as I’d already mentioned.
Harris has 3.3% more support than Biden had prior to dropping out of the race. That comes almost entirely out of RFK Jr.’s support. RFK Jr. is polling with 2.9% less support with Harris in the race compared to with Biden in the race. On the surface it would appear that approximately 3% of Democrats were unhappy enough with Biden that they’d at least being saying that they intend to vote for the former lifelong Democrat in Kennedy (polled 3rd party support is historically overstated). So that’s the biggest impact in this race. Harris’ ascent at Biden’s expense appears to have brought about 3% of Democrats home which is a big deal if it holds. It’s possible that it might have happened in the voting booth anyway, but that it's happening now definitely changes the complexion of the race from one in which Trump benefitted from added candidates in the mix to one in which they’re now appearing to be a headwind for his campaign.