Kamala Harris Election Odds – August 15th, 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 and vice president. History has shown that if people are generally satisfied with the performance of the president and vice 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 incumbent vice president who has become the Democrat's presidential 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. We’re now in unprecedented territory with Vice President Kamala Harris having quickly become the Democrat’s presumptive nominee without a primary process playing out. As an incumbent vice president, she has had regular approval/favorability polling that provides a baseline that can be used for this analysis.
Here’s where Harris’s election odds stand as of today with under 12 weeks to go before Election Day:
- 43% based on an average 45% approval/favorability rating
Harris’ favorability rating is still low; however, it’s surged by 7-points since she became the Democrat’s presidential nominee, including rising another one-point over the past week lifting her odds of winning the election from 12% three weeks ago to 43% today using this methodology. Her approval/favorability rating is two points higher than President Trump’s on the same date, three points lower than President Obama’s and three points lower than President George W. Bush’s. What we see, as we’re under three months away from Election Day, is Harris having made up a lot of ground in her standing quickly since become the top-of-the-ticket choice for Democrats, however she is still pacing three points lower than any incumbent president of vice president who’s won the presidential election.