Q&A of the Day – Kamala Harris’s Favorability Compared to Trump’s in Swing States
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio What are the favorability ratings of Harris vs. Trump in swing states? If most people vote for the candidate they like that might be an indication of how the states will break.
Bottom Line: I’m reminded of the saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. That’s because your question reminds me of the 2016 presidential election which was the first to feature two major party candidates who both had negative favorability ratings with most Americans. The same was not true in 2020 as Joe Biden had a net positive favorability rating of 11-points heading into Election Day – in comparison to Donald Trump’s net negative 4-point rating according to Gallup. Gallup is a good resource on this topic for historical perspective as they’ve surveyed favorability ratings for every major party presidential candidate since 1956. On that note consider this...
According to Gallup’s favorability study released this week – for the first time at any point Donald Trump has a net positive favorability rating with 50% favorability compared to 48% unfavorable. That contrasts with Kamala Harris who has a net negative rating with 48% favorability and 50% unfavourability. It’s one of the many survey measures of this election that’s moved meaningfully in Trump’s direction this week. Trump’s current favorability rating is 14-points higher than when he became president of the United States in 2016. So yeah, to the premise of your question today. If late breaking voters break for the candidate that has the highest favorability generally – that would be Donald Trump. As for the swing state breakout...
Most accredited survey companies don’t keep updated state by state favorability ratings. In fact, there’s only one that I’m aware of that does and that’s Civiqs – which always allows you to see the daily changes in their data online for free. Now, one note about them. They show lower favorability ratings for both candidates than Gallup does – with Trump coming in with just 43% favorability compared to Harris’s 46% favorability. So, as I go through the swing state analysis that’s worth being mindful of. There are two ways in which I think it makes sense to break down what we’re seeing with candidate favorability without getting bogged down in hard numbers. If a candidate is more or less favorability viewed in each swing state than they are generally, and which candidate has the highest favorability rating in each swing state. So, let’s get to it...
- Arizona: Harris 43% (lower), Trump 47% (higher)
- Georgia: Harris 45% (lower), Trump 45% (higher)
- Michigan: Harris 46% (even), Trump 45% (higher)
- Nevada: Harris 45% (lower), Trump 46% (higher)
- North Carolina: Harris 47% (higher), Trump 44% (higher)
- Pennsylvania: Harris 46% (even), Trump 44% (higher)
- Wisconsin: Harris 50% (higher), Trump 44% (higher)
Going through this exercise produces a couple of interesting storylines that also somewhat mirror what we see in head-to-head swing state polling. Donald Trump has a higher a favorability rating in every swing state than he does across the country overall. This is consistent with Trump consistently performing better in swing state polling where the RealClear Politics polling average shows him with a 0.9% lead in battleground polls compared to Harris holding a 0.2% head-to-head advantage nationally. Conversely, we see that it’s a mixed bag for Harris.
Kamala Harris’s favorability is lower in 3 swing states than her national average, while it’s higher in two and in line with the national average in two. On the flip side, Harris has a slight overall advantage in swing state favorability compared to Trump. Harris’s favorability rating is higher in Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while Trump has higher favorability in Arizona, and Nevada with Georgia tied. If this race were to turn on favorability alone it would appear that Kamala Harris would be best positioned to win. And this takes us back full circle.
In 2016, while Hillary Clinton had a negative favorability rating, Donald Trump was even more widely disliked and yet he won. In any analysis of favorability ratings between Trump and Harris in comparison to the 2016 election – Trump is performing better now than he did eight years ago when he won. While Trump’s base has always loved him, for most Americans in the middle that have voted for him previously, it’s been because Trump may not represent the medicine you like but the medicine that you think you need. With Kamala Harris having net negative favorability among voters, and thus there not being a widely liked candidate in this race, this cycle has much more of a 2016 feel in terms of the relevance of favorability than it does 2020 when most voters held a favorable view of Joe Biden.
With that said, if it turns out that Kamala Harris wins this election – this conversation would probably be the reason why. And the swing states she’d probably win to clinch it would be the ones she leads Trump in favorability in – the so called “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and North Carolina. If Trump wins this election, it would likely be due to lower turnout in those states and likely all swing states for Kamala Harris compared to the more well-liked Joe Biden of four years ago. It’s my belief that this will be a turnout election. And I believe, as of my Anatomy of a Swing State analysis today, that turnout will be lower than four years ago and that Donald Trump and Republicans down ballot will likely be the beneficiaries.