The early signs last week were that Vice President Harris’s replacement of President Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 standard-bearer appeared to modestly increase Democrats’ hopes of winning.
The evidence since then has only affirmed that. The signs continue to improve for the Democratic ticket — particularly when it comes to Harris’s image.
A long-unpopular vice president has gotten a second look from voters now that the spotlight is trained on her. And at least for now, the polls suggest that Americans are both warming to her and liking her significantly more than they like Biden.
Multiple polls in recent days tell that tale.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll on Sunday showed Harris’s favorable rating at 43 percent. That’s eight points higher than her rating last month, and 11 points higher than Biden’s last month.
A Wall Street Journal poll Friday showed 46 percent of registered voters liked Harris — 11 points higher than her showing almost a month ago, and 12 points higher than Biden’s at that time.
And Fox News polls on Friday in four key Midwestern and Rust Belt states — Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — showed Harris’s favorable rating averaging 49 percent, which is eight points higher than Biden’s current number.
Combine that with earlier CNN and New York Times/Siena College polling, and it all suggests that Harris has increased favorable views of the top of the Democratic ticket by at least the high single digits.
Some of the more interesting findings from those polls:
- The ABC/Ipsos poll is the first quality poll in years to show more Americans viewing her positively (43 percent) than negatively (42 percent), though the difference is well within the margin of error.
- That same poll showed Harris improving by 16 points with independents — from 28 percent favorable in mid-July to 44 percent favorable today.
- The Wall Street Journal poll showed that the percentage who viewed her “very favorably” more than doubled from 15 percent last month to 35 percent now.
- The Fox polls showed Harris’s favorable rating improving on Biden’s by an average 11 points with independents, 11 points with women, 17 points among voters under 35 and 15 points among people of color (though that last number includes only Michigan and Pennsylvania).
- The Times/Siena poll showed her improving on Biden’s early July numbers by six points with non-college Whites, nine points with Black voters, 11 percent with independents, 12 percent with women and 30 points with voters under 30.
- The earlier CNN poll showed somewhat smaller increases vs. Biden in late June — but increases nonetheless. She gained five points with independents, eight points with women, and 12 points among people of color and voters under 35.
Perhaps most striking in the Times/Siena poll is how much Harris appears to have made the Democratic ticket more palatable to less-reliable voters who could defect from the Democrats or sit out the 2024 election.
While just 74 percent of Biden 2020 voters liked him, 88 percent of Biden 2020 voters liked Harris. And the poll showed her being viewed favorably by about twice as many people who didn’t vote in 2020 (46 percent vs. 24 percent) and who currently support a candidate besides her, Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (33 percent vs. 17 percent).
All of which suggests Harris could not only stem the bleeding of Biden’s support, but she could appeal to less-likely voters and claw back some voters who went for left-leaning third-party candidates.
As with all early polling conducted in the days after the Democrats’ switcheroo, it’s worth emphasizing that it’s early. Harris is surely in a honeymoon period that might not last, particularly as attention turns to some of the positions she took during her 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign.
It’s also important to note that, even with the improved image of the top of the Democratic ticket, Harris’s favorable numbers are mostly similar to Trump’s in these polls. Trump appears to have gotten a bit of his own bump after the assassination attempt against him and the Republican National Convention, and he was already generally more popular than he was during his presidency. And the race both nationally and in swing states is very close.
But there’s little question that, at least for now, Harris has put the Democratic ticket back on the map for lots of the most problematic voting groups for Democrats. Democrats looked like they were going to have to win lots of voters who didn’t like Biden and who didn’t seem to have much reason to vote blue, beyond dislike of Trump. Many of those voters today see a more viable option in Harris.