by Ben Whedon
Vice President Kamala Harris has enjoyed a noticeable surge in the polls — particularly nationally — since becoming the Democratic nominee, but a rapid change in her standing has some industry analysts questioning whether the vice president’s previously unpopular position has been significantly improved. She struggled to break 3 percent in her 2020 campaign before dropping out, According to Hill.
Before she became the Democratic nominee, Harris had decidedly faint ratings, and Trump initially had an advantage over her in a head-to-head matchup. But the average quickly reversed after several polls showed Harris ahead. However, those polls caught the attention of many pollsters, either because of the lack of transparency in the sampling methodology or because of the oversampling of Democrats.
“So what they’re doing is polling a smaller number of Republicans. They’re polling a disproportionate number of Biden 2020 voters in these states that were completely even,” pollster John McLaughlin said this week on the television show “Just the News, No Noise.”
“They are trying to limit our voice”
“They’re saying Biden voters in 2020 should be four or five points higher. It’s ridiculous. So they’re trying to pump up Harris. They’re trying to suppress our vote. And that’s, you know, there are smart people who are doing that, so I think it’s intentional.”
Harris currently leads Trump by 1.5 percent. RealClearPolitics average of pollswith 48.2 percent support to his 46.7 percent. He leads by the same margin in five way race including Jill Stein of the Green Party and independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and professor of Christian philosophy and practice at Union Theological Seminary, Cornel West.
Currently, the only polls showing Trump ahead in the two-way race average come from Fox News, Rasmussen Reports, and CNBC. All others show Harris with a lead of between one and four points. Trump led Harris in the RCP average until August 5 and has not regained the lead since then. None of the RCP averages include data from the McLaughlin & Associates poll.
“The Harris Honeymoon”
After Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio sent out a note predicting a so-called “Harris honeymoon,” during which the vice president will see his support rise in the polls due to an augment in positive coverage of him.
“The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition, at least in the short term. That means we’ll start to see polls — especially national polls — in which Harris is ahead of President Trump, or even ahead of him,” Fabrizio wrote in slow July.
Fabrizio also said the electorate’s positions on such significant issues as inflation, crime and inflation are unlikely to change with a Democratic victory, saying “the fundamentals of the race remain the same.”
Speaking of “John Solomon’s Reportspodcast earlier this month, pollster Scott Rasmussen called the surge in polls a “sugar high” and agreed with Fabrizio, based on his own data, that voters’ opinions on the issues tend to be different from their opinions on the major candidates. He also insisted that voters remain largely unaware of Harris’s actual positions and that heightened awareness of her positions on key issues could sway the electorate. Even the renowned Democratic pollster and campaign veteran James Carville Warned Democrats about their “stunning euphoria” over Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign.
“It’s a very sugar high. … Now, when we look at all the issues and say, what do voters know about Vice President Harris? Well, they know she’s very pro-choice on abortion. They don’t really know anything else about her,” Rasmussen said.
“One of the issues that we’ve highlighted from what happened last week at the Olympics is that a majority of voters are very much opposed to the idea of allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports,” he continued. “In fact, only 21 percent of Harris voters — her own supporters — believe it should be allowed, and yet almost no one knows that Vice President Harris is a strong supporter of allowing those biological males to compete in women’s sports.”
“So the question is, you know, when are people going to learn? What are people going to learn about Vice President Harris and when are they going to learn it? Because right now it’s a sugar high because she’s not Joe Biden, she’s not Donald Trump,” he concluded.
Initial Probing showed Harris doing only slightly better than Biden against Trump. McLaughlin, for his part, highlighted the rapid turnaround from initial polls showing Trump ahead of Harris, saying, “you had a completely unified Republican convention, and then all of a sudden, the Sunday after the convention, Joe Biden pulls out, hand-picks Kamala Harris.”
“We go out in the field, we do another poll, and Trump is ahead of Harris by two points. This all happened in a month. He entered the month with a two-point lead. He left the month with a two-point lead for Harris,” he continued.
However, Harris gradually gained ground until mid-August, when several polls showed Trump gaining ground, and stabilization of the race to some extent.
What’s in the sample?
An significant factor in determining the final results of a survey is the characteristics of the survey group and how closely it overlaps with the rest of the population.
This Washington Post released the poll last week in partnership with ABC News and Ipsos. The top numbers showed Harris with a four-point lead over Trump, 49 percent to 45 percent, one of Harris’ largest margins in recent polling. In the five-candidate race, Harris led by three points.
The survey surveyed 2,336 U.S. adults, including 1,975 registered voters, between Aug. 9 and 13. The sample of registered voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. It’s worth noting that the survey didn’t disclose demographic questions about the sample. The sample came from KnowledgePanel, which the survey said matched “U.S. population benchmarks” for a myriad of demographic characteristics based on the Census Bureau’s March 2023 Population Survey.
“When did you see Washington Post The Ipsos poll, there’s no transparency,” McLaughlin said. “They say it’s census-weighted. It’s selected from their internal panel, and it’s all done online, and there’s obvious bias.”
The survey did not reveal any division of respondents based on party affiliation.
Fewer and Fewer Republicans Around the World
In addition, state polls have also been tough on Trump, though to a lesser extent. Exit polls from the 2020 election can provide a benchmark for gauging voters’ partisanship. But at least some polls have diverged significantly from that split, creating polling groups that overrepresent Democrats or underrepresent Republicans.
“And you see polls like this for example New York Times… their weekend polls in Siena, where in Georgia… CNN’s 2020 exit polls showed 38 percent support for Republicans, that’s [is] 5 percent fewer Republicans… in New York Times“Siena poll,” McLaughlin said.
Thirty-three percent of respondents in NYT/Siena College Poll Georgia state polling self-identified as Republican. Trump led Harris 50 percent to 46 percent in Peach State polls.
“[S]same thing in North Carolina, 5 percent less Republicans,” he continued. This iteration of the NYT/Siena poll showed Harris leading Trump in the Old North State 49 percent to 47 percent and was an outlier among North Carolina polls in RealClearPolitics average of polls.
“Michigan… They [were] 38 percent in the 2020 exit polls, Republicans, their poll is 29. Now it’s nine less,” he added. The latest NYT/Siena Michigan Study shows Harris with a four-point lead of 50 percent to 46 percent in the Wolverine State. Only 27 percent of registered voters participated in that survey self-identify as Republicans in Michigan.
IN WisconsinIn 2020 exit polls, 37 percent voted Republican. In the last New York Times poll, Siena was 27 percent Republican. Ten points down,” he also said. Harris led Trump 50 percent to 46 percent in the state.
National Polls vs. Electoral Map
It is worth noting that the leader in national polls does not necessarily reflect the state of the race. Trump himself lost the popular vote in 2016, but still managed to win the White House thanks to Electoral College.
Regardless of the state, Trump still has a lead over Harris that, if it holds, would allow him to win the election for a second time without a popular vote.
“Mean RealClearPolitics polls, they have, they have Harris up a point now, but there are some of those bad polls in there,” McLaughlin said. “And then when you look where there’s no swing in the Electoral College vote, they have Trump with 287 and they have Harris [at] about 231, something like that. So it’s a close race, but Trump is leading.”
RealClearPolitics currently projects Trump to win 287 electoral votes and Harris 251, based on state averages, several of which show only single-digit leads for each candidate. projection without throws currently shows Trump winning in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. Harris currently leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia. A majority of 270 electoral votes is needed to elect the president.
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