How is Vice President Kamala Harris performing as the Democratic candidate?

US Elections: The 2024 election season is nearing its conclusion, and it will likely take weeks for America to elect a female president for the first time. However, how is Vice President Kamala Harris doing as the Democratic nominee?

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, was the party’s first female presidential nominee eight years ago. In line with Clinton, Harris is challenging former president Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, in the last three presidential contests.

According to polls, Harris is having trouble gaining traction with voters and is still ahead of Trump within most survey error limits. Additionally, Harris’ lead is less than what Joe Biden and Clinton had over Trump at this stage of the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

Clinton leads Trump by 5.1 Points

The national polling tracker at FiveThirtyEight shows Harris leading by 2.6 percentage points with 31 days till Election Day. One month before to the election in 2016, pollsters predicted Clinton leading Trump by 5.1 points. In the 2020 campaign, Biden led Trump by 7.6 points at the same stage.

As of Friday, RealClearPolling had Harris leading Trump by 2.2 points, placing her far below the previous Democratic contenders. According to RealClearPolling, with 31 days to Election Day, Clinton was ahead by 4.7 points and Biden by 7.4 points. Most surveys have margins of error that range from +/- 2 to 4 percentage points.

Given that the vice president is not burdened by the same obstacles as Clinton was in 2016, the polling results might be a red flag for Harris’ candidacy.

Voters saw the former secretary of state as a representative of the establishment two presidential election cycles ago, telling voters that they thought she was dishonest and unreliable. She was facing off against then-political novice Trump at the time and was deeply involved in an email scandal that she subsequently claimed lost her the election.

Harris has no significant political commitments

Conversely, Harris has no significant political liabilities. Her popularity skyrocketed when Biden stepped down and backed her as the Democratic candidate, and she isn’t embroiled in any major personal scandals. Many people saw her as a symbol of change. Furthermore, Trump is no longer the outsider in politics that he was in 2016. However, Harris is still having trouble gaining ground in the polls.

According to political analyst Steve Schier, “Harris has yet to effectively introduce herself to many voters,” a media report said. “Her initial rollout was accompanied by many positive media messages, but the impression generated by that was in need of further development.”

Harris traveled the campaign road hard, but she stayed mostly out of the media’s way. Her first in-depth interview with CNN, which she did in tandem with her running partner Governor Tim Walz, didn’t happen until over six weeks into her campaign. She wouldn’t do her first solo interview until eight weeks in.
Even though Harris did a respectable job in what will probably be her one and only debate with Trump, Schier said that Harris “did not create a deep enough impression to resolve doubts and uncertainties about her.”

Two days before to the September 10 debate, a survey by the New York Times and Siena College revealed that 28% of respondents felt they needed to know more about Hillary, whereas just 9% felt the same way about Trump. Following the debate, that percentage of voters remained almost unchanged, indicating that Harris may have had a chance to allay those worries.

“Her subsequent media strategy of avoiding press conferences and granting few interviews has not helped her to define herself well,” Shcier said. “This clarifies the reason for her campaign’s desire for another debate with Trump, in which she may further present herself and draw comparisons with him. It’s doubtful that Trump will do her that favor.”

On the other hand, other analysts believe Harris is doing better than anticipated in this race right now.

Despite entering the race extremely late, inheriting a campaign that she didn’t build, and having virtually no opportunity to introduce herself or carve out her own political persona, veteran Democratic strategist Matt Bennett told a media report that “it’s remarkable that Harris is in as good a position as she’s in.”

“She took over against a previous President whose turbulent period in power was seen by many through rose-colored glasses on a ticket that was deeply submerged. Some poor policy decisions during her 2019 campaign burdened her. Bennett said that the largest challenge she faced was inflation, or rather, the general belief that living in the post-pandemic period had become too expensive.

Democratic data researcher and strategist Tom Bonier also told a media report that comparing polls from the 2016 contest to the current election cycle is “extremely problematic.” The increase in Harris’ favorability ratings, he said, is evidence that her campaign has “done a quantifiably good job in defining her as a candidate.”

“She and her team have positioned her perfectly as a moderate focused on economic opportunity, she has performed brilliantly on the big stages of the convention and the debate, they are bringing in boatloads of money, and they have made a losing race very competitive,” Bennett said. “The headwinds are still howling, but she has built enough momentum to overcome them.”