By Manzanita Miller
For the last month, Democrats have been riding a high, celebrating the fact that for the first time this year they have a candidate running who appears to garner some level of enthusiasm. The Democratic National Convention celebrated Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket, and the mainstream media lost no time favorably covering her campaign. In picking radical leftist Tim Walz as her Vice President, Harris further energized the America Last wing of the Democratic Party, and she appears to be is sailing on a wave of deep-pocketed Wall Street funding toward the finish line.
There is one glaring issue for Harris however – independent voters. Around 41 percent of Americans currently identify as independent according to Gallup, and averaged around 43 percent in 2023, and by all accounts, they are not fans of Harris, with new polling data showing independents breaking for former President Donald Trump after supporting President Joe Biden by double-digits in 2020.
Independent voters supported Biden over Trump by 13 percentage points, 54 percent to 41 percent in 2020 in the CNN exit poll and made up a full 26 percent of the voter pool. However, the latest YouGov poll reveals Harris will be lucky to win them by even a single percentage point – and she could lose them to Trump entirely.
According to YouGov data released this week, independents plan to support Trump over Harris by five points, 42 percent to 37 percent, constituting a 17-point decline for Harris compared to what Biden got in 2020.
Another poll from Roanoke College is causing a stir among Virginians, with former Gov. Terry McAuliffe expressing disbelief that Kamala Harris isn’t polling better against Trump with independents in the state. The poll, which was conducted before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, found that Harris is ahead of Trump by just three percentage points, with independents contributing significantly to Trump’s margins. Independents are planning to support Trump by 16 points, 50 percent to 34 percent in a two-way race according to the poll. Even with Kennedy on the ballot, independents planned to support Trump by 12 points over Harris.
This swing toward Trump is a massive shift from 2020, when Biden won Virginia independent voters by nearly twenty points, 57 percent to 38 percent. While Trump is ahead in Virginia so far according to the poll, Trump’s strong lead among independents is concerning to Democrats who know they need to appeal beyond their base to win. Independents, particularly those in rural areas, are reluctant to throw their support behind a candidate who stood beside Biden at the helm of the country for the past four grueling years.
Nationally, the share of Americans identifying as independent is on the rise. According to Gallup, again, 41 percent of the population identifies as independent today, much larger than the 30 percent who identify as Republican and the 28 percent who identify as Democrat.
The only other time in the past three decades when this many Americans have identified as independent was in 2014, when conservatives swept U.S. House races, securing a historic majority in the House. In the 2014 midterms, independents who were fed up with the Obama administration and the radical left’s trajectory flooded Republican House races and helped contribute to the largest number of House seats for Republicans since 1928. Independents supported Republican House candidates by a margin of 12 points nationwide.
The independent vote matters, and by most metrics Harris is falling short of Biden’s numbers. This isn’t a total surprise, given that her platform is catering to the most radical elements of the Democratic Party. Conservatives have their work cut out to beat Harris with the amount of institutional support and funding she has acquired, but there is a real opportunity to turn out independent voters who are not at all interested in her America Last agenda.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.