By Bill Wilson
Before being shuttled aside and replaced with the terrifyingly extremist Kamala Harris-Tim Walz duo, President Joe Biden was already running into deep trouble with swing voters this year including working class Black and Hispanic voters.
As we noted this spring, “older white liberals who favor abortion” were the few Democratic leaning voters that remained loyal to Biden until the end. Younger voters, minorities, and the working class were walking out the door.
What was driving Biden defectors away long before the president’s sobering debate performance against former President Donald Trump revealed his grave health concerns? The economy, largely.
As we noted in May, “according to a breakdown of the New York Times data on Biden loyalists compared to Biden defectors, voters who do not support Biden are highly economically driven, with 71 percent of Biden defectors compared to just 16 percent of Biden loyalists saying the economy is currently in poor condition. In addition, 29 percent of Biden defectors compared to 15 percent of Biden loyalists say inflation and the economy are the reasons behind their vote choice in November.”
In other words, unless Harris pivots from her current fixation with “diversity, equity and inclusion” to proposing a plan to bring down inflation and breathe life into the economy, the fact that she is “unburdened” by Biden’s health issues is not likely to move the needle with working class voters.
As of early August, Harris is polling better than a barely functional Biden was leading into the debate against Trump, but Biden lost a lot of ground with swing voters over the past four years and Harris is still below Biden’s 2020 numbers.
The latest New York Times poll has Harris polling five points below Biden’s 2020 exit poll numbers with Hispanics, with 60 percent of Hispanics planning to vote for her in November compared to 65 percent who supported Biden in 2020.
Harris has also failed to garner the same support that Biden did in 2020 among Black voters, with 72 percent of Black voters intending to support Harris in November while 87 percent supported Biden in 2020. That means Harris is still polling fifteen points below what Biden earned in 2020. In addition, even with Harris on the ballot, nineteen percent of Blacks intend to vote for Trump according to the Times poll. This is a six-point gain for Trump among Blacks compared to 2020.
Harris is polling about seven points below what Biden earned with independent voters as well. The Times poll has Harris earning 47 percent of the independent vote, compared to the 54 percent that Biden earned in 2020. Trump has incrementally gained against his 2020 numbers with independents, going from 41 percent of their vote in 2020 to 45 percent in the latest Times poll.
Left-wing pundits no doubt hope Harris is just getting started and will continue to make up the ground Biden lost with swing voters through election day – and that is a possibility. However, it is also possible we are seeing renewed interest in Harris during the “Harris honeymoon” period, and once voters are acquainted with her radical social agenda and recognize her inaction on the border and the economy, those numbers will drop back down.
One group Harris is likely to continue to struggle with is working-class voters, particularly minorities. Harris pulls 29 percent of white-no college voters against Trump, a number that is three points shy of what Biden earned in 2020. Her numbers among working class voters of color are substantially worse, ten points below what Biden’s were in 2020. Harris is pulling only 62 percent of the minority non-college vote, compared to the 72 percent Biden won in 2020. Meanwhile, Trump has gained seven points with non-college minorities compared to his 2020 numbers.
The destabilized Biden Administration was already suffering vast double-digit deficits compared to Biden’s 2020 vote returns among swing voters this spring. So far, Harris/Walz are polling marginally better than Biden did, but they are still trailing Biden’s actual returns from 2020.
Biden himself struggled to maintain the “Blue Wall” among working class voters in the Midwest in 2020, and polling had him on track to lose blue collar voters to Trump at an even higher rate this year. Harris trails both Biden’s 2020 numbers and his recent polling numbers among white working-class voters.
Notably, Harris suffers even greater among working class minorities compared to Biden. By choosing a far more radical version of Sen. Bernie Sanders as her running mate and steering her campaign directly into the perilous waters of diversity, equity, and rioting while the economy struggles for breath, Harris is likely to continue to lose working class voters regardless of race.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
