By Manzanita Miller
After an initial surge of support for Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden exited the race in July, the polls have narrowed significantly.
Immediately upon announcing her candidacy seven weeks ago, Harris received a bump in support – particularly among key factions of the Democratic base that Biden had been steadily losing ground with for well over a year. Young people, independents, and minorities all appeared more interested in Harris than they were in Biden seven weeks ago, but that picture has shifted, with Harris suffering relatively large declines since early July.
The most striking decline for Harris has been among young people. Young voters had been steadily distancing themselves from Biden for well over a year by the time the president announced his retirement, and for a brief snapshot in time, Harris appeared to be activating at least a portion of young voters, namely young women.
That picture has shifted over the past seven weeks. A New York Times/Siena College poll from July shows Harris earning 59 percent of voters under 30 to former President Donald Trump’s 38 percent among the likely electorate, placing her nearly at the same level (60 percent) as Biden won four years ago.
However, youth enthusiasm has largely fizzled for Harris since the thrill of her “Brat” campaign has worn off. Economic reality has set in, and the latest Times poll from September places Harris at just 51 percent among voters under age 30. This represents an eight-point decline since she announced her candidacy and has nearly erased the gains she briefly held over Biden’s campaign.
Trump, meanwhile, has scrambled back up to 43 percent of the youth vote over the past seven weeks, a five-point gain since Harris became the nominee. Harris’ eight-point decline looks even worse when compared to the total share of the youth vote Biden won in 2020. According to CNN exit polls, Biden won young voters 60 percent to Trump’s 36 percent, meaning Harris is trailing Biden’s 2020 numbers by nine points, while Trump has gained seven points compared to 2020.
Harris’ brief “blip” in youth support right after Biden exited the race does not appear to be sustainable. Trump, however, has been polling around ten points above what he gained in 2020 with young people for over a year now. Democrats are on track to face the November election with a much-reduced pool of youth support compared to 2020, while Republicans have made incremental gains, despite an onslaught of attempts to portray Trump as a dictator. Among all other age groups, Harris’ numbers have stayed relatively stable since she entered the race with only marginal one or two points shifts.
While it isn’t as large of a decline as the numbers among young people, Hispanics have also reduced their support for Harris since she entered the race seven weeks ago, ousting Biden. According to the same Times poll looking at the likely electorate, 60 percent of Hispanics planned to support Harris shortly after she became the nominee, while 36 percent planned to support Trump.
The latest Times poll shows a five-point decline for Harris, with just 55 percent of Hispanics now intending to support her, while 41 percent plan to support Trump. This amounts to a five-point decline for Harris and a five-point gain for Trump over the past seven weeks.
Again, for reference compare Harris’ current standing in the polls to the share of the electorate Biden won in 2020, and the picture is even worse for Democrats. Biden won 65 percent of the Latino vote in 2020, while Trump earned 32 percent. As polls stand seven weeks after Harris announced her candidacy, she is on track to fall short of Biden’s 2020 numbers by ten points, while Trump is expected to gain nine points.
Where else is Harris in trouble? Harris may be suffering a decline in support among rural voters, after earning a small blip in July. Rural voters have increasingly skewed Republican, but just after Biden was ousted Harris was earning around 36 percent of the vote from rural areas to Trump’s 59 percent.
However, seven weeks later she is earning around 31 percent of the rural vote, while Trump has skyrocketed up to 65 percent of the vote. Compared to 2020, this is an eight-point gain for Trump in rural areas, with Trump winning 57 percent of the rural vote four years ago.
For Harris, this represents an eleven-point decline compared to the share of the rural vote (42 percent) Joe Biden earned four years ago. This isn’t that surprising. Biden attempted to portray himself as a simple blue-collar Democrat from Scranton, Pennsylvania, while Harris is a coastal elitist from deep-blue California who is not even attempting to resonate with middle America.
That said, just because Trump has regained footing among groups that were already on the way out the door for Democrats doesn’t mean Harris isn’t seeing an increase in support among certain demographics. City folks and Black voters have flocked to her side in larger numbers over the past seven weeks.
As of July, Harris was having difficulty attracting support from Black voters, but she appears to be gaining. She is up six points with Black voters, going from 72 percent of their vote in July to 78 percent as of early September. While this is a relatively large gain for Harris, she is still polling nine points below the 87 percent of the Black vote Biden won in 2020.
Trump, for his part, is polling at 14 percent of the Black vote in the latest Times poll, which would constitute a modest two-to-three-point gain compared to 2020. It isn’t much, but against a candidate that is being sold to the public as the “first Black female president”, it is worth noting she is doing slightly worse than Biden.
Then, there are city dwellers, another group that appears to be consolidating their support behind Harris. July’s poll had Harris earning a comfortable 59 percent of the city-folk vote, but that number has climbed to 63 percent. This represents a slight gain over the 60 percent of the city vote Biden earned in 2020, indicating Harris could beat Biden’s numbers among city dwellers.
In short, the longstanding demographic losses for Democrats among young voters and Hispanics which Americans for Limited Government and others have been covering for well over a year now appear to be “real” at least according to polls.
Young voters and Hispanics have been shifting away from Democrats over the past four years due to the Biden Administration’s mishandling of key issues like inflation and immigration, and they do not appear to be circling back just because Kamala Harris is heading the ticket now.
The urban/rural divide is likely to be even larger this election than it was in 2020, with Trump further consolidating support among rural Americans and Harris gaining over Biden’s numbers among urbanites. Black voters like Harris more than they liked Biden seven weeks ago as he teetered out of the race, but they still like her less than they liked the Biden of 2020.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
