By Bill Wilson
A slew of new polls are being trumpeted by the mainstream as vindication for Vice President Kamala Harris – she is now neck and neck with former President Donald Trump in battleground states, where a month ago President Joe Biden was trailing him.
Harris is being touted by the mainstream as a woman of color who will look out for the underdog, but most polling shows Harris is only popular among the entrenched elite and is struggling to gain traction among working-class voters – especially minorities.
According to the polls, Harris has little issue matching or exceeding Biden’s numbers with educated voters, including whites. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows Harris earning 56 percent of Americans with a college degree, a point more than Biden won in 2020. Among whites with a college degree Harris is earning 51 percent of the vote, the same share that Biden did.
The polls indicate that Harris may be able to earn around 42 percent of the white vote overall, but this could be a stretch. The first Black president, Barack Obama – who was also a man, and whose mother was white – won 39 percent of the white vote against Mitt Romney in 2012.
Obama claimed to be focused on the economy and attempted to portray himself as a populist fighting the Big Bad Insurance Companies to pass “Obamacare” – which turned out to be a disaster – but he made economic issues a central piece to the campaign. Harris is not. She is running as a far-left DEI Open Borders extremist, and she picked one of the most radical governors in the country as her running mate, a man whose response to rioting is watching his city go up in flames.
It is a bit of a stretch to assume that a larger share of the population, which includes a swathe of independents and moderates, would favor Harris and her social justice agenda over Obama’s purported attempt to address economic inequality in 2012. Nevertheless, if left-wing women largely vote and men largely don’t, Harris may indeed collect a sizeable share of the white vote.
Where the data gets interesting is in Harris’ trailing numbers among middle-class and working-class minorities.
A brand-new Times Siena poll of three racially and economically diverse swing states – Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada – shows Harris running away with the election among so-called ‘privileged’ classes, but widely underperforming Biden among the ‘less privileged’.
In Arizona, Harris is polling five points below where Biden was with Latinos in 2020, earning 56 percent of their vote to Biden’s 61 percent. However, among non-college educated minorities, her numbers are even worse. Harris is down eight points from where Biden was with non-college minorities in Arizona, earning a slim 52 percent of their vote while Biden won 60 percent.
In Nevada, Trump is up nine points with Hispanics compared to his share of the vote in 2020, going from 35 percent in 2020 to 44 percent now. Harris is netting 45 percent of the Hispanic vote – beating Trump by a single percentage point. This leaves Harris underperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers by a full 16 points, considering Biden won 61 percent of Latinos four years ago.
How about the non-college vote in Nevada? According to the Times poll, Harris is underperforming Biden by 14 points among minorities without a college degree, while Trump has gained eight points compared to 2020. Harris is netting a meager 48 percent of the non-college minority vote in Nevada, while Biden walked away with 62 percent of the vote. Trump has gone from just 34 percent of the non-college minority vote to 42 percent, placing him just six points below Harris. This is quite the climb for Trump, who lost non-college minorities to Biden by 28 points in 2020, 62 percent to 34 percent.
Then there is Georgia. Trump is up nearly double the amount he was in 2020 among Black voters – going from 11 percent of their vote to 20 percent in the latest poll. For her part, Harris is underperforming Biden by 15 points among Blacks, earning just 73 percent of the vote to Biden’s 88 percent.
Here too, Harris is widely underperforming among minorities without a college education while Trump has rapidly gained support among this group. Trump is up 17 points with non-college minorities compared to 2020, going from 19 percent of their vote to 36 percent today. Harris is underperforming Biden’s numbers by a startling 21 points among non-college minorities, earning just 59 percent of their vote to Biden’s 80 percent.
Polling from last week showed a similar underperformance among working-class minorities for Harris in three Midwestern battleground states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The poll, also from the Times, showed Trump up against Harris with Black voters compared to where he was against Biden in 2020, and doubling his share of the Black vote in two states.
What is this story telling us? Americans who are struggling, who have been beaten down by the Biden economy, crushing inflation, rampant crime and relentless illegal immigration are not behind the Harris-Walz ticket.
Working-class voters are increasingly disenchanted with Harris, and the bulk of her support stems from virtue-signaling ivory tower elites. Whether Harris will even earn the share of the white vote she is receiving in polls remains to be seen. Again, given all current metrics including the strain on the economy and the border, do we believe Harris is a more marketable candidate than Obama was in 2012?
Regardless of if Harris can attract a sizeable share of the white vote, her significant deficits among minorities – including the least educated – should raise some eyebrows. Whether these voters shift to supporting Trump is open ended, as lower-educated groups are less likely to participate in elections in general. It is possible disenchanted working-class voters will simply sit out the election. Long-term, Democrats cannot afford to build a party without the support of the middle-class, and yet their destructive policies are driving away most of them.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
