Member Newsletter
Whether or not it is enduring, Kamala Harris’ transformation of the 2024 presidential race is stunning. There’s no other way to put it. When Joe Biden dropped out of the race he was approaching 4 percentage points behind Donald Trump. Today Harris is just shy of three points ahead, a six- or seven-point shift. What is even more striking is the shift in her net favorability. As of today, according to the 538 average, she remains three points “underwater,” as the jargon has it — her unfavorability three points over her favorability. But in post-2016 politics this amounts to being absolutely on fire. The numbers tell the story: on July 9th, Harris had a net unfavorability of 17.5 percentage points. Today it’s 3. Shifts like this are simply unheard of. They don’t happen. And in today’s dismal politics, you often get less popular with more exposure, not more popular.
In retrospect, the dynamic seems clear. Pre-hot-swap, Harris’ public image and poll numbers were an artifact of Biden’s. She was actually slightly less popular than he was, judged by net favorability. Mostly she was a stand-in for him. But this would have been a wildly optimistic assumption going in.