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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.
Focus groups from early and mid-July showed that swing voters had a vague but generally negative impression of Harris. The key was the vagueness, though. They simply didn’t know much about her one way or another. That gave some early advantage to the Trump campaign. But she was much more of a blank slate than you’d imagine after already serving almost a full term as Vice President, and for the oldest President in American history. It was those dismal approval numbers which made many observers apprehensive about the switch. By the numbers, there was little reason to imagine that Harris would fare any better than Biden until the final drop off in his support in the third week of July.
Both campaigns were in a two- or three-week sprint to define Harris, a race that her campaign won hands down. I’ve made this point a number of times because it’s that rare piece of campaign conventional wisdom that is mostly true. First impressions aren’t set in stone. But the second take on defining someone is much, much harder than the first. But as much as we can say Harris’ campaign left Trump’s in the dust on this front, the shift is so dramatic you have to look to latent or unrealized potential as much as effective campaign and communications work. From the perspective of late August, Harris has the look of a Prince Hal type figure who bides their time feigning mediocrity and underperformance before revealing their true self at the defining moment. Whatever these literary flights of descriptive fancy, the shift in her favorability is even more stunning than the horse race numbers. And it’s more than some technical observation. It matters because those favorability numbers are the best indications that the horse-race numbers are likely to be enduring. That’s the fuel behind the horse race numbers and there seems to be a lot of fuel.
Donald Trump was also getting more popular at the same time. His net favorability numbers were already somewhat better than Biden’s. Then the attempted assassination coupled with the GOP convention drove them a bit higher. But they now seem to have topped out at just over -9 net favorability and now are trending again in the wrong direction.
Of course, there is something a touch odd about suggesting a candidate is reaching unimagined heights of popularity when she is in fact, by this technical definition, unpopular. But that’s simply the political moment we operate in. And she’s far ahead of Trump. Which is, right now, all that matters.