In her Honeymoon period, when most people don't know much about her leftwing extremist politics, and have never heard her Idiot Cackling, Kamala has slightly improved on Biden's performance against Trump.
The likely 2024 presidential election campaign between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump begins with no clear leader, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after President Joe Biden ended his bid for reelection.
Trump holds 49% support among registered voters nationwide to Harris' 46%, a finding within the poll's margin of sampling error. That's a closer contest than earlier CNN polling this year had found on the matchup between Biden and Trump.
Trump led Biden 49-45 in the same poll.
So is she doing better? Well.... I mean, it's statistical noise.
If Trump really is at 49%, that's game over. In a crowded field, you don't need 50%. Hell, Trump doesn't even need to be ahead in the national vote to win the electoral college by a bunch of votes.
And this is a poll of registered voters, not likely voters. (Though the likely voter screen doesn't favor Democrats much any longer.)
The survey finds voters widely supportive of both Biden's decision to step aside and his choice to remain in office through the end of his term. Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters are broadly enthusiastic about Harris and willing to coalesce around her as the new presumptive nominee, even as they remain deeply divided on whether Biden's Democratic successor should seek to continue his policies or chart a new course.
Whoops! Well that's a big problem the Democrats have, huh? It's 100 days until the election and they haven't figured out if they want to abandon and Repudiate Biden's policies, or double down on them.
And the new poll finds some critical movement in these early days of a Harris-Trump race.
Harris hangs on to 95% of those who earlier said they supported Biden, while Trump retains the support of a slightly smaller 92% of his previous backers. Those who previously said they would support neither Biden nor Trump in a two-way matchup now split 30% for Harris and 27% for Trump, with the rest saying they'd vote for someone else or opt out of this year's election.
...About three-quarters of Trump's supporters (74%) say their vote is to express support for him rather than opposition to Harris. That's an increase in affirmative support for him compared with the June CNN poll (66%), which came before an assassination attempt on Trump's life and the Republican National Convention at which the former president formally accepted his party's nomination. The poll finds Trump's favorability rating ticking up to 43%, higher than it's been since 2020 in CNN polling.
CNN's poll analyst Henry Enten says that the storyline about Harris doing better than Biden with young voters -- because young voters consider 59 to be the new 29, or something -- is just wishcasting, without support in the actual polling.
CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said Wednesday that support for presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is 'just not there' among young voters.CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten revealed on Wednesday that presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is struggling to gain traction among young voters despite a recent influx of internet memes.
Referencing CNN exit polls, Enten noted that President Biden won voters under the age of 35 by 21 points in 2020, but Harris is leading former President Trump by "significantly less" as of Sunday (9 points).
He said that Harris may be doing better than Biden among young voters before announcing he would not run for re-election. However, her numbers are still "way down" from many other Democrats in the 21st century.
"If this is unique support among young voters, I would like to know what her non-unique support is. Is it even worse than this?" Enten said.
...
"This idea, again, that the vice president has unique potential to dig in and get young voters to turn out--John, it's just not there in the numbers despite all the internet memes that are going around," Enten told anchor John Berman.
He noted that support for Trump is higher than it's ever been:
"Yes, Democrats can make this switcheroo, but they're still going to have to beat Donald Trump, a Donald Trump who is stronger, Sara, than he has ever been before," he told anchor Sara Sidner....
The network's data guru pointed to two recent national polls Tuesday morning, one from ABC/Ipsos and one from Quinnipiac University, showing the former president's popularity as it stands following the Republican National Convention last week.
"We know that Donald Trump has historically been unpopular, but take a look now," he began. "After the Republican National Convention, in the ABC News/Ipsos poll, he recorded his highest ever favorable rating at 40%. That's not a one-off."
Enten continued to underline the fact that Trump is at his most popular.
"We know that Donald Trump has historically been unpopular, but take a look now," he began. "After the Republican National Convention, in the ABC News/Ipsos poll, he recorded his highest ever favorable rating at 40%. That's not a one-off."
Mentioning the other poll, he continued, "Take a look at the Quinnipiac University poll: 46%. That's the highest ever in that pollster."
"The fact is, Donald Trump is more popular now than he ever has been before," Enten declared, summing up the new polls.
Sidner then invited Enten to demonstrate how Trump would stack up against Harris compared to how he would match up against Biden in a presidential race. According to the reporter's aggregate numbers, Trump currently has the edge over Kamala in national popular vote polling, whereas he was polling below Biden during the 2020 Election, which he lost.
Starting with Trump against Harris, he said, "If we take a look at the national average, what do we see? We see Donald Trump up by one. That's a within-the-margin race. That's a close race."
He then turned to the Biden/Trump numbers from last election cycle.
"So last time around, when Joe Biden barely won in the electoral college, he actually won the national popular vote by four points."
"So at this point, Donald Trump is running five points better -- five points better -- than he was four years ago against Joe Biden," he said, adding, "... Whether you look at the favorable ratings, whether you look at the horse race polling, we see that Donald Trump is doing significantly better than he was doing four years ago at this point."
Enten then provided a warning for Harris, who became the presumptive Democratic Party nominee following Biden suspending his campaign over the weekend.
"Kamala Harris is going to have to do better than this of course if she wants to win the popular vote, but more than that if she wants to win the electoral college where she'll likely have to outperform how she's done nationally," the reporter added, though he did acknowledge that there hasn't been national polling on Harris since Biden ditched his bid over the weekend.
(((Harry Enten)))
@ForecasterEnten
16m
Here's what we have for voters under the age of 30 so far...CNN/SSRS: Harris +4
Reuters/Ipsos: Harris +14
NYT/Siena: Harris +21Average so far: Harris +13 (I'll note Marist, not included here, had an under 35 & looked most like CNN)... Better than Biden 2024. Worse than 2020
Despite not showing she's able to beat Trump, 76% of Democrats want her
to be the nominee.
"About three-quarters of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters (76%) say the Democratic Party should nominate Harris as its candidate for president, with only about 6% expressing support for any other specific person as the nominee," CNN revealed.
One pollster, Reuters-Ipsos, puts Harris up over Trump by two points, 44 to 42. But a guest on Megyn Kelly said that Reuters polls have consistently showed Biden doing better than any other pollster. The guest said the Reuters poll had Biden down by only one slender point, while other pollsters had it at 4 or 5 points.