US election: Kamala Harris’ image bump by the numbers

The polls suggest Kamala Harris could claw back some voters who went for left-leaning third-party candidates. Photo / Washington Post

The early signs last week were that US Vice-President Kamala Harris’ replacement of President Joe Biden as the Democrats’ 2024 standard-bearer appeared to modestly increase Democrats’ hopes of winning.

The evidence since then has only affirmed that. The signs continue to improve for the Democratic ticket — particularly when it comes to Harris’ image.

A long-unpopular Vice-President has got a second look from voters now that the spotlight is trained on her. And at least for now, the polls suggest Americans are warming to her and liking her significantly more than they like Biden.

Several polls in recent days tell that tale.

An ABC News-Ipsos poll on Sunday showed Harris’ favourable rating at 43%. That’s eight points higher than her rating last month, and 11 points higher than Biden’s last month.

A Wall Street Journal poll on Friday showed 46% of registered voters liked Harris — 11 points higher than her showing almost a month ago, and 12 points higher than Biden’s at that time.

And Fox News polls on Friday in four key Midwestern and Rust Belt states — Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — showed Harris’s favourable rating averaging 49%, which is eight points higher than Biden’s present number.

Combine that with earlier CNN and New York Times-Siena College polling, and it all suggests Harris has increased favourable views of the top of the Democratic ticket by at least the high single digits.

Some of the more interesting findings from those polls:

Perhaps most striking in the Times-Siena poll is how much Harris appears to have made the Democratic ticket more palatable to less-reliable voters who could defect from the Democrats or sit out the 2024 election.

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While just 74% of Biden 2020 voters liked him, 88% of Biden 2020 voters liked Harris. And the poll showed her being viewed favourably by about twice as many people who didn’t vote in 2020 (46% vs 24%) and who now support a candidate besides her, Donald Trump or Robert F. Kennedy jnr (33% vs. 17%).

All of which suggests Harris could not only stem the bleeding of Biden’s support, but she could appeal to less-likely voters and claw back some voters who went for left-leaning third-party candidates.

As with all early polling conducted in the days after the Democrats’ switcheroo, it’s worth emphasising that it’s early. Harris is surely in a honeymoon period that might not last, particularly as attention turns to some of the positions she took during her 2020 Democratic presidential primary campaign.

It’s also important to note that, even with the improved image of the top of the Democratic ticket, Harris’ favourable numbers are mostly similar to Trump’s in these polls. Trump appears to have received a bit of his own bump after the assassination attempt against him and the Republican National Convention, and he was already generally more popular than he was during his presidency. And the race both nationally and in swing states is very close.

But there’s little question that, at least for now, Harris has put the Democratic ticket back on the map for lots of the most problematic voting groups for Democrats. Democrats looked like they were going to have to win lots of voters who didn’t like Biden and who didn’t seem to have much reason to vote blue, beyond dislike of Trump. Many of those voters today see a more viable option in Harris.