Jul.24

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

The First Harris-Trump Polls Are In

The last 24 hours has seen the release of four national preference polls conducted after Joe Biden announced his departure from the race. Here are the head-to-head numbers:

We say, once again, that it's a little too early to be taking polls of the race seriously. However, here are some tentative observations:

• It appears that, despite the assassination attempt, the RNC, and the unveiling of the VP, Trump remains stuck at his usual ceiling of around 47%-48%
  
  
• On the whole, the number of undecideds is up relative to the previous iterations of these polls. And the data suggests that is being driven by independent women voters who have moved from the Trump column to the undecided column.
  
  
• With Harris in the race, the support for third-party/independent candidates shrinks a fair bit. That suggests that "a pox on both your houses" voters (a.k.a. "double haters") might be open to taking a look at her candidacy.

Tony Fabrizio released a memo yesterday in which he predicted that there will be a "Harris Honeymoon" in the polls, where her numbers are artificially high because of wall-to-wall positive coverage she is going to get in the media.

Fabrizio could be right about this; after all, this is what he does for a living. That said, he also works for a Donald Trump, who is known to fire pollsters when he's unhappy with what they are reporting. So, Fabrizio could be engaging in some proactive cover-your-a** activity. It is also the case that he generally pooh-poohs polling numbers favorable to Democrats.

Actually, truth be told, we don't particularly buy Fabrizio's assessment. To start, he's clearly wrong about the overwhelmingly positive coverage that Harris is going to get. Yes, she's getting a lot of positive coverage, but the media loves, loves, loves to write contrarian pieces in times like these. So, we have seen dozens and dozens of "here's a big problem for Harris" pieces in the last couple of days, some of them extremely contrived. For example, this op-ed from The Atlantic declares that the Democrats were right to cashier Biden, but they are "making a huge mistake" in rallying around Harris so enthusiastically. Huh? To take another example, this report from The Hill says that Democratic donor/fundraiser John Morgan will not be working to help elect Harris. Given that he wanted Biden to be replaced by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) or Andy Beshear, both of them moderate white male Southerners, you kind of know what the general problem is. In any event, from this one individual, the reporter draws the conclusion that this "could be a sign of some division among Democrats over the likelihood of Harris being their standard-bearer."

Here is our best guess as to where the polls are headed (and note, this is almost entirely gut feel, so take it with several grains of salt). As we note above, the extremely well known Trump looks to be at his usual ceiling. The less well known Harris, by contrast, has room to grow her support, as she gives voters some sense of who she is and where she stands on the issues. She could also lose support, mind you, as she introduces herself. But she at least has the possibility to gain support. We don't think Trump really does.

Also, there is a potential ace in the hole, as it were: the VP candidate. For the reasons we outline above, we very seriously doubt that J.D. Vance will attract new votes to the Republican ticket as he campaigns. And he might well push some votes away. On the other hand, if Harris chooses well, could she pick up a point or two or three in the polls? We think that is very possible. In particular, if it's one of the three apparent frontrunners—Beshear, Josh Shapiro or Mark Kelly—could you imagine that winning over some number of independent/centrist voters? We can. Meanwhile, can you imagine some sizable chunk of the electorate being outraged by the pick? We are having trouble seeing what group or groups that might be (particularly if it's Kelly who gets the nod).

There are going to be a lot more polls in the next week or two; we'll be very interested to see if they comport with what these first few polls are reporting. (Z)