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Harris is way ahead of where Biden was two weeks ago

Here's the latest YouGov poll on the presidential race along with all the crosstabs:

Kamala Harris is leading Trump 46% to 44%. Compared to two weeks ago, she's five points ahead of where Biden was and seven points ahead of where she was.

Compared to Biden two weeks ago, Harris has picked up 3 points among whites, 7 points among Blacks, and 7 points among Hispanics. She's also gained among all age groups, including a solid 11-point gain among young voters.

Harris has also gained a spectacular 10 points among independents, and she's polling higher with Democrats than Biden did. The undecided/third-party vote has plummeted by 7 points since she entered the race.

The YouGov poll generally changes slowly thanks to its structure, so these are big gains. And while it's true that Harris's honeymoon with the public won't last forever, I think these gains are permanent and will only get bigger. There are just a whole lot of people who breathed a huge sigh of relief when Biden withdrew. They really didn't want to vote for Trump, and all they were looking for was someone, anyone, who seemed like a reasonable alternative. Harris is that person.

50 thoughts on “Harris is way ahead of where Biden was two weeks ago

  1. Josef

    I am more confident than I was just a month ago. I hope Harris continues to improve. Trumps performance at the National Association of Black Journalists event should give Harris an even bigger boost. He's such an idjit. lol.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      It was very clever of Trump to bring up his concerns that Kamala Harris is not Black enough to merit the support of the Black community. I hope he sticks with that message. I'm sure it'll be a winner.

      1. zaphod

        "I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” he continued. “So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

        So, Trump evidently doesn't know that every person must have two parents. What an ignorant jerk.

      2. Elctrk

        "Ka-MAL-uh hasn't always been Black; a lot of people don't know that, by the way. Grown men come up to me with tears in their eyes, and they say, 'Sir, I didn't know she wasn't always Black...' "

      3. gibba-mang

        What's even funnier is that Trump et al made a big deal of Harris' pick as VP in 2020 ONLY because she was black.

  2. CaliforniaDreaming

    Biden was gonna be a tough vote. Harris is much easier to vote for, even if I am less comfortable with her.

    Hope she Stomps that other old guy.

    1. jeffreycmcmahon

      I'd be curious for you to elaborate on both of these?

      I mean, I don't see why it's a tough vote to choose the guy with deteriorating capabilities who doesn't want to be a dictator over the guy with deteriorating capabilities who does want to be a dictator. Or what the difference between "easier to vote for" vs. "less comfortable" is.

      1. cld

        Honestly, it's like it was a choice between voting for the old guy and having brain cancer.

        How was this ever a problem for anyone?

    1. Anandakos

      Males? Easy; Trump claims to have acted out their teen-age dreams of "nailing pussy" right and left. for decades. He's an "Alpha", just ask him. You can be an "Alpha", too, if you wear a Red Hat.

      Older Folks? You got me there; for anyone on Socisl Security it should be a slam-dunk: the Democrat.

  3. lower-case

    for years trump has been orange, but recently he's been claiming he's white

    so which is it, orange or white?

  4. Vog46

    Honestly I don't think Trump, being an alpha male had any choice in this.
    AFTER withdrawing from the debate and, AFTER watching the polls shifting, and, AFTER watching his news cycle domination disappear and, after watching his post convention bounce never materializing, he had to step up his game.
    He will frame his appearance at the NABJ as him going into the lions den. Fearless, and now feared. But at the same time he laid the groundwork for another excuse down the road. "I didn't have to debate Kamala, I went to debate a group that was much stronger than she is and I destroyed them with the truth."

    I have to admit to being surprised by the strength Kamala is showing so far. She's witty, pointed, and fearless in attacking Trump
    Where has this version of KH been? Have I missed something? Does she have new advisers? I am pleasantly surprised by what I am seeing.

    1. Josef

      I am also pleasantly surprised by her performance so far. I hope she keeps it up. Trump is easily manipulated into saying really ignorant and stupid things. She just needs to needle him a bit and let his overinflated ego do the heavy lifting. She needs to be the calm reasonable one to his out-of controll nutjob.

  5. Elctrk

    At what point is it no longer a sugar high or a honeymoon?

    La Donna didn't get any bump out of the assassination attempt, the convention, or naming Vance.

  6. D_Ohrk_E1

    And while it's true that Harris's honeymoon with the public won't last forever

    What makes people accept the inevitability of a trite metaphor?

    In less than two weeks, she's pulled $200M in campaign donations and nearly 200K in new volunteers. She's got Megan Thee Stallion opening for a rally filled with 10K people, she's got Beyonce's Freedom as her campaign's theme song, and she's been making the news multiple times a day. She's building momentum as she announces her VP, goes on a Midwest campaign swing with her VP, leading right into the DNC in four weeks.

    We literally haven't seen this level of enthusiasm and activity from a Democratic presidential campaign since 2008. Did Obama have a honeymoon period that came to an end in 2008?

    1. masscommons

      Thanks for your comment. FWIW, what's happened with Harris and the Dems over the past 10 days "won't last forever".

      Heck, our gracious host claims that Harris' lead "will only get bigger", and that's not a sure thing either. (Might happen; might not.)

      The Democrats just executed the political equivalent of a "Biles": unveiling an unprecedented maneuver with an extraordinarily high degree of difficulty while executing it perfectly, and with joy, on the biggest stage possible.

      Nobody does that every week.

      I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade. In fact, people should enjoy this while they can; it doesn't happen often. Then it's back to the grind of the campaign for another 14 weeks.

      P. S. While also making contingency plans for what to do if/when the GOP obstructs the vote count and certification if Harris is winning.

      https://masscommons.wordpress.com/2024/07/27/executing-a-political-simone-biles-lessons-learned-from-the-democrats-unprecedented-week/

      1. D_Ohrk_E1

        "won't last forever" is missing the point.

        There are a series of scheduled events that will continue to build momentum all the way through August. If we're lucky, Trump will agree to debate Kamala Harris in early September where she'll demolish him. She'll have at least 4 different moments through mid-September to get a boost in polling and positive news coverage.

        Trump has one: replacing JD. But he has only a week to do so before Ohio's calendar forecloses changes to the names on the ballot without court involvement. Harris' timing on her VP is key. She's set to reveal her choice one day before that deadline. If her pick grabs headlines and is hugely popular, Trump has 24 hours to flip on a dime in response to the non-stop talk about the Democratic ticket.

        Seeing how he bombed his appearance before the NABJ, his downward spiral also serves to boost her candidacy and her polling. In the last few years Russell Wilson was Seattle's QB, the saying was "let Russ cook". Well, let Trump cook his chaos soup to drive voters running to Harris.

      2. lawnorder

        The contingency plans have been made. It's been noted that both parties have lawyers on retainer in every state (many lawyers in each of the bigger states; fewer in the smaller states) prepared to conduct election related litigation on very short notice.

        From about September until next February, it may be difficult for an ordinary person to find a lawyer to conduct ordinary litigation, or a court with time to hear anything not election related.

        1. Josef

          The biggest fear I have is that Trump or his allies will instigate another January 6th. Only this time he'll have the support to be successful. No amount of lawyers will prevent a coup. The only positive thing is he won't be president with a v.p. willing to do anything he wants.

          1. lawnorder

            Trump was uniquely positioned in 2020 to lead a coup, being president with all the levers associated with that. He doesn't have that this time around. Biden is president and while he may not be as sharp as he used to be he's plenty sharp enough to make sure that potential insurrectionists are closely watched and that plenty of troops are on alert ready to respond to anything that looks like an insurrection.

            If Trump tries to pull off a coup this time, a lot of people will die.

    2. zic

      Not to mention that she's displaced Trump in the headlines at WaPo and NYT both. And my local paper, too.

      But what's really weird is that those institutions gave the freak show so much airtime for so long. Time to change the channel.

    3. lawnorder

      I expect that they're quite right that Harris's honeymoon period will end, two or three months after she is sworn in as president.

  7. bebopman

    I’m with Mr. Drum. I have long suspected, looking at the high negatives for Trump and Biden, that a lot of voters were just begging for a viable third choice. Harris is few persons’ dream candidate, but thank god she’s in the race. I may be wrong, wouldn’t be the first time, but i don’t the result is gonna be as close as many people think . I think we are about to find out just how small trumps hard core support is, because he’s not going get much more than that. (I hope.)

  8. Traveller

    Ms Harris's speech today was less fired up than yesterday's, I sense that it was a more restrained audience than a packed house of college students....she feeds on the audience as does everyone...it was good, just not over the top great.

    As to Ms Harris's being black....I'm not sure I see her as black myself....she is kind of Black/Asian, I am not sure this is not an issue she can build on...She can say, ".I am a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but I am like America itself and I will represent all communities,"

    at least this is how I would play it. Traveller

    PS I think Ms Harris is good on policy...hers good, his bad, I would pivot to this also.

    1. KenSchulz

      Kamala Harris lived in Black neighborhoods and was bused to a formerly white elementary school in accordance with a desegregation program. A neighbor took young Kamala and her sister to an African-American church. She attended, and graduated from a historically Black university (Howard), and joined historically-Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority there.

      1. Altoid

        When she was a kid, I think it was still the general pattern that if one parent in a family was Black, the whole family was considered Black and had to live in mainly Black neighborhoods. That was certainly the case with, say, Franco Harris, whose mom was Italian, and the pattern goes back to pre-Civil War days throughout the country. According to a radio report or podcast I was listening to on Monday, her Bay Area neighborhood had a lot of grad students too because the rents were low-- in fact I think her parents were grad students then.

        What I find particularly interesting myself, though very little-discussed, is that Harris lived in Montreal for about 6 or 7 years while her mom was working at McGill; she graduated from one of the prestige Anglophone high schools and did her first year of college there before she went to Howard. The Montreal connection doesn't say much about Black identity, but I think the breadth it signifies is really impressive and speaks to an ability to function comfortably in different milieus. The significance of Howard, OTOH, speaks for itself, as anyone seeing it on somebody's resume would immediately grok.

        OT, there's been some skepticism in another thread about Jamaica's relevance to the African American experience. Anyone who feels that way should read up on slavery as practiced in the West Indian sugar islands, and as it affected life on those islands after it was abolished.

        1. Traveller

          I like Altoid's formulation:

          "...an ability to function comfortably in different milieus"

          But it does not get to what I was trying to say to Ken...Ms Harris may identify as black...this happens inside her...I on the other hand do not necessarily see her as black...this happens inside me.

          If she insists on being black, sure...but I still don't necessarily see her as black! It is a visual thing with me.....lol Best Wishes, Traveller

          PS and Edit: Ms Harris is....Black.ish, whatever this means. But she also seems kind of Indian.ish .color, white, red, yellow, brown or black has to be very pronounced to me to call it that....I guess that's what I mean.

          1. Altoid

            A lot of people don't have a simple genetic/ethnic background-- that's what makes money for the DNA testing business-- and the way a person looks doesn't necessarily tell a bystander very much about a complicated background.

            Where trump screws the pooch is that he not only thinks he can tell by looking, but he thinks his impression should absolutely govern how *everybody else* defines a person's ethnicity, including how *that very person* should define their own ethnicity.

            That's what he and Fred used to do when it came to potential renters (until Nixon's DOJ slapped them for it), and how banks, federal mortgage insurance, hiring offices, etc, operated until July of the year Harris was born. Appearance was what mattered in unsegregated states (the segregated states had a stricter rule that wasn't completely based on what people looked like).

            The idea that someone like him can look at somebody and establish their ethnicity by decree, and insist that the world act on that basis, is also the essence of a patriarchal white-guy world view from before the Civil Rights era.

            OTOH, if it's just a matter of personal curiosity and doesn't affect the way we treat that person, then no harm no foul. Probably most people are going to wonder something like that about one person or another, and at that level, no biggie.

            AFAIK Harris has always been upfront about publicly identifying with the black side of her background. If nothing else, opting for Howard meant that her resume would forever identify her with an HBCU.

            That going there was a choice, by the time she reached college age, and not something she was restricted to, I think tells us that the Civil Rights Act brought positive change.

          2. lawnorder

            I spent some time in West Africa as a youth. One of the things I learned there is that "black" people, like "white" people, come in a large variety of shades. It always amused us when the local newspaper would describe a wanted criminal as being of "fair" complexion, which in the context meant several shades darker than Obama. The people they described as "dark" were dark enough brown that "black" was legitimately applicable to them. There are VERY few Americans that would qualify as "dark complexioned" by West African standards.

            Harris is dark enough brown enough to qualify as "black" the way Americans define the term.

    2. lawnorder

      Obama managed to be "black" despite his white mother and the fact that he is not descended from slaves. Harris's father, being Jamaican, probably does have some slaves in his ancestry, making him (and his daughter) just a bit more authentically American black than Obama.

  9. FrankM

    I'm skeptical by nature, and swings in polling data are particularly eyebrow-raising for me. I don't think people are really that fickle. I think what you're seeing is response bias. It's well-known and impossible to correct for. People who are enthusiastic about their candidate are more likely to respond to polls, while people who see their favored candidate as doing poorly are more likely to hang up.

    I start with two premises:

    1. No one who voted for Trump in 2020 is going to vote for Harris in 2024.
    2. No one who voted for Biden in 2020 is going to vote for Trump in 2024.

    There may be a vanishingly small number of exceptions to these, but not enough to matter. I'd bet that if you compared how people voted in 2020 with how they plan to vote this year you'd see a 0.99+ correlation.

    So it all comes down to turnout. Harris has generated a lot of buzz, which has her supporters jacked up and they're more likely to respond to polls than they were when Biden is the candidate. That's what you're seeing in the polling shifts. If this translates to turnout on November 5, she wins. All she really has to do is hang on to the Biden voters from 2020.

    1. KenSchulz

      Did you read the part about the drop in third-party and undecided? These do tend to decline as the election approaches, and perhaps represents more of a willingness to commit in a direction one was already leaning, than a true switch. Still, it points in the same direction as ‘enthusiasm’ — a greater propensity to turn out. As I’ve said previously, winning elections is mainly about getting your party’s low-propensity voters to the polls.

    2. skeptonomist

      The idea that there are no undecided or switch voters is not justified by any data. When you find a study with that .99 correlation you will have some evidence.

      There are undoubtedly fewer swing voters than in past elections, but the margins are likely to be very small when it comes down to the deciding states.

      Maybe when the generally low-information voters who are undecided start paying attention they will see how idiotic Trump has been acting, especially as he gets worse.

      1. Jasper_in_Boston

        The idea that there are no undecided or switch voters is not justified by any data.

        People just can't seem to let go of this zombie political idea.

        There's been ample evidence now for multiple cycles that (1) elections are won much more on persuasion than turnout and that (2) in fact persuadable voters make up a vital 10%-20% of the electorate.

        Moreover, high turnout these days helps MAGA more than Democrats, given that the former's base increasingly is comprised of low trust, low education voters who don't show up as reliably on election day (IOW like Democrats 30 years ago).

        I don't know why so many liberals are so stubborn in the face of the data. Is it simply resentment at the notion they might have to tailor their messaging to target the center? I guess the idea that there are millions of inactive voters who want to transform the US into a Nordic paradise is more appealing. I mean, admittedly, it would be nice if true!

        1. HokieAnnie

          I don't know why you cling to YOUR zombie idea. Switchers were a thing in the era when parties were looser coalitions that were not so starkly different as they are now. Folks aren't switching back and forth between the major parties not in statistically valid numbers. Your mix of voters swaps out with each cycle. Old voters die or get too sick to vote, younger voters take up the habit of voting.

          You can help change the mix by persuading non-voters to vote or to get presidential only voters to vote in local elections. Also you help by making voters who will never ever in a million years vote for your party to get discouraged and stay home instead of voting.

          1. Jasper_in_Boston

            Folks aren't switching back and forth between the major parties not in statistically valid numbers

            Sure they are. Thirteen percent (the percentage of Trump voters who previously voted for Obama) is very far from statistically invalid.

            https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

            This comports with most of the evidence, which suggests that, in our current era, some 10-20% of the electorate is up for grabs, and is open to voting for either ticket.

            True, that's not nearly as large as in previous eras. But it's way beyond the threshold for statistical validity. One of the nicest pieces of evidence we have for this, I might add, comes from congressional races. Hard progressive candidates don't pick up purple districts.

            https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/13/democrat-marie-gluesenkamp-perez-wins-key-house-seat-in-washington-state

            People like Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez do! Which I think is good news. It means there's a strategy available for winning back territory from Republicans: don't be stupid; don't highlight your worst issues; and nominate your candidates wisely. AOC is great. But she's not going to win in a purple district (and she's not going to win 270 electoral votes, either).

            NBC thought the percentage of persuadable voters was about 25%, incidentally, in 2022. That's a bit higher than most of the data I've seen, but only marginally so.

            https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read/persuadable-voters-are-breaking-democrats-nbc-news-poll-finds-rcna45235

            Swing voters are very real. Which is good. That means there are millions of folks out there who are potentially convincible that voting for a Democrat is a lot better than voting for a Republican!

    3. Jasper_in_Boston

      I start with two premises:

      1. No one who voted for Trump in 2020 is going to vote for Harris in 2024.
      2. No one who voted for Biden in 2020 is going to vote for Trump in 2024.

      There may be a vanishingly small number of exceptions to these

      Your premises are definitely wrong. 13% of Trump's 2016 voters voted for Obama. The number of people who regularly vote for either party isn't as large as it used to be, for sure. But it's definitely more than a "vanishingly small" number of people, especially in tight elections. Biden's three closest states (Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, if memory serves) were each won by something like 1% or less.

      1. FrankM

        Umm...Notice that 2016 is not a part of the two premises. How did those 13% vote in 2020? I'd venture to guess that nearly all of them went for Biden. Every election is unique. While Trump was somewhat of an unknown quantity in 2016, he's not anymore.

        Note in this YouGov poll that about 95% of self-identified D's and R's would not even consider voting for the other candidate. Self-identified independents constituted 14% of respondents, but as everyone knows by now, those claiming to be independent are mostly not really. Look at tables 6 and 7. 58% of them would not consider voting for Harris and 48% would not consider voting for Trump. This does not suggest that the number of persuadable voters is very high.

  10. jdubs

    It is really interesting how much the narrative has changed even though the polling data has not.

    Kevin frames this as a massive improvement over two weeks ago when we were a month into the 'dump Biden' campaign......but it is also relatively unchanged from the polling situation 4-8 weeks ago.

    Right now, being tied with or up a point on Trump is positive and exciting, a sign of strength.

    But just a few weeks ago, being tied or slightly ahead was distressing and a sign of weakness. The common wisdom was, 'You cant win if your only up a point or two, this is a sign that Biden cannot win, if he wasnt so old he would be polling much better!' This was the initial evidence that Biden must be replaced.

    Thes polls mostly show slightly more liberals and dems voting for Harris instead of being undecided. Which is good, but doesnt quite square with the narrative about independants and non-maga conservatives jumping on board.

    Narratives are powerful. Im glad it has shifted.

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