CNN: Man, These Kamala Harris Polls Are… Unimpressive

Does Kamala Harris perform better against Donald Trump than Joe Biden? The short answer is, slightly. The long answer is more like a yes and no since the Vice President also comes with her own brand of drawbacks.

However, the idea that dumping Biden overboard Biden gracefully dropping out would somehow flip the race on its head hasn’t happened yet. Sure, it’s still early, and Harris hasn’t even named her vice presidential pick. So far, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly seems to be at the top of the list but the situation is fluid and speculation is just that, speculation.

CNN’s Harry Enten, the data and numbers guy, went over some of Harris’ strengths and found them to be, well, underwhelming right now:

Trump supporters shouldn’t quite take it all to the bank, yet. There are approximately three months to go in this campaign or just shy of 100 days. The media is already working overtime to rebrand and “polish a turd,” as someone said, to make Harris seem like some kind of pragmatic centrist, which she is not.

The main gist of Enten’s analysis is that Harris is marginally better than Biden, but Biden was doing so badly, that marginally better, right now, ain’t good enough to win. For Harris to take the lead over Trump, she’ll need to be somewhere like +3 in national polls and put up numbers in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that look convincing. Right now, she’s not there yet.

Furthermore, it’s yet to be determined how much voters will hold the Biden cover-up against Harris since she was on record many times saying the president is sharp as a tack, but only in meetings with no cameras. In short, Harris is starting her national rollout with a big blackeye of dishonesty and deception when it comes to leveling with the American people. The media will shield her from this as much as it can, but the cat is out of the bag with Biden’s decline and it’s too fast and furious to put back in.

As Politico reports, Harris is doing better than Biden, but that’s like saying the Titanic is sinking a little slower than it was an hour ago, but it’s still sinking:

In the days since launching her presidential bid, Vice President Kamala Harris is polling slightly better than President Joe Biden did against former President Donald Trump — but the upended 2024 race is still statistically tied, according to a CNN/SSRS poll published Wednesday.

Harris, the all-but-certain Democratic nominee for president, drew the support of 46 percent of registered voters in a hypothetical match-up, lower than Trump’s 49 percent but within the poll’s margin of error. Trump’s support is unchanged compared to previous editions of the CNN poll, while Harris polls 3 percentage points better than Biden did in a survey released early this month. The latest poll is a panel-back survey, meaning that CNN interviewed people they have talked to before.

The only shining spot, so far, is that Harris may have brought Wisconins back to even and is down less than Biden was in Georgia, two states that are crucial for Democrats to hold the White House given Trump’s advantage on the electoral map.

All-in-all, Harris is a meh candidate right now that improves slightly over Biden. That could change over the next 100 days, of course, but Donald Trump is still in the driver’s seat of this race.

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Nate Ashworth

The Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Election Central. He's been blogging elections and politics for over a decade. He started covering the 2008 Presidential Election which turned into a full-time political blog in 2012 and 2016 that continues today.

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