OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
CNN’s data guru Harry Enten dropped some bad news on Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid in a network segment this week after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed her.
“For all the excitement that Democrats have over Kamala Harris, it is going to be difficult to beat Donald Trump, and I want to give you an understanding of why,” Enten began.
“Let’s take a look here just first at the favorable views of Donald Trump. We know that Donald Trump has historically been unpopular, but take a look now. 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. 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 continued.
“So, yes, Democrats can make this switch-a-roo but they’re still going to have to beat Donald Trump — a Donald Trump who is stronger than he has ever been before,” he said.
That led host Sara Sidner to ask, “How is he doing relative to Harris, who did run at one point? What do those numbers look like?”
“Yes. So, let’s take a look here, right? We’ve been focusing so much on how Harris was doing better than Biden in the polling. And that’s true. 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, right? That’s a close race,” he explained.
“But remember, of course, in the national popular vote, Democrats tend to do better there than they’ve done in the electoral college, at least when Donald Trump has been running for president. 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 — five points better than he was four years ago against Joe Biden,” he continued.
“At this particular point, 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. 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,” Enten added.
“Because the fact is, if you’ve got a tie in the national popular vote, that is probably not good enough if you’re Kamala Harris and you want to win the election against Donald Trump.”
According to a CNN survey conducted by SSRS after Biden dropped out, 49 percent of respondents supported Trump, while 46 percent backed Harris.
The poll was conducted between July 22-23, a few days after Biden announced he was abandoning his reelection bid. It was conducted among registered voters who had previously participated in CNN surveys in April and June when Trump led Biden by 6 points.
According to Newsmax, the poll found:
- 64% said Republicans have a better chance of winning the presidency in 2024 if Trump is the party’s nominee.
- 50% said their vote is more in support of Harris than against Trump, compared to 37% of Biden’s supporters who said their vote was mainly to express support for the president.
- 74% said their vote is to express support for Trump rather than their opposition to Harris.
- Among Harris supporters younger than 45, 43% say their vote is more in support of her than against Trump, up from 28% of Biden voters in that age group who felt the same way about the president in June.
- Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters are split over whether the next nominee should continue Biden’s policies (53%) or take the country in a new direction (47%).
- 88% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters say Republicans have a better chance to win with Trump at the top of the ticket.
