OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
While most polling shows a tight race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the vice president appears to be bleeding voters from a key demographic, POLITICO noted on Tuesday.
The poll conducted by a bipartisan team for AARP and first shared with the outlet shows that Harris is leading with 49 percent of likely voters, compared to 47 percent for Trump and 2 percent for other candidates. Additionally, 3 percent of respondents remain undecided.
The survey, conducted from September 17 to 24 via landline, cell phone, and text-to-web, is the first AARP has carried out in the state since President Joe Biden withdrew from the race.
In an April survey, Biden was down 5 percentage points overall. Among voters aged 18 to 49, he was trailing by 1 point; now, Harris is leading by 14. He was losing independents by 6 points, while she is now winning them by 9. Additionally, she is outperforming Biden among Democrats, women, suburban voters, rural voters, and even those without a college degree.
However, the survey found that Harris is losing among voters aged 65 and older by 7 points.
“Harris’ biggest weakness is older voters. It is the biggest share of the electorate, and she is behind,” said Republican pollster Bob Ward, whose firm, Fabrizio Ward, took part in conducting the survey.
The economy appears to be a significant factor in why older voters favor Trump over Harris. Among voters aged 50 and up who prioritize inflation and high prices as key issues, Trump holds a 54-point lead.
Jeffrey Liszt, a Democratic pollster whose firm Impact Research collaborated with Ward’s on the AARP survey, noted that Harris’ biggest challenge is that Trump’s retrospective job approval rating is higher than hers. And “a big piece of that is the economy,” he told POLITICO.
“It’s been a core strength of Donald Trump’s that he’s got this branding around being a businessman and having been on ‘The Apprentice,’” said Liszt, whose firm polls for VP Harris’ campaign. “When you look back at the job that people think that he did, his job rating is better than hers. And again, that’s her core vulnerability and his core strength.”
Fifty percent of likely voters approve of Trump’s job performance as president, while 49 percent disapprove. In contrast, 45 percent approve of Harris’s performance as vice president, and 52 percent disapprove. Liszt pointed out that this is contrary to their personal popularity, with Trump underwater by 7 percentage points compared to Harris, who is only 3 points underwater.
Liszt noted that Trump’s challenges include Harris’s strong performance among independents and her consolidation of younger voters and older Black voters—two traditionally Democratic voting blocs that had been skeptical of Biden’s candidacy. Meanwhile, Ward said that if Trump “could expand his margins among older voters, particularly older women, he’s got a good chance to pull ahead in this race.
On Wednesday, left-wing media figures and outlets panned Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s debate performance against Sen. JD Vance following the CBS-moderated event Tuesday evening, giving Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate low marks across the board.
CNN’s Abby Phillips, Dana Bash, and Jake Tapper, notably, were all critical of Walz, with each of them alternately opining that he appeared to either lack debate prep or had far too much of it and was not quick enough on his feet to counter Vance’s many jabs at Harris.
At one point during post-debate analysis, Tapper even claimed that Vance is a “much more experienced” debater, a point that Bash said could be attributed to the fact that Walz — and Harris — have not done many media interviews.
“I think there was a clear lack of preparation and execution here,” anchor Abby Phillip said, noting how Vance managed to land some “punches.”
Bash had the opposite take. “I think he had too much preparation. He had so many lines that he was clearly trying to say,” she said. “I think the lack of interviews that he has done with national media, with local media — it showed he needed more.”
