OPINION:
2024’s dead heat offers Vice President Kamala Harris a high-stakes choice: Stand pat or stand up.
All the foreseeable political variables — running mates, conventions and debates — have been seen … except one: Ms. Harris herself. With polls so tight, Ms. Harris must weigh whether to hide from serious press scrutiny or submit herself to it and risk revelation.
According to Real Clear Politics’ Sept. 23 national polling average, Kamala Harris holds a slim 2.2-percentage-point lead over former President Donald Trump in a two-way matchup: 49.4% to 47.2%. If those figures were to hold on Election Day, Ms. Harris would finish 1.9 points below President Biden’s popular vote percentage in 2020; Mr. Trump would finish three-tenths of a point ahead of his 2020 finish.
More ominously for Ms. Harris, her two-way race polling lead is below Mr. Biden’s in 2020 and Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 at the same stage of those races. In 2020, at this point, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by 7.1 percentage points — over triple Ms. Harris’ current lead.
At this point in 2016, Mrs. Clinton led Mr. Trump by 3 points — slightly more than Ms. Harris’ current lead. Of course, in the determinant electoral vote, Mr. Biden went on to barely win in 2020 (77,000 popular votes spread across Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin provided his margin of victory), while Mrs. Clinton went on to lose the 2016 electoral vote despite winning the popular vote by 2.1 points.
The discrepancy between popular vote percentage and electoral vote results is another point of concern for Ms. Harris. In their races, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton ran up large popular vote surpluses in California and New York, equaling roughly 4.4% of the popular vote. Assuming current national polling also captures the same Democratic overperformance in these two blue strongholds, then Ms. Harris is only about halfway to the surplus, so she needs to have a serious shot at winning the electoral vote.
Evidence of the importance of the discrepancy between popular vote (or national polling) percentage and electoral vote outcome is demonstrated by looking at the battleground states that have decided the last two elections and will also decide 2024. In Real Clear Politics’ recent average of seven battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) polls, Mr. Trump holds a scant 0.1-point lead: 47.8% to 47.7%.
There are also further worrisome signs for Ms. Harris outside the battleground states. In the most recent Minnesota poll, Ms. Harris led 48% to 43% — despite having Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate and Mr. Biden carrying it by 7.1 percentage points in 2020. The latest state poll in Virginia showed that Ms. Harris led by just 48% to 46%, despite Mr. Biden having carried it by a whopping 10.1 points in 2020.
Yes, Ms. Harris holds a favorability advantage over Mr. Trump. According to Real Clear Politics, Ms. Harris has a positive net rating of 1.1 points (48.7% to 47.6%). Mr. Trump has a negative net rating of 8.4 points (52.8% to 44.4%). But the presidential race is not a popularity contest; despite Ms. Harris’ current favorability advantage, her advantage in polls estimating voting preference is far less.
Ms. Harris’ favorability advantage underscores her dilemma. The foreseeable political variables have all gone her way thus far. Bolstered by overwhelmingly positive coverage from the mainstream media, Ms. Harris has erased what was until recently Americans’ decidedly negative view of her. Yet to get that pronounced favorability bounce, she has had to isolate herself from the media — and thereby from the voters.
Ms. Harris has done only softball media interviews, and just a handful of these. She has not held any news conferences since becoming the Democrats’ presumptive nominee: As of this past Monday, she has gone 64 days without one. Only recently did she do her first television interview.
In the last two months, Ms. Harris has reversed her positions on high-profile political issues such as fracking (now claiming she supports it after having opposed it) and illegal immigration (she formally excoriated the Trump administration for seeking to close the border, yet now claims to support a tough border policy, despite having done nothing to implement one as vice president and border czar).
Ms. Harris’ difficulty is that her national lead is seemingly too flimsy to rest on, and even this is inflated by a lack of scrutiny. So, does Ms. Harris risk remaining unknown by the electorate and thereby maintaining her favorability? Or does she risk becoming known in hopes of bolstering her slim polling lead?
Revelation has never been kind to Ms. Harris. She flamed out in 2019, never even reaching the Democratic primaries’ 2020 starting line. Her vice presidency has been widely panned, causing her to be hidden away by her own administration. And her serious interviews have often been disasters, “word salads” that no amount of dressing can make palatable — or comprehensible.
Thin as Ms. Harris’ lead is, it is inflated. Like a balloon, Ms. Harris’ lead is puffed up by the airy nothingness of her utterances and evasions of scrutiny.
So, in this dead heat’s last six weeks, the question is whether Kamala Harris decides to face the risk of standing pat or finally standing up.
• J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.
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