Kamala Harris seems to have more appeal among voters of color and younger voters than Joe Biden did before he got out of the presidential race. Still, the 2020 results show that Harris can make up even more ground with these groups in her expected matchup against Donald Trump.
Take a look at our newly published CNN/SSRS poll. Harris leads Trump among Black voters 78% to 15%. Among these same voters (the poll recontacted the same respondents), Biden was ahead by a smaller 70% to 23% in CNN polling data from April and June.
The same holds to a somewhat lesser degree among Hispanic voters. Harris comes in at 47% to Trump’s 45%, while it was 50% for Trump to 41% for Biden among these same respondents in the April and June data.
Voters under the age of 35 demonstrate a similar shift. It’s Harris 47% to Trump’s 43% now. In April and June, these same voters put Trump up 49% to 42% over Biden.
In some ways, none of these shifts are very surprising. Biden was doing the worst for a Democrat this century among all these traditionally Democratic-leaning groups. In fact, his performance among Hispanic and Black voters was the worst for a Democrat in over 50 years.
Harris probably had nowhere to go but up with these segments of the electorate.
Despite the improvement, the results should leave much to be desired for Harris. She is doing at least 5 points worse than Biden did among these same groups in the final 2020 polls.
Among Black voters, Biden led Trump 84% to 9% at the end of the 2020 campaign. Even more notable is that Biden led among Hispanic voters by a 58% to 32% spread.
Finally, even as Harris has become a meme favorite among young voters, Biden’s 60% to 31% advantage over Trump at the end of the 2020 campaign is massively larger than where Harris is right now.
(I should note the polling at this point in the 2020 campaign was similar to what the polls at the end of the campaign showed.)
This may seem like bad news for the Harris campaign, and, in one clear way, it is. Without improving among these groups, Harris likely cannot win against the former president.
The good news for Harris, though, is that she’s showing that she can make up some ground with this group relative to how Biden was doing earlier this year.
As Harris continues to define herself separately from being Biden’s vice president, there’s a real chance she could carve out her own political identity that may appeal more to voters of color and young voters.
The fact that Harris overperforms Biden among voters of color also provides her an opportunity to open up more paths in the Electoral College.
Biden’s pathway to 270 electoral votes seemed rather limited. He was likely going to need to run the table in the northern battleground states by carrying Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. His polling in the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina had been poor.
If he won the northern battleground states and the other Democratic-leaning states (minus those aforementioned Sun Belt states), Biden would have gotten exactly the 270 electoral votes he needed to win.
A big reason Biden struggled in those Sun Belt states is that each has a significant share of either Black or Hispanic voters. By doing better with those groups, Harris may reopen the possibility of more electoral paths.
If, for instance, Harris won all four Sun Belt battlegrounds mentioned above, she wouldn’t need to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin.
Perhaps more likely, Harris could get to 270 electoral votes by winning some mixture of northern battlegrounds and Sun Belt swing states.
The bottom line is that the latest CNN polling provides the Harris campaign with some hope. It’s not that Trump isn’t favored or that Harris doesn’t face an tough climb.
Rather, Harris now has a bunch of paths toward victory, while Biden’s options seemed to be closing rather quickly.