CHICAGO – A historic change in the presidential ticket. Change in voting. And an as yet undecided presidential candidate.
It comes amid this week’s Democratic convention, which began Monday with President Joe Biden passing the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris and will conclude Thursday night with Harris formally accepting the party’s presidential nomination.
These five numbers help set the stage for this week’s events and for the rest of the 2024 campaign after the conventions are over.
(1) 4 points
That’s Harris’ lead over Republican Donald Trump in the last national Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll49% to 45% among registered voters.
While the result is within the poll’s margin of error, it’s consistent with other national and battleground polls showing him slightly ahead of Trump.
And that’s a significant change from a month ago, when Biden was still in the race. In July, a Washington Post/ABC poll tied Biden and Trump at 46%.
(2) 81%
That’s the share of Democratic voters who said they were satisfied with Harris as the party’s presidential nominee, compared to 15% who said they would prefer someone else. National CNBC poll.
This is an amazing change in enthusiasm July NBC News pollwhile only 33% of Democrats said they were happy with Biden as the nominee, compared to 62% who wanted someone else.
(3) 9 points
That’s why Harris has a deficit on the economy against Trump WaPo/ABC survey. In this poll, 46% of voters said they trust Trump more on the economy, compared to 37% who trust Harris more.
Trump’s advantage in the economy lies in that consistent with what other surveys have shownalthough a Financial Times poll found the two candidates essentially even on the issue.
So Harris is going after an issue that voters typically say is the most important issue facing the country in 2024. However, it’s less than half of Biden’s economic deficit against Trump, according to an NBC News poll. tested them on this subject six months ago.
It comes as Harris tries to put more meat on the bones of his economic platform amid Friday’s speech makes plans to solve Food, housing, medicine and child care costs and Monday’s news that he supports raising the corporate tax rate to 28%.
(4) 64%
This is the percentage of voters who say they know what Harris stands for CBS News/YouGov poll.
That’s a majority of voters, but less than the 86% who say they know what Trump stands for.
This demonstrates one of the main goals of the Democrats for this convention: to clearly identify their party’s presidential candidate to the public, Republicans are racing to define it on their own terms.
(5) 45%
Accordingly, this is the share of likely voters New York Times/Siena College poll Those from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina say Harris is too liberal or too progressive.
That’s a narrow majority of respondents overall, compared to 6% who say he’s not liberal/progressive enough and 43% who say he’s not too far in either direction.
That compares with 35% of voters who believe Trump is too conservative, 9% who say he is not conservative enough, and 47% who say he is not too far off on either count.
So in the race to determine Harris, more voters — right now — believe the Democratic nominee is too liberal than believe the Republican nominee is too conservative.
Can Harris and convention change that perception? This week will help answer that question and perhaps determine whether he can maintain his momentum in the campaign.