Harris Is Still Trying to Rebuild Biden’s Winning 2020 Coalition
Vice president rallies support among Black and Latino voters but continues to trail Biden’s 2020 levels
The Democratic coalition that elected President Biden in 2020 was fractured and weakened by the time he ended his campaign for re-election. In the six weeks since, Kamala Harris has gone a long way toward repairing the damage.
But recent Wall Street Journal polling shows the vice president has more work to do to overcome the gains former President Donald Trump has made among Black, Latino and young voters—groups that traditionally back Democrats. Any erosion in the Democratic coalition could decide the election, given that Biden’s support was barely strong enough to win in 2020. The president’s Electoral College victory rested on tiny margins of about 44,000 votes across three states.
Support for Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has grown by 13 percentage points among Black voters since Biden left the race in July, combined results of Journal polls in late July and August show. But at 81% support, she is still 10 points behind Biden’s 2020 mark.
Harris has also gained 13 points in Latino support—but lags behind Biden’s 2020 mark by 6 points.
Similarly, Harris has improved the party’s standing among young voters—those under age 30—by 7 points. But the party still has a deficit compared with 2020, when Biden’s support was 12 points higher.
One reason Harris hasn’t closed the gap among these voter groups is that many men find Trump more appealing now than four years ago. He is winning 20% of Black men in the Journal’s two most recent polls, far higher than his 12% share in 2020. And Trump is essentially tied with Harris among Latino men, drawing 47% support compared with Harris’s 48%. Analysts have suggested a mix of reasons for the shift, among them the relative importance men and women place on abortion rights, as well as differing views on the economy and on Trump’s assertive persona.
Among voters of all races, Harris lags behind Biden’s 2020 national support a bit more among men than among women.
If Harris can’t match her party’s 2020 showing among these groups, where might she make up the votes? Many analysts say she can look to white voters, especially among women responding to her promises to work to restore access to abortion. If they are right, the first Black female president could have a winning coalition that relies more on white voters, and less on those from minority groups, than did the white man elected just before her.
“That’s where the trends are heading,’’ said Greg Strimple, a Republican pollster who was a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “That’s what I think is happening’’—in large part because women, including white women, are animated by the loss of abortion rights, he said.
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who opposes Trump and whose analysis rests in large part on state-level polls, said of Harris, “She is crushing it with women, with college-educated white voters who Biden did really well with, too.’’ Longwell added, “Her inroads with white voters are bigger than you would think.’’
A small gain among white voters can offset a bigger loss among those from minority groups, because white voters account for 70% or more of those who participate in elections.
Among white voters of both genders, Harris drew more support than Biden did in 2020 in seven swing states polled in August by Strimple and a Democrat, Patrick Toomey, on behalf of the Cook Political Report, Toomey said. That survey found Harris improving both among white voters with and without four-year college degrees.
Similarly, New York Times polling in August found Harris topping Biden’s 2020 support levels among white voters with a college degree in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The results were mixed among those without a degree, often called working-class voters. But not every poll shows the same trends.
Nationally, Harris is matching Biden’s 2020 support among white voters with four-year degrees, Journal polling finds.
These voter trends have big implications for campaign strategy. With Biden on the ticket, many Democrats believed his support had eroded so much among Black and Latino voters that his prospects had collapsed in the racially and ethnically diverse battleground states of the Sunbelt: Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Analysts who initially saw those races as tossups decided that Trump had gained an edge.
But when Harris became the nominee, they shifted their views again and now see those diverse states as competitive. In addition, analysts say that Trump’s edge has eroded in racially diverse North Carolina.
Democrats believe those states are worthy of Harris’s investment. Indeed, Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, just completed a two-day bus tour of rural Georgia. Her gains with minority voters suggest that she has more options than Biden did for assembling the states needed for an Electoral College victory.
Biden’s fractured coalition had left him a single path to victory, many analysts said, which relied on winning the northern battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the voter pool is more heavily white. Those northern states have been rated tossups throughout the year.