Newsweek, August 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris is winning over white voters from former President Donald Trump, recent polling has suggested. The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that while the Democratic nominee’s biggest boost has come from Black voters, she has also improved with white voters overall. The survey, conducted between August 1 and 4, found that 46 percent of white voters would vote for Harris if the election were held today, compared to 51 percent who would vote for Trump, the Republican nominee. But Harris’ share is up from the 40 percent of white voters who said they would back her in a poll conducted shortly after President Joe Biden quit the race on July 21 and endorsed Harris to replace him at the tip of the Democratic ticket.
Meanwhile, a Marquette Law School poll has found that Harris is trailing Trump among white voters by just eight percentage points, 42 percent to 50 percent. A majority of white voters have backed Republican candidates in every presidential election over the past 50 years, but the recent polls suggest Harris—the first woman of color to top a major party’s presidential ticket—could perform better with white voters than Biden did against Trump in 2020. Biden got 43 percent of the white vote in 2020, while Trump garnered 55 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.
