Kamala is Moderate: Weekly Digest

Sept. 16-20

Happy Sunday! We are officially Barack Obama days away from Election Day on Nov. 5 (get it? 44 days).

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appears to be on defense, wrapping up another week tallying only six press interviews thus far in the 60ish days she’s been a presidential nominee. But apparently that’s about to change: the New York Times reported this past week that the Harris team is “promising a series of appearances across an array of media venues, including local and national outlets, podcasts, radio stations and daytime talk shows.”

We’re looking forward to this since one of our slogans is literally “Democracy on Offense.” Harris must prove to the average American voter that she can deliver on policy and take the heat of the hard questions. Maybe go on Hot Ones?

When Harris goes on offense by engaging voters through interviews, voters like it. The polling firm Blueprint has found that clips from her recent interviews are moving voters:

Every clip from Vice President Harris’s interviews with CNN and 6ABC is viewed positively by at least six in ten voters.The clip voters are most likely to view positively (68%) is Harris’s answer to the6ABCquestion, “If there's something you wish Americans knew about who Kamala Harris is, what would that be?” where she spoke about her love of family, her lifelong friend, and how when she was a prosecutor she never asked a victim their political party. 

Every clip moves support toward Vice President Harris.The best-testing clip, which moves support toward Harris by 2.1 percentage points, is her assertion that she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet. In a close second, a clip that moves support by 1.9 percentage points is one where Harris shares her perspective of President Biden dropping out of the race. 

Voters feel they know more about Harris with every clip they watch. When asked if the clips made voters feel they knew more about Vice President Harris, each clip tested between 56% and 58% in the affirmative.

Now, on to this week’s round-up.

NABJ

Harris sat down with journalists in the National Association of Black Journalists last week in Philadelphia, sticking to the script throughout her interview. This is a very meh approach for a candidate who has still yet to really define herself. One thing worth mentioning was her nod to Black men in this election cycle:

I think it’s very important to not operate from the assumption that black men are in anybody’s pocket. Black men are like any other voting group. You got to earn their vote. So I’m working to earn the vote. Not assuming I’m going to have it because I am black, but because the policies and the perspectives I have understands what we must do to recognize the needs of all communities. And I intend to be a president for all people, specifically as it relates to what we need to do, to your point, around economic opportunity. Yes, I started way before I was the top of the ticket, what I called an economic opportunity tour focused on black men. Understanding that, for example, we have so many entrepreneurs in the community who do not have access to capital, but they’ve got great ideas, an incredible work ethic, the ambition, the aspiration, the dream, but don’t have the relationships necessarily…And so part of my approach is understanding the obstacles that traditionally and currently exist to allow anyone, including black men, be able to achieve economic wealth. And I’m going to tell you, I don’t think it is sufficient to just only talk about economic policy around reducing unemployment. It is an important marker. And I’m proud of the work that we’ve done thus far. But it should be a baseline there, everybody’s working. The point is, do people have an opportunity to build wealth if that’s what they choose to do, if that’s what they want to do. And a lot of my perspective as we go forward is just that. I believe that there are a lot of opportunities that are available to the American people if we just see people, and understand what they want for themselves and their families, and then meet them where they are.

Our friends at HIT Strategies noted the following about Black men:

OPRAH AND THE FEELS

Harris participated in a 90-minute forum, “Unite for America,” hosted by Oprah Winfrey. The New York Times wrote:

Ms. Harris has not often spoken off the cuff or at length about many issues since she catapulted to the top of the ticket after President Biden dropped out of the race. Here she addressed questions from the audience and Ms. Winfrey about issues like immigration and gun violence, and what would happen if her opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, didn’t accept the results of the election should he lose a second time.

Ms. Harris spoke more elaborately than she has before on the effects of illegal immigration — a key issue for voters and a vulnerability in her campaign. She cited the devastating effects of fentanyl, overwhelmed border patrol agents and strained resources for prosecuting transnational criminal organizations. She pointed out that a bill that Mr. Trump had helped kill in Congress would have helped confront these problems, and she vowed to resurrect that bill and sign it.

EVEN THE KIDS WANNA KNOW

Our friend and resident Gen Z expert Rachel Janfaza reported on the sentiments of our nation’s youngest voters. As a reminder, 41 million Gen Zers are eligible to vote this November, and 49% of young voters identify as moderate and believe the Democratic Party is to the left of where they are.

I’ve been in touch with more than three dozen young voters from across the country since Tuesday night. This includes 18-27-year-olds in key states: PA, NC, TX, VA, FL, OH, CA, MA, NY, IL, KY, OK, NJ, IL, OR, and CT.

The vast majority of them thought Kamala “won” the debate (though they said they aren’t sure that’s a productive way of looking at it) and said the debate wasn’t as bad as they thought it could have been (they had a really low bar, and honestly, who can blame them?). But overall, they’re looking to hear more about the candidates’ “plans” for the issues that were addressed.

While I spoke with a cohort of Trump voters, most of the young people I’ve been in touch with are planning to vote for Harris. That said — and this is key for Democrats to hear —they really want to know more about how she will address the topics she says she’s prioritizing. There were certain issues they felt were brushed over (gun violence, climate change) that I’ll get into below. But big picture, they felt that while they mostly understand the issues Harris champions, they want to know more about her concrete proposals to tackle them.

OPPORTUNITY WITH LATINO VOTERS

Deseret News reported last week on how shifting her message with Latino voters may help Harris gain support among an increasingly less Democratic demographic:

Vice President Kamala Harris sits atop the Democratic ticket, and she is taking a different tack when approaching Latino voters: hammering a middle-class message on the economy, while speaking about immigration only sparingly.

Further:

Now, several months later, Harris’ appeal to Latinos has sidestepped discussing immigration almost entirely — a message Palomarez endorses. “Immigration is not the top issue to us,” he said. “It’s important, but it’s not at the top. The economy is.”

THIRD WAY: WHAT VOTERS WANT ON IMMIGRATION

Last week, our friends at Third Way released new data showing Vice President Harris and the Democratic Party have an opportunity this election cycle to prove they’re the party that’s serious about restoring order at the border.

The report found:

When it comes to their perceptions of Vice President Harris on the issue, voters are initially concerned that she’ll be more liberal than President Biden on immigration. In fact, they voice more concern about that possibility than they do about former President Trump killing the bipartisan border bill by four points (49% to 45%). Latino voters were more concerned about Harris being too liberal than about Trump killing the deal by nine points (48% to 39%). Voters want common sense reforms that secure the border and make their communities safe, and they need reassurance that Vice President Harris won’t tack to the left of Biden on immigration.

Further:

After hearing more about Vice President Harris’s approach on the issue, voters shifted in her direction in a major way. Trump started with a 13-point advantage when asked whose approach they favored, but he ended with just a 1-point advantage, within the margin of error and smaller than his margin in the horse race in the survey. Latino voters similarly went from favoring Trump’s approach by 13 points to advantaging him by just 1 point. These messages even shored up confidence among base voters, increasing support for Harris’s approach by 19 points among Democrats. Voters identified as “persuadable” Harris voters went from favoring Trump’s approach on immigration and the border by 32 points to favoring Harris’s by 38 points, a whopping 70-point swing. Throughout the survey, Vice President Harris also gained significant ground on focus and seriousness around these issues. On focus, Trump went from an 18-point advantage to a 4-point advantage. Among Latino voters, Trump started with an 11-point advantage and ended with a 9-point deficit, a 20-point swing. Harris started at a 4 on seriousness and ended at 5.2, with Latino voters giving her a slightly higher 5.6. It is clear that when voters hear what the Vice President has to say, their concerns around these issues can be allayed.  

HALEY VOTERS FOR A MODERATE HARRIS

Haley Voters for Biden announced a $10 million ad buy to “present Harris as a moderate on key policy issues, like the economy and energy, in an effort to convince centrist and center-right voters to back her.”

In a test ad obtained by the Deseret News, a series of voters — labeled as “lifelong conservatives” and “Trump voters” — push back against accusations that Harris is a far-left progressive.

“There’s nothing socialist about Kamala Harris,” one man says in the video ad.

“We’re interested in finding ways to reach the nearly 1 million Haley voters across the seven swing states with messages that we felt the Harris campaign and other organizations aren’t able or willing to say,” Robert Schwartz said.

The group tested over a dozen different ads with thousands of voters. The most successful ad featured a two-time Trump voter in Alabama, who talked about Trump’s and Harris’ strategy on tariffs and the economy. At the end of the 30-second clip, he endorsed Harris’ plan.

Other ads reviewed by the Deseret News featured a series of conservative voters making arguments for supporting Harris, like an acknowledgement that electing her wouldn’t necessarily pave the way for a progressive agenda.

“Conservatives have a supermajority on the Supreme Court,” a voter in one ad says. “With a likely Republican Senate, those checks and balances will keep our country sane.”

PivotPAC hopes to roll out the ads on digital platforms in coming weeks.

The ads come as Harris faces criticism for flip-flopping on key issues, including her past opposition to fracking and constructing a border wall. Harris has repeatedly said her “values haven’t changed,” but many voters want to know what those values are: according to this month’s New York Times/Siena College poll, 28% of likely voters said they still need to know more about Harris, while only 9 percent said the same of Trump.

This past week, the Haley Voters for Harris account also notably tweeted:

BLUEPRINT FOR NON-COLLEGE WOMEN

Blueprint also released polling last week around the sentiments of non-college women in the seven swing states. They note that non-college women will make up roughly a third of the electorate nationally in 2024.

1. Price concerns dominate: 75% of non-college women in swing states say the most important economic improvement they want to see is lower prices on goods, gas, and services. They overwhelmingly support a price-gouging crackdown on groceries (74% support) and reducing prescription drug prices for seniors (90% support).

2. Harris's favorability presents an opportunity: While Biden has a -13 net favorability among swing state non-college women, Harris’s net favorability is +1, suggesting an opportunity for Harris to reset with this key demographic. She has more room to grow than Biden: Harris’s “extremely unfavorable” rating with non-college women in swing states is 33%, while Biden’s is 38%. Trump’s net favorability is 0. Not only that, but Harris has a 7-point trust advantage on abortion. 

3. Skepticism on immigration and border security: Swing state non-college women are particularly doubtful about Harris’s ability to handle immigration. 44% believe she won’t even try to deploy additional border patrol agents, and 53% support decreasing immigration levels. In contrast, Trump holds an 11-point advantage over Harris on trust regarding border issues.

4. The double-edged sword: By focusing on lowering prices, a priority non-college women already associate with Harris, and emphasizing the bipartisan border security bill, Harris can both strengthen support on a key issue and address concerns about her immigration agenda.

5. Campaign like the 1990s: Healthcare, deficits, and crime offer Harris opportunities to make inroads among swing state non-college women. These voters are concerned about high deficits, fentanyl trafficking, and access to healthcare. The most popular policies with non-college women in swing states are reducing prescription drug prices for seniors (net support +88), increasing sentences for fentanyl trafficking (+83)  and reducing the federal deficit (+68).

GAINS WITH INDEPENDENT VOTERS

A national FOX News poll last week had Harris up 12 points with independent voters compared to Aug. 8 — a notable 20 point difference between the two dates.