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This Campaign Memo on Kamala Harris' Chances Sure Is Laughable

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 24, 2024 6:00 PM

The Democratic Party has had Vice President Kamala Harris replace President Joe Biden as the party's nominee for the 2024 race. Not only did Biden endorse Harris not long after he dropped out of the race on Sunday, but Harris is retaining his campaign staff, like campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon. While it can't be emphasized enough how Republicans ought not to get complacent and cocky ahead of November, former and potentially future President Donald Trump looks to be in a good place to beat Harris. A memo from the Harris campaign claims otherwise, though.

A memo from O'Malley Dillon shared early on Wednesday morning, claims that Harris is "in a strong position to win." The memo notes that "[w]ith a popular message, a strong record on the issues that matter most to swing voters, multiple pathways to 270 electoral voters, and unprecedented enthusiasm on her side, the Vice President is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 104 days."

The memo also offers that Harris "is fighting for a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Donald Trump is a convicted criminal running to enact his extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda that would roll back Americans’ rights and freedoms, hurt the middle class, and threaten our democracy."

The takeaway from that is no matter how many times it's been fact-checked that Project 2025 is affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and not a part of the Trump campaign, Democrats in desperation will keep going with that narrative.

Even more concerning is that Trump was nearly assassinated a little over a week ago, and the Harris campaign is still claiming Trump will "threaten our democracy." So much for lowering the temperature, as Biden called for.

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The memo is most memorable and laughable regarding polling under the subheadline "Building a winning coalition of voters and multiple pathways to 270."

As the memo mentions:

Vice President Harris enters the presidential race with clear advantages among voters critical to victory.

First, Vice President Harris has well-documented support from the Biden-Harris coalition of voters that delivered victory in 2020. She has significant advantages with key parts of the Democratic base: Black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women, and young voters.

● Black voters: The Vice President has a +44 net approval rating and runs 54 points ahead of Trump. 61% of Black voters think that Vice President Harris cares about the needs and problems of people like them, as compared to just 20% of Black voters who think the same of Trump.

● Latino voters: Harris is more popular than Trump among undecided, independent, and third-party Latinos. Early polling from Nevada shows that the Vice President makes up ground with Latino voters and does “exceedingly well” with Latino voters who are skeptical of both Biden and Trump.

● AANHPI voters: Vice President Harris has a positive approval rating among AANHPI voters, 30 points higher than Trump’s net approval rating.

● Women voters: The Vice President’s net favorability is 21 points better than Trump’s among women.

● Young voters: Vice President Harris leads Donald Trump by 25 points with young voters, and a preliminary survey of college students conducted by Flytedesk found that intent-to-vote increased to its highest rate of the cycle after President Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Harris, with 83% of students indicating that they would vote in November.

Among those polls linked in the memo are the latest Quinnipiac poll, a Morning Consult poll, a poll from The Economist/YouGov conducted July 13-16, Harris' own internal polling, stats on a Nevada poll shared by Equis Research Carlos Odio, an Asian American voter survey from APIA Vote and partners, and a YouGov poll.

The memo mentions the Quinnipiac poll repeatedly, which is a curious decision. The poll shows Trump leads Harris by 49-47 percent in a head-to-head matchup. With third-party candidates on the ballot, Trump leads Harris by 45-41 percent, with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. enjoying 6 percent support. Trump also has an advantage over Harris with Independents, with 55-41 percent support.

Most memorable, perhaps, is that this poll shows Trump leading among young voters by +19, by 59-38 percent. 

The YouGov poll shows Harris leads Trump among young people by +25, 58-33 percent. There was chatter that Trump had made inroads with young voters even before the ticket switched from Biden as the nominee to almost certainly Harris.

While it's noteworthy that the two polls differ, it's laughable that a memo from the Harris campaign would link to a post shared on X that shows another poll with bad results for their narrative.

There also isn't much said about the Flytedesk surveys conducted, such as incentives involved, or how many respondents of those 83 percent who said they would vote in November would actually support Harris. Not mentioned in the memo is that young voters are a demographic less likely to vote. 

The Quinnipiac poll is also relevant when it comes to women voters. Notice how the memo doesn't speak to Harris' lead among women voters, which is 56-40 percent in a head-to-head matchup, and 49-37 percent when third-party candidates are on the ballot. She's still leading but by a smaller number than the favorable rating that the memo touts.

Further, a CBS News poll of likely voters from July 18, a few days before Biden dropped out, shows Harris only leading Trump among women voters by 52-47 percent.

While the +54 lead that Harris has among black voters may seem like exciting news, the Biden-Harris ticket won black voters by 92-8 percent in 2020, according to data from Pew Research. 

It's also worth addressing what Latino voters say in a poll that the Harris campaign does not reference, and it's not hard to see why. Pew Research showed that Latinos voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 by 59-38 percent. Today, a recent poll from Forbes/HarrisX shows that Harris and Trump are actually tied at 45 percent each among such voters. 

The memo also specifically mentions Nevada, a key battleground state. When it looked like Trump would be facing Biden, Nevada was one of his best battleground states, with RealClearPolling showing Trump leading by +5.6 in the Silver State. 

In 2022, now Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo managed to unseat former Democratic and incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak.

There's still more of this memo to unpack, so stay tuned!