Vice President Kamala Harris is not even the Democratic presidential nominee yet, and she’s already struggling among key demographic voters.
A recent poll released this week shows young voters are not thrilled with a Harris 2024 ticket.
As of Wednesday, Harris appears to be entering the race to replace President Joe Biden. However, her days in the White House appear to be numbered, with CNN analyst Harry Enten questioning Harris’s chances of beating GOP presidential nominee former President Donald Trump in November.
Brat Summer or not, I looked into whether Harris has a unique appeal to young voters. She doesn't. She's doing much worse against Trump than Biden did in 2020.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) July 24, 2024
Moreover, young Democrats are NOT disproportionately more motivated to vote than other Democrats because of Biden's exit pic.twitter.com/WpH5Sf4vPE
Only 42 percent of young Democrats between the ages of 18 and 29 are motivated to vote after Biden’s exit, contradicting a recent claim from the White House that she can win on the younger generation’s vote alone.
Harris's campaign is capitalizing on a viral meme called "Brat Summer" to try to appeal to Gen Z voters.
The meme was debuted by singer Charlie XCX's new song, "Brat," which, according to the singer, is about “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but then also maybe has a breakdown… It’s a brat."
Just hours after Biden endorsed Harris for the presidency, the singer branded the likely Democrat nominee as “Kamala is brat."
"Young voters vote significantly more based on just personality and, like, vibes,” Chris Mowrey, a Democratic social media influencer, told Reuters.
Enten, however, gave the Democrats a stiff reality check, pointing out that Harris is actually doing worse against Trump than Biden did in 2020.
“This idea, again, that the vice president has a unique potential to dig in and get young voters to turn out, John, it’s just not there in the numbers despite all the internet memes that are going around,” Enten said.
Democrats can ride high on their lies about Harris’s chances, but the data is simply not there.
“Kamala Harris may be unique in some ways. Maybe she does slightly better than the generic Democrat, but not all that much,” Enten added.
A poll conducted by the network further solidified Enten’s comments, showing Trump taking a significant advantage to Harris (49-46 percent).
“You may make the argument that was better than Biden was doing before he got out [of the race], but compared to that democratic baseline, where Democrats have, historically, in presidential elections, at least this century, been carrying that young vote by twenty or more percentage, she is way down from that,” he concluded.
A Reuters survey found that Harris leads Trump by two percentage points nationally. However, even in the worst-case scenario, Trump would still win the electoral college vote.