Vice President Kamala Harris does better than President Joe Biden in a matchup with former President Donald Trump, a nationwide poll released Tuesday shows.
The poll, conducted by Florida Atlantic University, doesn’t show a major difference, but Harris vs. Trump is closer than Biden vs. Trump.
FAU found:
- 49% for Trump, the Republican nominee, to 44% for Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee, among likely voters.
- 49% for Trump to 41% for Biden, who ended his presidential candidacy on Sunday after weeks of pressure to drop out from fellow Democrats.
“It looks like, at least initially, that the race would tighten with her at the top of the ticket. But it’s probably worth pointing out this is prior to the official announcement he was dropping out. It may actually be closer as Democrats coalesce around Vice President Harris as the candidate,” said Kevin Wagner, a Florida Atlantic University political scientist.
Democrats have been doing that. She’s been endorsed by a wide swath of Democratic elected officials and activists representing all the voting blocs the party relies on for election victories and among people who were longtime Biden supporters and those who had preferred other candidates in 2020.
The poll was conducted starting on Friday, the day after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention.
Surveying stopped on Sunday afternoon, immediately after the news that Biden was ending his campaign. Wagner — who also is co-director of FAU’s PolCom Lab, a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science, which conducted the poll — said questioning was stopped because “big news can bias a sample.”
Democratic prospects
The poll results suggest that Harris may have room to increase her support since she’ll gain attention as the party’s standard-bearer moving forward.
And the numbers strongly suggest that Biden made the right decision in dropping out.
The 49% for Trump to 41% for Biden among likely voters was an improvement for Trump and a decline for Biden. That’s an eight-point advantage for Trump.
FAU’s previous nationwide poll, released July 3, found a closer race, 46% of likely voters for Trump and 44% for Biden. That was a two-point advantage for Trump.
That poll was conducted after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with Trump, which generated the movement among many Democrats for Biden to end his candidacy.
In FAU’s April nationwide poll Biden was at 47% and 46% for Trump among likely voters. That was a one-point advantage for Biden.
Going from plus 1 to minus 2 to minus 8 is not a good trajectory for a candidate. “That’s the direction that I think was going to be hard for President Biden … and gives some sense about why they might have decided to call it quits.”
Trump ceiling?
The poll suggests that 49% of the vote, his share in both the Harris and Biden matchups, may be a ceiling for Trump.
Normally, the conclusion of a party convention is a high point for a presidential candidate, “which would be right about now,” Wagner said.
And the polling was taking place after all the attention on the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president’s life, which generated more visibility, sympathy and support for Trump.
Still, Wagner said it’s impossible to “definitively say” that Trump is at his ceiling.
Other findings
In a Harris-Trump matchup, 5% of voters said they would vote for another candidate and just 3% were undecided.
Harris had the support of 85% of Democrats and Trump had the support of 89% of Republicans. Independents were evenly divided, with 45% for Harris and 44% for Trump.
In a three-way contest, Trump had 45%, Harris 39% and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 9%, with 3% undecided and 3% favoring another candidate.
Favorability ratings
Overall, voters don’t have favorable views of either Harris or Trump, though the vice president fares somewhat worse.
Harris is viewed favorably by 44% of voters surveyed and unfavorably by 50%, which is a net negative of 6 percentage points.
Trump is viewed favorably by 49% and unfavorably by 48%, which is a net positive of 1 point.
“I would be cautious about reading too much into Harris’ early numbers, as many voters have not yet focused on her as a leading candidate,” Luzmarina Garcia, assistant professor of political science at FAU and PolCom Lab-affiliated researcher, said in a statement. “The key will be how she is viewed after becoming the nominee and consolidating the party vote.”
Wagner said negative 6 points is “not the best place to start a race,” adding that despite being vice president “as a political figure she’s probably not as well known.”
The favorability/unfavorability numbers demonstrate the nation’s deep partisan divide.
Among Democrats, 81% view Harris positively and 14% unfavorably. Just 11% of Republicans view her favorably and 85% unfavorably.
Trump is viewed favorably by 18% of Democrats and unfavorably by 78%. The former president is viewed favorably by 86% of Republicans and unfavorably by 12%.
Among independents, Trump was viewed favorably by 36% and unfavorably by 62%, which is a net negative of 26 percentage points.
Independents were somewhat less negative about Harris than about Trump, with 42% viewing her favorably and 50% unfavorably which is a net negative of 8 points.
The Republican vice presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, was viewed favorably by 43% and unfavorably by 39% of voters. Views of Vance are driven overwhelmingly by partisan leanings. Democrats were 72% unfavorable and Republicans were 77% favorable.
Voters are still learning about Vance and 17% didn’t have either a favorable or unfavorable opinion about him.
Fine print
The poll of 797 U.S. registered voters was conducted July 19 to July 21 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science.
The survey used an online panel and automated phone calls to reach other voters. It has a margin of error equivalent to plus or minus 4 percentage points for the full survey of Democrats, Republicans and independents.
However, the margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats, would be higher because the sample sizes are smaller.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.
