If there was any doubt about whether Vice President Kamala Harris influenced this year’s presidential election, the latest New York Times/Siena College polls released Saturday morning put an end to that doubt.
In the first Times/Siena College polls since she entered the race, Harris leads the former president Donald Trump by 4 points each in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin among likely voters. It’s a big shift from previous Times/Siena polls, which showed Trump trailing Harris and President Joe Biden by an average of 1 or 2 points in the same three states.
Sometimes it can be hard to explain why polls shift from week to week or month to month. In today’s polarized politics, it can even be hard to explain why voters shift at all. In this case, it’s easy: Harris’ entry into the race has upended the very foundations of this election.
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Until now, the basic dynamic of the race has been driven by Biden’s unpopularity. It has prevented Democrats from executing their usual strategy against Trump and his MAGA allies: turn an election into a referendum on Trump by fielding a broadly acceptable candidate. Millions of voters have been left with an agonizing choice between two candidates they don’t like.
With Harris riding an extraordinary wave of momentum atop the ticket, the usual political momentum of the Trump era has been restored, at least for now. In the poll, at least 49% of likely voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin say they have a favorable view of her, a level neither Harris nor Biden has reached in previous Times/Siena polls this cycle.
Trump’s approval ratings haven’t wavered. In fact, his approval rating has risen slightly, to 46% in the three states — just enough to represent his highest rating in the history of the Times/Siena polls. It’s a score that could have been enough to give him a clear lead over Biden, whose ratings had fallen into the 30s by early July. But for now, it’s not enough against the rising Harris.
One way to think of her position is that she has become something of a “generic” Democrat. This may sound like an insult, but it isn’t. In fact, nothing is more coveted. A no-name, generic candidate — whether Democrat or Republican — almost always polls better than named candidates, who are inevitably burdened with all the flaws voters learn about during a campaign.
When we polled these three states in October, an unnamed Democrat had a roughly 10-point lead over Trump, while Trump led Biden and Harris by about 1 point each. Of course, the advantages of another broadly acceptable Democrat were purely hypothetical. There was no guarantee that an outright Democrat wouldn’t alienate many voters who would have preferred to vote for someone other than Trump. And there was certainly no reason to think Harris would be such a Democrat, given that she was viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters and brought with her a lot of political baggage from her time as vice president and her failed 2020 presidential campaign.
But these days, Harris’s polls look a lot more like that generic, no-name Democratic presidential candidate. On every question, the poll finds that voters don’t seem to have any major reservations about her. Majorities say she’s honest and intelligent; that she’s a force for change and has the temperament to be president; and that she has a clear vision for the country. Majorities also don’t think she’s too far left: Just 44% of likely voters say she’s too liberal or progressive, compared with 44% who say she’s not too far left and 6% who say she’s not progressive enough. The poll didn’t have to ask whether voters thought she was too old to be an effective president.
Whether this will last is another question. Harris may be running like a typical Democrat, but she will now be much more scrutinized and attacked. So far, she has benefited from a few weeks of very favorable media coverage, significant endorsements and an outpouring of goodwill from voters eager for an alternative to two older candidates she dislikes. But this period won’t last forever, and the question is whether she can maintain this kind of support when the going gets tough.
The poll offers no indication. But the dramatic swing in opinion of Harris in recent weeks is a reminder that the public doesn’t necessarily have a set opinion of her. If Trump’s lead over Harris in earlier polls wasn’t necessarily based on solid opinions of the vice president, her lead over Trump today can’t be assumed to be solid.
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