Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised a record $1 billion within 80 days of becoming the Democratic nominee, but has failed to translate its cash advantage over Donald Trump into a poll lead in key battleground states that will likely decide the election.
The vice president’s fundraising, first reported by NBC, dwarfs the $309 million Trump’s campaign raised by the end of August and is equal to the amount Joe Biden raised for his entire 2020 campaign brought in.
But Democrats’ joy over the bounty is tempered by a lack of evidence that it will give her the edge she needs in battleground states to win enough to sway the election outcome in her favor.
In the latest warning sign for the vice president, a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed her trailing Trump by two and three points, respectively, in Wisconsin and Michigan — states that Democrats, along with Pennsylvania, call the “blue wall.” have mentioned.
The survey showed Trump with a 48-46% lead in Wisconsin and 50-47% in Michigan. Harris has a narrow lead in most national polls.
Harris maintains a three-point lead in Pennsylvania, according to Quinnipiac, as Barack Obama arrives in the state to campaign for Harris. The former president will lead a rally in Pittsburgh on Thursday, where he is expected to urge pro-democracy voters to turn out for the Nov. 5 election.
Paradoxically, there are fears that Harris’ fundraising success could lead to the money drying up when it matters most, by dampening donors’ enthusiasm to give extra money that strategists think might be needed to get her across the line in an increasingly tight race.
“There have never been so many Electoral College votes in play this late in the cycle, meaning our strong fundraising and volunteer enthusiasm are not guaranteed to be enough to fully reach voters wherever they are,” the Washington Post quoted a non named Harris campaign. employee as mentioned.
Obama’s actions on the campaign trail follow evidence of Harris’ failure to connect with key components of the Democrats’ constituency, including black men.
Politico reported that Democratic operatives were concerned about apathy among black men in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, even as Harris’ campaign has sent several high-profile African-American surrogates to the state, including basketball legend Magic Johnson and party leader James Clyburn.
“I’m concerned about the turnout in Detroit,” Jamal Simmons, Harris’ former communications director, told the site. “Do they have the machine to send people out?”
“We continue to experience this increasing apathy in cities like Detroit… [Harris] has done nothing to change that,” added Scott Holiday, executive director of Detroit Action, a voter mobilization group.
Concerns have spread among strategists from previous victorious Democratic presidential campaigns, including David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, who told Axios: “Harris made steady, incremental progress in the 10 days after the election. [10 September] debate, but now the race has stabilized.”
He added: “[Harris] had a great launch, right through the convention and the debate. But in these campaigns, every time you cross a bar, the bar is raised. You have to improve your game and adjust your strategy.”
James Carville, an architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 triumph, told the site that Harris “needs to be more aggressive.”
A Harris campaign official said he always expected the election to be “a race with a margin of error.”
“We are dealing with a polarized electorate – cycle after cycle, the pool of true swing voters is shrinking,” the official said.
