Amid candidate upheaval, voters reassess presidential race

Kamala Harris takes the abortion issue to Ron DeSantis’ home turf.

Carolyn Valone was not going to cast a presidential vote in November.

The 84-year-old Democrat from St. Louis said she “just cannot forgive Joe Biden for Gaza” and his continued support for the Israeli counteroffensive against Hamas.

Matteo Saracco and Cooper Brock, two 25-year-old traffic planners in Atlanta, were prepared to vote for Biden over Republican Donald Trump. But neither was thrilled with the idea of a rematch of the 2020 election between two men who were then already a combined 150 years old.

“I was kind of hoping something would change,” Saracco said of watching Biden, now 81, age over his three-plus years in office.

And then it did.

“It’s a fresh choice now,” said Valone, explaining her willingness to give Vice President Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic nominee, a chance after Biden ended his re-election bid.

Valone, Saracco and Brock reflect on what had come to define the 2024 presidential campaign: The wide swath of voters who were disillusioned or dissatisfied with having to choose between the same two men who waged a bitter national fight four years ago.

Now, those voters, especially those who lean left, are expressing a renewed interest in the campaign and are eager to see Harris take on the Democratic Party mantle instead of Biden.

“I don’t know enough about her yet, but I look forward to learning more,” Brock said. “And it’s certainly exciting to think about a woman and a woman of color” being in a position to win.

For months, Biden’s campaign had placed an all-in bet that voters frustrated with or in denial about their options this fall would come around to his candidacy because of their shared fear of Trump. It was a risky proposition, evidenced by the swift collapse of Biden’s candidacy after the June 27 debate.

With Harris in the driver’s seat, the same team that had prepared for a campaign of attrition is going on offense, seeing an “expanded universe of winnable voters,” as campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillion wrote in a recent memo.

Where Biden and Trump were universally known and widely disliked, voters know less about the vice president.

The campaign and its Democratic allies plan to reintroduce Harris to the American people in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention next month. They are looking to excite voters about their new choice.

The Democrats’ fresh start does not eliminate the presence of “double haters” – voters with negative impressions of both candidates. But it resets the race and gives Harris an opening to introduce herself to a range of voters, especially those who still hold strong reservations about Trump.

There are a range of emotions and opinions among disenchanted voters: While true double haters might have had genuinely unfavorable opinions about both candidates, others might have had a clear ideological lean toward one or the other, but a single stumbling block.

For Saracco, it was Biden’s age, a concern validated by his debate performance.

“President Biden has done an admirable job. I’ve been pleased with his administration,” he said. “But the debate was the breaking point.”

Americans’ unhappiness with the possibility of a Biden-Trump rematch has been evident for some time. Only one year into Biden’s presidency, an Associated Press-NORC poll found that 7 in 10 Americans, including about half of Democrats, did not want him to run for re-election. The same survey, conducted in January 2022, also found that about 7 in 10 Americans did not want Trump to run for president again.

By this point, broad dissatisfaction with Biden’s performance as president had started to set in. According to the January 2022 poll, only about 4 in 10 Americans approved of the way he was handling his job, a drop of nearly 20 percentage points from the year before.

Biden’s honeymoon glow was not completely gone – about half of Americans had a favorable opinion of him – but his favorability rating continued to fall over the following months.

By the end of 2023, when it became clear that a Biden-Trump rematch was a very real possibility, more than half of Americans said they would be somewhat or very dissatisfied if Biden or Trump were nominated.

However, as the Primaries wrapped up, Trump retained the enthusiasm of many Republicans, while Biden lost ground with his own party’s base. A July AP-NORC poll conducted just before Biden withdrew from the race found that while about 6 in 10 Republicans were satisfied with Trump as the nominee, only 4 in 10 Democrats said the same about Biden. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats in that poll said Biden should drop out.

Even left-leaning voters interviewed by the AP echoed broader frustrations over a two-party system that was poised to deliver a rematch.

“The United States has a jillion people, and for the candidates to be a former president and another president the ages that they are?” Valone asked in an incredulous tone. “I know why Republicans nominated Trump because they’ve just handed their party over to him. But how could Democrats not see this coming, not see this was going to be an election that people just could not get excited about.”

It’s unclear whether the new dynamic is permanent, but recent polls suggest the events of the past two weeks may have at least temporarily blunted the dynamics of the Biden-Trump rematch. Polls from CNN, The New York Times and Siena College show that at least slightly fewer voters now hold an unfavorable view of both candidates.

That’s driven chiefly by both polls showing that fewer have an unfavorable opinion of Harris than said the same of Biden, though both polls also suggest a slight uptick in the percentage, saying they have a favorable view of Trump.

Republicans believe they can blunt any shift in public opinion with a barrage of advertising defining Harris as an extension of Biden’s record, especially on consumer prices and immigration, while also damaging her personal brand. Harris and her allies have an opportunity for a counteroffensive.

“This race is more fluid now – the Vice President is well-known but less well-known than Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.

Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, a lead consultant for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said: “Double haters will still be in play in November.” But, he added, “There’s no question that voters know President Trump much better than Vice President Harris,” meaning unfavorable opinions about her may not be as calcified.

GOP pollster Whit Ayres said true independent “double haters” could still go either way, depending on the campaigns’ messages.

“If Trump goes down the DEI road of some of the far right-wingers, he’ll drive women into her arms,” Ayres said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “If he concentrates on her far-left San Francisco issue positions, he’ll drive them back to the double-hater category.”

Kathryn Kabat, a 69-year-old North Carolina voter who described herself as a Democratic-leaning independent, has already made her choice. The retired Air Force captain said she had planned to vote for Biden and mostly held to that intention even after his debate performance.

“I was sad for him, and I was worried he was going to lose and we would have another Trump term that we simply cannot afford,” she said.

Now, she’s not only a certain Harris voter but a volunteer.

“I’m sending postcards from home, and I’ll do whatever else I can,” she said. “So maybe I can add a few votes.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.