Americans Express Strong Lack of Confidence in Kamala Harris in New Poll
A new poll shows Americans lack confidence in Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Trafalgar Group poll asked a nationwide sample whether they were confident that Harris, who has emerged in the first six months of the Biden administration as the public face of its immigration policy and voting rights effort, is ready to be president.
The poll found that 63.6 percent of those surveyed were either “not confident at all” or “not very confident” in the former U.S. senator from California. Among those, 58.6 percent gave her the poll’s lowest possible ranking.
The poll found that 31.6 percent of those responding were either “very confident” or “somewhat confident” in Harris, with only 22.2 percent saying they were “very confident.”
The poll, with the conservative group Convention of States Action, was conducted July 12 and 13 and surveyed 1,161 likely general election voters, Trafalgar reported. Its margin of error was 2.88 percent.
Democrats were split over Harris. According to the poll, 35.7 percent of those responding were “not confident at all” about her, while 38.3 percent were “very confident.”
There was no such division among Republicans, with 83.8 percent saying they were “not confident at all” in her, and only 6.3 percent saying they were “very confident”
When the poll sampled political independents, an overall total of 61.8 percent were not confident in Harris while 30.8 percent voiced some level of confidence in her.
In breaking down the poll by race, black respondents were the only group to show much confidence in Harris, with 62.2 percent of respondents saying they had some level of confidence in her.
Among Asian-Americans polled, only 23.8 percent had any confidence in her, while 33.6 percent of Hispanics voiced any level of confidence in the vice president, and 27.4 percent of white respondents were able to feel any confidence in Harris.
Harris has earned far from rave reviews over her early performance, which could have implications in future presidential contests.
Matt Vespa, senior editor of the conservative Townhall website, described her in scathing terms in a July 3 piece headlined: “Democrats’ Latest Fear About Kamala Harris Has Serious 2024 Implications.”
“She’s very much in the vein of Hillary Clinton when it comes to candidate strength,” Vespa wrote. “She’s awful. In fact, she might be worse. Hillary was at least able to get large swaths of the Democratic delegates and even clinch the 2016 nomination. Harris folded after Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) called her out over her record as a prosecutor. Her national profile [was] bolstered by a fawning liberal media, but as you can see—that can only take you so far. “
Harris’ problems are not just with the conservative media, however.
Internally, reports of feuding and infighting as well as a low morale have been turning up even in normally Democrat-friendly outlets.
A report in the liberal-leaning Politico, for instance, summed up her office as “rife with dissent.”
In a July 11 commentary piece in The Hill, conservative political strategist Keith Naughton, co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, wrote that “Harris is providing plenty of ammunition for her detractors.”
“Her big policy responsibility, immigration, has been a mess. Her lengthy refusal to visit the border was a bad move, but her explanation was worse. Claiming that any visit would be a worthless stunt ignores the fact that worthless stunts are the sine qua non of politics. Politicians are expected to visit disaster zones (whether natural or policy), make declarations and offer empathy. Harris and her team were just being obstinate in the face of Republican attacks instead of facing the music,” he wrote.
“Perhaps Harris will grow into her role, relieving Democrats of their anxiety. For now, it looks like her future is a throw of the dice in 2028,” he wrote.
In a late June interview, Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce told “The Faulkner Focus” host Harris Faulkner that Americans are seeing the reality of Harris — one she said the mainstream media never bothered to seek before the presidential election.
“Obviously, they had an opinion about what she was going to accomplish. They lived in a world where they imagined what she was going to do. The problem is, because they are propagandists for the Democrats, they never really see clearly the politicians they’re covering,” Bruce said.
“They never really see or thought about seeing what Kamala Harris accomplished or did not accomplish, as Californians will tell you, when she was attorney general and when she was operating in California.
“So, then you’re really driven by your imaginings and by your hopes, by things that are not about real accomplishments or the real nature of someone. And that can be embarrassing. It leads the press to do what they did, which is pump her up, presuming she was everything they imagined,” Bruce said.
“Well, she’s clearly not. The problem is she not only is not the wish fantasy they had, she’s not doing a good job. And that’s what’s concerning them.”
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