The press is full of articles explaining Democrats are enjoying a resurgence in popularity now that they have swapped out Joe Biden at the top of their 2024 ticket with Kamala Harris. That’s plainly reflected in the polls, but the most recent Fox News poll identified just one issue that’s a bigger weakness for the incumbent vice president than it was for her current boss: immigration.
That poll was conducted between August 9 and 12 by Braun Research under the direction of Democratic polling shop Beacon Research and GOP opinion outfit Shaw & Company Research, with 1,105 registered voters surveyed. The margin of error is +/- three points, and while It was embargoed for release until last week, this is my first chance to delve into it.
Harris and Trump Tied at 45 Percent. That poll shows that Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, are tied among registered voters, with each receiving 45 percent support in a five-way race that includes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (6 percent) and Professor Cornel West and Green Party candidate Jill Stein — the latter two of whom receive 1 percent support.
Including leaners, the poll shows that Trump holds a slim one-point advantage over Harris head-to-head, 50 percent to 49 percent. For reference, Trump held the same edge over Biden in the Fox News July poll, when the candidates were split 49 to 48.
That said, enthusiasm is up across the board since Harris was named the Democratic presidential pick: In July, just 62 percent of voters polled said they were extremely motivated to vote, while in the most recent poll, 67 percent identified as such.
That’s still less enthusiasm than voters had in the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign. In October of that year, 73 percent of voters polled said they were extremely motivated to head to the polls, and two months earlier, in July 2020, 69 percent voiced the same enthusiasm.
All of that said, there’s a reason experienced D.C. hands refer to every summer prior to Labor Day in a year divisible by four as “the silly season” — the press and X users may be slavering for the coming fight, but most people are otherwise engaged in leisure activities until the kids head back to school.
Curiously, Trump’s favorability, at 47 percent, is as high as it’s ever been; he was last that popular in April 2020, not that it helped him much seven months later when he lost to Biden in a squeaker.
Harris, at 48 percent favorability, is below her high-water mark of 54 percent set back in December 2020. That said, she’s doing a lot better than she was this past February, when just 37 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of her.
Both Trump and Harris are underwater when it comes to favorability, however: 53 percent of voters polled have an unfavorable view of Trump, as do 51 percent when it comes to Harris. That means that there are plainly people who don’t like either of them.
Immigration Still a Key Issue, but ... Respondents were also asked what the most important issue would be when casting their votes.
Not surprisingly, the economy led the way as the key voting issue for 38 percent of respondents (up one point compared to February). There was a tie for second place, with 14 percent of respondents apiece identifying either immigration or abortion as their main concern when they head to the polls.
That’s a four-point rise for abortion and a seven-point fall for immigration compared to the February polling, and both were likely inevitable. The Democrats will continue to beat the “reproductive rights” drum until November, while immigration has receded as an issue as Border Patrol apprehension numbers have declined.
As I recently explained, the latest border numbers are illusory because they don’t include tens of thousands of other migrants whom the administration is ushering through the ports each month, a point GOP vice presidential pick J.D. Vance has recently echoed.
That said, it’s a sophisticated argument many in the Harris-friendly media won’t bother to explore or explain to their audiences. If, however, border numbers surge in the fall — a distinct possibility as smugglers find and exploit the loopholes in the administration’s latest border schemes — expect the percentage of immigration voters to rise, but I don’t see a big drop-off on the issue regardless.
I say that because those immigration voters are likely reacting to the impacts of the Biden-Harris border crisis in cities and towns thousands of miles from the Southwest border they’ve already seen. Those impacts are already baked into the electoral cake, meaning 14 percent is likely the floor for this issue.
Who Do You Trust to Do a Better Job — Harris or Trump? Which brings me to the next question respondents were asked, “Who do you trust to do a better job on each of” 11 different issues, “Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?”
Harris leads on five of those issues (climate change, abortion, health care, “uniting the country”, and Supreme Court nominations), from anywhere between 18 points (climate change) to three points (Supreme Court nominations).
Trump has the edge with respect to the other six (guns, crime, the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and “border security”), from between three points (guns) to 19 points (border security).
Most saliently, however, Trump leads Harris in that poll on who would better handle immigration, by a 56 percent to 42 percent margin, a 14-point difference.
Compare that lead in the latest Fox News poll to the one in July, when Trump “only” had an 11-point lead over Biden on immigration, 54 percent to 43 percent.
The border security question unfortunately wasn’t asked previously, but on no other issue aside from immigration does Harris poll worse against Trump than Biden did, and there’s only one (Supreme Court nominations) in which she and Biden each polled the same against Trump.
Harris’ media supporters have made an all-out effort to distance her from claims she was Biden’s “border czar” and thus bears full or partial blame for the disaster there. You can read my take on the issue here, here, and here, but regardless it appears that the harder the press runs cover for the presumptive nominee on the issue, the more average voters link her to it.
That’s consistent with prior findings I’ve made about voters’ impressions of Biden and the border. The border and immigration weren’t on most voters’ radar until House Republicans tried impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his border issues and Biden started touting a so-called “bipartisan Senate border bill”.
The press did similar yeoman’s work in attempting to hide the serious flaws in that bill while blaming Trump for its failure, and yet through it all, voters’ concerns about immigration only increased. It was in February, when the bill’s alleged merits were being lauded throughout the land, that the highest percentage of voters ever, 21 percent, told Fox News’ pollsters that immigration was their main issue.
Neither campaign is seeking my support, but if I were Trump, I’d raise immigration and the border at every opportunity I could get, and if I were Harris, I’d just stop talking about those issues — including to respond to Republicans — entirely.