Published August 16, 2024
Kamala Harris’ emergence as the Democratic presidential nominee has upended the race. She now leads in most national polls and in many recent swing state polls. Momentum is clearly on her side.
What most analysts have overlooked, though, is where her support is coming from.
While she has made up ground among all demographics from President Biden’s dismal post-debate standing, she remains well behind historic levels of Democratic support among blacks and Latinos.
That means the reason she’s in the lead is that she’s doing historically well among whites, especially college-educated whites. So her already slim lead is much more tenuous than it looks.
The Cook Political Report’s polling average makes this clear. It shows Harris with a thin lead nationally, 47.3% to 46.9%.
Click here to continue reading.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
