Even here in California, President Joe Biden’s decision to bow out of his reelection campaign has transformed the 2024 election, according to a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS).
The survey of likely voters released Wednesday morning shows Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are making dramatic inroads with voters who were lukewarm about Biden when Harris was his number two.
Overall, the IGS poll shows the Harris-Walz ticket leading former President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance by 25 points — up from an 18-point advantage in the February IGS poll when Biden topped the ticket. Harris is making big gains across the board, but especially with younger voters, independents and the state’s Black and Latino voters.
For example, among voters 18 to 29, for whom Biden was a particularly tough sell, Harris leads Trump by a whopping 73% to 22%. That’s an improvement of 23 percentage points for Harris over Biden.
Similarly, Black voters, who supported the Biden-Harris ticket by 58% to 23%, now favor Harris-Walz by 74% to 15%, an uptick of 16 percentage points toward the Democratic nominee. Latino voters also favor Harris by 10 percentage points more than they did Biden. She leads Trump 58% to 34%, compared with Biden’s 48% to 35% edge in the February IGS poll.
Eric Schickler, co-director of IGS, said Harris is benefitting from voter enthusiasm following Biden’s departure.
“It says that there was a pent-up demand among a lot of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters for another choice, for somebody to unify around,” he said.
Not only has Harris improved the Democrats’ position against the Republican presidential ticket, but she’s also enjoying a big jump in her own approval rating. In previous IGS surveys, California voters showed tepid support for Harris. However, in this poll, 58% of all voters view her favorably, while 40% have an unfavorable view.
“I think she’s rallied the kind of support of many party members who just hadn’t had a real opinion of her before and hadn’t seen her in action this way,” Schickler said.
The bump in support for the Democratic ticket transcends demographics and party registration. Not only do 90% of Democrats support the Harris-Walz ticket — compared to 79% for Biden-Harris in the February IGS poll — but independent or “no party preference” voters have also swung Harris’ way. In the February survey, 25% of independent voters were undecided. Now, just 9% are, and nearly all those who made a decision went for Harris.
Trump’s running mate isn’t helping his ticket. By a 2 to 1 margin, voters have an unfavorable view of Vance, whose earlier comments on people without children and “childless cat ladies” have had him in hot water for weeks. By comparison, 56% of voters are “enthusiastic” about Walz and another 25% are “satisfied.”
One thing voters agree on across the board: 88% said Biden’s decision to drop out of the race was good for the country, while just 4% think it was bad.
Harris’ three-week run of positive coverage, combined with Trump’s inability to tarnish the vice president’s luster, has reportedly left the former president fuming. But Schickler said Republicans are surely preparing to launch negative ads against her.
“The Trump campaign will certainly try to heighten fears about Harris, and certainly, her race and gender may be implicated in some of those efforts,” he said. “But at least from what we’ve seen so far, Harris has been quite successful in essentially getting the momentum and the kind of positive energy from this historic candidacy while not raising the kind of backlash that many people fear.”