Some voters are not confident about Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to be a leader, and are unsatisfied with her performance, new polling reveals.
Politico and the business intelligence company Morning Consult recently released a survey that collected data in May from nearly 4,000 registered Democrat, Republican and Independent voters. According to the results, 38% of overall respondents said that being a strong leader doesn’t describe Harris at all, along with 36% who entirely disagree with Harris being trustworthy. Thirty-three percent of voters don’t view Harris as honest, and reported “definitely not” trusting Harris on issues like national security (38%), gun policy (37%) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (38%).
And as more voters show concerns with President Joe Biden’s age, questions loom around Harris’ ability to lead the country. Overall, 51% of voters said they believed Harris wouldn’t make a good president, compared to 40% who said she would. Voters’ politics matter, though: Democrat voters (74%) supported the idea of Harris making a good president, while Republicans (88%) and Independents (51%) disagreed.
Results in this latest survey reflect a larger trend of declining support for Harris. The Los Angeles Times reported in April that 55% of voters had an unfavorable opinion of Harris. Her overall favorability was slightly lower than that of former vice president Mike Pence at the same point in his tenure, and “well under the ratings” of three previous vice presidents: Biden, Dick Cheney and Al Gore.
Harris’ declining support mirrors that of Biden’s —- with Politico’s poll revealing that 54% of registered voters find Biden unfavorable, and 52% find Harris unfavorable. This is a difference compared to 2021, when a Gallup poll found that Harris’ job approval ratings exceeded Biden’s when he was vice president during 2009.
Then there’s social media criticism that Harris’ accomplishments in office are too little to name. However, political experts say that the role of being vice president is more nuanced than what people think. In fact, “the role of the vice president is to keep a low profile and support the president,” according to Alexandra Filindra, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. The vice president does not have any “constitutionally specified role,” she adds.
“The vice president is really there in case something happens to the president,” Filindra says. “It is up to the president to elevate the profile of the vice president. But there is only so much you can do without creating tensions with the rest of your team.”
In terms of Harris’ obligations, Mary-Kate Lizotte, who is a professor of political science at Augusta University in Georgia, agrees with Filindra, saying that Harris has done “what most vice presidents do,” which is to do what is asked of them by the president. The role, she says, is a “very complicated position to be in.”
Why Harris is Under Attack
A potential reason why Harris’ public image has taken a negative toll stems largely from how she’s covered in the news, Lizotte says. When it comes to Fox News and other conservative mass media, these outlets cover Harris in a way that is “really negative that I don’t think is always fair”, she says. For example, Fox News published last year a YouTube shorts video titled “Kamala Harris’ top cringeworthy moments.”
“That has been the case more so with her than for a number of other vice presidents in the last 30 years,” Lizotte says. She also points to how the media landscape has changed. “There’s this sort of need to create scandal where scandal doesn’t exist. So she might misspeak, or she might not provide the most in-depth answer to a question — and then Fox News shows a clip to make her look like she’s uninformed or she’s ineffective.”
Besides media coverage, experts agree that bias fuels attacks against Harris. In 2022, Filindra and her colleague conducted a number of polls showing that voters’ support for Biden “lowered significantly” as soon as Harris’s name was added to survey questions, suggesting both negative racial attitudes and sexism was at play.
“If he had a different running mate, he might have had more support among white moderates, white independents,” Filindra says.
Another example: Harris received mostly positive press attention as a senator, but when she entered the Democratic presidential primary, negative comments about not being “good enough” quickly surfaced, Lizotte says. Bias “is likely part of the reason why conservative media outlets have been so critical of her, even above and beyond” Biden, she says.
After taking a trip to the mountains in Georgia last summer, Lizotte recalls seeing a bumper sticker displaying “Joe And The Hoe Gotta Go!” While she says she doesn’t believe that the Republican Party or Fox News are putting these messages out, “those sort of sentiments exist.”
“When we look back and see how Michelle Obama was portrayed and discussed on the internet — from a very racist, sexist point of view — it’s not terribly surprising that Vice President Harris is experiencing something very similar,” Lizotte says. (In 2016, a West Virginia county employee called Obama an ‘ape in heels’ on a Facebook post.) “No matter how perfect she [Harris] was, or is, she’s still going to be criticized at [a] much more intense level.”
Favorable Support
Despite criticism of Harris, there are still Democrats whose party loyalty hasn’t been swayed by all the noise, including Hitha Palepu, CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals and author of “We’re Speaking: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris.” Palepu, a 39-year-old New Yorker, says she was “delighted” when Biden first announced Harris as a running mate in 2020.
“When the streets in New York erupted in cheers and applause and celebration, it felt like a very hopeful moment for this country — and one that I still really recall very fondly,” says Palepu, who has met Harris multiple times in person.
Palepu says that Harris has been “a longtime role model of mine.” As a South Asian woman running an early-stage pharmaceutical company, Palepu has often been the youngest woman, the only woman and the only woman of color in spaces she occupied. By studying Harris from afar — including how she spoke and dressed — it helped Palepu “figure out my own style and find my own confidence,” she says.
In regards to Harris’ work in the administration, Palepu praises her for casting a number of tie-breaking votes — whether it was confirmation for judges or legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. She also says Harris has been the administration’s most “formidable leader” on serious issues such as gun violence and reproductive health care rights.
“She’s not afraid to go and do the work,” Palepu says. “I don’t think she gets nearly enough credit for it.”
Politico’s poll finds that Harris has strong favorability with communities of color, particularly Black voters (67%). This is a sharp contrast to Biden, whose favorability among the demographic declined from 63% to 31%.
Harris appeals to many Black women voters, specifically, because representation – and shared lived experiences – “matters to people,” Lizotte says. Although as the presidential election approaches, the Biden-Harris administration would make even more inroads by focusing on economic issues, such as combating inflation and the high cost of living, she says.
Filindra points to Harris’ efforts to fund historically Black colleges and universities, tackle student loans and maintain alliances with other countries as influential. Yet, the administration needs to do more “serious credit claiming” in the Middle East, and also make Biden more visible, she says.
Harris’s appeal to some voters may be offset by Biden’s age. “There’s this perception now…that basically he is a mummy that they just roll out to say ‘hello’ to people and then put him back in the closet,” Filindra says, “So, that clearly hurts him.”
The Likelihood of Having a Female President
While the country was “very, very close” to getting a female president when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes in 2016, Filindra says she doesn’t know if Harris is “necessarily the right person to get us there.” The Politico poll shows that 57% of voters doubt Harris’ ability to get elected as president, while 34% believe she could win. In the 2028 presidential election, Filindra says it’s possible that there could be female candidates from both major parties running against each other.
“The Republicans are cultivating strong women candidates,” she says, including Nikki Haley and Katie Britt. “They realize that they want to get more of the women’s vote.”
Lizotte says Gen Z might be the generation that challenges the status quo and votes for a female president.
“Gen Z is definitely different when it comes to a lot of their views on the world,” Lizotte says, adding that many young people don’t have a lot of the same prejudiced views as older generations.
As for Palepu, she says Harris would make an “exemplary president,” but she fears that the press will diminish Harris’ work while reducing her down to racist tropes and stereotypes. And while Harris knows how to push through all the noise, Palepu isn’t sure it will be enough.
“I just don’t have the same faith in our country that I have in her, unfortunately,” she says.
