CA120: Harris surges – and softens – in latest polls

As Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage on Thursday as the official presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, she will face a short 74-day campaign, with California voters getting their ballots in just over 6 weeks.

The Capitol Weekly poll has continued to survey California voters as the campaigns have navigated the twists and turns of this unique and frenetic Presidential campaign.  In the latest poll, completed the weekend prior to the convention, Harris appears to have lost some of the pop from the Biden withdrawal from the race, but still has plenty to be feeling good about.

The topline numbers see Harris at 57%, 20-points above Trump, with underlying improvements for Trump among Independents and Republicans over the past two weeks.

Improvements among Trump’s base and a softening of support for Harris among some independents seems to have contributed to a slight narrowing of her gap. For example, the July poll had a sizeable 13% of Republicans voting Harris, but that kind of result is unlikely to have been sustainable over the course of a campaign.

Under these topline numbers we see Harris improving among Latinos, but still far behind where Biden was in 2020, and where the Harris campaign likely wants to be.

In our survey, Harris made a small improvement among Latinos, now leading by 55%-37% margin, up from 49%-42% in the earlier survey.  However, this 37% Trump support from Latinos is the highest level of support from any ethnic group in our poll – and essentially shows Latinos performing for Trump at the rate of white voters.

This issue of Latino performance for Harris has been receiving a bit of attention, even sparking small debates, like this one between Mike Madrid, author of The Latino Century, and everyone’s favorite TV election nerd, Steve Kornaki.

This challenge among Latinos isn’t just a California thing, it is seen nationally, and could be especially impactful in the swing states of Nevada and Arizona, each of which have strong Latino voter bases that would have to turnout for Democrats to allow Harris to pick up key electoral votes.

One key improvement during this Harris honeymoon has been within questions about if voters feel she is focused on issues important to them, and on her fitness for the presidency.

When asked if Harris or Trump “cares about needs and problems of people like you,” less than a third of California voters in total believe this about Trump, but this gets two-thirds agreement for Harris.

With Latinos, this question has significant improvement, which could be an underlying reason for her small improvement in support from this community. Among women, this measure is even better, at nearly three-fourths of all women agreeing with the statement. Interestingly, this 74% outpaces her 59% support among all women, potentially pointing to a growth opportunity for her campaign.

The one critical group is those potential swing voters who are registered as independent or with a minor party.  Among those voters both Trump and Harris are tied on this measure, and the numbers have been essentially unchanged during this otherwise exceptional rollout for the Vice President.  If any of these voters are prone to watching the presidential conventions, there could be a real opportunity for the Vice President to tailor a message to these voters – potentially leading with more bipartisan issues and messengers.

Harris has also made improvements, overall, and across these subgroups in the question of “having temperament to be president.”  Among all voters, she is at 59% with 35% for Trump.  The biggest advantages for Harris are with Women and younger voters, each with a more than 2:1 advantage.

With Harris selecting Wisconsin Governor Tim Walz, and Trump selecting Ohio Senator JD Vance, we can see the early signs of potential impact these additions will have to their campaigns.

As has been seen nationally, JD Vance is “underwater” in our polling, meaning that the sum of his unfavorable ratings is greater than his positive ratings.  California voters disapprove of Vance at 33% support, 62% oppose, a net -29 rating.  Within this, a whopping 55% are “very unfavorable.”  And when asked if they supported the decision by Trump to appoint Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate, 34% said yes, with 39% saying no, and 27% having no opinion.

For Walz, he has a positive rating with 58% favorable to 35% unfavorable, for a net +23 rating. And when asked, 57% of voters said they supported Harris’ selection of him as her Vice Presidential pick, with 28% not supporting it, and 16% unsure.

During this period between our latest two polls, the favorable/unfavorable ratings for both Harris and Trump are basically unchanged.

Our plan is to go back into the field with this poll the week after the convention to see if she has any convention bounce, which, historically has provided each campaign with around 5-points of advantage after their week of intense television coverage.

The full crosstabs of these questions, and more questions not covered in this overview, can be found here with the prior three survey crosstabs here, here and here.