CA120: Harris gains only small post-convention bump

Before the convention we found in the Capitol Weekly polling a strong lead for Vice President Kamala Harris among California voters – which would be expected in a very Democratic  state.  However, we identified key parts of the electorate that she would want to try and make up ground with during her four-day Democratic convention, specifically Latinos and Independents, where former President Trump had been making strong improvements from his 2016 and 2020 numbers.

Additionally, we wanted to look at voters in the Central Valley, where, prior to the Convention, Harris was behind 55% – 39% (a 16-point margin) and where competitive congressional races are looking for a strong top-of-the-ticket performance.

In terms of the convention success, we can see that the Democratic convention had higher TV ratings and overall the event was seen as meeting the objectives of her campaign and vice-presidential roll out.  Our survey also finds that more likely voters say they watched most of the Democratic convention (35%) than the Republican convention (30%).  But this makes sense in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic.  And, underlying that data we can see that, in fact, a smaller share of Democrats watched their own convention.

In total, 63% of likely voter Republicans said they watched most of their convention, while 17% said they watched most of the Democratic convention.  Among Democrats, 54% said they watched most of their convention, with just 11% saying they watched most of the Republican affair.

While more Republicans saw Trump’s convention speech (74%) than Democrats saw Harris (69%). More Republicans crossed-over to watch the Democratic speech than the other way around (29%-18%). And by a small margin, more No Party Preference/Other voters saw Harris speech (43% -37%).

Historically, presidential candidates can expect a small 3-5% polling bounce out of their political conventions, which serve basically as infomercials for each respective party.

For former President Trump, the Republican convention bounce never appeared, likely because within 72 hours of that convention closing, President Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee.

In our poll after the close of the Democratic convention we find Harris receiving only a small 2-point post-convention bump among California registered voters, putting her in a large 22-point lead, but between her high-water mark of 24-points when she first became the nominee, and 20-points last week.

Nationally we are also seeing a small convention bump, and it is worth questioning if a real convention bump is possible for a campaign that is itself just a few weeks old.  In the past, a candidate who just came out of a compeitive primary would use the convention as a way of reintroducing themselves, and ramping up for the final push.  But this Harris campaign hasn’t had time to reach a mid-year lull – it is a campaign that was basically shot out of a cannon well after what would have been the end of a primary season – if there had been a real Democratic primary.

Looking within these numbers, what we really see is overall stability.  Numbers for Harris that ensure she will gain a big popular vote boost from a win in California, but still not having as strong support as Biden did in 2020 or Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The gender gap in the presidential contest is significant – with 62% of female voters across both surveys supporting Harris, compared to 53% among men.  Among Latino women Harris is up 28-points (60-32) but Latino Men favor Harris by a much narrower 8-points (50-42).

This gain by Trump among men, reaching over 40% support, and particularly Latino Men, where he reaches 42% and the support for Harris drops even more, should be of great concern to the campaign.

However, the greater Latino difference is by age.  As the following chart shows, Latino Seniors favor Harris by a 71%-25% margin – nearly 50-points, but among Latinos aged 35-44 the support is for Trump by 6-points.

We can also see geographic challenges for the Harris campaign.  While she will easily win California, with strong bases of support in San Francisco (50-point lead) and Los Angeles (43-point lead) she has been behind in the Central Valley.

Not only can the Central Valley be a proxy for the kinds of voters that will help decide the contest in the Sun Belt or the Rust Belt, it is also where California has several competitive congressional and legislative campaigns that are counting on high performance at the top of the ticket.

Looking at this region, we can see that pre-convention Harris was 16-points behind Trump, but that advantage has narrowed to just 4-points, a big swing.

Since the convention, her numbers on issues and general presidential temperment haven’t markedly improved with key subgroups, exept for Latinos where she received a 6-point boost to 44% in the measure of “Cares about needs and problems of people like you,” while Trump fell 6 points – meaning a 12-point shift among this subgroup.  This could be a precursor to some improved Latino numbers in the weeks to come.

However, overall, if the expectation from the Democratic Convention was that it was going to swing any Trump voters her way, or give her a dramatically widening lead in the race, this has not been met, at least according to the California data.

The coming events of the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates could provide another opportunity for separation, but if we’ve learned anything these past few months, no matter what happens this election cycle, things should continue to be close.

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