Gallup’s Latest Poll on Harris vs. Trump’s Favorability Is a Flashing Red Warning Sign For Harris’s Media Strategy

AP Photo/Rebecca Droke

Gallup, one of the country’s most respected polling firms, gave Vice President Kamala Harris some very bad news this week as it found more Americans have a favorable view of former President Donald Trump than they do of her.

Gallup polled just over a thousand American adults from September 3 to 15 and found 46 percent rated Trump favorably, while 44 percent rated Harris favorably. On the flip side, 53 percent rated Trump unfavorably and 54 percent rated Harris unfavorably. While the numbers are similar and within the margin of error, they illustrate a shift that should serve as a flashing red warning sign for the Harris campaign.

Since August, Harris’s unfavorable rating has gone up five points, while Trump’s has gone down two. On the other side, Trump’s favorability has gone up five, while Harris’s has gone down three. Trump winning over Americans at this stage in the campaign and after being omnipresent on the national stage for the last eight-plus years is a brutal indictment for Harris of how many Americans view their match-up.

Historically, neither Trump nor Harris has held a high rating in this poll with both languishing in the 36 to 37 percent favorabilty range for most of 2023, with Trump’s number starting to tick up after he announced another White House run in late 2023. Harris’s number surged to 47 percent following her becoming the party’s nominee but has since dipped again.

The Harris campaign is clearly running on a strategy of trying to keep the focus on Trump. Harris’s much-talked-about avoidance of the media and her willingness to let Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), suck up most of the headlines and news cycles makes sense in a country as polarized as ours – where negative partisanship (voting against the other side) drives voters to the polls.

However, that strategy only works if Harris is indeed the lesser of two evils in voters’ minds. For most Harris supporters it is all but inconceivable that more Americans could like Trump than Harris, but according to Gallup that is a very real possibility and one Harris’s camp doesn’t seem ready to combat.

Gallup’s breakdown of independent voters offered even more dire news for Harris, finding they rated her 60 percent unfavorably to only 35 percent favorably – a 25-point deficit. Trump, on the other hand, was rated 53 percent unfavorably to 44 percent favorably – a 9-point deficit.

Going back to 1992, only Trump has won the White House with a favorability rating under where Harris is right now. In 2016, Trump’s October rating going into the election stood at only 34 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 43 percent. Harris’s campaign is hoping to emulate Trump’s 2016 win, courting voters by exploiting their anger-rousing opponent, but as of right now the numbers don’t appear to add up.

Harris has some time to turn this around still, but letting Trump dominate the news cycle, even ones where he pushes debunked smears about migrants eating pets, isn’t doing enough to show voters she is the less bad candidate.

President Joe Biden’s final polling against Trump in October of 2020 showed him up 49 to 45 percent in Gallup’s favorability rating. If Harris can move the needle and bring her numbers in line with Biden’s she will undeniably be in a much stronger position to win this race and the only way she can do that is by reaching out to voters and improving their impression of her, which means doing more interviews.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.