She has been in the public eye for nearly a decade, but most voters don’t have a clue about Vice President Kamala Harris other than she’s a liberal abortion pitchwoman.
And that’s a good thing as she sets off on a 102-day rush to Election Day.
Because being largely undefined gives the presumptive party presidential nominee a chance to “pick and choose” issues to help make her case to voters, according to Evan Roth Smith, lead pollster with Blueprint.
“Kamala Harris is still largely undefined in the minds of voters,” Smith said during a Zoom briefing on Thursday. “Voters don’t really associate her with or really give her credit or blame for the most popular policies out of this administration. That also means she won’t have to carry any of the president’s baggage.”
Harris stepped into her role as the party’s presumptive nominee this week after President Joe Biden bowed to pressure from Democratic elites and the media to abandon his dream of a second term because his polls are bad.
Republicans moved quickly to portray Harris as a failed liberal who bungled her assignments, including a role as the border czar.
But Smith found that little has stuck to the vice president.
As a result, he believes that Harris can choose issues to build a resume that excites supporters and deflects GOP attacks.
Our new poll on Kamala Harris is out!
We asked voters how they perceive the presumptive Democratic nominee, what they credit and hold her responsible for, and what policies they associate her with.
Bottom Line: Harris is mostly unburdened by what has been; Biden’s…
— Blueprint (@Blueprint_2024) July 25, 2024
“She can pick and choose what she wants to be associated with,” Smith said. “She can hug the stuff that she needs to shore up, for example, vulnerability and skepticism on immigration, right? So, you know, this is not rocket science.”
The Democratic pollster’s new survey on Harris shows that there are just a few things voters firmly know about the vice president. First is her liberal politics. When asked to cite a word they associate Harris with, “liberal” was top at 43%.
The issue Harris is most associated with is abortion, at 53%. When asked about policies that voters believe Harris was responsible for, the highest was abortion at 50%.
Secrets asked Smith what issues he felt Harris should wrap herself in going into the Democratic National Convention in three weeks.
In addition to abortion, he said that Harris should define her economic agenda. And he said that she should play off her pre-Senate job as California’s attorney general and promise the public that she will be a prosecutor for them on matters such as corporate price gouging.
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“A prosecutor who goes after the white-collar folks who are screwing us. That’s like a perfect built-in-a-lab message,” Smith said.
“Voters are inclined to trust her on all of this and sort of, you know, connecting the dots for them and telling them exactly kind of what they want to hear. But it’s also really, I think, you know, my understanding of who she is, as an economics policymaker. I think that’s the direction to go. And you know, let her rip on reproductive rights, for sure, for sure. Those are the two most important things,” Smith said.
