In her first speeches since becoming the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris has shown how she plans to campaign.>>>CONTINUE FULL READING HERE....CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE
“Today, we face a choice between two very different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, and the other focused on the past,” she told an audience of teachers in Houston this week. “And we are fighting for the future.”
She has leaned heavily on her credentials as a former prosecutor, while pointing out Donald Trump’s status as a convicted felon.
But the 59-year-old vice-president faces a steep uphill battle to the White House ahead of polling day on Nov 5. Although a small number of recent polls put her ahead of Trump with American voters nationally, she is behind in all seven swing states where the result matters most.
Polling for The Telegraph this week shows she also has an approval rating of between -7 per cent and 3 per cent in those same states. Her path to victory, with election day just 15 weeks away, is narrow.
Ms Harris inherits a party that is behind in the states that will decide the election: Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
To win the election, she must secure 270 electoral college delegates, which will require her to win all of the industrial Midwestern swing states, or some of them plus the two Western battlegrounds.
Each presents its own challenge. Several key voting demographics have drifted away from the Democrats since the 2020 election, with black voters harming her numbers in Georgia and North Carolina, Latinos in Arizona and Nevada, and blue collar workers in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Each had doubts about Joe Biden, and are increasingly supportive of Trump.
Frank Luntz, the veteran pollster and US election strategist, said Ms Harris must reframe her messaging on the economy.
Around a quarter of voters live without savings, and they are disproportionately likely to fall into one of the demographics Ms Harris must win back to gain ground in the swing states.
Polling for The Telegraph by Redfield & Wilton Strategies this week found that the economy and inflation are the top priorities of Americans in swing states, and the largest group of voters in all seven states say their financial position has worsened in the last year.
“The people who matter most are the paycheck-to-paycheck voters,” Mr Luntz said.
“They are the traditional Democrats, by two to one, and Trump has narrowed that to less than three to two. He is clearly going after that segment of the population.
“These are people with jobs, but low incomes, and a lot of them are union members. That to me is the voter group that matters most because it’s the largest, most prevalent and they are paying attention to the election.”
Mr Biden was criticised for talking about major infrastructure programmes and headline macroeconomic statistics, rather than pocketbook economics that voters can relate to.
“Paycheck-to-paycheck voters are 24 per cent of the country,” Mr Luntz said. “It cuts across ethnicity, cuts across gender, cuts across age. They are gettable, and they form the greatest percentage of the truly undecided voters.”
While Trump’s winning 2016 campaign was built on the support of blue collar workers in the so-called Rust Belt, his appeal has since widened to include ethnic minority demographics including Latinos.>>>CONTINUE FULL READING HERE
One in four voters in Arizona and one in five voters in Nevada are Hispanic. The drift towards Trump is motivated mainly by concerns about the security of the southern US border
, according to Mike Madrid, a Latino voting expert and former Republican strategist, posing a problem for Ms Harris.
“If [Republicans] can undermine her on border security, they undermine the whole prosecutor versus criminal framing,” he told The Telegraph.
“You can’t blame your way out of this, not when you’re 35 points down on this issue. You have to come up with a narrative of what you’re for, and how you’re going to take care of the problem.”
Polls show Latinos also care deeply about housebuilding – a sector where a large proportion of Hispanic men work – and economic security, Mr Madrid said. These are likely to be major themes of Ms Harris’s campaign in those states.
While they mostly still plan to vote Democrat, Mr Biden’s lacklustre campaign has seen a shift of support towards Trump, especially among young black men.
In 2020, 92 per cent of African-Americans voted for Mr Biden, but a poll this week showed just 70 per cent intend to vote for Ms Harris. In Georgia and North Carolina, where black voters make up 33 per cent and 19 per cent of the electorate respectively, that decline could cost her either state.
Ms Harris, whose father is Jamaican-American, may benefit from her own race when attempting to convince these voters. But strategists say she will need to focus on the policy concerns of African-Americans if she hopes to win them back. That includes a strong economic message and tough policies on crime.
Presidential candidates generally choose a vice-president to help them reach voters in parts of the country where they are electorally weak. Trump’s decision to bring on JD Vance, who has a strong working-class Appalaccian backstory, is an attempt to convince voters in the industrial Midwest that he is focused on their concerns.
One option for Ms Harris is Josh Shapiro, the popular governor of Pennsylvania, who would likely win her the state and bring the Rust Belt credentials once represented by “Scranton Joe” Biden.
But Mr Shaprio will not help Ms Harris in Arizona and Nevada, where her campaign would be boosted by senator Mark Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut who has the rare accolade of winning Republican votes in Latino areas. Mr Kelly is on the shortlist to be her running mate, and would likely be aligned with her more critical stance on Israel
over the war in Gaza.
Mr Biden’s campaign suffered from a loss of support among young people, who typically vote Democrat but drifted from the party over his support for Israel and his age.
According to Mr Luntz, Mr Biden’s main drawback among young voters is that he was “so f—ing old”.
“They just simply did not relate to him,” he said. “He’s two generations apart from them. Harris changes that, and she’s older than people realise, but she doesn’t act that way. She acts younger than her age, which is advantageous for younger voters.”
Young voters are important for the Democrats because they often act as volunteers during the campaign, increasing the party’s reach in areas that would otherwise drain the resources of paid staff.
Ms Harris’s “honeymoon period” with voters “won’t last very long,” said Mr Madrid. She has benefited from an explosion of supportive and ironic memes online about her presidential campaign, but that early enthusiasm is likely to wane.
Early polling suggests Ms Harris, 59, is especially popular among young women, who are most likely to care about her campaigning against restrictions on abortion.
However, that alone will not win her a specific state. Unlike voters in some racial demographics, young voters are evenly distributed across the US, and a swing towards her party among those voters will not translate to a big shift in a statewide vote.>>>CONTINUE FULL READING HERE
