In recent weeks, national Democrats and surrogates for Vice President Kamala Harris have settled on a pretty simple strategy: calling former President Donald Trump, his running mate Sen. JD Vance, and MAGA-aligned Republicans “weird.” One of its original purveyors, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, used it again during his first appearance with Harris as her running mate.
“You know it. You feel it. These guys are creepy and, yes, just weird as hell!” Walz said.
The attacks may be sticking— hardening the pre-existing views many Americans have toward Trump, Vance, and the national Republican brand. But they’re no substitute for a forward-looking, positive case in favor of Harris and Walz, according to new polling conducted by the Democratic firm Blueprint and shared with Vox.
What must come next is an effort to define Harris by reintroducing the electorate to her track record before becoming vice president and leaving behind the politics and acrimony of the Trump-Biden era.
“People really want to know who Kamala Harris is, and people are interested in finding out more about her. That is part of the atmospheric shift that’s taken place in this race,” Blueprint’s chief pollster, Evan Roth Smith, said. “There’s a lot more interest in hearing Kamala Harris and her campaign talk about Kamala Harris — more so than there is in hearing her talk about Donald Trump, or even Joe Biden.”
There are two sets of numbers in Blueprint’s poll that explain the opportunity Harris has right now: the share of voters who say that their minds are absolutely made up on the candidates, and the share who say they could be persuaded to change their opinions.
For Trump, 71 percent of registered voters say “there is absolutely nothing” that could change their opinions of him. Just 57 percent say the same about Harris. And when asked if they would be open to changing their mind or would want to learn more about a candidate, just 12 percent of respondents felt that way about Trump, compared to the 20 percent who said that about Harris.
This difference in strong opinions about Harris may help explain another of the poll’s counterintuitive results: Many voters don’t blame Harris for the unpopular parts of the Biden presidency and trust her more than President Joe Biden on specific issues, like protecting abortion and reproductive rights.
“On big, salient issues — the economy, inflation, and immigration — she should define herself outside of the last four years and very, very, very carefully cherry-pick items from the Biden years to be associated with,” Smith told me.
The survey also tested a variety of Republican attacks on Harris and hypothetical Democratic defenses. It found that a combination of facts about Harris’ background and work on the issues were more convincing to voters than the default Democratic response of calling something a “Republican lie” or attacking Trump as an existential threat.
The best Democratic rebuttal turned out to be saying that she could be both tough on the border — because of her background prosecuting transnational gangs and drug smugglers — and compassionate to migrants because her parents’ immigration stories gave her hope for humane and sensible reforms to the immigration system.
Similarly, criticisms about inflation were best rebutted by talking up a populist economic message of going after price-gouging, capping drug prices, cutting junk fees and taxing the rich.
Candidates only get so much time to get their message across in an election. That’s particularly true for the Harris campaign, with the vice president getting a historically late start to a presidential bid. And as the summer passes by, the fall stretch of the election will be especially valuable, as that’s when a lot of casual voters tune in for the first time.
Because of that time constraint, there’s an opportunity cost to any line of messaging: The investments Harris makes in promoting her own record come at the expense of making the case that Trump is unfit for office.
Still, the polling suggests that the trade-off is worth it.
Christian Paz is a senior politics reporter at Vox.
