CNN analyst Harry Enten cautions Democrats against premature celebration of Vice President Kamala Harris’s potential candidacy against former President Donald Trump.
He highlighted that while Harris’s polling is slightly better than President Biden’s, she still trails Trump, who is experiencing his highest favorability ratings since a recent assassination attempt.
“This has been the craziest month in American politics that I can recall,” Enten said. “But here’s the thing — for all of the excitement that Democrats have over Kamala Harris, it is going to be difficult to beat Donald Trump.”
“The fact is, Donald Trump is more popular now than he ever has been before. So yes, Democrats can make this switcheroo, but they’re still going to have to beat Donald Trump – a Donald Trump who is stronger than he has ever been before,” Enten added.
Enten noted that Trump leads Harris by 1% in polls, indicating a close race, and emphasizes that Trump is performing better now than he was four years ago.
To win, Harris will need to improve her national polling significantly, as a tie in the popular vote may not suffice for success in the Electoral College.
“But remember of course, in a national popular vote Democrats tend to do better there than they do in the Electoral College, at least when Donald Trump is running for president. So last time around when Joe Biden barely won in the Electoral College, he actually won the national popular vote by four points. So at this point, Donald Trump is running five points better… than he was four years ago against Joe Biden.”
Enten added, “So at this point, whether you look at the favorable rating, whether you look at horse race polling, we see that Donald Trump is doing significantly better than he was doing four years ago at this point. Kamala Harris is going to have to do better than this, of course, if she wants to win the popular vote but more than that if she wants to win the Electoral College where she’ll likely have to outperform how she’s done nationally because the fact is if you’ve got a tie in the national popular vote that is probably not good enough if you Kamala Harris and you want to win the election against Donald Trump.”
Recent polls show Trump ahead of Harris by up to 10%, reinforcing the challenges she faces in a potential matchup.
