Is the Harris Honeymoon Over?

After weeks of glowing reviews and surging support, recent polls suggest that excitement surrounding Kamala Harris is beginning to plateau. A weekend NY Times/Siena College survey showed Donald Trump with a 1-point lead in the national polls, narrowing Harris’ 1.2-point lead in the RCP Average.

The September NY Times poll is one of few surveys to show Trump with a national lead since Harris cemented herself atop the Democratic ticket over six weeks ago. Harris has enjoyed an unprecedented rise in popularity, with Democratic officials and voters alike rallying around her in a shocking show of unity for an oft-splintered party.

Harris has gained nearly five points on Trump since her pedal-to-the-metal campaign began on July 21 but may be losing steam as the race heads into its final stretch. One issue voters have with Harris, surveys suggest, is that they simply do not know enough about the vice president.

Three in ten (28%) Americans say they “feel like they need to learn more about” Harris, compared to just 9% of Americans who feel the same about Trump. Of those voters who said they need to learn more about Harris, 66% said they need to learn more about her policies and plans specifically.

Harris has been criticized for her caginess – the Democratic candidate has only made herself available to the press once, in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, when her running mate Tim Walz was by her side. The vice president rarely addresses the country off-script, compared to her competitor, world-class spit-baller Donald Trump.

In an effort to make her policy stances more explicit, the Harris campaign this weekend unveiled an “Issues” tab on KamalaHarris.com. The page lays out her economic agenda, her plan to secure reproductive rights, her foreign policy goals, and more. There are some concrete policy proposals – like voting rights acts and tax cuts – but much of the information builds on Harris’ history of painting in broad strokes.

Four separate times, the page links to information about “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda,” the conservative wish list for a second Trump term that continues to cause the former president a headache. The 900-page document proposes, among other things, disbanding the Departments of Commerce and Education, criminalizing pornography, and shredding LGBTQ+ protections. Three-quarters of likely voters said they had heard about Project 2025, and 63% said they oppose it, according to the NY Times poll.

Besides proving she has a clear vision for the future, Harris also needs to prove she can offer the one thing voters most want: change. Virtually all voters (95%) said the next president should represent a change from Biden, and 61% of those respondents said it should be a “major change.”

Most Americans (60%) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, so it is natural voters are looking for a marked change in leadership. Harris faces an obvious hurdle here, however: only 25% of voters believe Harris represents that change, while 53% of voters feel that Trump would represent a major change from the Biden presidency.

Harris is hoping to strike the right balance between key engineer of the Biden administration’s most popular achievements and distant relative of its most disappointing failures. Trump, meanwhile, is trying to paint Harris as deeply intertwined with Biden’s unpopular economic and border policies (or lack thereof).

The Trump campaign has dubbed Harris the “border czar,” a problem for Harris in that immigration is among the top three most important issues to voters this November, following only the economy and abortion. Trump and his team are also blaming Harris for the cost-of-living crisis and high inflation. Working in Trump’s favor is the fact that voters trust him to handle the border (53%-43%) and the economy (55%-42%) over Harris. 

Harris, on the other hand, has the advantage on issues such as abortion (54%-39%) and democracy (50%-45%), the second and fourth most frequently cited “important issues” for Americans. When one puts all the cross-tabs together, the NY Times poll may seem like just another snapshot showing how tight the race is. 

Yet for Harris, the recent survey may be a darker herald. Democrats hoped that Harris would be their knight in shining armor, come to turn the race on its head and slay Trump once and for all. It seemed, at least for a moment, that the vice president might be able to coast to victory without any real obstacles. But now that the dust has settled on the rearranged battleground, polls suggest that Democrats might still have an uphill fight.