Recent polls indicate that Vice President Kamala Harris faces challenges in potential presidential aspirations as Americans prefer President Joe Biden over her.
Despite Biden’s own unpopularity, he garners more enthusiasm from voters compared to Harris in a hypothetical matchup against Donald Trump.
Harris’s low favorability ratings are concerning, with only a third of respondents believing she could defeat Trump.
Even among Democrats, support for Harris is not robust, and independents show low backing.
While Harris has moments of showing leadership, her overall favorability remains below par, with critiques on her handling of public appearances and gaffes.
The disparity in approval ratings between Harris and past vice presidents, along with fact-checking controversies, has added to her uphill struggle for broader acceptance and political viability.
“Well, there are polls that also say I have great approval ratings,” Harris said in 2023. “I think the point that has to be made is that there are attempts to create distractions away from the accomplishments of our administration.”
“At the time the ABC News interview aired, FiveThirtyEight’s average was 39.7% approving of Harris’ performance and 52.3% disapproving, for a net of 12.6 percentage points ‘underwater,’” PolitiFact wrote at the time.
“Meanwhile, the most recent poll in which more people approved than disapproved of Harris’ performance was from October 2021 and was more than 100 polls ago. That poll, conducted by Saint Leo University, found Harris above water by 2 percentage points, which was within the poll’s 3-point margin of error.”