Back in June, the Pew Research Center offered a sobering bit of data. The percentage of Americans who viewed both major parties’ presumptive presidential nominees unfavorably had reached 25 percent, 1 in 4. It was the highest such percentage in the history of Pew’s polling, and it suggested that people who disliked both candidates were poised to be the determining factor in November.
But that was June, back when the two still-presumptive nominees were former president Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. Then Biden — certainly understanding that his broad unpopularity was not a political asset — stepped aside. And, just like that, the race was redefined. No longer is 2024 a contest defined by double-haters, people who dislike both candidates.
Or at least, not so much.
On Wednesday, Monmouth University released new polling showing the difference between a Trump-Biden race and a Trump-Harris one.
Evaluating Trump and Biden, about 4 in 10 respondents viewed Trump favorably but not Biden and another 4 in 10 viewed only Biden favorably. About 2 in 10 viewed both unfavorably — the double-haters.
When comparing Trump and Harris, though, the double-hater pool was sliced in half. A lot more people view only Harris favorably than view only Trump favorably.
Put another way, a bunch of the double-haters shifted to liking only Harris. Asked to choose between Harris and Trump, those who view both Biden and Trump unfavorably picked Harris by a 5 to 1 margin.
You can see Harris’s advantages over Biden and Trump when breaking out the overall responses on Monmouth’s favorability question. Harris is viewed more positively overall. But among members of each politician’s own party, you can see Harris’s wide advantage: A lot of Democrats view Biden somewhat favorably, but three-quarters view Harris very positively. It’s a higher percentage than the percentage of Republicans who view Trump very favorably.
Among independents, a group that’s generally pretty skeptical of politicians, Harris is viewed about as favorably as unfavorably.
YouGov released other polling recently that mirrors Monmouth’s findings. Conducted for the Economist, it asked people how they felt about the two presidential and two vice presidential candidates, the latter being Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).
At both candidate levels, the Democrats were more popular. Walz is now much better known than he was when Harris picked him, but more Americans have an opinion of Vance. A negative one, on net.
One detail to notice from those results: Republicans are much more lukewarm about Vance than Democrats are about Walz. It’s also worth noting that a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday shows Harris leading in the state of Pennsylvania. Her selection of Walz was criticized by media observers in part because it was believed that selecting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was important to her success in that state.
YouGov also asked Americans whether certain terms applied to Harris and Trump. Despite Trump’s energetic efforts to portray Harris as unintelligent, that perception hasn’t caught on. In fact, Americans are more likely to describe Harris as intelligent than they are to describe Trump that way. Even members of their own parties are more likely to describe Harris as intelligent than Trump. Harris has slightly smaller advantages on ‘hard-working’ and ‘qualified.’
Perhaps the most striking finding, though, is that most Americans believe it’s fair to describe Trump as ‘corrupt’ — including 1 in 8 voters who say they plan to vote for Trump to be president. Harris, despite having a much more limited political profile, is viewed as corrupt by more than 4 in 10 Americans, including three-quarters of Republicans. This is unquestionably somewhat a function of ‘corrupt’ serving as a catch-all pejorative for disliked political actors — good news, in a sense, for Trump.
For now, Harris holds a strong position in her race against Trump. Voters like her better than Biden, including Democrats, and they’re rewarding her with their support. (In YouGov’s poll, Harris has a slight lead over the former president.) The campaign isn’t over yet, and Trump and his allies are just starting to target Harris and Walz with negative rhetoric and ads. But, for the moment, Harris has managed to break the grip that political skeptics had on the 2024 contest earlier this year. The double-haters may prove to be less important than the Harris enthusiasts.
Update: Within minutes of this article being published, Pew released a new assessment of the presidential race. It found, like Monmouth, that Harris’s favorability numbers have improved. It also found that the percentage of people with negative views of both candidates had fallen — again almost in half.