Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, appears to have lost momentum with swing voters, trailing where President Joe Biden was at the same point in 2020 by 9 points, according to new analysis for Newsweek by Impact Social.
Former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee, and Harris are fighting for swing voters amid what polling and election analysis suggest remains a tightly fought election.
According to Impact Social’s analysis of thousands of social media posts, which it gave negative or positive designations, Harris leads Trump by one point, although both had a net-negative rating. Harris was on -13 against Trump with -14.
Trump has been boosted, in part, by an uncertainty around the Democratic Party’s nominee, the report said.
In the report, Phil Snape of Impact Social said the vice president had seen positivity around her candidacy, but she was struggling to shed voter’s identifying her as the “incumbent” candidate.
“As this tracker has consistently shown, ‘joy’ and ‘hope’ has waned since the TV debate and a failure to articulate how her presidency would differ from Biden’s has led to a vacuum,” Snape wrote. “Consequently, many independents conclude that Harris is at least partly to blame for the perceived failures of the current administration and are unconvinced she has the solutions or capability to put it right.”
The analyst said Harris’ campaign message of turning the page meant little to independent voters who saw her as continuing Biden’s presidency.
Newsweek has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment via email Friday afternoon.
During the 2020 campaign, Trump, as the incumbent, saw far less favorability among swing voters than Biden, whose popularity steadily rose from early September through to this point in October, where he sat at -4 against Trump’s -18.
In this election cycle, while Harris has remained ahead, sentiment has fluctuated over the past two months.
The analysis looked at thousands of social media posts discussing both candidates and broke down users by various categories, including those who were independent voters or leaned further left or right. Voters who were pro-Trump said that he would be president for all Americans and that there was enough of a system in place to keep him in-check over his presidency.
“Frankly, I’d prefer a restrained Hitler to a Harris president any day of the week,” one voter said. Trump has been accused of praising the Nazi leader and said he had done some “good things,” according to former White House chief of staff John Kelly, although in a previous statement to Newsweek Trump’s campaign denied this.
Those who were pro-Harris said she was classy, decent, and a true leader, who was working for the working class. For around a third of those saying they were in favor of Harris, anti-Trump sentiment was driving that feeling.
“A late surge is of course possible. Harris’ current attempt to project Trump as a dangerous fascist might work, particularly if it reminds undecideds of why they voted against Trump last time around,” Snape said. “However, in reality this is just a re-pining of the ‘Not Trump’ badge – a meagre attempt to cover the ‘incumbent’ label which lurks underneath.”
While Harris may be struggling slightly with swing voters overall, polling has shown she is performing better in battleground states, although still slightly behind Trump in some surveys.
Previous data from Impact Social showed Harris went from a rating of -8 with swing voters on September 27 to -17 on October 18, while Trump moved from -10 to -23 over the same period. Previously speaking to Newsweek, one political scientist said the two had become “polarizing figures” with American voters.
The Trump campaign told Newsweek that the former president and his team had been hitting swing states in order to let Republicans, disaffected Democrats and independents about his plan for them.
“[Former] President Trump continues to dominate in poll after poll, Republicans have made massive voter registration gains, and we are far outperforming in our share of the early vote relative to two or four years ago across all battleground states,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement. “Voters know that Kamala Harris has destroyed our country, but President Trump will fix it—and that is why he is well-positioned for victory on November 5.”
For a copy of Impact Social’s full report, please click here.
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