New UMass Amherst Poll Finds Kamala Harris Enjoys Higher Job Approval from Americans than Joe Biden

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll

President Joe Biden’s job approvals have ticked up slightly since January, but Vice President Kamala Harris enjoys a slightly higher approval rating among Americans surveyed for a new national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll.

Biden has had a four-point positive swing since the last UMass Poll, moving from a 39-57 approval-disapproval rating in January to 41-55. Harris’ approval currently stands at 46-47 and, while not surveyed in January’s poll, her current rating marks an 11-point swing since a June 2023 UMass Poll had her approval pegged at 39-51.

“What a difference a year makes,” says Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll. “Last summer, Kamala Harris’ approval numbers mirrored those of her boss, Joe Biden, with a majority of voters expressing disapproval of the job she was doing as vice president. Now, with Harris taking the mantle as the Democratic nominee for president, her approval ratings have increased by seven percentage points with significant increases seen across gender, generational, educational, racial, partisan and ideological groups. Unsurprisingly, the only voters to sour on Harris are Republicans, conservatives and Trump voters. With the election less than 100 days away, the Harris campaign still has work to do, but the campaign is likely thrilled by the newfound fondness for Harris’ tenure as VP.”

“Harris has higher approval ratings than Biden, but not by much,” notes Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “Forty-six percent of voters approve of how she is doing her job, with Biden at 41%. She is somewhat tethered to the current administration as if she is the incumbent, but she is in the range of Obama’s approval ratings at this point before his re-election in 2012.”

The poll, which was conducted July 29-Aug. 1, found widespread commendation of Biden’s decision to pass the baton for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination to Harris, with 81% of respondents saying that stepping aside was the correct choice for Biden to make.

“Joe Biden continues to receive very low marks from the public,” says Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “Though Biden had a remarkably impactful presidency from a legislative standpoint, views of his presidency were undermined by high inflation during his first two years in office and by the perceived deterioration of his health in the last two. Nearly half of Americans – 49% – believe they are worse off since the start of Biden’s presidency than they were before it. This is a staggering number, and it points to the depth of frustration with Biden’s presidency. This also shows that, despite his decision not to seek reelection, many Americans are not changing their evaluations of Biden’s presidency and why most express relief that he will not be running for reelection.”

“President Biden has been lauded by Democratic elites for his willingness to step aside as the Democratic nominee,” adds Alexander Theodoridis, associate professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the poll. “More than 80% of the American electorate agrees that ending his bid for a second term was the right choice, and nearly two-thirds – 62% – say that history will look favorably upon that decision. However, while history may view Biden’s withdrawal favorably, the afterglow from the baton pass appears to be largely shining upon his replacement at the top of the ticket. While Kamala Harris’s approval numbers have increased, especially among Democrats, Biden’s have remained stagnant and Americans still appear to evaluate his presidency negatively. Fifty-six percent tell us he has fallen short of expectations and only about a quarter – 27% – think the nation has been better off under Biden than it was before.”

Ultimately, Nteta says, “Father time remains undefeated. Biden spent the early part of the summer making the case that he was ready and able to lead the country as president for the next four years; voters vehemently disagreed with this position as evidenced not only by his low approval numbers but by the dominance of the negative words like ‘old,’ ‘weak’ and ‘senile’ to describe him. These are not the words used to describe a popular and effective leader and explains why after weeks of contemplation, he decided to leave the race and endorse Harris. Whether his gamble will pay off is still left to be seen, but with Biden’s low approval numbers and the overwhelmingly negative ways in which voters describe him, it was likely that if he had remained in the race that he would have faced long odds to remain the commander in chief.”

The Republican Response to Nominee Kamala Harris

The new UMass Amherst Poll found that some of the attempted GOP attacks on Harris since she became the Democratic Party’s de facto nominee, while popular among the Republican base, are generally falling short of connecting with the general electorate.

Though 41% of the poll’s respondents said that Harris is the Democratic nominee “due to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts,” more than half of Republicans (57%) and nearly two-thirds (65%) of those who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 hold this belief.

“In the wake of former President Trump questioning the racial identity of Kamala Harris, and Harris vying to become the first Black female president of the U.S., there remains substantial attention on the issue of race in the 2024 campaign,” says Nteta. “Americans are seemingly of two minds on questions of whether race will play a role. On the one hand, half of Americans believe that the nation is ready to elect a Black woman to the most powerful office in the nation with less than a quarter of respondents disagreeing with this sentiment. However, 4 in 10 Americans believe that Harris’ ascendance to the top of the Democratic ticket is a reflection of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and not Harris’ experience and readiness for the office, a trope that the nation has repeatedly embraced when faced with candidates from underrepresented groups. On Election Day, we will see if Americans will reflect the better angels of our nature, but our results suggest that voters are optimistic that the nation is ready to make history.”

Likewise, attacks on Harris’ eligibility to hold the presidency have similar levels of agreement (52%) from Republicans, but just one-quarter of the poll’s overall respondents question her eligibility to hold the nation’s highest office.

“For the most part, GOP efforts to cast Harris as a ‘radical San Francisco liberal,’ label her a ‘DEI candidate,’ or even imply that she may not be eligible to run appear to be largely missing the mark so far, except among Republicans,” Theodoridis says. “The majority of Republicans believe Harris is the nominee for diversity reasons, and about half say she isn’t eligible to run, but these opinions are not widely held by either Democrats or independents.”

“Do Republicans need to go back to the drawing board?” Nteta wonders. “In the wake of Joe Biden’s decision to step away from the campaign for president and his endorsement of Kamala Harris, a number of Republican elected officials and conservative media hosts have returned to the playbook made famous during the Obama administration and have questioned whether Harris is eligible to run for the presidency due to her parents’ immigrant status. Given our identity as an immigrant nation, coupled with the high number of first, second and third generation Americans living in the U.S., it is no shock that this strategy has largely fallen on deaf ears. Only a quarter of Americans support the notion that Harris – who was born in Oakland, California, and has already been one heartbeat from the presidency for the last four years – is ineligible to run for the White House.”

“Are voters being honest with us when 1 in 4 say they don’t think Harris is eligible to serve as president?” La Raja asks. “It’s hard to say whether our poll’s respondents are sincere or engaged in some partisan trolling against the Democratic nominee.”

State of the Nation – Economy, Crime and SCOTUS

The latest UMass Amherst Poll also surveyed respondents’ views on the economy, crime and the legislative and judicial branches of our federal government.

“Not much has changed about how people feel about the national economy, or their own economic situation, over the past six months,” La Raja says. “By conventional benchmarks, the American economy has been chugging along well in the past year, although a lot of voters don’t feel that way. Two in five Americans say the economy is ‘poor’ – slightly more than six months ago (35%) – but interestingly, many fewer Americans (28%) currently call their own economic situation poor.

“The malaise among the American public extends beyond the economy,” La Raja adds, noting how the stats belie voters’ emotions. “Just over half (51%) of voters believe that crime in the nation increased in the past year, but FBI statistics report a 15% drop in both violent crime and property crimes in the past year. Additionally, 60% of voters believe illegal immigration has increased at the Southern border. However, since December there has been a steep drop in border encounters with undocumented immigrants, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And 69% of Americans think inflation has increased in the past year when, in fact, inflation rate has been quite stable, hovering at around 3.0% – slightly less than a year ago. By international standards that is very good.”

Finally, while the new poll continued to find dismal approval ratings (23%) for Congress, it also found that a majority of Americans (51%) also now disapprove of the job being done by the Supreme Court, while only 39% approve of the court’s performance.

“Due to controversial decisions and recent controversies over possible conflicts of interest, the Supreme Court remains deeply unpopular,” Rhodes says. “Americans want to reform the court, but not through ‘checks and balances’ from Congress or the president, who they don’t trust either. Instead, they want ‘neutral’ process reforms that affect all justices regardless of ideology or partisan leaning – like term limits or recusal requirements when conflicts of interest might exist. When it comes to reforming the court, Americans seem to prefer ideas that can’t easily be manipulated by either party.”

Nteta agrees, saying, “As the Supreme Court moves the country in a rightward ideological direction on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and the limits of presidential power, coupled with a number of startling revelations concerning the unethical behavior of certain members of the court, there have been increasing calls to reform the nation’s highest court. While President Biden’s proposed reforms to the court will likely fall on deaf ears given his status as a lame duck president, a number of these reforms are indeed popular among the public. Most notably, close to 6 in 10 Americans support term limits for the Supreme Court and close to 7 in 10 Americans would support a requirement that justices recuse themselves if there exists a conflict of interest. With a new President and Congress on the horizon, changes may be in store for the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll of 1,000 respondents nationally was conducted by YouGov July 29-Aug. 1. YouGov interviewed 1,123 total respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 1,000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The sampling frame is a politically representative “modeled frame” of U.S. adults, based upon the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and 2020 presidential vote.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined, and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, region and home ownership. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on region (4-categories), 2020 presidential vote choice, as well as a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories), and a two-way stratification of race (4-categories) and education (4-categories), to produce the final weight.

The margin of error of this poll is 3.8%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at www.umass.edu/poll