WASHINGTON — Democrats are planning for Vice President Kamala Harris to campaign in areas with heavy concentrations of Black and Hispanic voters and where they need women and young people to turn out for the midterm elections.
Democrats familiar with the strategy are hopeful that Harris — who is popular with African American and urban voters, particularly Black women — will be able to energize the party’s base.
“For the Democratic Party, it’s the number one need, period. You have got to get out these voters that don’t generally come out in a midterm election,” said Amanda Renteria, who was the national political director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Black and Hispanic voters cast ballots at higher rates in last year’s election, when Harris was on the national ticket, than four years prior, when Donald Trump beat Clinton to become president.
Democratic operatives say those voters will be crucial to the party keeping control of Congress and the Biden administration making progress on its legislative goals. In 2022, they say, the party also needs high turnout from voters under age 34 and women.
Turning out Black and Hispanic voters alone will not win the midterm election for Democrats, one person familiar with the strategy said. “We have to be able to turn out women in this election.”
“And let’s be clear, when we’re talking about women, and the ‘suburban moms’ that everybody likes to talk about, suburban moms are older millennials at this point,” the person said. “Increasingly the suburbs are more diverse. So we are also intrinsically, yes, talking about women of color and young people.”
Harris can appeal to those voters, party insiders say, noting that fundraising emails sent out in her name bring in more money than anyone else in the Democratic Party except for the president.
She is expected to further ramp up her political appearances this month, starting with the off-year election that is taking place in Virginia. Sources familiar with the planning said she is likely to do more events for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
McAuliffe’s pathway to victory in Virginia is through Black communities in the central and southeastern areas of the state that encompass Hampton Roads and Richmond. Harris visited the state twice last month, traveling to Hampton University, a historically Black college, and appearing at a fundraiser in northern Virginia for McAuliffe days later.
The outcome of the off-year election will provide insight into potential vulnerabilities for both political parties in next year’s midterms. Virginia is viewed as more of a bellwether for the midterms than California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom handily won his recall election last month, or New Jersey, where Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is seeking reelection this year.
Biden easily won all three states in 2020, but the race in Virginia was tighter. He beat Trump in the state by 10 points compared with the nearly 30-point victory he had in California, a reliably Democratic state that Harris represented in the Senate.
“As we head into 2022, Vice President Harris will continue to be an invaluable asset to Democrats up and down the ballot. Vice President Harris will play a key role as the DNC continues to fight to expand our majorities and fire up our grassroots supporters, including women, young people, and Black and Brown communities,” DNC Deputy Communications Director Ofirah Yheskel said in a statement.
Turnout election
Plans to send Harris into blue states and communities of color are not surprising, pollsters said, given how she performs in surveys with key demographic groups compared with Biden.
In a recent Gallup poll, Democrats gave Harris a 92% approval rating. Women and Americans under age 34 each rated her at 58%.
Harris was more popular than Biden in the September survey that was taken shortly after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The president had an approval rating of 43% in the poll, the lowest of his presidency in a Gallup survey.
“Midterm elections are turnout elections,” said Neil Newhouse, a partner and co-founder of Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. “And given the weakness of the president’s numbers, the softness among Democrats and among his base — and there is some real softness there — you’d want to use her to reinforce the base.”
Biden’s support among independents was 24 points lower in the Gallup poll than it was in January, falling to 37% from 61% over eight months.
Some pollsters cautioned that Harris’ higher approval rating in the Gallup survey could be an outlier. But the president’s approval rating in it was consistent with Morning Consult’s latest survey in which Biden had an overall approval rating of 45% and a favorability score of 34% among independents.
In the Gallup survey, Harris received 4% support from Republicans, and her favorability with independents was unusually high at 46% compared with other polls that have gauged her popularity.
“She could not be any more popular with the Democratic base voters. But the challenge is, if she has aspirations for national office in the future, she’s got to be careful that she’s not defined as a polarizing figure, which is really what happened to Hillary Clinton,” said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist and president of the polling firm Bendixen & Amandi International.
Harris drew less support from young people and women in the latest Morning Consult survey than she did in the poll Gallup conducted last month. Her overall approval rating, 42%, her support among Democrats, 80%, and independents, 32%, were also lower in the newer Morning Consult poll, compared with Gallup. Her approval rating with Republicans, 8%, was an improvement.
Biden sought to win over disaffected Republicans last year who did not want to vote for Trump, and he has had double-digit support from them at various times in his presidency.
Amandi said “it’s probably a fool’s errand” to think Harris could attract more Republican support than she has right now in a “hyper-polarized, hyper-partisan” political environment.
“That said, I think it would be of long-term interest to her to make sure that with independents, she is seen as a competent, if not popular, steward of the federal government,” Amandi said.
“Collapsing support with independents and no support with Republicans while maintaining high support with Democrats is not a path to the White House,” he added.
———
