‘The Thrill is Gone’ Edition: Independents Prefer Trump Over Harris in Latest Gallup Poll

Kamala Harris Pence Debate

A new Gallup poll of former President Donald Trump’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s favorability ratings shows a surprising shift from the August iteration of the same poll. Trump has now surpassed Harris overall and, most significantly, among independent voters who participated in this survey.

Trump’s favorability rating now stands at 46%, a gain of 5 points from one month ago, and his unfavorability rating at 53%, a decrease of 2 points. Meanwhile, Harris’s favorability is 44%, down 3 points from last month. Her unfavorability is 54%, an increase of 5 points. 

While both candidates’ favorability ratings are underwater, Trump’s unfavorable rating among all adults is 7 points higher than his favorable score, and Harris’s is 10 points higher. He has a 2-point favorability edge over Harris.

However, among independents, Trump’s lead increases to 9 points. His numbers are 44-53 (net: -9) and Harris’s, 35-60 (net: -25). 

According to Gallup, “Trump is currently viewed better than he was at a similar point in the 2020 and 2016 campaigns, while Harris’s positive rating is on par with Biden’s in 2020.”

Even Gallup, considered a left-leaning pollster, admits Harris’s “bump in favorability after her unexpected nomination as the Democratic presidential nominee has moderated.”

This survey, conducted Sept. 13-15, encompasses the Sept. 10 presidential debate.

At the risk of reading too much into a single survey, this poll indicates that Trump’s favorability is rising and Harris’s is dropping. 

It suggests that the media-driven “Harrismania” we were forced to endure throughout the month of August, which was never based on reality, may finally be fading.

If this is true, it would follow the pattern of Harris’s run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Her candidacy began on a promising note. She enjoyed some early success, particularly after her infamous ambush of then-candidate Joe Biden during a June 2019 primary debate. She attacked him over his record on busing and his past association with segregationist lawmakers. But as voters got to know Harris a little better, her popularity waned. Donations to her campaign eventually dried up and she was forced to drop out of the race before a single primary vote was cast.

There have been other indications that the initial “thrill” of the Harris campaign is gone. Most notably, on Wednesday, the Teamsters, a transportation workers union with 1.3 million members, announced they would not be endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle. The decision came after an internal poll found that 58% of its members supported Trump while only 31% chose Harris. This marks the first presidential election since 1996 (because of NAFTA) that the organization has not endorsed a Democratic candidate. Mary Chastain reported on this story here.

Harris really should take this decision personally. In the Teamsters’ presidential town hall straw polls that were released in July before President Biden dropped out of the race, he led Trump by a margin of 44.3% to 36.3%. If he were still the nominee, he likely would have received the Teamster’s important endorsement.

In another sign that the initial euphoria may be subsiding, CNN’s Daniel Dale published a scathing attack on the Harris campaign’s rapid response page on X over the weekend. According to Dale, @KamalaHQ “has made a habit of misleadingly clipping and inaccurately captioning video clips to attack former President Donald Trump.”

The account has been “repeatedly deceptive” and has made “inaccurate comments on multiple occasions,” Dale noted. And he goes on to fact check eight of the account’s most disingenuous posts from the last month. I wrote about this story here.

The polls are so tight at this moment that all we can do is read the tea leaves. As of Thursday morning, Trump and Harris are quite literally tied in the RealClearPolitics average of battleground state polls.

The polling averages in the states that will decide the race are as follows: Arizona, Trump +1.6; Georgia, Trump +2.0; Michigan, Harris +1.7; Nevada, Harris +0.2; North Carolina, Trump +0.1; Pennsylvania, Harris +0.7; and Wisconsin, Harris +1.1.


Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

Tags: 2024 Presidential Election, Donald Trump, Gallup Poll, Kamala Harris

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