CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said Wednesday that Vice President Kamala Harris has not been able to win back young voters that President Joe Biden lost to former President Donald Trump.
Among younger voters ages 18 to 29, Trump leads Biden 48% to 40%. according to A New York Times/Siena College poll from early July found that Harris may be “slightly better,” but not significantly better than Biden, and is faring much worse among younger voters than the 2020 president. (Related: Exclusive: Biden news prompts leading Republicans at RNC to simulate Kamala scenario)
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'She's fallen so far behind': CNN's Harry Enten pours cold water on Kamala Harris' efforts to win back young voters pic.twitter.com/AxiHwfOlss
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“You know what's going on with Brat Summer and all that stuff, so let's look at the Trump vs. Democrat vote percentages. Remember where we were at the end of the 2020 campaign? Joe Biden won voters under 35 by 21 points,” Enten told host John Berman. “What about Kamala Harris? She's still leading, but her vote percentage here is significantly lower than Joe Biden did in 2020. She's only by nine points. You could argue that Biden did better before he left office, but compared to the Democratic baseline, Democrats have historically won over 20 percent of the young vote in presidential elections, at least this century, and she's way below that.”
“If this is unique support from young voters, I'd like to know what is not unique support. Is it worse than this? She was slightly better. Biden might have been 6 or 5 points better on average. This may be slightly better, but this is not groundbreaking, Mr. Berman,” he added.
Enten also noted that Harris hasn't taken any unique steps to encourage young voters to vote in the 2024 election.
“But let's also talk about motivations. It's not just about who you support, but whether you go to the polls,” he said. “I think that's pretty interesting. Are Democrats saying they were more motivated to go to the polls after Biden dropped out of the race? Certainly there's a significant percentage of Democrats who say that, 39 percent. But what I'm interested in is whether it was younger voters who were disproportionately more likely to go to the polls or more motivated to vote. And what we see here is 42 percent. There's not a huge difference between 42 percent and 39 percent. So, John, the idea that the vice president has some unique potential to bring younger voters to the polls, despite the memes that are circulating on the internet, just isn't showing up in the numbers.”
The data reporter added that younger voters are also increasingly identifying as Republicans.
“So when I say Harris is doing worse than Biden, it's not that she's particularly bad, but rather that she's struggling,” Enten said. “She's trying to fight a wave of opposition to Democrats among younger voters, and Harris may be special in some ways. Maybe she's doing a little better than the average Democrat, but not by much.”
Enten also warned on Tuesday that it would be “tough” for Harris to beat Trump, given her popularity after the Republican National Convention and the fact that she survived an assassination attempt.
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