Washington –

For Vice President Kamala Harris, almost everything has gone well in the early stages of her surprise presidential campaign. She has quickly solidified support from party leaders. Significant increase in financial contributions and Enthusiasm erupts among party activists It dispelled the despair that had enveloped many Democrats.

But Harris still trails former President Trump, at least in terms of winning the states needed to secure a majority in the Electoral College.

Whether that change will occur will depend on three fundamental strategic decisions that Harris and her top advisers must make in the three and a half weeks between now and the start of the Democratic National Convention on August 19.

Harris has to do one thing after another.

— determines the path of the Electoral College, which in turn guides how campaigns spend their money and, importantly, their limited time.

— Choose a running mateIt will help set the direction of the election campaign and possibly strengthen the election strategy.

— Perhaps most importantly, he needs to decide how he wants to position himself politically to counter the Republican portrayal of him as an irresponsible, naive California liberal.

Campaigns typically spend weeks, even months, poring over reams of data to make a decision; Harris has just days.

What's more, Harris and her team will have to make more gut-wrenching choices than usual: Polling data so far has offered tantalizing hints about the state of the race, but both sides — and outside analysts — are operating somewhat blindsided by the presidential race's foray into unprecedented territory in American politics.

Democratic pollster Natalie Jackson said it's “really too early” to gauge exactly how the public feels about the Democratic candidate mix change. “All of this is still filtering in.”

With big news coming up, including the vice presidential selection and the Democratic National Convention, it may take “a while” to get a truly clear picture, possibly until Labor Day (November 14), she said.

Election Map

Harris has some big advantages, most importantly: A large segment of voters For your opponent.

When Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, Trump was still leading nationally by just a few points, even though only about one in five voters considered Biden mentally fit for the presidency. Reuters-Ipsos Poll In a survey conducted shortly after the decision, that number was 22 percent.

Trump's failure to gain a significant lead in these circumstances is a clear indication of the resistance the former president provokes.

That means Harris doesn't have to make big changes, but in this era of extreme political polarization, even small changes require big efforts.

Where to focus that effort will be Harris' first major decision.

To win the presidency, Democrats need to win enough states to secure 270 electoral votes. Democrats can count on their base of 226 to begin with. Biden's declines threatened to put some of those states at risk, but the decision to withdraw was likely a win for the Democratic Party. The map was restored Return to normal configuration.

To increase their vote total from 226 to 270, Democrats would need to win any combination of six battleground states: Nevada and Arizona in the West, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in the Northern industrial belt, and Georgia in the Southeast. Democrats have long wanted to add a seventh state, North Carolina, to that list, but the state has only been won twice in the past 60 years, by Presidents Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.

Biden Won all six battleground states in 2020but his June's disastrous debate with TrumpPolls show he appears to have dropped out of the race in three battleground states, mostly in the Southeast and West. Support declined among Latino and black voters.

That left his campaign with just one path to victory: winning all three Northern industrial states with far more white voters than Southern voters, plus the Democratic states, which would give him exactly 270 electoral votes.

The potential advantage of Latino voters

Early polls suggest Harris may have more of a choice.

She is positioned to garner significant support among Latino voters who are “dissatisfied” with the Trump-Biden election and inclined to sit out the election, Carlos Odio said. Equis Researchfocuses on Latino voters. Analyzing Trump's win In 2020.

A few days before Biden decided to drop out, the company conducted a poll of Hispanic voters in Nevada and found that Harris was leading Biden by a large margin, especially among women under 40.

“A lot of people were disengaged from the election and didn't like their choice,” Odio said, but he added that these voters also didn't like Trump and “were looking for an alternative candidate.”

“She can be that alternative.”

Similarly, Auckland-based company Civiqs Democrat-aligned pollsters began tracking a potential contest between Harris and Trump two weeks before Biden withdrew, running the surveys alongside their daily tracking of Biden and Trump.

“In the Biden-Trump election, we had a ton of voters who were undecided or voting third party,” said Drew Linzer, a director at the company. In the Harris-Trump election, “they're on the move.”

He said this trend is especially pronounced among voters under 35 and among Black and Latino voters. For example, the company's research found that Biden leads by less than 10 percentage points among voters between 18 and 34 years old, while Harris leads by 20 percentage points.

Linzer and Odio stressed that the polling data so far should be considered very preliminary, but the numbers show what Democrats want Harris to accomplish.

“This puts the race back in 2020,” said John Della Volpe of the Harvard Institute of Politics, who specializes in polling young people and supported Biden in the last election. In addition to polling, he noted a flood of funding and a surge in memes and messages supporting Harris on social media.

“The path to 270 felt like it was narrowing even before the debate started,” Della Volpe said. “Now it's starting to widen.”

Selection of Vice Presidential Candidate

Nevada and Arizona could become competitive again if Harris can hold onto her support among Latino voters, and Georgia could be back in the running thanks to a surge in black voters. 1 opinion poll A poll released this week showed Harris trailing Trump in the state by just one point, but the results are still in doubt because of a small survey.

Such victories will ease some of the pressure for Democrats to win three northern battleground states, though Pennsylvania, the largest state with its 19 electoral votes, would still be difficult for Democrats to replace in any realistic scenario.

Jackson said the choice of vice presidential candidate “could be a signal of where they're going on the map.”

The candidates known to be under consideration share some commonalities — they're white, male and moderate governors and senators — but their impact in key states could be different.

A likely win in Arizona and Nevada would strengthen the position of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut.

Expanding into Georgia might make Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina or Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky more appealing.

If winning the northern states was the only realistic path, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz would have the advantage.

The campaign has little time to vet candidates and make a decision: Under procedures laid out by the Democratic Rules Committee, they must choose a candidate by Aug. 7 to meet Ohio's early voting deadline.

Define her image

At the same time, the campaign will have to decide how to rework its convention plans to highlight Harris rather than Biden.

This is made all the more important because, unlike Biden, Harris is partially a blank slate for many voters.

“This race is now in flux. The Vice President is well known, but not as well known as President Trump or President Biden,” campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote in a public memo on Wednesday. “This shift in the race creates an even larger pool of voters that can be persuaded,” she said.

Republicans have rushed to define her, imposing the equation that she is too liberal, or, as Trump told reporters on a conference call this week, “just like Biden, but much more radical.”

Republicans have coupled the accusations with efforts to link Harris to the administration's failures on the border, a potentially powerful way to appeal to many voters' perception that Democrats are weak on public safety.

In the 2020 nomination election, Harris faced the opposite problem. persuade party activists that she is progressive enough,challenge It seemed to be bothering her..

It's a key element of her resume. Experience as a prosecutor — was a burden for primary voters during the tense post-election situation. George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police.

“Kamala is a cop” has become a prominent anti-Harris slogan among leftists.

The situation is very different in the general election, with median voters, especially in battleground states, being significantly more conservative than those participating in Democratic primaries.

Harris has already highlighted her own law enforcement record as contrasting it with Trump's misdeeds, which include 34 felony convictions.

“I've fought criminals of all kinds — predators who abuse women, con artists who deceive consumers, con artists who break the rules for their own personal gain. So say I know what type of person Donald Trump is,” she has said many times on the campaign trail.

How much she talks about her law enforcement background will be a key factor in determining how she presents herself to voters. Whether the Democratic left attacks her about that, or any deviations from progressive orthodoxy, could determine whether the party's newfound unity lasts or falters in the summer heat.

Other things to follow:

This week's poll: Only a quarter of Americans Local government and political reporting.

Weekly Must-ReadLooking back Harris' roots in San Francisco politics and Howard University.

LA Times Special: California's news industry is in steep decline. What's at stake?

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