Harris Tried to Win Over Republicans. Democratic Support Collapsed Instead
During the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris toured battleground states with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. After she and her dad, Iraq War architect and former Vice President Dick Cheney, endorsed Harris, the Democratic nominee said she was “honored to have their endorsement,” calling them “well-respected,” and saying the Cheneys had made an “important statement that it’s OK … to put country above party.”
It was all part of the Harris campaign’s bet big on appealing to Republican voters, following what has become Democrats’ favorite strategy for trying to beat Donald Trump, despite mixed results in the past. This year, the strategy plainly failed, according to exit polls from Edison Research.
Harris only received five percent of Republican votes — less than the six percent Joe Biden won in 2020 when he beat Trump, as well as the seven percent won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she lost to him. While Harris won independents and moderates, she did so by smaller margins than Biden did in 2020.
Meanwhile, Harris lost households earning under $100,000, while Democratic turnout collapsed. Votes are still being counted, but Harris is on pace to underperform Biden’s 2020 totals by millions of votes.
The Edison Research exit polls show a smaller percentage of the electorate, 31 percent, identifying as Democrats than in recent elections. In 2020, 37 percent of voters were Democrats. In 2016, that number was 36 percent. This year is the first time more voters described themselves as independents than Democrats, according to Edison Research.
Trump will likely be the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades, and he appears to have run the table in the seven battleground states, despite being significantly outraised by Harris. It is easy to say her campaign failed.
However, the exit polls suggest Harris’ investment in courting Republicans was a major misfire. And while Democrats were busy making the case that Republicans should leave Trump, voters fled the Democratic Party instead — or stayed home.
On The Daily Show several weeks ago, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz laid out the thinking behind the Harris campaign’s strategy of courting support from conservative elites. Republican voters “are trying to find permission to get off the MAGA stuff and move over,” he said. When host Jon Stewart expressed discomfort about the alliance with the Cheneys in particular, Walz said they “give permission to those folks who want to find a reason to do the right thing.”
Unfortunately for Democrats, not many Republicans wanted permission to cross over to Team Blue, and Democratic voters needed no such permission to bail.
As Rolling Stone reported Wednesday, exit polls and other surveys indicated Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the economy under Biden; voters who were motivated by the economy heavily favored Trump.
The Fox News Voter Analysis survey results show that Democrats have lost ground on many of their key economic issues.
Among the majority of respondents who said they were very concerned about their health care costs, 54 percent said they were supporting Trump. A plurality of respondents said they would trust Trump to better handle taxes than Harris.
Harris’ efforts to run to the right on immigration did not persuade voters, either. A majority said he would be better able to handle immigration, while only 36 percent said Harris, according to the Fox survey.
In the Edison Research exit polls, only 11 percent of voters said that immigration was their top issue, and 90 percent of them favored Trump.
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