The rise of Kamala Harris shows how political toughness and smart polling can pay off.

The rise of Kamala Harris shows how political toughness and smart polling can pay off.

Briana Gicchettera & Josh Pasek

After Joe Biden’s widely ridiculed performance in the June debate, many political commentators called for him to withdraw from the presidential race. Despite these calls, the Biden campaign justified Biden’s staying in the ring by citing polls, which showed that voting intentions remained essentially unchanged after the debate. Under increasing pressure from donors and party leaders, Biden eventually withdrew from the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic nominee.

Did the polling data really indicate that Biden should drop out? Or was his decision not to run for reelection based solely on a scared bunch of “elites”? The answer will tell us what to watch in the polls as November approaches.

In hindsight, it’s easy to point out the improvement in the Democratic polls after Harris became the candidate and claim that party leaders made the right decision in July. However, whether a decision happens to be correct and whether the outcome could have been predicted with certainty are fundamentally different. In fact, before Biden withdrew, Harris and Biden were performing similarly in polls in head-to-head matches against Donald Trump. Therefore, there was no guarantee that changing the candidate would improve these numbers. There was also considerable concern about the fierce nomination battle within the party.

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But the ploy seems to have worked. Initially, Harris performed much better in the polls than Biden had done anywhere else this election cycle. Within two days of Biden’s withdrawal, Democrats had rallied around Harris and her fledgling campaign, raising enough delegate support and $81 million in grassroots funding to make her the party’s presumptive nominee. The move also upended the media’s tone around the presidential race. Before Biden’s withdrawal, Democrats had feared a decisive defeat. Now, it seems, Harris has given them a fighting chance.

The data before July suggested that losing Biden would improve the performance of the Democratic Party. But the question was not who people were willing to support, but what their enthusiasm was for voting. Measures of voting intention are more important than measures of enthusiasm. But enthusiasm makes a big difference at the margins, because enthusiasm can prevent people from being discouraged from voting. This is the hidden lesson behind the upcoming polling stories in this year’s election.

Biden’s long run was based on poll numbers that showed very few people would change their vote after the debates. Those numbers were right. And they weren’t particularly relevant. The US voting coalition was surprisingly stable, meaning the vast majority of Biden’s supporters had no intention of switching their support to the Republican Party. But in 2016, Democrats learned the hard way that poll rankings alone are not enough to win an election. A party can’t win if voters don’t actually show up on Election Day, and a lot of that depends on whether supporters are willing to put in the effort to vote. Enthusiasm plays a key role in bridging the gap between intent and turnout.

Unfortunately for Biden, polls have shown declining enthusiasm for his reelection campaign among Democratic voters beyond 2022. By July, only 2 in 10 Democrats said they were satisfied with Biden’s performance against Trump. After his debate performance in late June, a majority of Democrats said Biden should drop out of the race. The campaign’s attempts to rehabilitate Biden’s image have largely failed, and the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump has left Democrats fearful of a surge in enthusiasm among Republican voters.

This is the backdrop against which a pressure campaign from Democratic elites gained momentum. The Biden campaign may have argued that the pressure to withdraw was merely a narrative created by a few pundits and media outlets, but his views did not reflect the reality of the opinions of rank-and-file Democrats, who really wanted him out of the race. The party leaders who urged Biden to withdraw were faced with a difficult decision, but based on the available evidence, their choice was well-informed.

Since Ms. Harris replaced Mr. Biden as the Democratic nominee, her campaign has been buzzing with enthusiasm the Biden campaign could only have dreamed of. Black and young voters, two key Democratic voting coalitions where Mr. Biden struggled, are more sympathetic to Ms. Harris. And this extends to the party as a whole: In early August, 6 in 10 Democrats said they were comfortable with the new candidate taking on Mr. Trump. And later that month, nearly 8 in 10 Democrats said they were more enthusiastic about voting than usual.

But Democratic Party leaders are not unaware of how quickly this could backfire on them. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Democratic Party elites quickly shifted to praising Biden’s presidency in order to minimize backlash and keep voters enthusiastic. This move continued at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), where Biden was warmly welcomed by many delegates holding “We Love Joe” signs. But it’s unclear whether this actually healed any rifts in their relationships. or Resentment toward Biden is an issue Democrats likely won’t address, instead focusing on a party that emerged from the Democratic National Convention reinvigorated and more eager to vote than Republicans, even as the race remains very close.

This outcome didn’t just come out of nowhere. There was good data showing it was predictable. But that data is only as useful as political analysts are willing to use it. Democratic elites used that data to make informed choices, seemingly abandoning conventional wisdom about the incumbent candidates and giving the Harris campaign an incredibly enthusiastic start.

But Democrats can no longer pat themselves on the back for making a wise political move. As Tuesday’s debate approaches, they must face their next big hurdle: Will putting Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump in the same room help or hurt their party’s candidate’s chances of generating enough enthusiasm and voter turnout to win a tight election? The answer could determine the outcome of the race for the White House.

This is an opinion and analysis article and the views of the author are not necessarily those of Scientific American.