On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX Founder and CEO Dritan Nesho discussed a new HarrisX/Forbes poll taken prior to President Biden dropping his 2024 bid, which shows voters' attitudes towards former President Trump's RNC speech, a head-to-head matchup between the ex-President and Vice President Kamala Harris, and more.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Harris X founder and CEO, Driton Esho. Driton, thanks so much for joining me.
00:12Thanks for having me, Brittany.
00:14I feel like the past few times, every time you and I have talked, it has been in the wake of unprecedented times. And that's where we are right now.
00:23President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race. But before he did so, Harris X, Forbes had a poll about President Trump and his RNC speech, as well as head-to-head matchups.
00:36So let's dive into there. What did voters think about Trump's RNC speech?
00:42So just to lay the scene a little bit, we were in the field together with Forbes after Trump's RNC speech.
00:50And we pulled this survey of over 2,500 respondents that was running over the weekend, about an hour before President Biden's announcement was made.
01:02Nevertheless, we have been tracking head-to-head matchups with President Biden and Kamala Harris.
01:09So we have a rich view into the state of the race as it stands.
01:15First off, close to eight in 10 voters watched Trump's RNC speech.
01:24Overall, voters were split whether or not the speech was unifying or divisive.
01:31And again, it was a long speech, and President Trump was less humble and a little bit less magnanimous than he was in the lead up to the speech post the assassination attempt.
01:44However, 56% had a favorable reception to it, which is positive for Trump.
01:52And it did the trick with Republican voters, which overwhelmingly supported the speech, as well as with independents.
02:04What we saw in the poll is that a net of about 11% of voters are more likely to vote for Trump after the speech than they were before.
02:1533% said that they're more likely to vote for Trump.
02:1822% said less likely.
02:20And for about 46%, a little bit less than half, said that it didn't make any impact.
02:26But when you dive deeper and you look at important segments of the electorate, with his base, with the GOP base, 61% said they were more likely to vote for Trump.
02:38And only 5% said less likely.
02:41When you look at independents, 28% said more likely, and 19% said less likely.
02:47Even 9% of Democrats, and we've talked about in the past that Trump has some cross-party pool with Democrats.
02:57He's not a conventional Republican candidate, let's put it that way.
03:01He resembles the Democrats of the 1980s, the economic populism that they had.
03:08So even 9% of Democrats said that they're more likely to vote for Trump, even though overwhelmingly 39% said less likely, and then 52% said it would have no impact.
03:19I think where President Trump did also well is with the pivotal battleground of suburban women.
03:27In our last poll together, we noted how a lot of the undecideds that we were seeing in the head-to-head matchup between Biden and Trump, how they over-indexed on being suburban women.
03:40And this is a historically Democratic lynchpin or voter group that now was undecided or has been undecided up until the race really changed yesterday.
03:55And 28% of suburban women said that they're more likely to vote for Trump, 21% said less likely, the rest said no impact.
04:03So there was a net positive effect there with suburban women as well.
04:08So all in all, he gets good marks for the speech.
04:13It was a speech with less rhetoric and less vitriol than Trump's historical speeches.
04:20And voters respond to that, right?
04:22Voters, as we've said again before, they want clear positions for the future, clear positions of the issues that matter to them, and really a vision of what America looks like under either of these candidates rather than continuing to re-litigate over and over again past occurrences.
04:42So all in all, he gets good grades for his speech, and that seems to have translated for him in the horse race as well.
04:50Let's talk about how that over 90-minute speech translated in the horse race, because we know that in a head-to-head matchup, former President Trump was beating Biden.
05:01But then, as you noted yesterday, we saw President Biden drop out of the 2024 race.
05:08I know Harris-Axe Forbes has some numbers about a head-to-head matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
05:17Talk about the numbers here.
05:19Absolutely.
05:20So the post-convention speech bump is real for both Trump and the Republicans.
05:30What we're seeing is that former President Trump has nearly doubled his lead both towards President Biden and towards Kamala Harris.
05:42So right now, where the state of the horse race stands is that Trump is ahead by eight points when you don't account for undecideds, when you run him against Biden.
05:56And then when you factor in for those undecideds and you ask them, which way are you leaning, he's ahead by six points.
06:02This is roughly two times the gap or the margin that we had several days ago or a few days ago when we last spoke together and we were last tracking the state of the horse race.
06:15With Harris, we see similar numbers.
06:19Trump is ahead by nine points compared to Harris when you don't factor in undecided voters.
06:26And when you push undecided voters, Harris does a little bit better with undecided voters than Biden did.
06:33So it's, again, Trump plus six.
06:36So she cuts the margin when you factor in undecideds, but still starting behind and still needing to make up a good amount of ground compared to President Trump.
06:52The other thing that's concerning for the Democrats is that the gap grows amongst likely voters to a double digit gap.
07:01When you look at likely voters, those who say that they are very likely to vote or significantly likely to vote in the upcoming election, the gap is plus 10 when you don't factor in undecideds.
07:19And then when you factor in undecideds, it narrows a little bit to plus eight.
07:25And these numbers are the same for both Biden and Kamala Harris.
07:30So the post-conventional speech and post-convention bump for Trump is real.
07:39And at least as of an hour before President Biden's announcement, neither Harris nor Biden are doing particularly well.
07:48They're both starting behind the eight ball when you match them up with Trump.
07:57Trump got the RNC bump, as you said, but does this shake up this last minute shake up less than a month from the DNC?
08:04Does that give Kamala Harris and Democrats a bump?
08:07Did this move energize the base?
08:09Because yesterday, Kamala Harris did see record breaking fundraising numbers.
08:16Yeah, I think that where the change matters is in terms of energizing the Democratic base and getting out the vote.
08:25And that's what you're seeing with the close to 50 million dollars raised within less than 24 hours after the announcement.
08:34Does it make a difference for independent voters, for undecided voters, for the state of the horse race?
08:41That's something that we're going to look at closely over the course of this week.
08:46What we know so far is that Vice President Harris's numbers have tracked those of President Biden for months now.
08:55And she has performed similarly, if not slightly worse than President Biden has.
09:04Both of their approvals are underwater, deeply underwater at 38 percent.
09:09It's exactly the same.
09:11However, Kamala does have higher approval amongst young Democrats, 18 to 34 year old, 62 percent compared to Biden's 55 percent.
09:21And then slightly better approval amongst Hispanic Democrats, 68 percent to 62 percent.
09:29She also seems to win undecideds by a better margin than Biden.
09:36And we see good traction for her amongst undecided independents, 59 percent to 41 percent against Trump.
09:46So she wins undecided independents when you ask them, which way will you break or lean?
09:51And very importantly, suburban women, which, as I mentioned, are a key battleground and a historically Democratic voter group.
10:00So amongst the undecideds, she does better.
10:03But again, she starts at a disadvantage compared to Trump.
10:08And her numbers are similar to Biden.
10:14So it might be a little bit of a case of too similar and too late.
10:19That she's too similar to President Biden or is seen as owning many of the same issue positions as he as he has.
10:29She only has about three months worth of runway, which is not a lot of time to build her up.
10:37There's a question mark in terms of the momentum that she will get with the Democratic base.
10:43And our polling indicates clearly that her selection alleviates concerns amongst the Democratic base.
10:52And that the level of concern among for their candidate drops from the mid 30s to roughly the mid 20s between Biden and Kamala.
11:03But we will see how this poll polling matures and stabilizes over the next few days and see whether or not Kamala can get real traction compared to Trump.
11:15Or, as I said, you know, is it a case of too similar, too late?
11:20So as we know, President Biden's major problem, the thing that really made him leave the race was his age and mental acuity.
11:28Voters did not feel good about that.
11:31Kamala Harris is 20 years younger than him, so she doesn't inherit that problem.
11:35But what you're saying is she inherits the problems of the administration, like the record on immigration and like the economy.
11:44So she has that wrath around her. Republicans can say, hey, this is essentially Biden Jr.
11:51Absolutely. And you notice that within minutes of the announcement, a pro-Trump super PAC had an attack ad out on Kamala Harris that underscored this specific point.
12:05And that said that she owns all of the policy decisions of the administration and some of the big failures like immigration.
12:13You also have to bear in mind that in a previous poll that we conducted together about a month ago, we asked voters of their expectation.
12:21Did they think that Biden would be able to complete a second term?
12:26And if not, when did they expect Kamala Harris to step in and take over for Biden?
12:32A majority expected her to step in and take over for Biden when the first year of the second Biden administration.
12:40And then the numbers grew significantly from their own. So a lot of voters were also factoring in the fact that a vote for Biden was to a very large extent also a vote for Kamala Harris.
12:54And, you know, based on what I'm seeing right now, the fundamentals are stacked up at a disadvantage for her.
13:05We'll see whether or not this momentum after the announcement changes anything in a sustained basis or not.
13:12But based on the numbers that we have, it's too early to tell.
13:16And what we're seeing clearly is significant traction from Trump and the Republican, which is really also translating in the generic ballot and downrange.
13:29The GOP in our poll since the convention finished has also doubled its lead in the generic ballot from plus two to now plus five.
13:41This is a question that asks, who are you willing to vote for in the upcoming election for as your congressional representative?
13:51And this validates in a great degree why Biden decided to step aside, because he was not able to help the rank and file downrange.
14:03And in fact, to make the argument that he was hurting many Democrats that are running in competitive, in competitive downrange elections.
14:14So, again, the picture as we as we're seeing it right now is that the post-RNC bump is real.
14:22Kamala seems to have some momentum. Can she translate it into better polling numbers? Yet to be seen.
14:28So Democrats in those battleground states, I mean, they were valid for their concerns based on this poll that a Biden on top of the ticket would affect them in their congressional races and their Senate races.
14:42Yes, essentially left unchanged. The polling showed that Republicans have gained in the generic ballot.
14:52This number is much more difficult to move than the presidential horse race number, because it reflects the opinions of voters across many different districts and jurisdictions on a very wide array of potential candidates.
15:07And the fact that the generic ballot number also doubled after the Republican National Convention tells you that the Republicans landed several messaging wins with the electorate at large during that convention that don't just have to do with President Trump, but they translate downrange to the Republican rank and file.
15:31This was a monumental shakeup as a pollster. Does everything we know about the election right now, has that been blown up or are there just a few unanswered questions? I mean, what are you looking out for?
15:45Well, I think that we will have a clear picture within the next week and candidates matter in an election setting and how Vice President Harris approaches the next two to three weeks will determine in large part how competitive she is as a candidate and whether or not the messaging that she has to offer, the policies that she has to offer,
16:14translate for the election. We've spoken in the past that the voters in the middle, the voters that will decide this election, these are issue-based voters. These are voters that by and large don't like any of the choices that are put in front of them.
16:29They didn't want Trump to run again. They didn't want Biden to run again. Over two-thirds of voters on both sides of the equation and they haven't been particularly impressed by Vice President Harris, whose numbers, as I mentioned, have slightly trailed those of President Biden's up to date.
16:51So a lot is to be seen how she introduces herself or reintroduces herself and whether or not she can build a compelling choice for this election and a compelling vision of the future under a Harris administration.
17:08I think that there's a lot yet to be seen, but this polling gives us an indication of her starting point and the fact that her starting point is behind Trump by a pretty hefty margin, at least as the horse race stood at noon yesterday.
17:28Dhritan, as you noted, there is a lot that remains to be seen, but as more numbers come out from you, I am so excited to break them down and continue the conversation. Dhritan Nesho, thank you so much.
17:42See you soon and everyone check in with Forbes for our latest numbers as we go through this week.
17:58Transcribed by https://otter.ai