Kamala Harris seems overwhelmingly likely to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, having been given the blessing of both Bill Clinton and Biden himself. But does she actually have a better chance of beating Donald Trump than Biden did?
The betting markets think it’s a done deal: the below shows that other possibilities (Gavin Newsom, Whitmer etc) are nothing more than wild outside bets. So let’s focus on Harris.
Since the Trump-Biden debate last month, a handful of polls have shown that voters would be no more or less likely to vote Democrat if Harris replaced Biden as the presidential nominee. In all of these polls, Trump leads (albeit by a fairly small margin). In general, Harris polls better than other big-name Democrats and due to her position (selected for precisely this eventuality) she has been the clear bookies’ favourite for the nomination.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, Trump had opened up a three-point lead over Biden (they’d been neck and neck just before the debate). Last week, a YouGov poll put Trump five points ahead of Biden (52 – 47) but only three points (51 – 48) ahead of Harris. So losing the President would be an improvement: but not much of one. An Ipsos poll found that Harris would not not do any better or worse than Biden (both ‘statistically tied’ with Trump). More alarmingly for the Democrats, another YouGov poll found Biden losing to Trump by two points but Harris losing to him by five.
All of these results are within the (significant) margin of error in such polls – which are, anyway, not wildly reliable when testing out hypothetical leaders. The few undecided or wavering American voters will want to see Harris in action – and see her debate Trump – before they form a clear view about her merits. So all of these polls should be treated with a pinch of salt.
But the idea that dropping Biden will give the Democrats a better chance against Trump has weak support in the studies conducted so far. Whoever the nominee is – and it seems near certain to be Harris – the bookmakers give Trump a 67 per cent chance of taking the White House in November. So markets think that, no matter who the Democratic nominee, this race is very much Trump’s to lose.
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