The 2024 presidential election is a whirlwind of constant news updates, especially during the past few weeks surrounding the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. This year’s election truly accelerated following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
One of the biggest changes of this election was one that was likely hard to miss by not only Americans, but people around the world. The change, of course, was President Joe Biden’s decision to step down from the running and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee. Despite all of this, two of the most important things to look at regarding this upcoming election are how campaigns have shifted and how these changes have affected polls.
After the June 27 debate between President Biden and former President Trump, Biden began losing support, while Trump began steadily rising in the polls. According to the New York Times/Siena College poll, by July 3 Trump had gained 47 percent favor of those polled, while support for Biden had decreased to 44 percent. A huge factor for this change was likely that Democratic voters were losing enthusiasm for voting for President Biden’s second term.
Dr. Benjamin Toll, associate professor of political science, said that political scientists understand elections to be less based on ideology of the candidates and more on gaining excitement of voters, without providing the opposite reasons to do the same.
He talked more specifically about the current presidential election campaigns.
“When President Biden was the candidate, we saw that Republicans were very enthusiastic to vote for Donald Trump, and while Democrats do not like Trump, there was a sizable percentage not excited about going and voting for Biden a second time with his age,” said Dr. Toll. “Now that VP Harris is the presumptive nominee, the main thing holding excitement back from Democrats is no longer an issue. We have two fairly excited groups of voters and the winner will be determined by turnout.”
The introduction of Vice President Harris being the likely Democratic nominee has created an interesting, yet seemingly effective, campaign strategy. Many are familiar with the recent upsurge of campaign posts for Harris appearing on social media platforms including TikTok. According to a poll from Tufts’ Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, in November 2023, 51 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 who said they were likely to vote in the 2024 election also said that they were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate.
As Dr. Toll pointed out, the issue of the Democratic party prior to Biden was voter excitement, and since Harris announced her running, she has gained the lead in polls. Young voters do seem to be receiving Harris’ campaign strategy well and are becoming more enthusiastic about voting blue.
Mia Decker, senior history and secondary education major, said that she feels more enthusiastic to vote for Harris. She said that the campaign methods also seem to be working and show “how personable and down to earth (Harris) feels when she’s talking to people about the music she listens to or her favorite foods.”
Decker also found that the strategy of using things that made Harris “memeable” is working to gain support of young voters.
On the other hand, polls in favor of former President Trump have begun to decline following the beginning of Harris’ campaign. While prior to her running, Trump had been able to center much of his campaign on Biden’s old age, according to Dr. Toll, he now must take on the defensive side, but he is seeming to struggle to find a criticism of Harris that sticks.
That is not to say, however, that support for Trump has dwindled exponentially. In the current New York Times/Siena College poll, the national polling average shows 49 percent favor for Harris and 47 percent support for Trump. However, there is still much time left until the election, and a lot can change between now and then.
“The polls are showing a consistent lead for Harris in a lot of the necessary states for her to win, and she will get a bump after the DNC convention,” Dr. Toll said. “However, these polls are often within the margin of error which indicates we cannot be confident about these numbers being different.
“The Trump campaign really needs to continue working on finding something that will stick as a negative attack against Harris in order to get the excitement level back up for non-MAGA Republicans. The Harris campaign will not keep their momentum and could very easily get stuck if their primary appeal to moderate Democrats is they are not Trump. While we are nearing the beginning of the official campaign season the election will be a lot closer than if Biden had stayed in and I expect a lot of unique things to continue to happen in the next few months.”
There is still time to register to vote in Pennsylvania with the deadline being Oct. 21. To register, go to https://www.pa.gov/en/services/vote/register-to-vote.html.