Democrats are energized, but can Harris win?

Democrats:- Since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris has quickly consolidated power and energized a campaign that many Democrat leaders had worried about.

Meeting no meaningful challenge from other Democrats, Harris secured votes to be the nominee from 4,567 delegates — 99% of the participating delegates — in a virtual call earlier this month.

The campaign, together with the Democratic National Committee and other joint fundraising committees, raised a historic $310 million in July, dwarfing the tally for the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, in the same month. More than $200 million of Harris’ haul came during the first week of her candidacy.

“We’ve seen a groundswell of support. The type of grassroots support -- organizing and fundraising — that wins elections,” said Kevin Munoz, a Harris campaign spokesperson.

The campaign’s optimism is reflected in the polls. After another series of very strong surveys in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Harris now has a 55% chance of winning, said election data analyst Nate Silver.

Silver gave Biden a 27% chance of winning when he was the Democratic nominee.

However, the Trump campaign insists that the fundamentals of the race have not changed.

“The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,” Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo.

Harris’ “honeymoon” will soon end, he said. “While the public polls may change in the short run and she may consolidate a bit more of the Democrat base, Harris can’t change who she is or what she’s done.”

While the fundamentals have not changed, they were “being obstructed by concern about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“Donald Trump is as unpopular as ever, and now he has an opponent who is much more appealing,” he told VOA. “Democrats are back in the game.”

Battleground states

In the United States, elections are not determined by winning the popular vote but by winning Electoral College votes, which are allotted to each state roughly in proportion to its population. In all but two states, the candidate getting the most votes in a state gets all its Electoral College votes.

Harris’ team has been investing heavily in campaign infrastructure, opening offices, recruiting new staff and enlisting tens of thousands of volunteers in what is considered battleground or swing states that could help determine the 2024 electoral victory — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.

In 2020, those seven states were won by a margin of 3 percentage points or less. Currently, Harris is polling slightly ahead but still within the polling margin of error in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump is ahead in Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina. He is leading by more than the polling error margin in Georgia.

Both Trump and Harris will be hard-pressed to win without Pennsylvania, said Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. Pennsylvania has 19 Electoral College votes, the most of any swing state.

“They can each afford to lose it but would have to run the table in most, if not all, of the other swing states, which include Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and North Carolina,” Roginsky told VOA.

A candidate needs to secure at least 270 out of the 538 electoral college votes to win. Ultimately, it comes down to winning more Electoral College votes than your opponent, however you make that math happen, said Kelly Dittmar, associate professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden.

“Winning swing states with a high number of Electoral College votes, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania — both states where Democrats have recently won statewide and where Biden won in 2020 — is one solid path toward [Harris] achieving success,” Dittmar told VOA.

In Michigan, a state with a large population of Arab Americans, Harris will need to convince the more than 100,000 people, angry over the Biden administration's staunch support for Israel, who wrote “uncommitted” on their primary ballots. Thirty members of the so-called Uncommitted National Movement have earned delegate spots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week.

Harris also inherits opposition from the “Abandon Biden” movement over the same cause.

“We are saying do not vote for those who are supporting or endorsing what's happening currently in Gaza,” Hudhayfah Ahmad, the campaign’s media representative, told VOA. “Quite frankly, that applies to both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.”

Inflation and immigration

While Democrats’ enthusiasm has soared, Harris must deal with voters’ frustration over high inflation, a problem that Republicans blame on the Biden-Harris administration.

Trump previously held a commanding lead among voters on key economic issues, with various polls showing Americans think they will be better off financially under Trump than Biden.

However, a survey conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business published this week found that 41% trust Trump to be better at handling the economy, while 42% believe Harris would be better – a figure up seven points from Biden's numbers in July.

Immigration is another weak spot for Biden, and by extension Harris. The Trump campaign has sought to paint her as the nation’s “Border Czar” responsible for the “invasion” of Central American migrants crossing into the United States from the border with Mexico.

Her campaign is now aiming to present their candidate as someone who is pro-immigration but tough in enforcing the law, by highlighting Harris’ life story as the daughter of immigrants and experience as a former attorney general of California, the state with the largest number and share of immigrants.

“I was attorney general of a border state,” Harris said at a recent rally in Arizona, a swing state where immigration is a top concern for voters. “I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and human traffickers. I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won.”

Will she win in November?

In such a tight race in an ever-changing political environment, analysts have avoided saying that any candidate’s path to victory is clear.

The Harris campaign said they believe this will be a very close election, decided by a very small number of voters, in just a few states.

Even with this momentum, said Harris campaign spokesperson Munoz, “we are the underdogs in this race, and we’re taking nothing for granted.” VOA/SP