In an instant, Vice President Kamala Harris has delivered a shot of adrenaline to the heart of the progressive body politic. A new survey of more than 5,000 members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee obtained by RealClearPolitics shows a newly energized Democratic base.
Enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential ticket more than doubled between the first debate, a historic low point for the left when President Biden’s diminished acuity was on full display in Atlanta less than a month ago, and the moment Harris replaced Biden, a swap accomplished in less than 72 hours.
“Those who were very enthusiastic spiked from 34% post-debate to 78% with Harris today, while those not enthusiastic at all plummeted from 33% to 5%,” said Ethan Jasny, a quantitative analyst with the organization. “Our PCCC membership generally tracks with Democratic voter sentiment broadly. This spike in enthusiasm is a key indicator in a year when base turnout could be determinative to who wins the White House.”
The depression on the left was palpable each week Biden refused to go quietly. Internal data from the progressive group quantifies that melancholy but also the subsequent bounce back. For instance, after Atlanta, 66% of PCCC members reported fears that Democrats would lose the White House.
Fast forward three weeks: The number of progressives afraid of losing the Oval Office drops to just 27%.
The White House will take notice of those numbers. The PCCC has pull inside the administration. Earlier this year, co-founder Adam Green was meeting with top Biden advisors urging them to have Biden read from a more progressive script. Talk less about Bidenomics, he told the West Wing, and more about taxing billionaires to pay for Social Security.
Biden took some of that advice during his State of the Union address with mixed results. For the vice president, now the presumed Democratic nominee, progressive populism is a more natural language. During her time in Congress, Harris was ranked the “most liberal” member of the Senate by the government transparency group GovTrack in 2019.
While the polling data will likely intrigue the Harris campaign, it will serve only as confirmation. They have relied on a different barometer: cash. The vice president brought in more than $81 million in donations in the first 24 hours after declaring her candidacy. As the conservative Washington Examiner observed, though, she had to violate her 2020 pledge to do it: She cashed checks from lobbyists and corporations.
Those concerns are secondary to what progressives see as an existential election to save democracy itself. The left sees November as a binary choice, and the progressive polling includes another result that will delight the Harris campaign. According to the survey, the number of Democratic voters considering a third-party alternative to Biden and Trump after the debate, 17%, plummeted to just 8% after Harris became the standard bearer of her party.
Republicans looking from the outside in at both the money and the positive polling have sounded the alarm. For their part, the Trump campaign insists any bump is just a result of “the Harris honeymoon.” When voters learn of her record, a policy portfolio to the left of Biden, GOP operatives insist, the electorate will adjust. Among progressives at least, they love it – and her.
“We expect this downward trend in third-party flirting to decrease as more voters learn about her,” said Jasny.
