The challenges Kamala Harris faced in her election campaign’s final weeks, including strategic missteps, policy shifts, and media interactions as Election Day approaches.
Looking back on the final weeks leading up to Election Day, one of Kamala Harris’s biggest problems was that voters felt they didn’t truly know who she was or what she stood for. But the more Harris put herself out there, the less voters liked what they saw.
According to polling averages, the high-water mark for Harris’s campaign was in the days following her only debate against Donald Trump, when she opened up a two-point national lead in the RealClearPolitics average by mid-September. That lead slowly evaporated over the following six weeks, and Trump now holds a slight edge on Election Day eve.
Looking back, there is a clear correlation between Harris’s efforts to define herself to voters and her sinking polling numbers. Far from reassuring voters, the vice president’s media tour, where she attempted to define something of a policy agenda, led to declining support.
Leading up to the debate, Harris was already under intense scrutiny for her unwillingness to answer questions off-script. After Biden was forced out of the race in July, Harris became the Democrat nominee in glaringly un-democratic fashion, without a single Democrat primary voter casting a ballot for her.
Harris subsequently refused to give interviews and rarely appeared in public outside of campaign rallies. It took her over 50 days to add an “issues” page to her campaign website.
During the debate, Harris struggled when pressed on actual policy. But with an assist from the debate moderators, she was able to avoid the disaster moment that befell Biden just a few weeks prior. The media predictably shouted her praises, declaring her the unquestioned winner even as several voter panels indicated a belief among everyday Americans that Trump had won.
Before and after the debate, the Harris campaign leaned into a “vibes”-based strategy.
