Vice President Kamala Harris’ approval rating remains low as questions continue about the possibility of Democrats replacing President Joe Biden as their 2024 presidential nominee.
Recent polls show that fewer Americans disapprove of Harris than they disapprove of Biden but the vice president’s ratings are still in unfavorable territory as the campaign begins in earnest.
Biden’s age and cognitive abilities have recently come under renewed scrutiny since the publication of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report that raised questions about his memory.
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Hur’s report said that criminal charges were not warranted against Biden following a probe of his handling of classified documents but described the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
The president was heavily criticized by op-eds in some left-leaning news outlets, while 48 percent of respondents to a Monmouth University poll said they believed it was likely that Biden could be replaced on the November ballot.
On February 13, The Atlantic published an op-ed by Damon Linker, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, arguing that Democrats “should pick a new presidential candidate now.”
Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan progressive Democrat, was recently criticized for urging voters to withhold support for Biden in her state’s primary election. However, Tlaib did not call for Biden to be replaced by an alternative candidate.
As vice president, Harris might seem an obvious choice to step in if Biden were to bow out of the race but her low approval rating could prove an issue.
Analysis from poll tracker FiveThirtyEight found that the vice president’s approval rating stood at just 36.7 percent as of February 18, while 51.9 percent of Americans disapproved of her.
FiveThirtyEight’s analysis, which assesses polls from a wide variety of reputable pollsters and its own system of pollster ratings, showed that President Biden’s disapproval is higher than his vice president’s.
Biden had an approval rating of 39.4 percent as of February 18, while 55.9 percent of Americans disapproved of the job the president is doing.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment.
A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll conducted among 1,500 registered voters on February 10 found that Harris’ approval rating was 35 percent compared to 44 percent who disapproved.
The same poll found that Biden enjoyed 38 percent approval and that 50 percent of respondents disapproved of the job he’s doing.
Polling on Harris’ approval is more limited than Biden’s but a large recent survey from Lord Ashcroft Polls found that Harris’ approval was just 36 percent compared to 52 percent who disapproved of her.
Biden enjoyed an approval rating of 37 percent in the same poll, while 58 percent disapproved of him.
The Lord Ashcroft poll was conducted among 10,192 U.S. adults from January 17 to 18. The pollster is funded by international businessman and politician Michael Ashcroft, a former deputy chair of the U.K.’s Conservative Party. He is a major independent public pollster in the U.K.
Political scientists who spoke to Newsweek last week suggested it was impossible for the Democratic Party to replace Biden at this stage because of the nature of the primary process. However, the president could choose to step aside and allow the Democratic National Convention to pick a different candidate when it meets in Chicago in August—a move that could spark chaos.
“Throwing the Democrat National Convention into a tailspin, with no obvious heir apparent, doesn’t seem like an obviously better choice than the status quo,” Thomas Gift, founding director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, told Newsweek.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.