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Barring an improbable wild-card choice, Harris versus Warren is likely to be a very close decision for Biden.
Joe Biden is expected to announce his running mate by August 1, maybe sooner. The assumption has been that he has to name a Black woman, to keep faith with the rising movement for racial justice. The smart money has been betting that the candidate for VP will be Kamala Harris.
Indeed, the Wall Street people around Biden have been urging him to name whoever will most help him get elected (presumably Harris). And if that should be the far more centrist Harris, it conveniently sidelines Warren, who would be a severe threat to the speculative Wall Street business model.
Now comes a new poll from Data for Progress and YouGov that blows that conventional wisdom to hell. It’s very good news for Warren. And the deeper you drill down, the better news it is.
The poll asked uncommitted voters and voters in battleground states a series of questions.
In battleground states, among independent voters Warren is ranked best on the economy by 22 percent of voters, compared to 7 percent for Harris. She also comes out on top in terms of who’d be best at dealing with the coronavirus.
Among independent voters, the poll also asked who would be best at taking over as president if something happened to Joe Biden. Warren also came in first with 13 percent to Harris’s 7 percent.
A companion poll also contained good news for Warren. She is the preferred candidate among lower-income voters and among the unemployed—the kind of voters who defected to Trump in 2016, and the sort of voters who often need to be motivated to turn out. Harris scores best among respondents earning over $150,000 a year.
The other interesting finding is that Harris scores better among voters who say they will definitely vote for Biden (25 to 15 for Warren) but Warren does better among voters who are less sure of whether they are backing Biden (21 to 5). In other words, Warren would help a lot more with undecided voters.
The total sample was too small to break down preferences by race. But other polls have shown that Warren outpolls Harris among Black voters.
Presumably, the Biden campaign does its own extensive internal polling. And one must assume that the campaign’s own polls show approximately what the public polls do.
So barring an improbable wild-card choice, Harris versus Warren is likely to be a very close decision for Biden. Weighing in Harris’s favor is the symbolic importance of naming a Black running mate. Weighing in Warren’s favor is the fact that Biden and Warren have a close personal relationship; and as I’ve reported previously, she is very much a player in the campaign and he is relying on her for major policy advice.
Until this latest round of polls, one might have assumed that the decisive factor in Harris’s favor was the most important one—that putting her on the ticket would help Biden get elected. Now that honor seems to go to Warren.
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