With Harris in the race, ‘double haters’ are on the decline: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Policy Deska nightly newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News politics team on the campaign, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki explains how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump’s favorability ratings are improving. Plus, we have a preview of tonight’s primary in battleground Arizona.

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With Harris in the race, ‘double haters’ are on the decline

By Steve Kornacki

Where did all the “double haters” go?

It would be too much to say that either is popular, but both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are noticeably less unpopular since Harris’s emergence as the presumptive Democratic standard-bearer.

In three major polls released last week, Trump posted favorability ratings that were among the highest he has ever achieved. And Harris achieved a significant improvement over her own previous favorability ratings — and the consistently dismal levels that President Joe Biden had been reaching.

Trump’s 47% favorable mark represents the best he’s ever done in the current iteration of the Wall Street Journal poll, which was released in late 2021. Forty-seven percent is also his new upper limit of favorability in the New York Times /Siena poll. And while it doesn’t seem like much, Trump’s 36% rating in the ABC News/Ipsos poll is actually the second-best he’s ever received in that poll dating back to the 2020 campaign.

Trump’s new numbers also come after he survived an assassination attempt and was officially nominated at the Republican National Convention.

Meanwhile, Harris’ improvement over Biden in terms of favorability is dramatic, with jumps of 9 to 13 points in these three polls compared to where Biden was running. The same goes for jumps from your own previous levels. So far, the Wall Street Journal survey has tested her favorable score six times since the beginning of 2023, with 35% being her highest level – that is, 11 points below the level where she is now.

Crosstabulations from the New York Times/Siena poll show two demographic groups where Harris’s gains over Biden are most apparent: Hispanic voters (a 9-point increase in favorability) and voters under 30 (a 13-point increase). . Clearly, with Biden as the candidate, there has been a gap between what Democrats consider some of their core constituencies.

These gains for both Trump and Harris, if they hold or even expand, will shake up what had been an important variable in the 2024 presidential race: the “double haters,” voters divided between their dislike for candidates from both major parties. .

They had been a huge block, at least until now. A survey from June Pew Research Center found that 25% of voters were “double haters.” This drew parallels to the 2016 Trump-Hillary Clinton campaign, when 18% of voters in polls said they disliked both candidates. Trump outperformed the “double haters” by 17 points in that election. How they would break this time had long seemed to be the potentially decisive question.

But now? Well, they still exist, certainly. The New York Times/Siena poll reveals that “double haters” represent 8% of the electorate, down from 20% before Harris entered and well below 2016 levels. But that number is still higher than in the 2020 elections, when just 3% of voters told investigators they didn’t like either Trump or Biden.

Of course, the “double haters” may not have finished sorting out their feelings yet. The fact that there was such a significant change is impressive in itself, considering how so many elements of this campaign seemed absolutely frozen for so long. It turns out that not as many opinions were fixed as the majority supposed.

Trump’s influence looms over Arizona primaries

By Adam Wollner

After a month-long break, we return to the primary season tonight in the critical battleground state of Arizona, where Donald Trump’s influence is growing.

Acolytes of the Republican presidential candidate appear at every Arizona poll, including several candidates who lost key statewide races in 2022 on platforms centered on election denial. Some continued to cast doubt on the results of the last presidential race, as well as their own defeats.

Courtesy of NBC News’ Alex Tabet and Adam Edelman, here are some of the top races to watch. Voting closes at 10pm ET.

Main confrontations in the Senate: Tonight’s primary is expected to officially set up a matchup between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, which could help determine which party controls the Senate.

Lake, who has refused to accept her defeat in the 2022 governor’s race and questioned Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, has already been focused on the general election for months, largely ignoring her two GOP primary opponents. While Lake has the support of Trump and Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, she still faces skepticism from some party members that she is too far to the right to win in November. Still, tonight, the question for Lake is how big her margin of victory will be.

Gallego, a Phoenix-area congressman and Iraq War veteran, is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Republican Party fight in the 8th District: Arizona is hosting one of the most bitter Republican House primaries of the cycle, with a crowded field vying for the seat vacated by Rep. Debbie Lesko.

The two leading candidates are election deniers who unsuccessfully sought statewide office in 2022: Blake Masters, who lost his Senate bid to Democrat Mark Kelly, and Abe Hamadeh, who lost his campaign for attorney general by fewer than 300 votes ( an election that Hamadeh has also claimed, without evidence, was stolen).

The two spent much of the race launching personal attacks at each other. After Trump endorsed both candidacies two years ago, he initially supported Hamadeh. But in an unusual move, Trump offered his support to both candidates over the weekend.

Other candidates include: State Sen. Anthony Kern, who was among 18 Trump aides and allies indicted in April by an Arizona grand jury for his role in an effort to overturn the 2020 state election results; state House Speaker Ben Toma, who was at the center of an unsuccessful Republican Party effort to block the repeal of the state’s near-total ban on abortion in 1864; and former Rep. Trent Franks, who served in Congress for 16 years before abruptly resigning in 2017, acknowledging at the time that he had discussed surrogacy with two former staffers.

The winner of the primary will be a heavy favorite for the seat in the fall.

Maricopa County Recorder: Stephen Richer, one of the most outspoken Republican defenders of electoral processes in the country, is simultaneously fighting to keep his job and preparing to manage voting this fall in Maricopa, the largest county in battleground Arizona.

The Maricopa County Recorder’s administrative role is broad, including processing deeds and overseeing the election file and other parts of elections. Since 2020, this has drawn the most attention, leaving Richer to face a series of attacks from Trump-inspired Republicans.

Richer’s main opponent is state Rep. Justin Heap, who has avoided questions about whether the 2020 election was fraudulent. But he has been endorsed by many of Arizona’s most prominent election deniers, including Lake.

Read more about how Maricopa County election officials are trying to crack down on election conspiracy theories →

That’s all from the Department of Politics for now. If you have feedback – like or dislike – send us an email at newsletter@nbcuni.com

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