Democrats Are Enthusiastic About Harris—but Don’t Tell the Media
Polls, polls, polls. Way too many polls, way too much media coverage and obsession with polls. Right? Well ... it depends on which ones. Because there is one set of polls that isn't driving much press coverage at all, and I find it interesting and telling.
Since the day Kamala Harris got in the race, she has consistently led Donald Trump on the question of voter enthusiasm. She led by a lot when she first entered the race in late July because Democratic enthusiasm for Joe Biden was at a serious low, and because the mere fact that the Democrats made a change—and that she came out of gate with such swagger—made rank-and-file Democrats feel such a burst of relief.
That carried on through the Democratic convention. A Gallup poll from late August (right after the convention) showed Democratic enthusiasm at 79 percent—one point short of the all-time high, which was during the 2008 Barack Obama–Hillary Clinton primary—and Republican enthusiasm at just 64 percent.
Since then, Republican enthusiasm has gotten closer to Democratic levels, but in the several recent polls I looked over this week, Democratic enthusiasm was still higher. This Gallup result from October 6 was representative. When asked if they were more enthusiastic this time around than in previous elections, 80 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 75 percent of Republicans.
So Democratic voters are in fact enthusiastic about Harris—a shade more enthusiastic than Republican voters are about Trump. But ask yourself: Is that reality reflected in the media coverage you see? My own answer to that question is a thundering no.
This is admittedly unscientific, and undoubtedly, I've missed some stuff. But what I mostly see and hear and read is this: Trump voters love their man (and many do, of course). Black and Hispanic voters are tepid on Harris. She hasn't "made the sale." Black men in particular are skeptical. She's in a danger zone.
Some of this is true and borne out by polling, and of course it's necessary to report on it. But meanwhile, where, in the media narrative, is the Democratic enthusiasm? Where are the voters who admire and even adore Harris and can't wait to go pull the lever for her?
They're mostly invisible.
They're mostly invisible because they are chiefly based in two groups, neither of whom is of the remotest interest to the press. The first is college-educated people, mostly white but of all races. These people's votes count just like anybody else's, but to political journalism, they don't count because they're not real Americans. Real Americans eat carb-heavy breakfasts in diners in Altoona and Saginaw. They don't eat tofu scrambles in Bucks County or Buckhead. They didn't attend private colleges, they don't go to gyms, they don't drive hybrids, they don't drink lattes.
So as far as political journalism is concerned, these voters don't exist. It's all a bit paradoxical and frankly a little twisted, since virtually all journalists are members of the tofu-scramble class, but that only accentuates the matter, because journalists feel a collective guilt about all the above that makes them dismiss voters like them as uninteresting.
And sure, there's a dog-bites-man element to those voters backing a candidate such as Harris. But I submit there are still stories there. Are these voters as enthusiastic as they were in 2020? Are they out there door knocking and phone banking? Are donations coming in at high levels or low from those zip codes?
The other invisible group—and this is a far worse error—is Black women. If you Google something like "Black women Harris enthusiasm," you'll see a bushelful of s from late July, when she first got in the race, when the #WinWithBlackWomen network famously enlisted 400,000 Black women to join a Zoom meeting the very night that Harris became the presumptive nominee. I saw a number of stories from that period.
But since the heat of the campaign post–Labor Day? I don't see much. In fact, the first page of search results for the search term mentioned above includes a bunch of s from July, a couple from August—and exactly one from September. Was it in ? Was it an Associated Press or Reuters piece?
No. It was in the Black community newspaper in Atlanta.
Black women, as usual, are invisible to the political media. Oh, Oprah's town hall made news. But generally speaking, if you're a Black woman in this country and you want a bunch of microphones shoved in front of your face at election time, you'll be way ahead of the game if you're willing to say that Kamala Harris just doesn't speak to you for some reason and Donald Trump is a savvy businessman.
Yes, again, there's a dog-bites-man aspect to stories about Black women backing Harris. But isn't there also a dog-bites-man quality to white rural voters backing Trump? Of course there is. And yet, I'm still seeing those stories, still seeing those people interviewed on cable news. Why? Because the political media (reporters, but I think mostly editors at mainstream outlets) are terrified of being seen as liberal. Of missing the Trump story, of opening themselves up to accusations of out-of-touch elitism.
The right is so effective at lobbing this grenade that mainstream outlets have collectively come to sense that there is a professional price to be paid for ignoring Trump voters. But there is no professional price to be paid for ignoring Black women. They're ignored all the time anyway.
Is Harris in real trouble among Black voters? Maybe. Maybe not. This week's NBC poll has her beating Trump 84–8 among Black respondents in battleground states. That's up from 82–12 a month ago (Trump lost of his Black support! Isn't that a story?), and it's on par with Biden's 2020 national margin among Black voters over Trump of 87–12, or indeed will be better than Biden's margin, if Trump stays in single digits.
It's a close race. There's a lot to worry about. I worry every day, and you should too. But you should also remember this: Democratic voter enthusiasm is high—higher than Republican enthusiasm, according to numerous polls. From the way this race is being covered, you'd never know that. Harris's enthusiastic voters, especially Black women, aren't "real Americans." They're being erased from the narrative. By the "liberal" media.
