CNN’s Harry Enten on Thursday shared several signs that he thinks are positive for Kamala Harris’ chances of winning next week’s election.
The senior political data reporter opened his case by pointing to the fact that the vice president is more popular than her opponent, Donald Trump, in terms of their respective net favorable ratings.
Since 1956, the candidate with a better net favorable rating has won on 16 occasions compared with just one victory for the less popular choice—Trump in 2016.
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“Of course remember, Hillary Clinton was quite unpopular herself,” Enten said. “But the bottom line is this: Kamala Harris has been consistently more popular in the polls than Donald Trump and she’s consistently had a higher net favorable rating than Donald Trump and normally, usually, the candidate who’s more popular goes on to win on Election Day.”
Democratic candidates’ performance in special elections in 2023 and 2024 also hold promise for Harris, Enten argued. On average, those candidates in state, legislative, and federal races “have surpassed Joe Biden’s 2020 margin by 2 points,” he said.
“Remember: Joe Biden won,” Enten said. “So the fact that these Democrats have been doing better than Joe Biden’s been doing is a good sign. Historically speaking, there is correlation between how folks do in the special elections—especially in this polarized era—and how folks do eventually in the presidential election.”
Enten pointed out that in 2020, Democrats’ performances in special elections suggested that Trump would do better on Election Day than polls suggesting at the time that Biden would win comfortably.
“This time around the special elections are suggesting the opposite,” Enten said. “That in fact… because Democrats have been exceeding Joe Biden’s margin, that maybe Democrats will actually do better than the polls have been indicating.”
On Wednesday, Enten had pointed to what he saw as positive signs for Trump. Among them, he highlighted polling showing that few people (28 percent) believe the country is on the right track and Biden’s 40 percent job approval rating.
Harris supporters can take some comfort, though, from the fact that those same metrics had been similarly bad for Democrats in 2022—when “the White House party did historically well in that midterm,” Enten said.
“A lot of Democrats believe that when voters vote, they win,” he said. “And with abortion being a much bigger issue this time around than… it was in 2022, [when] Democrats did historically well, perhaps Democrats will surprise a lot of folks and do historically well come next Tuesday.”
