Voters question Harris’ pitch as agent of change: POLL

Vice President Kamala Harris’s position as a change agent is a headwind unknown Biden administration: While three-quarters of Americans want President Joe Biden to take a new direction in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, most don’t think he would.

Harris also follows the former president Donald Trump for providing enough detail about the policies he would pursue as president. But the gaps in vision aren’t just his: More than half say neither Trump nor Harris have done a good job of expressing new ideas for the country’s future.

Poll, conducted by ABC News Langer Research Associates with field work Ipsosfinds that the public by a wide 74%-22% would prefer Harris to go in a new direction as president rather than continue the policies of the Biden administration. Most Democrats say so, too.

But that’s not what most people expect: 65% think Harris would mostly continue with Biden’s policies, while 33% say he would chart a new path.

See PDF for full results.

The desire for change reflects how the Biden administration continues to have very negative assessments of its economic performance. 44 percent of Americans say they are not doing as well financially as they did when he took office, roughly where he has been since early 2023 and tied for the most polls since 1986. Few, 18%, say they are better. , although it was higher than January’s 13%.

Harris’s weakness was around subject matter emphasized this week: Asked on ABC’s “The View” what Biden would do during his presidency, he initially replied, “There’s nothing that comes to mind.” (He later said he would appoint a Republican to his cabinet.) Trump’s campaign seized on that comment.

Trump, for his part, does better on expectations than on preferences, although there is still a gap between the two. 64 percent believe that he would continue with the policies of his previous administration. More than half would prefer a new direction, but 53% say so, compared to 74% who want to move away from Harris Biden’s path.

Another way to evaluate these results is to see how well people match what they want and what they expect from candidates. Trump does better: for 54%, what they want and what they expect from him are the same, be it continuity or change. Fewer, 48%, align themselves with Harris.

The big difference is that 32% both think Trump will continue with his past policies and want him to do so, while only 18% think Harris will continue with Biden’s policies and want him to do so.

The differences on these questions are significant, and once again mark the decline of Biden’s popularity. Even among Democrats, only 36% want to see Harris continue the policies of the Biden administration. 63% of Democrats want to see Harris take a new direction.

Across the aisle, these numbers are reversed: 65% of Republicans want Trump to continue the policies of his previous administration, and a third want a new direction. Independents are also twice as likely to want Trump to continue his policies than Harris to continue with Biden.

Policies and ideas

When it comes to defining their policies and expressing their vision, the candidates do not shine. Only 37% say Harris has done enough to detail the policies he would pursue as president; more, though only 42%, say the same about Trump. It’s a five percentage point advantage for Trump, but narrow given his long dominance in the national spotlight.

In terms of outlook, there is almost no difference overall: the public 53%-46% rate Harris negatively rather than positively for having new ideas for the country’s future. It’s a similar 54%-44% for Trump.

Trump fares worse than Harris on this measure of sentiment intensity. 39 percent say he has done an absolutely poor job with new ideas, compared to 31 percent who say the same about Harris. Across the intensity spectrum, far fewer say both have done a great job in the new ideas department: 20% for Trump, 18% for Harris.

Political allegiance is a strong factor here, evidence of how people evaluate candidates through a partisan filter. Ninety-one percent of Democrats rate Harris positively on new ideas; 10% of Republicans agree. These numbers flip to Trump: 89% positive for Republicans, 8% for Democrats.

Independents rate the candidates essentially equally on new ideas. When it comes to defining their policies, however, Trump does 7 points better than Harris among independents (though not quite as well, 40% vs. 33%), contributing to his 5-point overall lead in this metric.

Methodology

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel® from October 4-8, 2024, in English and Spanish, among a national random sample of 2,631 adults. The partisan split is 29%-29%-30%, Democrats-Republicans-Independents. The results have a margin sampling error plus or minus 2 percentage points, including the design effect, for the entire sample. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in surveys.

The survey was conducted by ABC News Langer Research Associateswith sampling and data collection by Ipsos. See details on ABC News’ survey methodology here.