Senator Kamala Harris’s addition to the Democratic ticket this week means the United States now has its two major-party tickets complete for the 2020 presidential elections.
According to recent YouGov polling on behalf of Yahoo News, Harris has the highest net positive favorability rating among registered voters of any candidate on either presidential ticket.
Looking just at the Biden-Harris Democratic reveals her net boost. At 49 percent, Biden boasts the highest percentage of favorable opinions of the four candidates. Taken with the 47 percent of voters who say they have an unfavorable opinion of him, however, that leaves him with a net positive score of +2 points.
Biden’s running mate Harris isn’t viewed quite as favorably as he is, but she also isn’t seen as unfavorably. By 46 percent to 43 percent, voters have a favorable view of Harris, earning her a net positive score of +3 points. At the time of polling, better than eight in 10 voters (89%) could form an opinion on Harris but 11 percent of voters could not.
The Biden-Harris ticket is still an idea, but President Trump and Vice President Pence are nearing the end of their first term, so the public presumably has more information by which to assess. Slightly more than two in five voters (42%) say they have a favorable opinion of Trump, but the president draws the highest unfavorability rating of any of the four candidates — 56 percent. This leaves him with a net negative score of -14 points.
Of the four candidates, Mike Pence earns the lowest percentage of favorable ratings from voters (40%). A bare majority of voters (52%) say they have an unfavorable opinion of Pence, earning him a net negative score of -12 points.
See the toplines and crosstabs from this week’s Yahoo News/YouGov Poll
Methodology: The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,529 U.S. adult residents interviewed online Aug. 14 and 15, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education, as well as 2016 presidential vote, registration status, geographic region and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S residents. The margin of error is approximately 3.4 percent.
Image: Getty