It was perhaps the buzziest finding in a New York Times-Siena College poll that had plenty of people talking Monday.
Analysis by Aaron Blake
Likely voters said 61 percent to 34 percent that they wanted a “major change” from President Joe Biden. And while a majority said that Trump represented “major change,” just 25 percent said Vice President Kamala Harris did. In fact, 55 percent said Harris didn’t even represent “minor change”; they said she was “more of the same.”
There you have it: Harris has failed to distance herself enough from Biden and has ceded the mantle of change in a change election, it seems.
“The ruse isn’t working,” declared an article by the conservative National Review. Others cast it as a giant warning sign for Harris.
Or, maybe, not so fast?
Just a day after the Times-Siena poll’s release, a new NPR-PBS News-Marist College poll presents a significant counterpoint.
It asked straight-up who voters thought most “represents change.” The leader: Vice President Kamala Harris, by a 52-46 margin.
That’s not a huge lead, but it certain calls into question many of the assumptions that people were making about the role of change in the 2024 election.
Change is a gauzy political concept, and the 2024 election presents unusual dynamics on that front. The change candidate is usually the nominee of the party that doesn’t currently hold the White House, but Trump is a former president. Harris, meanwhile, is the vice president, meaning she has had input on the Biden administration’s policies, but she hasn’t generally been, as George W. Bush put it, the decider.
And other data suggests she has or can get some distance from the Biden administration’s policies. A couple weeks back, I highlighted how a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed around 6 in 10 voters said she has had just “some” or “very little” influence on the administration’s economic and immigration policies.
It’s also worth emphasizing that change means different things to different people, and people are looking for different types of change.
Just because 61 percent of voters want “major change” and a majority think Trump represents “major change” doesn’t mean Trump’s version of “major change” is the version they want.
To use an extreme hypothetical: If former congressman George Santos (R-N.Y.) ran for president, you can bet he would score off the charts on the “major change” metric; that doesn’t mean people would be inclined to vote for that change.
Even earlier Times-Siena polling drives this point home. Last month, it asked voters across the four southern swing states whether Trump and Harris would “bring about the right kind of change.” While 49 percent of voters said that of Trump, 50 percent said it described Harris.
It’s worth asking what people think about when they think about change, and why these two polls seem to differ (at least somewhat) in their findings. The most notable finding in the new Times-Siena poll was that a majority viewed Harris as “more of the same” — not even “minor change.” How can another poll, then, show her leading on change?
It’s possible it has something to do with the historic potential nature of her candidacy, as the potential first Black female and Asian American president. That’s certainly a change.
It’s also notable that, while the Times-Siena poll asked about each candidate separately, the Marist poll asked voters to compare them directly. Perhaps people’s overall candidate preference seeped into the latter. Harris led by one point among registered voters and three points among voters who said they would definitely vote. But even then, her advantage on change was actually bigger than her overall margin. And we have the earlier Times-Siena polling suggesting this is more or less a wash.
Whatever the case, the conclusions drawn about the role of change in the 2024 election on Monday were probably hasty. This may still loom as a hurdle for Harris; the “more of the same” finding, in particular, should lead to some arched eyebrows inside Harris HQ.
But it’s way too early to christen Trump the change candidate that America demands.
