The polls are tightening as the presidential election races toward its final week, and it’s clear that successfully blocking Trump is going to hinge on turnout. But with the Harris campaign spending considerable time showcasing its big-name Republican endorsers and refusing to differentiate itself from the Biden administration when it comes to enabling Israel’s genocide in Palestine, many progressive and peace organizations are sounding the alarm.
They are worried the Harris-Walz strategy of veering to the right in hopes of chasing a few stray anti-Trump Republican votes is costing the Democrat among a key part of what standard political logic says should be a committed part of her base: self-identified progressive voters.
A fresh poll of that constituency carried out by Our Revolution, the organization spawned by Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, revealed significant skepticism about Harris and even outright opposition to her among some.
Our Revolution has reached over 2.7 million voters in key swing states thus far during the campaign in an effort to mobilize turnout for elections up and down the ballot. Its latest polling data surveyed almost 5,000 progressive voters – nearly three times the typical sample size in major national polls.
The group found that 1 out of every 7 progressive voters – some 15% – said they would not vote for Harris. Most indicated they plan to vote for a different candidate, while a small number said they will not vote at all. While they might have been persuaded earlier, it could be too late in the game to convince most of this group to cast a ballot for Harris.
Open to persuasion
But in the critical swing states, at least 10% of progressives said they are still holding out, waiting to see if Harris and the Democrats will try persuading them to vote for her. However, they’re hearing more from the GOP and Trump’s MAGA media machine than they are from the Democrats. Nearly a third have been contacted by Trump, while barely a quarter said the Harris campaign had reached out to them.
Our Revolution’s analysis said this gap signals an urgent need for outreach and a strong emphasis on the vice president’s labor and progressive credentials.
The survey also indicates widespread concerns about the campaign’s strategy of embracing right-wing Republican figures like militarist and neoconservative Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney, who spearheaded the George W. Bush administration’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.
“In a world of limited time and resources, Democrats should invest into their base, not in courting Republicans who are not coming over,” Our Revolution Executive Director Joseph Geevarghese said in a statement sent to People’s World on Wednesday.
Downgrading the issues that might mobilize more progressive votes in favor of spotlighting establishment Republicans who happen to be anti-Trump isn’t working. That point is supported by other polls released this week showing that only 3% of Trump’s 2020 supporters have flipped to Harris, while 4% of Biden’s 2020 voters have abandoned the Democrats and switched to Trump.
“We’ve seen time and again that this is not a winning strategy – wasting precious time chasing GOP endorsements that won’t translate into votes.”
Geervarghese said the Harris campaign’s approach lately could be alienating voters that would be solidly in her column under other circumstances.
“Our survey and reports from the field tell us that progressives are deeply concerned about the campaign’s focus on appeasing conservatives while ignoring the bread-and-butter issues that matter most to working families.
“Engaging and winning over this segment of voters will determine the outcome in swing states.”
Arms embargo for the win
According to the analysis done by the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s Policy Project, the elephant in the room that could change the game for Harris and help her break out from the dead-even race with Trump is Israel’s war in Gaza.
Looking at all the latest national polls, IMEU concludes that Harris’ refusal to break with Biden and endorse an arms embargo against Israel is costing her many of the critical votes she needs right now.
Bernie Sanders introduced an arms embargo resolution in the Senate in late September that would block the sale of more than $20 billion in offensive weaponry to the Netanyahu government. It will be voted on when Congress returns to Washington after the election.
Harris said again recently that she would like to see a ceasefire in Gaza, but like President Biden, she has not committed to taking the step necessary to make that happen – cutting off the flow of bombs and bullets for the Israeli military.
The lead that the Democratic nominee held over Trump in most of the swing states throughout late summer has evaporated. The Oct. 24 average of polls on fivethirtyeight.com shows Trump in a statistical tie with Harris in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Georgia and North Carolina, he leads.
The most recent nationwide poll on the arms embargo question found that 61% of Americans overall support halting U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. Among the voters Harris critically needs to beat Trump, the numbers were even higher: 77% of registered Democrats, 77% of those under 30, 75% of Black Americans, 66% of women, 64% of Latinos, and even 63% of self-identified “moderates.”
Those numbers were tabulated in June; given the escalation of Israel’s brutal campaign of extermination in Gaza and its expansion of the war to Lebanon and beyond since then, the total number of U.S. voters opposing arms for Netanyahu is likely even higher now.
IMEU has its own numbers, too, which make a solid case that supporting an arms embargo could be a winning issue for Harris.
A poll conducted together with YouGov in August found that swing-state Democrats and independents were more likely to support Harris if she committed to cutting off weapons for Israel.
In Pennsylvania, 34% said a weapons embargo pledge would draw them to Harris, while only 7% said they’d be less likely to vote for her. In Arizona, it was 35% and 5%, while in Georgia it was 39% and 5%.
IMEU’s findings match up with those of other institutions.
The Cato Institute (by no means a progressive outfit but a critic of blank-check support for Israel) found in surveys conducted in September that majorities of swing state voters back an embargo, including 61% in Wisconsin, 56% in Michigan, and 51% in Pennsylvania.
The same month, the Arab American Institute’s polling showed that committing to an embargo could increase Harris’ nationwide support by as much as five percentage points.
Chase the base
So, while high-paid consultants and political spin doctors may be telling the Harris campaign otherwise, progressives and opponents of the war in Gaza say the numbers are telling a story: Courting the old-time Republican elite and sticking by Netanyahu are not winning strategies.
They believe the Democratic Party needs to give up on the fantasy that an anti-Trump groundswell is going to magically appear among the Republican core in the closing days of this election. Instead, they argue, Harris needs to chase her own base.
“The Republican electorate isn’t following [Liz] Cheney’s lead in any meaningful numbers,” Our Revolution’s Geevarghese concluded. “This isn’t about rejecting Republican support outright,” he acknowledged, implying that Harris should of course welcome any vote, no matter where it comes from.
“Instead, it’s about understanding that our pathway to victory is rooted in the base. Democrats must lean into policies that matter to working people, such as raising the minimum wage, canceling student debt, and expanding healthcare.”
Those issues, he said, are the way to mobilize and inspire the progressive and working-class voters needed to win in November.
Even middle-of-the-road Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut sees the writing on the wall. He’s been warning his party for months that it ignores the needs of working-class Americans at its peril.
Late last year, Murphy said the Democratic Party “is not immune to the influence of corporate interests and Wall Street.” Murphy argued the only reason the Democrats overperformed in the last mid-term elections in 2022 was that they showed voters they “will take on entrenched corporate interests like fossil fuel companies and Big Pharma in order to deliver for Americans.” He could have added the military-industrial complex and all the elements which benefit from endless war.
Of course, it shouldn’t take all this calculating and surveying to convince a political leader that ending support for genocide and taking on corporate oligarchy are the right things to do. But this is U.S. imperialism, so if endless polls or focus groups are what it takes to convince the Democratic Party that its own political self-interest aligns with things like halting mass murder or standing up to Wall Street every now and then, so be it.
As with all op-eds and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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