Opinion Today: Which campaign will win the race to define Kamala Harris?

The vice president is leading in national polls, but that isn't the whole story.

View in browser|nytimes.com September 24, 2024 Illustration by The New York Times; source photograph by Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse, via Getty Images By Kristen Soltis Anderson Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion's series of focus groups. The battle to win over the remaining undecided voters in the 2024 presidential election looks as though it's coming down to which campaign can successfully define Kamala Harris; look no further than the ads you see on TV in battleground states. This may also explain why polls in battleground states can paint a very different picture of the race from that of national polls. In the past several days, we've had a flurry of national polls with mostly good news for the Harris campaign, only to be followed by Monday's release of New York Times/Siena College polls of three Sun Belt battleground states — Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina — that presented a much more favorable view of the race for Donald Trump. I've been on the road recently in the Phoenix area and took a moment to catch Sunday's game between the Detroit Lions and the Arizona Cardinals on TV. Arizona voters are seeing their airwaves blanketed by political ads, and I was struck by the difference in approach from the Trump and Harris teams. Spots aired by Mr. Trump and his allies were largely negative ads about Ms. Harris, highlighting, in particular, her past position supporting the provision of gender transition surgery to incarcerated people. Meanwhile, ads from the Harris camp varied: While some hit Mr. Trump, particularly on the issue of abortion, more than a few were also purely positive ads, including highlighting her comment, during their debate, about her time as a prosecutor who "never asked a victim or a witness, 'Are you a Republican or a Democrat?'" The ads were representative of the mix of messaging that battleground state viewers have been seeing since on-air spending for the two campaigns ramped up in recent weeks. The Wesleyan Media Project estimated that the Trump team has spent almost zero on ads that only promote him in a positive light, while around a quarter of Harris ads are positive. Why are both campaigns spending so much time talking about Ms. Harris? Because while most voters know how they feel about Mr. Trump, views of her remain very fluid. Take the NBC News poll that came out this past weekend, showing Ms. Harris with a five-point advantage over Mr. Trump among registered voters. It also showed that since July, views on her swung significantly from deep unpopularity (a net 18 percentage points unfavorable) to a net positive (net three points favorable). NBC's Mark Murray noted only three other times a presidential candidate's favorability has swung so significantly in such a short period, including George W. Bush's favorability immediately after Sept. 11. Murray wrote, "By contrast, Trump's net rating in the new poll is essentially unchanged from July — 40 percent positive, 53 percent negative (–13)." Or take, for instance, the Times/Siena poll of Arizona, which showed Mr. Trump with a five-point lead over Ms. Harris among likely voters. In August the same survey showed her with a five-point lead and a much stronger brand image for her than for him. Since then, his favorability in Arizona has only slightly changed, while hers seems to have swung from a net two-point positive image to a net seven-point negative. Views of Mr. Trump aren't moving; views of Ms. Harris still are. That's what I think is driving much of the movement in polls of this race. If you've been a longtime resident of the Cleveland suburbs, you probably got blasted with presidential campaign ads in 2012. Today you probably can't escape ads from the Bernie Moreno-Sherrod Brown Senate race, but you're seeing close to nothing on air from the presidential race. The reason is pretty straightforward: Ohio isn't in play. Outside the battlegrounds, Ms. Harris's image is probably being shaped by media coverage or, at the very least, sources apart from the Trump campaign. But in the states where campaigns are spending big on airtime, voters are hearing a lot about her — positive and negative — in a way that voters in other states might not be. Ms. Harris certainly has a path to victory. She could lose all three Sun Belt states in the Times/Siena poll (in 2020, Joe Biden won Arizona and Georgia; Mr. Trump won North Carolina) and still emerge victorious. Her performance in the Industrial Midwest battlegrounds remains stronger, including her slight edge over Mr. Trump in The Times's polling average of the almost-must-win state of Pennsylvania. But if you're wondering why national polls are strong for Ms. Harris while swing-state polls are less so, consider the ways in which the efforts to define her look different in the places where the campaigns are spending big to intrude on your Sunday football viewing. Odds and Ends We agree to disagree. It's hard to find many issues about which large numbers of Americans across party lines see eye to eye, but at least an overwhelming majority of us believe that we are, indeed, divided. Per Gallup: "Americans have long thought the nation was divided on the most important values, but never to the degree they do now. And that view is shared about equally among all major subgroups of Americans." Cats and dogs. CBS News's latest national poll asked voters if they found Mr. Trump's unsupported claims of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs to be credible, and two-thirds did not, including nearly one-third of his voters. Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks The Ezra Klein Show What Pete Buttigieg Learned Playing JD Vance The politician discusses how Democrats can rebuild trust. 59 MIN LISTEN More From Opinion Jamelle Bouie The Black Box of the Undecided Voter Won't Yield Its Secrets Undecided voters have tuned out the noise of American politics. By Jamelle Bouie Guest Essay Getting Into Yale Isn't Enough Economic anxieties are generating crushing pre-professional pressure on campuses, destroying college life and damaging students' mental health. By Isabella Glassman Katherine Miller Kamala Harris's Ideas About Patriotism Patriotic Americana has been the vice president's theme since she became the Democrats' presidential candidate. By Katherine Miller Michelle Cottle Will Larry Hogan Score a Senate Upset in True-Blue Maryland? How party control of the Senate may come down to Maryland Democrats taking a big gamble. By Michelle Cottle We Need a New Global Measure for Poverty Eradicating poverty is at the top of the U.N.'s stated goals. But their measure of poverty is only half the story. By Max Roser Michelle Goldberg A Leading Law Scholar Fears We're Lurching Toward Secession Can we fix the Constitution before it destroys us? By Michelle Goldberg Paul Krugman Trump Learned Nothing From the Obamacare Debate. Neither Did Vance. Their "concepts" would abandon people with pre-existing conditions. By Paul Krugman The Opinions Why Liberals Should Listen to Trump Supporters Nicholas Kristof responds to readers who disagree with him. 8 MIN LISTEN Trump Once Exploited Undocumented Workers; Now He Demonizes Them His treatment of immigrants at his country club is a sharp contrast to employers of legal workers in Springfield, Ohio. By Jonathan Alter Peter Coy The U.S. Lost the Battery Race to China. Can It Make a Comeback? The cutting edge of American battery technology is rusty. By Peter Coy Illustration by The New York Times letters Using Haitian Immigrants as a Campaign Issue Responses to a guest essay by Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and a column by Jamelle Bouie. Also: Donald Trump and Jewish voters; pagers in war; airport trays. We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here. 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