Top 3 Reasons Voters Gave for Not Supporting Harris: Poll

An exit poll released by Democratic polling firm Blueprint outlined the top three reasons voters nationwide gave for not supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in her 2024 bid for U.S. president.

The leading issue for voters was that inflation is too high. This was followed by the Biden–Harris administration allowing in too many illegal immigrants, and that Harris focused too much on cultural topics like transgender issues rather than the middle class.

In addition to inflation, illegal immigration, and Harris’s focus on transgender issues, the next three factors named by all voters were that debt rose too high under the Biden–Harris administration, that Harris is too similar to President Joe Biden, and that Harris would let in even more illegal immigrants. One choice that scored high among swing state voters in particular was that “Democrats did a bad job running the country.”

“In the end, Harris couldn’t outrun her past or her party—perhaps it was a lack of time, but it was certainly a vice grip that proved impossible to escape,” the polling report’s authors wrote.

The factors of least concern to voters were that Harris was too pro-Israel, too conservative, or not similar enough to Biden.

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The poll’s findings were published as top Democrats reel from Tuesday’s election results, point fingers, and assign blame for who’s responsible for Trump’s sweep of the seven battleground states.

“We cannot get wrapped around the axle by our base and resistance politics.”

“Maybe you’re a leftist who feels deep frustration at the many calls to move the Democrats to the center at the expense of targeted and marginalized communities, the expense of suffering people and normal times,” Ash-Lee Woodard-Henderson, co-executive director of the Highlander Research & Education Center, told the virtual attendees.

Progressive congresswoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wa.), also dismissed calls to blame the party’s left-wing coalitions, and their messaging on cultural issues, for Harris’s loss.

“The blame game, you’ve seen it, it’s already started with a lot of cheap shots at our progressive movement, and it’s easy to finger-point even for us, but we need to resist it,” Jayapal said.

“I imagine we share a lot of theories about this election and what led us here, but I think we actually need to look at the [exit polling] data.”

Blueprint’s exit polling data seems to validate the concerns of the party’s more moderate members such as Suozzi.

Roughly 64 percent of respondents said they had seen Trump campaign ads highlighting Harris’s previous support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants.

Voters were roughly split on the topic of gender-related procedures, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors under the age of 18 who identify as transgender. Forty-seven percent said they “strongly/somewhat favor” medical and surgical treatment for minors, while 52 percent said they “strongly/somewhat oppose” the procedures.