The latest personality ratings for the 2024 presidential candidates show that Vice President Kamala Harris has a significant lead over former President Donald Trump in US voters’ perceptions of her as a likeable person, while she has a smaller lead in perceptions as someone with strong moral character and who is honest and trustworthy. Trump is ahead of Harris in perceptions of him as a strong and decisive leader and a person capable of seeing things through to the end.
Despite this clear difference in image – Harris is credited with character, Trump with leadership – neither candidate has an advantage in voters’ perceptions that each possesses the other five presidential qualities: running the government effectively, showing common sense in crises, having a vision for the country’s future, caring about people’s needs and being a person people would be proud to have as president.
These findings come from a Gallup poll conducted in September 16-28 following the September 10 presidential debate, which gave Americans the only opportunity in the entire campaign to see the candidates interact.
Trustworthiness rating
Perceptions of Trump are similar to what Gallup found at the same time in 2020, except that voters are now slightly more likely to believe he would show common sense in a crisis situation – up six percentage points to 52%.
Trump’s honesty and trustworthiness rating is now higher than the 38% in 2016 when he won the election. However, even at that low level, Trump’s honesty rating was higher than Hillary Clinton’s 31%. That changed in 2020 when, despite raising his “honesty” score to 41%, Trump fell 11 points behind Joe Biden on that measure.
In fact, in the three presidential election cycles since 2012, when Gallup first assessed presidential qualities in this way, the candidate with the higher “honest/trustworthy” score has won. Other characteristics were not asked as often so their history can be traced.
Brief evaluations show mixed results
Harris is ahead of Trump 51% to 45% on another question asked more broadly: whether each candidate possesses “the personality and leadership qualities a president should possess.” So while Trump separately does better on the ‘strong and decisive leader’ item, Harris’s higher marks for being likable and having strong moral qualities may matter more to voters’ responses to that question.
At the same time, Americans believe both candidates are equal on the issues. About half (49%) said they agree with Trump “on the issues that are most important to you,” while 47% agree with Harris.
Harris leads in California, but Latino support softens
Harris maintains a lead over Trump in California, but Trump’s gains among the state’s Latino voters show troubling signs for Democrats nationally, according to a new poll.
Kamala Harris’ overall lead over Trump in California is 57%-35%, little changed from an August lead of 59%-34%, according to the poll conducted by the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and co-sponsored by The Times.
The state’s streak of voting for Democrats in every presidential election since 1988, when President George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, is unlikely to be broken. His 54 electoral votes – the biggest prize on Election Day – will almost certainly go to Harris.
Harris’ margin among Latinos in this state is similar to her overall margin, 54% to 35%. But that’s a steep drop from President Biden’s margin of victory in 2020, when he beat Trump 75% to 23% among California Latinos, according to the poll.
Support for Democrats is waning
This new poll is consistent with other national polls and surveys in swing states that show waning support for Democrats from a group of voters who have been a major segment of the party’s coalition in recent decades. That shift began in 2020, when Biden lost ground among Hispanic voters to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in 2016.
Harris is ahead of Trump by an average of 2-3 percentage points in national polls, but the race for electoral votes is seen as a toss-up.
Two of the seven swing states – Arizona and Nevada – have large Latino populations that could make the difference. Latino voters could also make an impact in other states with smaller numbers – Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, for example – given that polls show a very close contest. Christina Mora, co-director of the Institute for Governmental Studies and an expert on immigration and racial politics, said:
If anywhere there should be the happiest Latinos, the most progressive Latinos, it’s here. But they experience all the pain points of inequality.
Immigration reform dampened enthusiasm
Latinos, who make up about 3 in 10 voters in California, have been among those hardest hit by the state’s housing crisis and the effects of inflation, which has ebbed in recent months but left high prices in its wake. The Biden administration’s lack of progress on immigration reform has also dampened enthusiasm among progressive Latinos, Mora said.
Despite Trump’s use of incendiary phrases, including claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and taking away “black jobs,” he has capitalised on the frustration of some segments of the Latino population, including many second- and third-generation families.
Harris, the first South Asian-American and first black woman to lead a presidential ticket, has also lost some support among Asian and black voters compared to 2020, but they remain key parts of her coalition. In California, 66% of Asian/Pacific Islander voters and 72% of black voters support her.
Harris has made up for some of those losses in California with white voters, among whom she leads Trump 56%-37%, more than Biden’s 51%-47% advantage in 2020. That margin coincides with another national trend – the drift of white voters with college degrees toward the Democratic Party, while voters without college degrees are moving to Trump’s side.
According to the poll, Trump has a slight edge among white Californians without a college degree; among college-educated voters, Harris leads by a wide margin. This educational divide also helps explain some of Trump’s gains among black and Latino voters without degrees.
Harris seen as a uniter
Only a small fraction of likely voters – 5 percent – are undecided, according to the poll, which is in line with the national average of 5.6 percent. However, the relatively large sample size of more than 3,000 voters provided more detailed information about this group than other surveys typically provide.
These undecided voters are more likely to view Trump in a negative light (55% to 31%) than Harris (43% to 39%), and they are more likely to believe Trump is too extreme and a danger to democracy if elected president. But at the same time, they expect Trump to do a better job of managing the economy and foreign affairs and “has the toughness to be president” compared to Harris.
Those voters see Trump as deeply flawed and are more likely to see Harris as a uniter, Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s leader, said. He also added:
But they still think he would be a stronger candidate on a number of those qualities.
