Here is the path to victory for Kamala Harris
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For immediate release by Harris for President Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon
July 24, 2024
This week, Vice President Kamala Harris filed her candidacy for president of the United States. Following a groundswell of support from across the country, she is now the presumptive Democratic nominee – and she’s in a strong position to win.
Yesterday, the Vice President campaigned in Milwaukee, marking her fifth visit to Wisconsin so far this year. In front of a crowd of over 3,500 – the campaign’s largest event yet – Vice President Harris laid out the choice in this election between two very different visions. She is fighting for a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Donald Trump is a convicted criminal running to enact his extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda that would roll back Americans’ rights and freedoms, hurt the middle class, and threaten our democracy.
In the days and weeks to come, she’ll take that message across the battlegrounds, capitalizing on the historic infrastructure the campaign has spent the last year building to reach voters where they are to ensure they understand the choice in this election.
With a popular message, a strong record on the issues that matter most to swing voters, multiple pathways to 270 electoral voters, and unprecedented enthusiasm on her side, the Vice President is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 104 days.
Building a winning coalition of voters and multiple pathways to 270
Vice President Harris enters the presidential race with clear advantages among voters critical to victory.
First, Vice President Harris has well-documented support from the Biden-Harris coalition of voters that delivered victory in 2020. She has significant advantages with key parts of the Democratic base: Black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women, and young voters.
Black voters: The Vice President has a +44 net approval rating and runs 54 points ahead of Trump. 61% of Black voters think that Vice President Harris cares about the needs and problems of people like them, as compared to just 20% of Black voters who think the same of Trump.
Latino voters: Harris is more popular than Trump among undecided, independent, and third-party Latinos. Early polling from Nevada shows that the Vice President makes up ground with Latino voters and does “exceedingly well” with Latino voters who are skeptical of both Biden and Trump.
AANHPI voters: Vice President Harris has a positive approval rating among AANHPI voters, 30 points higher than Trump’s net approval rating.
Women voters: The Vice President’s net favorability is 21 points better than Trump’s among women.
Young voters: Vice President Harris leads Donald Trump by 25 points with young voters, and a preliminary survey of college students conducted by Flytedesk found that intent-to-vote increased to its highest rate of the cycle after President Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Harris, with 83% of students indicating that they would vote in November.
Second, the Vice President is also well-positioned to expand support from 2020, drawing the support of voters who have moved towards Democrats since the 2020 election. In many cases, these voters did not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, but came out in support of Democrats in 2022 as Donald Trump’s Republican Party grew more and more extreme. These voters supported Democrats in battleground states in 2022, and they will be critical to hold onto in 2024. Notably, the Vice President already holds significant favorability advantages among the key demographic groups that have moved toward Democrats since 2020: Her net favorability is 19 points higher than Trump’s among white, college-educated voters, and 18 points higher than Trump’s among voters over 65.
The Vice President has been at the forefront on the very issues that are most important to these voters – restoring women’s reproductive rights, upholding the rule of law following January 6, Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, and the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.
Voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections: In CNN’s 2022 pre-election poll, nearly three quarters of voters called abortion very important to their vote, and a majority of voters called it extremely important. This trend continues in 2024, where 76% of voters have identified abortion as an important issue in this election, and nearly half of voters ranked it as very important. 57% of young people ages 18-29 identify abortion as a “major” factor in their vote, as do 55% of women.
Vice President Harris has been a champion for reproductive freedom even before the Dobbs decision. As a Senator, she grilled now-Justice Kavanaugh and fought for legislation to improve women’s health. As Vice President, she is leading the Biden-Harris Administration’s response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, including implementing three executive orders on reproductive health care access, and traveling the country to galvanize leaders in the fight for reproductive freedom. She has spoken to more than 15,000 students about the fight for our fundamental rights, including our reproductive freedom. And on her “Fight for Our Freedoms” tour, she became the first Vice President in history to visit a reproductive health care clinic. A KFF survey found that eight in ten (82%) Democratic and Democratic-leaning women voters say they trust Vice President Harris to speak about abortion policy, including large majorities of White Democratic women voters (85%), Black Democratic women voters (76%), and Hispanic Democratic women voters (72%).
These expansion voters are also deeply troubled by Donald Trump’s criminal convictions. 32% of independents said that the conviction made them less likely to support Trump, and 21% said this would be an important factor in their vote. As a former prosecutor who has never shied away from taking on those who harm the American people, Vice President Harris is uniquely positioned to hold him accountable over the course of the campaign.
While the Vice President is poised to build on the 2020 Biden-Harris coalition, Trump, on the other hand, has not expanded his support. This has become even more clear in the last month, where he largely failed to win over new voters following the debate and the RNC convention. Now, even Trump’s closest allies have started to indicate that he made a mistake by choosing JD Vance, his most extreme option, as running mate. Trump’s, and now Vance’s, far-right positions on women’s reproductive rights and democracy put these key voters even further out of reach.
Third, in a highly polarized electoral environment, this shift in the race opens up additional persuadable voters who our campaign can work to win the support of. This race is more fluid now – the Vice President is well-known but less well-known than both Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies.
This expanded universe of winnable voters is highly accessible to Vice President Harris: We have a clear advantage on issues, they have been supportive of Democrats in the past, and many are supportive of Democrats down-ballot. It is the job of the Harris campaign to win these voters, but the pathway to do so is clear.
About 7% of voters remain undecided in this race, and these voters are disproportionately Black, Latino, and under 30. They are more likely to have supported the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, and are two times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. These voters also disproportionately support Democratic candidates down-ballot and we have a clear issue and character advantage.
While we know that we cannot take these voters for granted, we have a significant opportunity to consolidate their support once they hear from our campaign.
Finally, the map. Winning the presidential election still requires winning 270 electoral votes, and that means our pathways to victory runs through the states. Vice President Harris enters a tight race, but it is clear that she can bring together a coalition of voters to keep a wide set of states in play. We continue to focus on the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, where the Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes.
We intend to play offense in each of these states, and have the resources and campaign infrastructure to do so.
Grassroots enthusiasm
Where Vice President Harris goes, grassroots enthusiasm follows. This was the case in 2020, when the Biden-Harris campaign had its best 24 hours of grassroots fundraising of the entire race following then Vice President Biden’s selection of Harris as his running mate, and it has certainly been the case over the past 36 hours since receiving the endorsement of President Biden. A few facts and figures here:
In the first 24 hours after receiving President Biden’s endorsement, Team Harris raised over $81 million – the most in a 24 hour period in the history of presidential politics. As of Tuesday evening, Team Harris has raised $126 million since the endorsement.
Over 1.4 million grassroots donors made donations since Sunday afternoon, 64% of whom made their first contribution of the 2024 cycle.
Since Sunday afternoon, Team Harris has added 74,000 new recurring donors, with two-thirds of these recurring donors signing up for weekly donations.
We also know that it takes more than money to win the presidential election — it takes an army of supporters and volunteers to spread our message. In the last two days, we have seen unprecedented volunteer signups.
Since Sunday afternoon, over 100,000 volunteers have signed up to join the campaign.
In Nevada, volunteers literally showed up at field offices on Sunday asking to help and 2,500 Pennsylvanians signed up to volunteer, 4x our previous biggest day.
In Wisconsin, we held our biggest rally ever on Tuesday, with more than 3,500 fired up supporters who organizers will now engage to volunteer with the campaign.
Nearly 2,000 people applied to work on the campaign in the 24 hours after Vice President Harris announced her campaign – more than 3x our previous record.
Campaign infrastructure firing on all cylinders
From day one, the Biden-Harris campaign has not only been prepared to win a close election, it has been designed to win a close election. Vice President Harris will now inherit that robust campaign operation.
Since last fall, we have been building deep relationships in communities across the battlegrounds, creating a blended organizing model designed to register, persuade, mobilize and turn out voters when it matters most. Using both in person events and activities as well as engaging voters online, we are having conversations with voters to cut through media silos and political narratives. At the same time, we made early investments in a staff presence across the battlegrounds that has grown over time, with more than 250 coordinated offices in the states. We are presently at over 1,300 coordinated staff in battlegrounds, will be over 1,500 by the end of the month, and well over 2,000 before the summer is out. They are building an army of tens of thousands of volunteers who will talk to millions of voters. And all of this comes alongside an organizing program that will hit more than 3 million doors across the months of July and August.
We know, both from election results and from research, that when the choice is between Donald Trump’s extremism and the Biden-Harris Administration’s record of delivering for the American people – and when Democrats have an operation capable of persuading and mobilizing voters on the ground – we win.
Bottom line: This campaign will be close, it will be hard fought, but Vice President Harris is in a position of strength – and she’s going to win.
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