The Reason Some Young, Uncommitted Voters Flipped on Kamala Harris After Her Speech

This summer, Times Opinion organized a new project to follow a group of young, undecided voters through the election, and we kicked it off just before the Democratic National Convention with a wide-ranging discussion about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. The group had very specific opinions about Mr. Trump. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was searing for many of them, some who were then teenagers, and they blamed Mr. Trump. They called him a traitor, a narcissist, untrustworthy. Some, fearfully, that he would not respect another electoral loss.

 And yet, even more damningly, the group was much more negative about Ms. Harris.

When a survey research question asked them to rate Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump on a zero-to-10 scale, with zero a very negative rating, Ms. Harris got mostly threes at best — she did no better than a five. Mr. Trump got mostly fours and fives and topped out with a seven.

But there was a difference in how the group criticized the two candidates. Most of them had doubts about Ms. Harris: how she would improve the economy, whether she supported Israel, if she was patriotic, what she knew about President Biden's cognitive abilities. They termed her insincere, invisible, pretend. Most were suspicious about Ms. Harris, yet most loathed Mr. Trump. They knew him.

If in our first debate Ms Harris was losing the battle to Mr. Trump, I felt she had a chance to win the war. In the closing days of presidential races, the candidate who is less well known and running as an agent of change often has the better chance to make a persuasive impression with a larger share of Americans who are on the fence or just tuning in to the race, rather than the candidate who has a cemented negative image among many voters.

She Support Israel:

"So as I sat inside the United Center in Chicago on Thursday night and listened to Ms. Harris's convention speech, I wondered if it would change the minds of anyone in our group, whom I'd asked to check out her speech.

 Turns out it did. When, in our group work in the past couple of days, I asked for follow-up whether anyone's views had changed, 5 said that, after listening to her speech, they would be inclined to vote for Ms. Harris; 3 said they would be inclined to do so less; 6 said it did not have an impact. I also sought to have the 14 of them rate Ms. Harris again; they gave her mostly threes fours sixs and a seven. No one came away from the speech giving her a lower rating than they had before.

(We will ask our group to rate Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump after their first debate)

On the whole, Ms. Harris had filled in many of the blanks in their knowledge and understanding over the course of the convention. Nearly everyone cheered the way she talked in her victory speech about her mother and her family, but a couple matters of policy and positions broke through, too: her promise of leading the way on abortion rights (important, perhaps, to a couple of women still deciding), her pledge to fight gun violence, her descriptions of an "opportunity economy," and her remarks defending democracy.

Abigail, a 23-year-old graduate assistant in Virginia who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 and who said she was more likely to vote for Ms. Harris after the convention, called the Thursday speech "simultaneously great and shallow" — strong on biography ("I loved how she introduced herself to us") but full of platitudes, such as Ms. Harris saying she would "stand strong" with Ukraine and NATO but offering nothing on how she would confront Vladimir Putin. But Abigail's main takeaway was that she felt she knew Ms. Harris better:

I can now see that she can be well-spoken and that she has an inspiring American story. Before, I wasn't sure if she was genuinely proud of our country, but now I see that she wants to defend (her vision of) American democracy, and that was powerful even if some of what she said was misleading.

All four women in our group also said they were more apt to vote for Ms. Harris following the speech. Lillian H., 27, Virginia, working in digital advertising and a last-year voter for Mr. Trump, said she was "greatly inspired" by Ms. Harris's speech, although she still wants to know much more about her record and "core principles." She gave Ms. Harris a five compared with a three before the speech. Added:

Her position on Israel and the military are some of the most notable to me, as it seems to go against the very little I know about her.

The biggest swing in opinion came from Ben, a 20-year-old student from Michigan, who was pretty negative on Ms. Harris before the convention. He viewed her as deceitful; for election issues, he worried the most about anti-semitism in this country and pro-Israel sentiment. "I would have Harris articulate her competence to be president," said Ben. Pre-convention he gave her a 3—post speech by Ms. Harris, he awarded her a 6. He specifically liked her remarks when she commented that Israel should have a right to defend herself and the demands needed to. Ben further said the following from Hillary's speech:

 I like that she based her whole speech on looking ahead not backward

 Still, he wasn't sure whether her speech would influence that him will vote for her at the end of the day

 

 What it made me do was compare her speech to Trump's. I liked hers a lot better.

Chris, 24, a law student in Florida who identifies as a "Reagan Republican" and voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, said he was more likely to support Ms. Harris:

I thought the section on foreign policy and her contrasting views about dictators was particularly good. That and peaceful transfer of power. I would have liked to see more policy substance on the economy.

The speech, they said, made them less likely to vote for Ms. Harris, either because it felt substanceless or because it included stands they disagreed with. One of the latter was an opinion from Pierce, a 26-year-old in sales working in North Carolina who didn't vote in 2020. She said that Ms. Harris lacked substance on policy and sounded "rehearsed," even on the war in Gaza. Take Mark, 24, a California chef who did vote for Mr. Biden in 2020, saying her denunciations of Jan. 6 and her attacks on Mr. Trump were great but that Israel and Gaza left him troubled about Ms. Harris.

She stated that she would hold no different view on the Middle East conflict between herself and Biden. Just like any other candidate, she was going to make empty promises about wanting the war to cease, despite not being willing to withhold arms to achieve that. Since that was among my dealbreakers, I felt less willing to support her.

No focus group made up of a few voters could be a perfect representation of the electorate, and our goal in pursuing this project was not predictive; rather, to cast a light on a demographic group often stereotyped or passed over in the public eye when a presidential contest starts to heat up. Only a sliver of the electorate is undecided at this point, and Harris's speech, at best, seemed capable of persuading some late-breaking younger voters as well as offering some obstacles for her. The race to land any of these last undecided voters is on, and a Harris-Trump debate would be a big moment — and, for Mr. Trump, the latest instance of trying to undercut Ms. Harris from making another good impression.