FACT CHECK: Kamala Harris Claims Some Polls Say She Has ‘Great Approval Ratings’
Vice President Kamala Harris claims some polls state she has “great approval ratings.”
Verdict: False
Poll aggregators show that Harris continues to have negative approval ratings since October 2021.
Fact Check:
Harris sat down with ABC News anchor Linsey Davis recently, where she discussed abortion, the 2024 election and immigration, according to ABC News. During the interview, Davis asked whether Harris thought “race and gender” played any role in reports of Harris’s low approval rating.
“Well, there are polls that also say I have great approval ratings. I think the point that has to be made is that there are attempts to create distractions away from the accomplishments of our administration,” Harris responded.
The claim that there are polls that say Harris has “great” approval ratings appears to be false. Check Your Fact reviewed several poll aggregators that track Harris’s approval rating, such as RealClearPolitics, FiveThirtyEight and the Los Angeles Times, and found that each of them show her with substantial unfavorable ratings.
RealClearPolitics shows that she has an aggregate favorable rating of 37.6%, compared to an unfavorable rating of 53.1%, leaving a negative 15.5 spread. FiveThirtyEight shows her average approval rating is 39.6%, and her average disapproval rating is 52.3%. The Los Angeles Times’ aggregator shows Harris’s favorable rating is 40%, while her unfavorable rating is 53%.
“After becoming vice president, Harris was asked to lead the administration’s response to the contentious issue of immigration. Her handling of the topic has been criticized, which some observers link to her approval rating sinking at a greater rate than Biden’s thus far,” the Times reported. (RELATED: Pentagon Claims Last Time U.S. Used Cluster Munitions Was In 2003)
Newsweek reported that Harris has not had a poll with a positive approval rating since October 2021. RealClearPolitics President Tom Bevan said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, that there aren’t polls that showed Harris has good approval ratings.
No, there really aren’t. https://t.co/ERfqiMbZfA
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) August 1, 2023
A recent CNN poll found that Harris’s approval rating is 42%, while her disapproval rating is 57%. 77% of Democrats approved of her, compared to 42% of independents and 8% of Republicans, according to the poll. Axios reported that a June 2023 NBC News poll showed she hit a “record low for VP net favorability” in that poll’s history.
Check Your Fact reached out to the Vice President’s office for comment and will update this article if a response is provided.