October 2, 2024
On the heels of a national ad and a multi-million dollar swing state ad buy tying Vice President Kamala Harris to President Joe Biden, the Trump campaign’s closing strategy is coming into focus.
So Blueprint took a look at two questions:
- Does Harris need to further distance herself from President Biden?
- And if so, how can she best do it?
Here’s what we found…
HARRIS BENEFITS FROM A BREAK WITH JOE BIDEN
Blueprint conducted a MaxDiff test to assess how voters respond to statements Harris could hypothetically make.
The statements that performed best were those that displayed a clear break between her and Biden.
The statements that did the worst were those that portrayed a future Harris administration as building on the accomplishments of the Biden era.
HOW HARRIS CAN MOST EFFECTIVELY MESSAGE A BREAK WITH JOE BIDEN
Having established that Harris benefits from distancing herself from Biden, Blueprint conducted a separate MaxDiff analysis—in which survey respondents are asked to choose their preferred option among two randomized items. Blueprint tested hypothetical messages Harris could deploy in order to further break from Biden, using a mock interview format.
Issue-specific distancing from Biden on prices, immigration, and on top issues for Democrats like healthcare worked well in our testing. The single best testing message was
- “In a recent interview, Kamala Harris said, “I’m not happy with what greedy corporate giants got away with over the last few years. Joe Biden needed to get the economy back on track after the pandemic, but companies took advantage of that to jack up prices at a time when Americans were already hurting, and they got away with it. As president, I will be tougher on unethical businesses than Joe Biden was — they won’t get a pass from me.”
Another top performer was
- “In a recent interview, Kamala Harris said, “I want to take a different approach to Biden on immigration. I approach the issue from my background as a prosecutor. I believe first and foremost we need to be really enforcing our laws at the border and putting drug smugglers and illegal traffickers in prison.”
These best distancing messages share an approach: a specific policy break from Biden on a high-salience issue that pivots into Harris’s own approach.
In the middle of the pack are messages that are missing pieces of this formula: a more sweeping break with Biden that doesn’t name key areas of difference, breaks on lower-salience policies, or criticisms of Biden that don’t offer specifics on how Harris herself would be different.
At the very bottom of the pack are vibe-based breaks on age and energy that don’t get into policy differences at all—indicating clearly that Harris benefits the most from a meaningful break with Biden rather than a symbolic one.
ABOUT THE POLL
The first MaxDiff comes from a national poll of 1,097 registered voters conducted from Sept. 15 to Sept. 16. This survey was weighted to education, gender, race, survey engagement, and 2020 election results; it was conducted in English, and had a margin of error of ±3.4 percentage points.
The second MaxDiff comes from a national poll of 1,061 registered voters conducted from Sept. 21 to Sept. 22. This survey was weighted to education, gender, race, survey engagement, and 2020 election results; it was conducted in English, and had a margin of error of ±3.6 percentage points.
PRESS CONTACTS
Alyssa Cass
alyssa@slingshotstrat.com
347-992-5006
Evan Roth Smith
evan@slingshotstrat.com
646-240-0096
Follow us on X for more information and regular polling updates
