CNN —
Kamala Harris’ border trip and speech outlining her economic vision continued to improve in September, according to new findings from The Breakthrough, a polling project that tracks how people view election news. It attracted considerable American attention as it neared its end. But some new trends in the data suggest warning signs for the vice president’s campaign.
Since her presidential debate with former President Donald Trump in early September, the percentage of Americans who have heard anything about Harris has declined each week, as has the tone Americans use to describe what they’ve heard about her. The latest results reached the lowest point of her campaign, which has also become more negative.
When we look at what people say they’ve heard, read and seen about Harris, “lie” persistently rises to the top of the words some Americans associate with her. In the latest data, it was the fourth most mentioned word, behind “border,” “poll” and “campaign.” It was ranked 6th in last week’s data and 2nd in the week of the ABC News presidential debate, but it was below 12th in the early stages of the survey and below 20th before the Democratic convention in August.
The survey, conducted by SSRS and Verasight and a research team from CNN, Georgetown University, and the University of Michigan, was conducted between September 27 and 30 to find out what Americans have recently heard about Harris and Trump. This is an evaluation of what you have read and seen.
When asked what they’ve heard about Harris, the percentage of Americans who say words like “liar” and “liar” remains fairly small. For example, 15% mentioned something related to immigration, compared to just 6% in the latest data. However, over time, that percentage increased, from less than 3% before the Democratic convention to a peak of 9% immediately after the debates.
“Kamala hasn’t said anything,” wrote one respondent in the latest survey. “She uses a lot of nonsense. She says she’s going to close the borders, but that’s a lie to get elected. All of her promises are lies.”
The latest data focuses broadly on immigration (15% mentioning Harris) and the economy (13% mentioning it), marking a notable shift in reactions to Harris. He visited the southern border of Arizona and delivered an economic policy speech in Pittsburgh. This is the first time Harris has had multiple policy-related topics in her top five, and the latest data shows that Harris has had immigration-related issues related to her campaign since she entered the race. The words were mentioned the most. Late July.
Another respondent wrote, “I watched her speech and appreciated her clear explanations of her policies and positions on a variety of issues.” “Her interest in everything and her ability to articulate solutions to problems is a marked contrast to Donald Trump.”
On Trump’s side, while the assassination attempt against him continues to garner national attention, the immigration issue has receded somewhat, with his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last month attracting attention.
“He met with Mr. Zelensky, but he was not very enthusiastic about helping Ukraine,” one respondent wrote.
Calling the former president a liar is also consistently near the top of his list. The latest data shows that about 8% of respondents use the words “lie” or “liar” when referring to Trump. This number has often been in the low single digits as a percentage of topics related to Trump since the survey began in June, and has sometimes been lower than that, such as during the first assassination attempt on the former president and around the Republican National Convention. Sometimes it was lower.
While responses for Harris are still generally less negative in tone than responses for Trump, there is a notable drop in overall sentiment in Harris’s responses, while Trump’s numbers are lower after the debate. It has slightly recovered from its decline. For Harris, the negative change is evident across political parties, with sentiment expressed by Democrats, Republicans and independents all leaning slightly more negative than in the previous week in the new data. However, sentiment regarding Mr. Trump remained stable among Republicans, and there was slightly less negative change among independents and Democrats than in the previous survey.
In the latest poll, just under two-thirds (64%) of Americans said they had seen, read or heard something about Harris, compared to 68% who said the same about Trump. answered. This is the fourth week in a row that more people have heard about Trump than about Harris, and the percentage of people who said they have heard about each candidate is significantly higher than in the previous week. (Mr. Trump decreased by 7 points, Ms. Harris decreased by 5 points). .
Overall attention to the current presidential candidates is lower than at this point in previous cycles, but this may be a side effect of the timing of the debates. For example, in 2020, more than 8 in 10 Americans reported hearing news about Trump and Joe Biden during the same week of the campaign, but the presidential debate was held on September 29th. Ta. In 2016, there was a decline in mid-September. The event attracted attention ahead of the year’s first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, which will be held on September 26th.
“This week has been relatively quiet,” one respondent in the latest survey said when asked about President Trump. “I haven’t heard anything.”
CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.
