With Harris in the race, ‘double haters’ are on the decline: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki breaks down how Vice President Kamala Harris’ and former President Donald Trump’s favorability ratings are improving. Plus, we preview tonight’s primaries in battleground Arizona.

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With Harris in the race, ‘double haters’ are on the decline

By Steve Kornacki

Where have all the “double haters” gone? 

It would be too much to say that either of them are popular, but both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are noticeably less unpopular since Harris’ emergence as the likely Democratic standard-bearer.

In three major polls released this past week, Trump recorded favorability ratings that are among the highest he’s ever attained. And Harris notched significant improvement from her own previous favorability ratings — and from the consistently dismal levels that President Joe Biden had been running at. 

Trump’s 47% favorable mark represents the best he’s ever done in the current iteration of the Wall Street Journal poll, which was launched in late 2021. Forty-seven percent is also his new high-water mark for favorability in the New York Times/Siena poll. And while it doesn’t look like much, Trump’s 36% rating in the ABC News/Ipsos poll is actually the second-best he’s ever received in that survey dating to the 2020 campaign.

Trump’s new numbers also come after he survived an assassination attempt and was officially nominated at the Republican National Convention. 

Meanwhile, Harris’ improvement over Biden in favorability is dramatic, with jumps of 9 to 13 points in these three polls compared to where Biden had been running. So, too, are the jumps from her own previous levels. Before now, the Wall Street Journal poll had tested her favorable score six times since early 2023, with 35% being her highest level — that’s 11 points lower than where she is now.

Crosstabs from the New York Times/Siena poll show two demographic groups where Harris’ gains over Biden are most apparent: Hispanic voters (a 9-point rise in favorability) and voters under 30 (a 13-point increase). Clearly, with Biden as the candidate, there had been slack among what Democrats consider some of their core constituencies.

These gains for both Trump and Harris, if they hold or even expand, stand to shake up what had been a major variable in the 2024 presidential race: the “double haters,” voters torn between their dislike of both major party candidates.

They had been a massive bloc, at least until now. A June survey from Pew Research Center found that 25% of voters were “double haters.” This drew parallels to the Trump-Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, when 18% of voters in the exit poll said they disliked both candidates. Trump carried the “double haters” by 17 points in that election. How they would break this time around had long seemed like the potentially decisive question.

But now? Well, they do still exist, certainly. The New York Times/Siena poll has “double haters” making up 8% of the electorate, down from 20% before Harris’ entry and far below 2016 levels. But that’s still higher than the 2020 election, when only 3% of voters told exit pollsters they didn’t like either Trump or Biden. 

Of course, the “double haters” may not be finished sorting out their feelings yet. That there’s been such a significant shift is itself striking, given how so many elements of this campaign had seemed absolutely frozen in place for so long. It turns out that not as many opinions have been locked in place as most had assumed.

Trump’s influence looms over Arizona primary

By Adam Wollner

After a monthlong break, we’re diving back into primary season tonight in the critical battleground state of Arizona, where Donald Trump’s influence is looming large. 

The Republican presidential nominee’s acolytes appear all over Arizona’s ballot, including several candidates who lost major statewide races in 2022 on platforms centered on election denialism. Some have continued to cast doubt on the results of the last presidential race as well as their own defeats. 

Courtesy of NBC News’ Alex Tabet and Adam Edelman, here are a few of the top races to watch. Polls close at 10 p.m. ET. 

Key Senate matchup: Tonight’s primaries are expected to officially set up a clash between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego that could help determine which party controls the Senate. 

Lake, who has refused to accept her loss in the 2022 gubernatorial race and questioned Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, has already been focused on the general election for months, largely ignoring her two GOP primary opponents. While Lake has endorsements from Trump and the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, she has still faced skepticism from some in the party that she is too far to the right to win in November. Still, for tonight, the question for Lake is how big her margin of victory will be. 

Gallego, a Phoenix-area congressman and Iraq War veteran, is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination. 

GOP brawl in the 8th District: Arizona is hosting one of the most bitter House Republican primaries of the cycle, with a crowded field vying for the seat being vacated by Rep. Debbie Lesko. 

The two leading contenders are election deniers who unsuccessfully sought statewide office in 2022: Blake Masters, who lost his Senate bid to Democrat Mark Kelly, and Abe Hamadeh, who lost his attorney general campaign by less than 300 votes (an election that Hamadeh has also claimed, without evidence, was stolen).

The two have spent much of the race lobbing personal attacks against each other. After Trump endorsed both of their runs two years ago, he had initially backed Hamadeh. But in an unusual move, Trump offered his support to both candidates over the weekend. 

Other candidates include: State Sen. Anthony Kern, who was among 18 Trump aides and allies indicted in April by an Arizona grand jury for their role in an effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election results; state House Speaker Ben Toma, who was at the center of an ultimately unsuccessful GOP effort to block the repeal of the state’s 1864 near-total abortion ban; and former Rep. Trent Franks, who served in Congress for 16 years before he abruptly resigned in 2017, acknowledging at the time that he had discussed surrogacy with two former female staffers.  

The winner of the primary will be a heavy favorite for the seat in the fall. 

Maricopa County recorder: Stephen Richer, one of the most outspoken Republican defenders of election processes in the country, is simultaneously fighting to keep his job while preparing to manage the vote this fall in Maricopa, the largest county in battleground Arizona. 

The Maricopa County recorder’s administrative role is vast, including processing deeds and overseeing the voter file and other parts of elections. Since 2020, that is what has captured the most attention, leading to Richer facing a slew of attacks from Trump-inspired Republicans. 

Richer’s main primary challenger is state Rep. Justin Heap, who has dodged questions about whether the 2020 election was fraudulent. But he has been endorsed by many of Arizona’s most prominent election deniers, including Lake. 

Read more on how Maricopa County election officials are trying to quash election conspiracy theories →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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