CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said Thursday on “News Central” that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign looked like a “loser” because only 28% of Americans think the country is on the right track.
Host John Berman said, “Do voters think the country is on the right track or the wrong track?”
Enten said, “Yeah, if we look at whether voters believe we’re on the right track or the wrong track, I think that this sort of gets at a problem for Kamala Harris’s campaign. Just 28% of Americans think the U.S. is on the right track. And I want you to put that into perspective, right? When does the average when the incumbent party loses the election, look at that: It’s just 25%. That looks a heck of a lot like that 28%, right, that currently think the country is on the right track.”
He added, “When the White House party wins, i.e. Kamala Harris’s party, the Democrats, 42% on average think that the country is on the right track. This 25% looks a lot more like this 28%. It doesn’t look anything like this 42%,” he continued. “This to me is a bad sign for Kamala Harris’s campaign. The bottom line is it looks a lot more like a loser than it does like a winner when it comes to the country being on the right track.”
Berman said, “Can an incumbent party win with numbers like this?”
Enten said, “Yeah, so if we look historically speaking, right, and we say, okay, say the U.S. is on the right track, the incumbent party when they win. Today, again, it’s just 28%. Look throughout history, right, 96, 88, 04, 12, 84 in all of these instances, in all these instances, far more than 28% thought that the country was on the right track. Thirty-nine was the lowest back in 1996. We got upwards of 47% in ’84, of course that was a blowout, right, for Ronald Reagan. So there is no historical precedent for the White House party winning another term in the White House when the country, when just 28% of the country thinks that we’re on the right track. John, simply put, it would be historically unprecedented.”
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