August 19, 2024
About half of the public have a favorable view of Kamala Harris, while 41% have a favorable view of Donald Trump. A sizeable minority say they don’t know enough about the vice presidential candidates to have an opinion.
Harris is widely liked among Democrats and disliked among Republicans; the opposite is true of Trump. Among independents, 40% have a positive opinion of Harris and 40% have an unfavorable opinion. Twenty percent say they don’t know enough about her to say. Forty percent of independents also have a favorable opinion of Trump, but 50% have a negative opinion, and 10% don’t know enough about him.
The views of white and Hispanic adults are similar toward both Harris and Trump. About 4 in 10 of both groups have a favorable opinion of Harris and Trump, while about half have an unfavorable view. However, Harris is liked by two-thirds of Black adults, and about the same number have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.
Harris is viewed more favorably by women, while Trump is viewed more favorably by men.
Neither candidate’s favorability has shifted substantially in recent months. Fifty-six percent have an unfavorable view of Trump, same as in the AP-NORC poll conducted in early June. Similarly, Harris’s 45% unfavorable rating is not very different from the 49% found in early June.
The Republican and Democratic presidential candidates have only recently selected their running mates, and many adults remain unfamiliar with them.
Trump named JD Vance as his choice for vice president on July 15, the first day of the Republican National Convention, which was held July 15-18 in Milwaukee.
Views of JD Vance haven’t shifted much since his announcement. In an AP-NORC poll taken about a week after the RNC, 27% of the public had a favorable opinion of Vance, including 53% of Republicans. Forty percent had a negative opinion, including 65% of Democrats and 30% of independents. But 32% said they didn’t know enough about him to have an opinion.
The latest poll has similar results. Nearly as many adults don’t have an opinion of Vance. Twenty-seven percent still have a favorable opinion and 44% are negative. Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans like Vance, while three-quarters of Democrats have a negative opinion.
Harris announced her selection of Tim Walz to run with her on the Democratic ticket on August 6. The Democrats are holding their national convention in Chicago August 19-22. Like Vance, a sizeable minority of adults are unfamiliar with the governor of Minnesota. Most Democrats have a favorable view of Walz, and about half of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion.
Democrats are more negative toward Vance than Republicans are toward Walz. Independents are also more negative toward Vance than Walz. But in both cases, more don’t have an opinion on Walz than Vance.
The nationwide poll was conducted August 8-12, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,164 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.8 percentage points.
- Suggested Citation: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (August 2024). “Strong partisan differences in the public’s opinion of the candidates for president and vice president“
