How Kamala Harris' Approval Ratings Fare as Joe Biden Stands by Her

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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property insurance market, local and national politics. She has previously extensively covered U.S. and European politics. Giulia joined Newsweek in 2022 from CGTN Europe and had previously worked at the European Central Bank. She is a graduate in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Politics and International Relations from Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy. She speaks English, Italian, and a little French and Spanish. You can get in touch with Giulia by emailing: g.carbonaro@newsweek.com.

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While Joe Biden is likely to approach the 2024 presidential race with a dangerously low approval rating historically linked with losing a re-election campaign, his running mate Kamala Harris has an even bigger popularity problem.

Both Biden's and Harris' approval ratings have been steadily under the 50 percent mark for the past year, but the vice president's popularity has remained consistently below 40 percent. Meanwhile, support for the president has been slowly growing among voters in the past few months as his administration scored some significant victories in Congress and brought down the price of fuel.

Harris' poll numbers leading to the 2024 presidential election have so far been around the higher end of 30 percent, an underwhelming result that could lead the incumbent vice president to be "a drag on Biden's ticket," according to Axios.

Harris' popularity suffered greatly in the first two years of the Biden presidency due to the issues she was tasked with, including immigration—a challenge where Harris found no easy win to bring home. The vice president saw many of her staff leaving and she has been "rarely" entrusted with high-profile assignments, Axios reported.

Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks about reproductive freedom at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on April 25, 2023. Harris is again President Joe Biden's running mate in the 2024 election. STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Data compiled by FiveThirtyEight shows that Harris' popularity among the American public grew slightly in the past few weeks, with 42.6 percent of voters approving of her work as of April 26. A majority of 54.4 percent disapprove of her work.

Harris is featured prominently on Biden's revamped campaign website, a sign which could represent a shift within the Biden administration to show a more united front between the president's and vice president's teams.

Biden's video announcing his bid for re-election in 2024 also heavily features Harris, another signal that the president intends to put his running mate at the center of his campaign, giving her a focus which many, between critics and supporters, agree is a good thing—though for different reasons.

While speaking to The New York Times, Harris' detractors said that shining a spotlight on the vice president will likely undermine Biden's campaign; her supporters think it will make Biden's stance on issues like abortion and climate change stronger.

But one crucial factor which makes Harris an ambiguous ally for Biden is the vice president's age. At 58 years old, Harris is significantly younger than 80-year-old Biden, who will be turning 82 before the beginning of his potential second term and whose age is considered a matter of concern by many voters.

According to a poll recently released by NBC News, 70 percent of adults think Biden should not run again because of his age.

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment.

Republican challenger Nikki Haley, who announced her 2024 presidential bid in February, has used voters' concerns over Biden's age to attack both the president and his running mate. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, the former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina said that Biden is "not likely" to "make it" to the age of 86—when his second potential term should end—and voters would really be electing Harris.

"[Biden] announced that he's running again in 2024, and I think that we can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden you really are counting on a President Harris, because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely," Haley said.

"Republicans clearly think they've landed on a winning talking point: that given Biden's advanced age, a vote for Biden is a vote for Harris in the White House," Thomas Gift, associate professor of political science in the School of Public Policy at University College London, told Newsweek.

"But Republicans should be wary of overplaying that card. Biden wasn't exactly a spring chicken in 2020, and neither was Harris a paragon of popularity. Ultimately, Americans care about the name at the top of the ticket. Especially if 2024 becomes a Biden-Trump rematch, Harris' high disapprovals will fade into oblivion as a factor on most voters' minds."

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About the writer

Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property insurance market, local and national politics. She has previously extensively covered U.S. and European politics. Giulia joined Newsweek in 2022 from CGTN Europe and had previously worked at the European Central Bank. She is a graduate in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Politics and International Relations from Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy. She speaks English, Italian, and a little French and Spanish. You can get in touch with Giulia by emailing: g.carbonaro@newsweek.com.

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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property ... Read more