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I Oversaw Biden, Harris Polling. Here's How I Read '26 Polls
Confirmed
In Short: Democratic consultant Julian Epstein and former RNC general counsel Alex Vogel discussed on 'Fox News Live' how Democratic candidates are avoiding campaign appearances with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris following new polling data.
Harris and El-Sayed will participate in a roundtable on Black maternal health, highlighting Harris's focus on maternal health during her vice presidency.
In recent off-year elections like 2023 and 2025, polls underestimated Democratic support, according to a Democratic strategist.
Former President Joe Biden, battling advanced prostate cancer, has maintained a limited public schedule, with Obama and Harris stepping up their efforts to support Democratic candidates.
Biden has endorsed candidates and helped raise funds for the party, but has appeared at only a handful of political events this year.
Despite these concerns, Biden has written on social media about the importance of voting, stating, 'American democracy begins and ends at the ballot box.'
Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist, told Fox News that some in the party's elite and fundraising class are concerned that Biden could be a liability if he were to campaign in person or virtually.
Koh, a Democratic candidate, ran hard on endorsements from both Biden and Harris, featuring the pair in a campaign ad despite most Democratic candidates keeping their distance from the last administration.
The biennial debate over whether polls can be trusted obscures their real value in identifying voter preferences, according to a Democratic strategist.
Polls are often accurate in identifying what voters want, but they’re not always right about the outcome of a close election.
In the past two midterms, however, polling was quite accurate and did not overestimate one party or the other.
What this adds
WarpBeat previously reported that Kamala Harris would campaign with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, focusing on Black maternal health.
What's confirmed
- On September 22, former Vice President Kamala Harris joined Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate from Michigan, for a campaign event in Detroit.
- Harris and El-Sayed will participate in a roundtable on Black maternal health, according to El-Sayed’s campaign.
What's still developing
- In each race, I used polls not so much to predict who would win, but rather to tell me how the candidate can win.
- The most common argument I hear is that “the polls were wrong last time, so they’ll be wrong again this time.” It’s true that most public polling overestimated Democratic support in the past three presidential elections — though the misses were much smaller in 2024 than in 2016 and 2020.
- Instead he condescendingly said the movement was only “uncommitted” to Biden, not to Harris, as if they did not share the same policies and the same class orientation.
- El-Sayed, who had backed the “Uncommitted” protest vote against Biden in Michigan’s presidential primary, endorsed Harris immediately after Biden withdrew and campaigned for her in the general election.
- Her campaign barred the “Uncommitted” movement, including Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American who supported Harris, from speaking at the Democratic National Convention.
- Democratic consultant Julian Epstein and former RNC general counsel Alex Vogel join 'Fox News Live' to analyze Democratic candidates rejecting campaign appearances from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris after new polling data was revealed.
- That November, Kamala Harris won the Latino vote by three points, according to the Pew Research Center.
- The Biden-Harris administration launched a federal maternal health strategy that included efforts to reduce pregnancy-related complications and racial disparities in maternal mortality.
- During her Michigan visit, Harris also plans to meet with local elected officials and the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the NAACP’s Detroit branch, according to her spokesperson.
- "Things have to be done legally. Many of us were worried that the borders were just open" under the Biden-Harris administration, he said.
- “Inflation is a big deal, and I don’t think Harris quite gets it,” he said.
- Donald Trump has soared to a decisive election victory over Kamala Harris, lifted up by some of the very voters that Democrats once relied on.