Kamala Harris’ Departure Means A Boost For Elizabeth Warren

Harris supporters and endorsers will likely flow to Warren

For a struggling Warren, Senator Kamala Harris’ departure from the 2020 field offers some much needed good news. Data shows that Harris supporters will likely find a new home in the Warren camp.

In one of the most interesting polls of 2020, voters were given the opportunity to rank candidates in order of preference. This was meant to simulate what would happen if ranked choice voting were used in the election.

Votes were counted in a runoff fashion where the lowest performing candidate was eliminated in rounds and their votes were transferred to those voters’ next favorite choices.

The poll results revealed a strange roadmap to victory for candidates — not a map based on what they should try to win by their own virtue, rather what they should anticipate gaining from other candidates flunking.

The poll showed which candidates were fighting over the same bank of voters. As it turns out, Warren and Harris supporters have quite a bit of overlap. When Harris was eliminated in the runoff process, half of her votes went to Warren and roughly a quarter went to each Biden and Sanders. This was one of the earliest signs that one of Warren’s biggest challengers was Harris.

Since then, more data has surfaced. BusinessInsider reported that Harris supporters support Elizabeth Warren by 14% more than other Democratic voters do, and that when Harris falls in the polls, Warren rises.

Geoffrey Skelley of FiveThirtyEight saw similar trends.

“… one reason to think that some of Harris’s supporters have moved into Warren’s camp is that they have tended to name Warren as their top second-choice candidate. In part, this is probably because there is some demographic overlap in their support — both candidates have a fair amount of backing from college-educated voters and more progressive voters.”

So what does Warren’s playbook look like now?

Warren and Klobuchar are the only women likely to qualify for the December debate, and Klobuchar hasn’t hit double digits in a credible poll in… maybe ever.

Harris’ departure also means endorsements — possibly lots of them. After Biden, Harris had the strongest endorsement list according to 538. If other support trends hold, then some of those endorsements will float Warren’s way.

There’s also money, which Warren has already jumped on. Shortly after Harris dropped out, Warren send a fundraising email reading:

“Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand — two women senators who, together, won more than 11.5 million votes in their last elections — have been forced out of this race, while billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg have been allowed to buy their way in.” “Our party and our democracy deserve better.”

The only question is whether Warren will be able to find enough salvageable support from Harris’ campaign to outperform Biden, Buttigieg, and Sanders.

-Ben Chapman

Ben is a political organizer in Illinois who writes about food, politics, the environment, and the internet. You can find more about him at his website: https://www.benchapman.us