How Kamala Harris' Approval Rating Stacks Up With Mike Pence's 6 Months into Vice Presidency

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How Kamala Harris' Approval Rating Stacks Up With Mike Pence's 6 Months into Vice Presidency

By Jason Lemon



After six months in office, polling suggests that more voters disapprove of Vice President Kamala Harris than approve of the job she has done thus far.

Survey results from Politico/Morning Consult released on Wednesday showed that just 45 percent of respondents held a favorable view of the vice president's performance. Meanwhile, 47 percent had an unfavorable view and 5 percent said they had no opinion. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent and was conducted from July 16 to 18.

That polling aligned fairly closely with a separate survey conducted by The Economist/YouGov from July 10 to 13. In that poll, 44 percent of voters said they viewed Harris somewhat or very favorably. But nearly half (48 percent) said they had a very or somewhat unfavorable view of the vice president. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percent.

Harris' approval rating is close to how voters viewed former Vice President Mike Pence after his first six months under former President Donald Trump.

A tracking poll conducted by YouGov America found that Pence's favorability rating stood at 42.5 percent at the end of July 2017. Comparatively, his unfavorability rating stood slightly higher at 44.8 percent. Separate polling by Gallup from around the same time showed 42 percent of voters viewed Pence unfavorably, while 42 percent viewed him favorably.

At the present, however, the Politico/Morning Consult survey showed that 47 percent of respondents held an unfavorable view of the former vice president. At the same time, 41 percent said they viewed Pence favorably as of July 2021.

Notably, a poll conducted by Politico/Morning Consult in August 2017—less than a month after the six-month point of the Trump administration—showed that more voters wanted Pence to be president than Trump. While 30 percent of respondents to that survey said they would rather see Trump as president, 34 percent picked Pence. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent.

The situation currently appears to be reversed with President Joe Biden and Harris. The July poll by Politico/Morning Consult showed Biden with a favorability rating 7 points higher than that of his vice president. While 45 percent of respondents said they approved of Harris, more than half (52 percent) said they approved of the president.

When elected alongside Biden last November, Harris became the first woman, as well as the first South Asian and first Black person, ever elected as vice president. Before serving as vice president, Harris was elected as a senator for California in 2016. Prior to her time in the Senate, she served as the state's attorney general from 2011 until 2017.

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