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This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 16 episode of "Deadline: White House."
Since Donald Trump entered the political scene, he’s owned the enthusiasm gap. But, according to a new survey from renowned pollster Ann Selzer, that’s no longer the case. The Des Moines Register poll found that in Iowa, a state Trump won comfortably in both 2016 and 2020, 80% of Vice President Kamala Harris’ supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about her as their choice for president. That’s compared to 74% of Trump’s supporters.
In 2016 and 2020, I don’t think it was that there was a lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. But you had Trump burst onto the scene, giving the finger to the man, to the government, to the system, to the "swamp" — to whatever you want to call it. That kind of negative messaging created such a burst of enthusiasm among a bunch of folks who felt like nobody got them, that nobody was taking care of them. They wanted to give the finger to everybody in power, too.
But this time around, the burst of enthusiasm is on the Democratic side. People see Harris as positive and uplifting. She’s talking about the problems that matter to the American people.
One of the issues driving up enthusiasm for Harris is abortion. Many women feel that Trump has diminished their pain. But it’s not just women who find this issue motivating, it’s women and the men who love them, the men who care about their daughters and their nieces and their grandchildren.
Nobody is making up that women are bleeding out in bathrooms and hospital parking lots. Nobody is making up that women are not able to get the medical care they need when a pregnancy has gone terribly wrong through no fault of their own.
All of that creates a kind of visceral pain that makes women and men want to rise up together and say enough is enough. That’s where a lot of this enthusiasm for Harris is coming from.