As the political future of former Vice President Kamala Harris hangs in the balance, there's been a flurry of polls regarding the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election and where she stands with voters in a potential gubernatorial run in California and as the Democratic nominee for president, yet again. Polls still show her at the top for both roles, but there's more to these polls. California, which already elected her as a senator and the attorney general may want to have her back, and good riddance. But what about the rest of the country, especially when Harris has yet to ever win a single primary vote for president?
Harris is indeed the frontrunner for governor in 2026, with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom being term-limited. As Leah covered earlier on Thursday, a poll from Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics/The Hill shows Harris with 57 percent support among Democratic primary voters, with the next closest candidate, former Rep. Katie Porter, having just 9 percent. More than that, 9 percent who support Porter are the 17 percent who say they're "undecided."
📊 2026 CA Governor Democratic Primary
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 13, 2025
• Harris: 57%
• Porter: 9%
• Villaraigosa: 4%
• Kounalakis: 4%
• Atkins: 3%
• Yee: 2%
• Thurmond: 1%
• Cloobeck: 1%
• Younger: 1%
---
• Other: 3%
• Undecided: 17%
Emerson | n=1000 | 2/10-11https://t.co/wGemPydHoF pic.twitter.com/Zhng3oADbq
The poll was conducted February 10-11, with 1,000 California registered voters.
Harris' standing as the clear frontrunner in the race has become a trending topic on X. However, there's more worth examining in another poll.
A Capitol Weekly poll found that against Republican John Cox, Harris only leads by 23-21 percent. They are the top two among five total candidates. Among those voters who are Democrats or have no party preference, Harris still leads, with Porter behind her in second place, but it's a narrower gap, 23-16 percent.
Without Harris among the top five candidates, Porter leads Cox by better numbers, 26-21 percent. Among those voters who are Democrats or have no party preference, Porter also leads, with 26 percent to Rick Caruso's 8 percent in a distant second. Caruso previously ran against Karen Bass to be the mayor of Los Angeles in a runoff election but came up short, as the city went in a far-left direction.
📊 2026 CA Governor Top-two primary
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 13, 2025
Top 5 candidates
• Harris (D): 23%
• Cox (R): 21%
• Porter (D): 16%
• Chen (R): 10%
• Caruso (D): 8%
Without Harris
• Porter (D): 26%
• Cox (R): 21%
• Bonta (D): 9%
• Chen (R): 9%
• Caruso (D): 8%
——
Among Democratic and no party…
The poll's write-up does come with caveats, stating, "Polling this far out is not very predictive of what would happen after the next 16 months before the June primary." Adding, "On the Republican side, these candidates are just put in as placeholders for any eventual Republican candidates."
That same poll also looked at 2028 candidates, Harris included. As it turns out, she's not even a top contender. "CA 120: Dems in a funk, but Harris and Newsom could still shine," the poll's headline notably mentions. "We surveyed nearly 1,200 California voters and found an electorate that is just as divided as ever and Democrats, in particular, in a funk," the write-up states early on, speaking about how California voters have reacted to the recent 2024 election, with Harris losing handily to President Donald Trump in the Electoral College and with the popular vote.
In this poll, the top finisher for the California Democratic primary would be Newsom, with 27 percent. That's something of a curious move, given how he's mishandled the wildfires that raged in his state last month. It would also be bad news for the Democrats as a party to nominate yet another West Coast elitist, but so be it if they want to keep losing.
Harris is tied with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 15 percent support, though slightly more Democratic respondents, 18 percent, say "other."
📊 2028 California Democratic Primary
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 13, 2025
• Newsom 27%
• Buttigieg 15%
• Harris 15%
• Klobuchar 6%
• Shapiro 6%
• Whitmer 6%
• Booker 5%
• Pritzker 1%
• Gallego 0%
• Moore 0%
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• Other 18%@CA_120 | 2/6 | Dem n=681https://t.co/npEhMJERXT pic.twitter.com/eDTQ9X7qcq
The poll doesn't merely examine the 2026 governor's race or the 2028 California Democratic primary race for president but also focuses heavily on 2024.
What else the poll reveals doesn't exactly spell good news for those who voted for Harris, if they expect to win in 2028:
To begin, the simple question of if voters were surprised by the Trump victory, 49% of voters said they were surprised President Trump won re-election, while 51% said it was what they expected. This mirrors the polling going into Election Day, when polls and modeling had the outcome firmly within the “toss up” range.
But the partisan divide can be seen in these answers, as 77% of Vice President Harris’ supporters expected her to win, while among 91% of Trump supporters said they expected him to be re-elected.
...
Who do voters who supported Kamala Harris blame for the loss? Among the 600 Harris supporters in the survey, every subgroup, including gender, ethnicity, age and geographic region, blames Biden and his team for Democrat’s loss in 2024. Overall, only 34% of Harris supporters blame her, with the remaining 66% pinning the blame on Biden and his team. This is even more dramatic among women, among whom 72% blame Biden.
It is always somebody else's fault but the bad candidate in question. As the headline and write-up put it, Democrats are "in a funk," or, to be it another way, this is another example of Democrats in disarray.
As other polls have also shown, the Democratic Party is in pretty dire straits regarding how it's viewed by the American people:
While favorability for Harris and Biden have dropped since the election, the views of the Democratic Party seem to have dropped even more. When asked “Do you think the Democratic Party has shown an ability to present an effective case against the Trump administration?” only 11% said yes, with 79% of voters saying that the Democratic Party has not shown this ability. Among Democrats the numbers didn’t improve much – with 19% expressing confidence in their party, and 68% not.
When asked to give one word to describe the Democratic Party, the responses were bleak.
A word bubble shows that "ineffective," "lost," and "weak" appear to be the top three words chosen, and from Democrats no less. Although there were some positive words included, like "hopeful," "determined," and "optimistic," negative words far outweighed positive ones.
This follows a Quinnipiac University poll from last month showing Americans had an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party by 57-31 percent, and Cygnal's poll from earlier this week showing 2026 likely general election voters have an unfavorable view by 54-40 percent.
There's still more bad news from there, as the poll also asked if respondents think that "the Democratic Party has shown an ability to present an effective case against the Trump administration?" Overall, just 11 percent say "yes," while 79 percent say "no." The numbers are hardly better among Democrats, as just 19 percent say "yes" and 68 percent say "no." Thirteen percent are "unsure." Independents/others aren't in the Democrats' corner either, as 86 percent say "no." Just 5 percent say "yes," with more of these voters saying they're "unsure" at 13 percent.
As the poll write-up mentions, highlighting how badly the Democratic Party is doing among its base:
Only 11% of voters have confidence in the Democratic Party. It makes sense that this number is just 1% among Republicans, but at just 19% for Democrats and 5% among independents, the base of the Democratic Party appears to be in a deep hole.
And getting out of this hole for Democrats may be months or years away. Unlike in 2017 when Democrats were shocked by the Trump election, this re-election has hit much harder, and caused less protest, more resignation. Among Harris voters, 51% stated that they were more resigned/depressed and trying to avoid the Trump administration and national politics.
This rings similar to a CBS News poll released last November, just days after Trump beat Harris, which among the key takeaways included how there wasn't much confidence that Democrats could stand up to Trump. Months have gone by, though, with Trump actually having taken office, and the numbers continue to look pitiful.
Newsom also comes into play here as well. As the write-up goes on to mention:
After the election, Vice President Harris had seemed to be avoiding the spotlight, but we have seen Gov. Gavin Newsom trying to serve as a counter-force to Trump with the state’s special legislative session and at the same time trying to work with the Trump administration on issues like the Southern California wildfires.
When asked an open-ended question as to which leader Democrats are most looking to right now, the clear answer was Governor Newsom...
There's another word bubble, with Newsom sure enough being the clear frontrunner there. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) slightly overshadows Harris, who is in the same category as Butiigieg and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in that bubble.
The poll was conducted on February 6. There were 1,200 voters, including 681 Democrats.
Still another poll came out for the 2028 Democratic primary, on a national level. In this case, Harris does lead the pack, and it seems to be by pretty sizable numbers, according to an Echelon Insights survey of likely voters.
Harris is at 36 percent, while Buttigieg and "unsure" are tied with 10 percent support among 447 Democrats. Harris is down 5 points since a poll on November 18, and Buttigieg has gone up 4 points.
📊 2028 National Democratic Primary (shift from November 18)
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 13, 2025
• Harris 36% (-5)
• Buttigieg 10% (+4)
• Walz 9% (+3)
• Newsom 6% (-2)
• AOC 5% (+1)
• Whitmer 4% (+1)
• Cuban 3% (new)
• Shapiro 3% (-4)
• Crockett 2% (new)
• Fetterman 2% (+2)
• Booker 2% (=)
• Pritzker… pic.twitter.com/19a2x4TBQS
