Mark it down: In 2028, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential candidacy will not survive the New Hampshire primary.
Likewise, former Vice President Kamala Harris might make it a bit further, but not much.
Why the bold forecast? Well, in a poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted between Feb. 27 and March 3, NBC News found that Harris and especially Newsom have comparatively low favorability ratings even among Democrats.
Incredibly, only 52 percent of Democrats reported positive views of the California governor. If only half of voters in your own party like you, then how can you possibly win a national election?
For comparison’s sake, Harris earned a 67 percent favorability rating among Democrats.
Of course, one might argue that Harris, who already ran a national campaign, benefits from name recognition.
That explanation, however, does not account for the fact that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who, like Newsom, has never run a national campaign, matched Harris’ popularity by earning a favorable rating from nearly two-thirds of Democrats.
In other words, Democrat voters have taken their candidates’ measure, and in each case, at least one-third of those voters have found the candidates lacking.
From there, the news got even worse for all three leading Democrat contenders.
First of all, Vice President J.D. Vance, widely seen as the current Republican front-runner for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination, received a 77 percent favorability rating among Republicans — a 10-point advantage inside his own party compared to Harris and Ocasio-Cortez, and a whopping 25-point advantage over Newsom.
Second, Harris and Newsom fared poorly with the broader electorate. Among all voters surveyed, only 34 percent gave Harris a favorable rating, compared to 51 percent unfavorable. Newsom, the less-established national candidate, had lower numbers in both categories: 27 percent favorable and 45 percent unfavorable.
On the whole, those numbers align with voters’ views of the two parties in general.
For instance, whereas the Republican Party (51 percent) had essentially the same negative rating as the Democratic Party (52 percent) among all voters, the GOP scored a 37 percent favorable rating compared to only 30 percent for the Democrats.
As for voters’ satisfaction with their own parties, Republican voters gave the GOP a 77 percent favorable rating. Only 62 percent of Democrats, however, did likewise for their party.
Nor does the NBC News poll look like an outlier. In fact, according to the RealClearPolling aggregate of polls, Republicans currently enjoy a six-point edge over Democrats in net favorability.
Of course, the same polling aggregator shows Democrats leading Republicans by 4.4 percentage points in the generic 2026 midterm ballot.
In other words, voters despise Democrats in general, but they also hate the way Republicans in Congress have governed. Considering the results thus far, who could blame them?
In short, when it comes to the electoral landscape, we all know that Republicans have their problems. But, how would you like to be the Democrats and have to pretend that Harris, Ocasio-Cortez, or Newsom are serious human beings, let alone presidential quality?
Indeed, according to this NBC poll and others like it, the GOP’s problems pale in comparison to what Harris and especially Newsom will have to overcome.
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