A recent Yale Youth Poll reveals that despite her loss in 2024, Kamala Harris remains a popular candidate among Democrats for the 2028 Presidential Election. According to the poll, she trails Gavin Newsom by 7 percentage points among all voters, and she remains the most popular candidate for voters between 35 and 64. Her dominance among Black voters is also notable, as 47% of Black voters would prefer her to any other candidate. Newsom, who came second among Black voters, was only preferred by 12%.
In 2024, Kamala Harris ran against Donald Trump, where she earned a respectable 226 electoral votes, but also lost an election where Trump won the popular vote for the first time in his career. If chosen to represent the Democrats in 2028, Harris would earn a rare second chance to run again after losing in her first election. The last time a presidential nominee lost the election and then won the nomination again in a future election was in the 1960s, when Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960, but then came back to beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968. If she runs again on a similar moderate platform, she may have a hard time winning back swing voters that specifically voted Trump to avoid electing a candidate deemed by many as inexperienced. Whatever the future holds for former VP Harris, she clearly is keeping her options open, as she has declined to run for California Governor in 2026, a position that she could probably win in a landslide, due to her popularity in her home state.