Skeptical voters wrestle with what they know about Harris versus what they've seen from Trump

A new focus group of skeptical Hispanic voters reveals the potential limitations of Democratic enthusiasm breaking through with the remaining sliver of persuadable voters in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ rise to the top of their ticket.

Conversations with nine voters — who are primarily from presidential battleground states and say they’re unsatisfied with both major-party candidates — show a near-unanimous lack of familiarity with Harris. That’s bred a real skepticism about whether Harris means what she says in the campaign or whether the November election is a choice, as one voter put it, between the “devil we know” in former President Donald Trump and the “devil we don’t know” in Harris.

Yet that dynamic also gives Harris a potential opening, some participants noted, as a new voice in a race that was shaping up for a year-plus as a rematch between two of the most recognizable politicians in recent American history.

“It’s better a fool known than the fool unknown. Sorry, I’ve already been through Trump, I think I can handle him another four years. He’s not going to kill the whole nation in four years, he doesn’t have that power, and I just don’t know Harris well enough,” said Maddie C., a 52-year-old from Macon, Georgia, who also backed Trump in 2020.

But Andreas O., a 47-year-old from Durham, North Carolina, who backed President Joe Biden in 2020, said of Harris, “At the very least, she’s competent. I don’t have any doubts about her ability to run the government.”

The latest edition of the NBC News Deciders Focus Group, produced in collaboration with Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago, makes clear the decision to swap Biden with Harris at the top of the ticket has fundamentally changed the discussion about the Democratic ticket. The near-universal discomfort with Biden’s age across every prior focus group of skeptical or undecided voters is gone. But it’s been replaced by voters in these sessions who used words like “ghost” and “hiding” and “unknown” to describe Harris.

Cecilia Q., a 53-year-old Phoenix resident who voted for Biden in 2020, said skepticism about Harris compared with her familiarity with Trump is weighing on her vote. If forced to choose between the two major-party candidates, she said, she’d back Trump. But given more choices, she chose progressive activist Cornel West, a significant shift that she says has become a joke with her family.

“I don’t know much about him, but I do know what it was like under Trump. So I thought: OK, well, I already dealt with one bad, how bad could a” liberal version of that be, she said.

Asked why voting for Harris wouldn’t be on the table, Cecilia Q., a native Californian with a criminal justice background, said she didn’t think the policies Harris pursued as state attorney general were “in the best interest of the community.”

Not one of the nine voters said they watched most or all of the Democrats’ recent convention, with four saying they watched some and five saying they watched none of it. Only one said they watched most of Harris’ speech — a very liberal voter who plans not to vote and is deeply critical of Harris over the administration’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.

“There’s a long-standing pattern of not-hugely-familiar vice presidents needing to reintroduce themselves to America — and reset the campaign dynamic — when they accept their party’s presidential nomination,” said Engagious President Rich Thau, who moderated the sessions. He added: “Vice presidents are infrequently seen, and even less frequently heard, so it’s not a surprise that low-information, skeptical voters don’t know much about Kamala Harris. The challenge for her is to creatively penetrate the consciousness of voters who avoid the messages that campaigns work hard to promote.”

While the group of Latino voters was largely unfamiliar with Harris, there are indications that some of her policy proposals are breaking through. When asked what they’ve heard about each candidate recently, some of the participants mentioned policies on housing and prescription drug prices, as well as her decision to adopt Trump’s plan to eliminate federal taxes on tips — and memes on social media, both positive and negative, about Harris.

And while Harris’ lack of definition among some of these voters was itself a turn-off to them, even among those with real criticisms of the Biden administration, none of the voters suggested Harris should be held responsible for much of anything, good or bad, that has happened while she’s been vice president.

“You can’t blame her for being a silent partner,” Maddie C. said. “Being vice president does not give you any muscle.”

Victor C., a 59-year-old from Bartonsville, Pennsylvania, who backed Biden and plans to vote for Harris, agreed.

“In the years that I’ve lived in this country, I don’t remember seeing any vice president do anything or get credit for anything,” he said, adding: “It’s a decorative figure. It’s only there when the president is not here or if something happens to the president. The president is the one to decide whatever’s going to be done.”

Meanwhile, sentiment about Trump largely reflected what other panels of voters have said about the former president since the start of the focus group series.

While supporters praise Trump’s business acumen and his time in office, an overlapping group of his critics and even many of those who plan to back him in the fall are deeply critical of his tone and his approach. During the word association portion of the focus groups, a single person replied to the mention of Trump with a positive word, with sentiments like “arrogant,” “narcissist” and “problem” dominating the responses.

“I dislike the way he is disrespectful to people. Even if he has a good policy or a good idea about something, when he is genuinely just rude to other people, that comes off as arrogant, comes off as him not caring about who he’s speaking to,” said Denise H., a 55-year-old from Marietta, Georgia, who voted for Trump in 2020 and plans to again.

Asked to choose between only Trump and Harris, five chose Trump, three chose Harris and one said they wouldn’t vote. Given the additional choices of independent and third-party candidates, only one moved: Cecilia Q., who switched from Trump to West.

While Harris was far more of a blank slate to these skeptical Latino voters, almost every one said that Trump would be a bigger agent of change in a second term, regardless of their view of the change.

“I would say dismantling every meaningful aspect of our democratic principles is a pretty big change,” said Andreas O., a Harris voter. “Change in the sense that a wildfire is change.”

Cecilia Q., the voter conflicted between Trump and West, said that Trump has “the ability and the people in place to put the changes that need to occur, as it relates to international [relations] and the economy.”

“Good or bad, he’s going to make changes,” she added.

But Maddie C., who says she’ll vote for Trump, had a different view of the change Trump could bring.

“Think about it, guys: He’s a convicted felon, right? But we are still voting for him for president. Why, when an average felon can’t even go pick up trash with a trash company because they have a history of being a felon,” she said.

“Open your eyes, that man is bringing a lot of change, and it’s going to be corrupt and it’s going to be ugly. I want to see it to believe it. I’m sorry, I have to, I’ve got to see what this fool is up to,” she added.

Abortion and immigration provide openings for Harris and Trump

The Trump and Harris campaigns have fundamentally different theories about what will motivate voters to turn out for their sides, and the conversations with these skeptical Latino voters highlight how issues including abortion rights and border security could resonate with some of these voters.

Take Denise H.: She said at the start she backed Trump in 2020 and plans to again, but when asked about abortion, she called herself a “firm believer in a woman’s right to choose,” adding it will weigh heavily on her vote.

Asked how she reconciles her support for Trump with that reality, she admitted it’s a “struggle.”

“Had you not brought up the abortion issue, I may have just stayed where I was, but it is a struggle for me,” she said. “I was in a city that had major demonstrations after Roe v. Wade [was overturned], and they were very disturbing. I’m going to be so all over the place on this, on the other hand, I don’t know what Kamala can do in four years.”

“I am 100% conflicted,” Denise H. continued.

Cecilia Q., the 2020 Biden voter who said she’d vote for either Trump or West, argued that “I don’t think at any point in time I have a right to tell somebody what to do with their body and I wouldn’t want anybody to tell me what to do with mine.”

“Our conversations with these skeptics suggest Vice President Harris’ best path to win them over is through amplifying women’s reproductive rights as a key issue,” said Margaret Talev, the director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship in Washington and a partner in the focus group project. “Otherwise, many who say they don’t really know what she stands for — or what distinguishes her from President Biden — defaulted to former President Trump because they miss their pre-Covid personal finances, or said he better secured the border.”

“But some of those voters who lean toward Trump were truly torn when the conversation turned to women’s autonomy over their bodies or ability to make decisions with their doctors without government interference,” Talev added.

There were limits to the issue’s salience across the board, even with voters who plan to back Harris. Victor C., who plans to vote for the Democrat, said he’d support restrictions after 15 weeks of a pregnancy. And many of those who say they’re voting for Trump signaled support for abortion restrictions.

Trump has convinced his supporters on his signature issue of immigration, like Gloria L. and Yvonne J., who both echoed Trump’s concerns about unvetted people coming into the U.S. illegally, while the issue has soured him among those voting for Harris, who call his approach to the border inhumane.

But again, Cecilia Q. typifies the kind of voter who feels caught in the middle, “torn” on the two different approaches.

“In regards to preventing or working on building the wall to try to prevent [undocumented] immigrants, it would be Trump,” she said when asked who would do a better job handling the border, “but in regards to being more compassionate, that would be Harris.”