Nate Cohn
One way to think about her position is that she has become something like a “generic” Democrat. This might sound like an insult, but it’s really not. In fact, nothing is more coveted. An unnamed generic candidate — whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican — almost always fares better in the polls than named candidates, who are inevitably burdened by all the imperfections voters learn about in the process of a campaign.
When we polled these three states last October, an unnamed Democrat led Mr. Trump by around 10 points, even as Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris by about one point each. The upside of a different, broadly acceptable Democrat was purely hypothetical, of course. There was no guarantee that any real-world Democrat could avoid alienating many of the voters who would prefer to vote for someone other than Mr. Trump. And there was certainly no reason to think Ms. Harris would be such a Democrat, as she was viewed unfavorably by a majority of voters and brought plenty of political baggage from her tenure as vice president and her failed 2020 presidential campaign.