Californians not keen on Kamala Harris as president: Poll

American voters are not very keen about Vice President Kamala Harris running for President in 2024 If Joe Biden decides not to run for a second term, according to a new poll in her home state of California.

Just 16% said they’d be “very enthusiastic,” about a presidential run by Harris, daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican American father, in the Berkeley Institute of Government Studies/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted between Feb 14 and Feb 20 among 7,512 registered voters,

Another 21% said they’d be “somewhat enthusiastic”; 18% answered “not too enthusiastic,” and a clear plurality of 41% said “not enthusiastic at all.” Four percent of survey respondents offered no opinion.

In sum, just 37% of voters say they have enthusiasm for a Harris presidential bid, compared with a whopping 59% who expressed hesitancy. When looking at the results among only Democratic voters, 56% say they’d be enthusiastic, while 41% said they would not be.

In sum, just 37% of voters say they have enthusiasm for a Harris presidential bid, compared with a whopping 59% who expressed hesitancy.

When looking at the results among only Democratic voters, 56% say they’d be enthusiastic, while 41% said they would not be. The fact that 4 in 10 California Democrats don’t want to see Harris run for president is extremely worrying news for her, SFGate.com suggested.

Biden is reportedly planning on formally announcing a reelection bid in March or April. However, the poll confirms reported fears from Harris’ orbit that whenever she does seek the Democratic presidential nomination, she’s likely to face a “difficult, messy” primary, it said.

The Berkeley survey did not poll a hypothetical Democratic presidential primary in California, though in August of last year, the pollster found Harris trailing both Governor Gavin Newsom and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The poll also found that Biden’s approval rating in California is ticking up. The September version of the survey showed Biden at 52% approval and 43% disapproval, while the Feb 23 poll results show him now at 57% approval and 39% disapproval.

Those are his highest marks since the summer of 2021, which is the last time he had positive approval nationally, SFGate noted. Negative coverage of his administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan drove Biden’s poll numbers underwater, and he has yet to recover.

Despite the approval rebound, a clear majority of California voters still want the 80-year-old president to step aside: 57% of survey respondents said they oppose a 2024 reelection bid, while 37% said they approve.

While that gap of 20 percentage points is bleak, it was at 30 percentage points in August, with 61% expressing disapproval of Biden running compared with just 31% who expressed approval.