Vice President Kamala Harris was delivered a harsh rebuke by a fact-checking organization after she responded to a question from a reporter about her poor rating among voters, saying other polls show her with “great approval ratings.”
The polls Harris is referring to were conducted more than 100 public polls ago, according to PolitiFact, which rated the vice president’s comment false, saying “public polling results do not support her assertion.”
“At the time the ABC News interview aired, FiveThirtyEight’s average was 39.7% approving of Harris’ performance and 52.3% disapproving, for a net of 12.6 percentage points ‘underwater,'” PolitiFact wrote. “Meanwhile, the most recent poll in which more people approved than disapproved of Harris’ performance was from October 2021 and was more than 100 polls ago. That poll, conducted by Saint. Leo University, found Harris above water by 2 percentage points, which was within the poll’s 3-point margin of error.”
In a recent interview with ABC News, reporter Linsey Davis asked VP Harris whether she believed race and gender are playing a role in her having “the lowest approval rating of any vice president.”
“Well, there are polls that also say I have great approval ratings,” said Harris. “I think the point that has to be made is that there are attempts to create distractions away from the accomplishments of our administration.”
PolitiFact attempted to ask the White House for proof of the positive polling cited by Harris. The White House responded by saying she was asked an “open-ended question” and that “some polls” from early in her tenure showed her above water. “The spokesperson added that polls have found that certain subgroups of voters register strong approval of Harris, such as 72% of Black voters in the July SSRS/CNN poll,” wrote the fact-checkers.
The vice president has made public misstatements and other verbal stumbles a common occurrence during her public events, episodes that sow doubt on her ability to take over for the aging President Joe Biden should the need arise.
Earlier this month, VP Harris regurgitated the phrase “space cooperation” three times in 30 seconds while holding a press conference with the prime minister of Mongolia. She was scorched in July for giving a kindergarten-level explanation of artificial intelligence, starting off “First of all, it’s two letters.”