Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has plummetted in the polls with black Democrats after Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) called out the former California attorney general for her record on criminal justice.
The latest Quinnipiac Poll reveals that Harris has dropped to just one percent of support among black Democrats — one of the party’s most vital voting bloc coalitions.
For black Democrats, Harris is the last 2020 Democrat pick amid the party’s leading presidential primary candidates, following former Vice President Joe Biden with 47 percent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with 16 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) with eight percent, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) with two percent.
According to the Quinnipiac Poll, there are now just as many black Democrat primary voters who support former Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and businessman Andrew Yang.
Across all Democrat primary voters, Harris trails in fourth place at seven percent behind Biden, Warren, and Sanders.
Compare Harris’s recent polling numbers to Quinnipiac’s same poll from a month ago where she stood at 27 percent among black Democrats, putting her in second place to Biden with black primary voters. In that poll a month ago, Harris was polling at second place with 20 percent after Biden and ahead of other leading contenders like Sanders, Warren, and Buttigieg.
Harris’s significant drop in support from black Democrats and Democrat primary voters comes after the second Democrat debate where Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) noted Harris’s record as California’s attorney general, when she supported jailing marijuana-smokers and keeping inmates in prison to provide cheaper labor for state projects.
In response, Harris told CNN she expected to be attacked because she is a “top tier candidate.”
This month, Gabbard slammed Harris for resorting to “cheap smears” against her anti-war record and accused her of perpetuating an “unfair, unjust” criminal justice system in California.
Gabbard said of Harris:
It’s pathetic that when confronted with the facts and the truth about her record that she claims to be proud of, as a prosecutor and as attorney general of California, all she can do is lob cheap smears. The American people deserve better than this, especially when her whole campaign is predicated on being a champion for the people … this is all a lie, because when she was in a position to do something about it, when she was in a position to make a difference and truly be a champion for the people, she furthered and perpetuated this unfair, unjust system that harmed many black and brown people in the state of California.
The Quinnipiac Poll was conducted between August 1 through August 5 and surveyed 807 Democrats and swing voters who lean Democrat. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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