Polling data shows Trump campaign’s difficulty in framing the conversation around Kamala Harris

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — Heading into the Democratic National Convention, new data suggests that the Trump campaign’s initial attempts to frame the conversation about Vice President Kamala Harris have so far gained relatively little traction.

Instead, the public’s attention has remained largely focused around the Democratic nominee’s selection of a running mate and other facets of her campaign – a dynamic that could be reinforced for another week as the Democratic Party gathers in Chicago. Meanwhile, the public conversation around the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, remains relatively unfocused in the quieter aftermath of a month of major news stories surrounding him.

The Breakthrough is a CNN polling project that tracks what average Americans are actually hearing, reading and seeing about the presidential candidates throughout the campaign. Charting the words used to describe each candidate, the project finds that in the weeks since Harris entered the race, the word “campaign” has been mentioned more frequently regarding Harris than Trump – a break from earlier in the summer, when the Trump campaign drew as much or more attention than President Joe Biden’s campaign.

In the most recent survey – conducted August 9-12 by SSRS and Verasight on behalf of a research team from CNN, Georgetown University and the University of Michigan –Americans were more likely to report hearing about Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for the Democratic vice presidential slot (and other news about the vice presidency, including her own current role) than any other topic. Slightly fewer mentioned other aspects of the Harris campaign, a broad category that includes the new ticket’s rally tour, fundraising totals, poll numbers or ads.

“I’ve seen her more on the news lately,” one poll respondent wrote.

Far fewer mentioned the border, and there was even less mention of the economy – two traditionally GOP-friendly campaign issues on which the Trump campaign has criticized Harris. The most prominent negative news about Harris to break through was criticism that she has been reluctant to hold news conferences or engage with the media.

“She refuses to answer any questions from the media and I don’t know any of her ideas for office,” another respondent wrote.

At the same time, the conversation around the former president is even more scattered, leaving the Trump campaign in the unusual position of fighting to carve out space in the public’s attention. In the aftermath of a flood of high-profile news featuring him –- the assassination attempt, his VP pick and the Republican convention – more recent developments, including his calls for more debates and his Mar-a-Lago press conference, have gained some notice. But the discussion around him has yet to coalesce around any new central theme. In that absence, some criticism of Trump is more prominent than it had been, with the word “lie” the fourth-most-mentioned word about him.

“I [haven’t] seen much new lately,” wrote one respondent. “Just keep seeing clips of him saying that Harris is crazy and such.”

A few others had followed news specifically about the Trump campaign’s messaging efforts, with one writing that they’d heard Trump “is struggling how to approach campaigning now that Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee.”

Overall, public attention to both parties’ candidates is down slightly from the fever pitch of earlier this summer, when nearly 9 in 10 Americans were following news about Biden and Trump. But more than three-quarters of the public have heard something about Harris in the past week, a much higher profile than she held before assuming the nomination, and on par with Trump’s numbers. By contrast, fewer than half in any given week said they’d heard anything about independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (In the latest wave of data, much of the discussion that did exist around Kennedy focused on, as one respondent put it, “[s]omething kooky about a bear.”)

The poll also looks at tone, a metric that incorporates the net tenor of the sentiments Americans are using to describe what they’re hearing. That’s distinct from the favorability ratings often seen in polling, which ask respondents directly to share their own opinions of a candidate.

The results suggest that the reset in campaign dynamics following Harris’ entrance into the race – including a rise in Democratic enthusiasm for the race seen in other polling – is so far continuing to hold. While Trump’s scores on this metric have been underwater throughout the summer, he largely fared better than Biden, whose campaign was largely defined in its final days by a poorly received debate performance and by questions about his health and his viability within the Democratic Party. By contrast, Harris’ score on this metric has remained largely neutral in recent weeks, buoyed by positive numbers within her own party.

“Have had a gleeful time with friends and like minded people that her campaign seems to be running so well,” wrote one poll respondent, who recounted watching multiple Harris rallies and receiving texts from her campaign. “We love her choice of running mate.”

The Breakthrough survey project, which will run throughout the 2024 campaign, provides a different lens on the campaign than much other election polling, demonstrating which current events, campaign narratives and media stories break through to the American public amid a perennially busy news environment. In past elections, the responses to that question highlighted overarching campaign dynamics, ranging from the looming presence of the coronavirus pandemic during  the 2020 campaign, to the way mentions of Hillary Clinton’s email server dominated conversations throughout her 2016 campaign. Read more about the project here.

CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta and Edward Wu contributed to this story.

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