California Sen. Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee, has seen her popularity surge after being announced as Joe Biden's running mate in the upcoming election.
In a Morning Consult poll published on Thursday, Harris saw her popularity grow across a number of key voting groups between late July and this week, with her overall favorability growing by 12 percent.
At least 45 percent of the 1,990 voters surveyed in a poll conducted on Wednesday, the day after Biden's announcement, said they view Harris favorably.
In a poll conducted between July 24 and 26, just 33 percent of 1,997 voters surveyed expressed favorable views of the California senator.
At the same time, however, unfavorable views of Harris also grew by three percent, with 34 percent of voters expressing unfavorable views in July and 37 percent sharing the same views in August.
The biggest change in unfavorability, however, appeared to come from Republicans, who saw their dislike grow from 58 percent to 70 percent.
Jumps in favorability appeared to occur in groups across the board, with Harris' favorability surging from 61 percent to 77 percent among Democrats and from 35 percent to 52 percent among moderates.
Among Republicans, there was only a minimal one percent change in favorability, growing from 9 to 10 percent.
With a key focus on whether Harris will rally the support of Black voters, the Morning Consult poll had good news for the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee, with support among Black voters surging by 20 percent, from 50 percent in July to 70 percent in August.
Meanwhile, Harris also saw support grow from suburban voters and voters over the age of 65, with the former seeing favorability grow from 35 to 45 percent and the latter seeing positive views rise from 40 to 51 percent.
While past research has suggested that vice presidential nominees have little impact on the outcome of elections, this time could be different, with many looking at Biden's running mate as his potential successor, given his age and whether or not he will pursue a second term.
"You could cut other nominees like [former President Barack Obama] and Hillary Clinton some slack because of their age vitality and so forth. This is slightly different because of Biden's age and I think he's acutely aware of it," Bruce Wolpe, a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, told Newsweek in an interview ahead of Biden's announcement of his pick for VP.
Harris, he said at the time, would likely be the strongest candidate to win support as Biden's running mate, and as a potential future president.
