The Kamala Conundrum: Examining A Potential 2028 Harris Presidential Run

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— While Kamala Harris generally leads 2028 national primary polls, she trails several potential opponents in New Hampshire and has even been behind in her home state of California.

— Although defeated presidential nominees have occasionally won a subsequent nomination, and sometimes even the White House, Harris’s trajectory is more similar to those who eventually gave up their comeback attempt.

— Looming over all of this is the question of whether the Democratic electorate is willing to nominate a woman for a third time in 12 years, as that glass ceiling remains stubbornly unshattered.

Harris 2028?

Over the past few months, Kamala Harris has offered the same answer whenever she’s asked if she’ll run for president in 2028: “I might.”

If you remember, the 2024 Democratic nominee remained surprisingly strong in those first 2028 polls taken in the days after she lost to Donald Trump. Rather than immediately toss her aside, Dems appeared at least temporarily open to a future Harris campaign. As a result, Harris’s inner circle soon began to consider three potential paths ahead for her. The former vice president (1) could run for governor of California in 2026, (2) could leave electoral politics altogether, or (3) could try for the presidency once more in 2028.

As Harris spent most of 2025 weighing a gubernatorial run and writing her 2024 campaign memoir, her standing in the early 2028 surveys began to decline. Consequently, by the fall of last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s feud with Donald Trump was able to propel him past his old in-state rival into pole position as the 2028 Democratic front-runner. Yet when Harris finally emerged again on her book tour, we eventually saw the numbers begin to shift once more. Throughout the winter of 2026, Harris and Newsom traded the lead back and forth until Harris firmly retook the top spot in the spring; and she has retained that top spot in national polling, albeit only with about 25% of the vote, according to recent averages from RacetotheWH and VoteHub.

Beyond these national numbers, though, Harris performs particularly poorly in some state-level surveys. Take New Hampshire, for instance, the state that is currently third on the 2028 primary calendar (although they’re still threatening to go first anyway). In every poll of the Granite State so far, Harris not only trails Newsom and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY-14) as well. According to June’s Saint Anselm College poll, only 4% of New Hampshire Dems are supporting Harris.

Moreover, several surveys in Harris’s home state of California found Newsom far out ahead in the lead as Harris was left to contend with Buttigieg and AOC; sometimes finishing in second ahead of them, yet other times again ending up behind both in fourth place (although none of that polling is recent). Suffice to say, such results would be embarrassing for a former vice president and presidential nominee and suggest real vulnerabilities for any 2028 campaign.

Some historical precedents for Harris’s situation

In the history of American politics, there are relatively few comparisons we can make to the situation Kamala Harris finds herself in right now. Despite running for president in the last two campaign cycles, she’s yet to actually be tested in a primary contest, because she dropped out before voting started in the 2020 cycle and was anointed as the nominee in 2024.

Nevertheless, the last presidential nominee who lost a general election right before her, Donald Trump, was able to come back and win just four years later. Trump, though, was averaging over 50% in 2024 surveys during the spring and early summer of 2022. His low point wouldn’t come until after the 2022 midterms, when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) led in a handful of obscure surveys, although Trump generally still led in the polls.

A much more pessimistic comparison might be Al Gore’s 2004 non-campaign. Another former Democratic vice president coming off a close defeat, Gore saw his support decline over the course of Gallup’s 2001 and 2002 surveys, leaving him with only an 8-point lead over then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (26% to 18%) in a hypothetical Democratic field. Gore would maintain that level of advantage over Clinton and the other possible contenders through November 2002, when he finally decided not to run again.

Before Gore, former President Gerald Ford debated running in 1980. In fact, Gallup found in April 1978 that Ford held a 10-point lead (40% to 30%) over his 1976 primary rival Ronald Reagan. Yet by that December, Reagan was back ahead by 16, and Reagan would lead Ford throughout 1979 and into 1980 before Ford eventually passed on the race.

Like Harris, Hubert Humphrey had to take up the party mantle from an unpopular sitting president in 1968, and like Harris, Humphrey also came up just short in the general election. From 1969 through 1971, Humphrey tended to trail both Ted Kennedy and his 1968 running mate, Edmund Muskie, in 1972 surveys. So Humphrey dragged his feet before finally declaring his candidacy in January 1972, although as a result he missed the filing deadline for several early states. By March, however, Humphrey was leading in the national polls as the party sought to stop George McGovern from securing the nomination.

In the spring of 1972, Humphrey’s comeback effort peaked with victories in the Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio primaries. Yet he lost his momentum when the attempted assassination of George Wallace helped the Southerner win in Maryland and Michigan. All the while, McGovern continued to benefit from the new delegate rules—which McGovern had helped write—and a last Humphrey stand in California fell short. Four years later, Humphrey was again leading national Democratic primary polls, but he’d grown too sick to give it one last try.

In the convention era, we have polling for a few more past examples. In May 1962, for example, 1960 GOP nominee Richard Nixon was leading New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller by 10 points (42% to 32%), although the bottom fell out after he lost his campaign for governor of California in November 1962. Ultimately Nixon’s comeback had to wait until 1968.

The last Democratic nominee to lose an election and then win a subsequent nomination was Adlai Stevenson, who in August 1954 held a strong 57% to 22% advantage over Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Stevenson would go on to lead wire-to-wire nationally, only to lose to Dwight Eisenhower in another landslide (with Kefauver as his running mate).

Finally, 1944 GOP nominee Thomas Dewey led former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen in national polls in the leadup to the 1948 Republican convention, although Dewey trailed Stassen in a couple of April 1948 Gallup polls. Dewey’s fight with Stassen lasted all the way to May 1948, when he defeated Stassen in the Oregon primary. In that year’s general election contest, Dewey infamously lost to Harry Truman in perhaps the biggest upset in American presidential politics.

Harris’s numbers over the past two years much more closely resemble Gore, Ford, Humphrey, and Dewey’s than any of the more successful examples. Both Gore and Ford decided to bow out, while Humphrey and Dewey both suffered heartbreaking defeats. Furthermore, the ones who did prove able to mount a daunting comeback—Nixon and Trump—were two of the most ruthless figures in U.S. history. Such findings should give Harris some insight on what it will take to prevail.

How a Harris 2028 campaign might unfold

To overcome all this history, Harris is looking to her own past.

Back in 2020, the first Kamala Harris presidential campaign envisioned an “SEC strategy” that involved targeting the heavily Black, Southern Democratic primaries. Now, six years later, she added a Southern leg to her book tour in April to build up potential support.

Focusing on Black voters makes sense for Harris, as demographic breakdowns of polls consistently show her doing best with them. With Hispanics, Harris generally competes with Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez for support, while Buttigieg and Newsom vie with Harris for white votes. Meanwhile, one spring survey found Newsom and Ocasio-Cortez at the top among Asian voters.

As we saw in the 2008, 2016 and 2020 primaries, Black Democrats hold considerable sway in Southern contests, especially in the smaller states like South Carolina. Thanks to the party’s proportional allocation rules, landslides in those states present one of the few opportunities for a Democratic candidate to really rack up delegates. To top it all off, South Carolina is now positioned to be the first state on the Democrats’ 2028 primary calendar.

This approach, however, is hindered by one central flaw. It’s by no means guaranteed that Kamala Harris would enjoy the levels of Black support Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden experienced in 2016 and 2020. After all, their main rival in each election was Bernie Sanders, who had very few Black constituents in Vermont and never demonstrated much support among Black voters. Conversely, several of the Democratic governors widely expected to run in 2028—such as JB Pritzker, Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro—have plenty of experience winning over Black voters, despite being white themselves.

We also have past indications that Harris’s Black support could erode over time. Remember that during her first 2020 campaign, this constituency chose Joe Biden over her, then in the 2024 general election, Harris lost significant ground among Black voters compared to Biden and Hillary Clinton.

Furthermore, there’s the issue of money, as several reporters have found that many wealthy Democratic donors remain furious at Harris for the way she spent their money during the 2024 campaign. This ill will is so deeply embedded that some donors refused to even donate to the DNC, an echo of their successful push to get Joe Biden out of the 2024 race. Such a reality ensures that any Harris 2028 campaign will be incredibly dependent on small-dollar donors.

Finally, we must consider the question ominously looming over Kamala Harris’s presidential hopes: Can she actually win? After all, she had her chance two years ago, and she lost. Then there’s the seldom-spoken question behind that original question: Can any woman really win the presidency?

Former First Lady Michelle Obama is one of the few public figures willing to frankly voice this fear. “As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready,” Obama told an audience last November. “That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman.”

Every potential voter is quite aware that the Democrats nominated female presidential candidates twice recently and lost both times. To say nothing of the fact that America trails several other first-world nations when it comes to female representation in government.

While impossible to quantify, the impression persists that some percentage of the electorate will not vote to elect a woman president, and Democrats are petrified that this group of voters will once again cost them the White House. Even the very people who chanted for Harris to run again during her April appearance at Al Sharpton’s NAN convention admitted to reporters that they fear she can’t actually win the presidency. Sharpton himself reportedly cautioned Harris that her legacy would be diminished if she ran again and lost.

In the end, we’re left with nothing but questions: Is Kamala Harris really the 2028 Democratic front-runner? Will her 2024 defeat define her political career? Could she actually shatter the glass ceiling on her third try? Only time can provide the answers.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.