New insight from “The Breakthrough”, a project from CNN, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan, SSRS and Verasight.
Each week, 1,000 Americans are asked to share what they have seen, read or heard about major presidential candidates in their own words. The results build on similar work in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and provide a unique window into how people across the country are experiencing this year’s historic campaign.
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.