Harris’s Hope: Getting Right-Leaning Voters to Shift to the Left

Democrats see a narrow opening to peel away center-right voters bothered by abortion bans and by the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

For months, Gretchen Wolfe of Phoenix has agonized over her choices in this year’s presidential election.

Ms. Wolfe, 56, was active for years in her local Republican Party. She voted for former President Donald J. Trump twice, holds more conservative views on border security and is wary of Vice President Kamala Harris’s spending plans.

But this week — appalled by Mr. Trump’s record of election denialism, worried about women’s rights and disgusted by displays of racism at his recent Madison Square Garden campaign rally — she cast her ballot for Ms. Harris.

“I felt like I was betraying my party, but country has to come first,” said Ms. Wolfe, who works in municipal government. “Even if our country is not better off in four years because of her policies, in four years, we’re still going to have a country where I have sovereignty over my body, and my ability to be the same level of citizen as somebody who has a different gender.”

In a politically tribal and closely divided nation with vanishingly few undecided Americans left, Ms. Wolfe is the rarest of rare voters.

Democrats are betting that she is not alone.

As Ms. Harris faces alarming signs of erosion with several traditionally Democratic groups, her ability to win over a few more Trump-weary moderate or right-leaning Americans like Ms. Wolfe could play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of a razor-tight election.

“What percentage of them are going to revert to party? Probably most,” acknowledged former Representative Jim Greenwood, a leader of a Republicans for Harris effort in Pennsylvania. “But we’re counting on it being the case that enough Republicans, something like 7, 8, 9, percent, will not vote for Trump, but will vote for Kamala Harris.”

From suburban Philadelphia to upscale Phoenix neighborhoods, interviews with more than 50 voters in critical battleground areas made clear that these voters indeed exist, and tend to be particularly bothered by far-reaching abortion bans and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Ms. Harris, fueled by notable support from women, has a chance to maintain and even expand the advantages Democrats have built in such places in the Trump era.

But whether Democrats can capitalize on that opening is far from assured in the face of deep political polarization, widespread concerns about the cost of living, realities of racism and sexism, and the fact that Ms. Harris serves with an unpopular Democratic president.

“I want to support her,” said Meredith Smith, a Republican from Phoenix who was still struggling with her decision earlier this week. But, she said, Ms. Harris has not been clear enough about how she would distinguish herself from Mr. Biden.

“I just wish there were better choices,” she said.

‘I don’t think she’s as nutty as Trump’

Ms. Harris and her allies have made persuasion of moderate and even right-leaning voters a central aspect of their closing strategy.

In the final stretch, Ms. Harris has campaigned across swing states with former Representative Liz Cheney, the conservative Republican Trump critic. Democrats are running ads featuring two-time Trump voters now backing Ms. Harris, an effort to offer a permission structure for voters to change their mind.

And the campaign constantly highlights new endorsements from onetime Republican leaders and elected officials alienated by Mr. Trump.

The point of such messaging is not just to pursue the daunting task of flipping Republicans. Across the battlegrounds, only 5 percent of Republicans in the suburbs say they’re planning to vote for Ms. Harris, according to polling last month from The New York Times and Siena College. Just 10 percent of suburban Republican women view Ms. Harris favorably.

According to Ms. Harris’s campaign, it is also intended to signal to undecided voters who dislike both parties that Ms. Harris is not a pure partisan.

“We’re pretty cleareyed about peeling off self-described Republican voters,” said Molly Murphy, a Harris campaign pollster. “Those messages certainly appeal to the handful of anti-Trump Republicans who are still considering their choice in this election, but it is a far bigger swath than just that narrow universe.”

The message, she said, is both “‘These are conservatives who trust her, and you should, too,’ but also, much more broadly, ‘This is someone who does not play Dem team versus Republican team. This is someone who is willing to bring people together.’”

Ms. Murphy added that the messaging also signals that Ms. Harris “will take the temperature down in this country.”

In 2020, Mr. Biden campaigned effectively on a unity message, outperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margins in many key swing counties. But not all of those Biden voters are staying in the Democratic tent this election.

Susan Kondraske, 66, of Doylestown, Pa., is dismayed to know that firsthand. Her husband, who supported Mr. Biden last time, is now backing Mr. Trump, she said in an interview from a manicured outdoor shopping district outside Philadelphia.

“He doesn’t particularly like Trump, but he believes in the Republican policies,” said Ms. Kondraske, who said she supports both her Republican congressman, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, and Ms. Harris. “It’s a tough subject in my house.”

Further up the street in Doylestown, Bob Straw, 68, was sparring with his Democratic sister over his choice. As he recalled, he supported Mr. Biden in 2020, but was undecided now.

“I kind of like Trump a bit on the military,” Mr. Straw said, even as his sister, who declined to share her name, noted that some of Mr. Trump’s former advisers had spoken out against him. “I know he’s aggressive.”

Still, Mr. Straw said, “I might end up with Harris, I think. I don’t think she’s as nutty as Trump is.”

Doylestown is in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia. The region is home to the kind of moderate, highly educated suburbanites who have flocked to Democrats in recent years, and Ms. Harris must run up the score in such areas around the country.

But in Bucks, Republicans recently gained a voter registration advantage, and the county appears highly competitive.

“That’s where a lot of these Republicans, these soft Republicans who maybe have doubts about former President Trump, reside,” said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster.

But Mr. Newhouse doubted that Ms. Harris had more room to grow. “Any Republican who’s inclined to move away from Trump has probably already moved,” he said.

A constellation of groups across the battleground states are searching for a few more, with particular focus on supporters of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Republican presidential candidate.

The group Women4U.S., led by current and former Republican women, is reminding similarly minded women in swing states that their vote is private.

“For many Republican women, they are fearful, genuinely fearful, of people in their lives learning that they’re going to vote for Kamala Harris,” said Jennifer Horn, the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party and now a political independent, who is working with Women4U.S.

“It’s something that is almost impossible to measure,” she said. “I would call it a quiet movement of Republican women who are going to vote for Kamala Harris.”

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, argued that many women supported him because they “want a president who will secure our border, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods and put more money in our pockets.”

‘This isn’t a communist state’

Two years ago, anger about the overturning of Roe v. Wade — led in part by Mr. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees — fueled Democratic victories across the country.

Democrats are betting that the issue still resonates in powerful ways across a broad cross-section of voters.

Representative Hillary Scholten, a Democrat from West Michigan — the Bible Belt of the state, she noted — said that she had seen a political shift among “voters of faith,” especially women, since the fall of Roe and the enactment of far-reaching abortion bans.

“I have had dozens of these conversations myself where folks have said, ‘You know, I voted pro-life my entire life, including for Trump. I never realized everything that Roe versus Wade was protecting,’” she said.

Sharon Baechtle, 64, of Kintnersville, Pa., said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 — “biggest regret of my life” — but backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and would support Ms. Harris this year.

“Didn’t realize the importance of the Supreme Court,” she said.

Polling shows that the economy, not abortion, is the most important issue for voters, an issue on which Mr. Trump had a narrowing edge in the latest Times/Siena polling.

There are also Americans who support abortion rights and are backing Mr. Trump, who has tried to soften his rhetoric on abortion in this campaign.

But in half a dozen conversations with women in purple neighborhoods of Phoenix and surrounding suburbs, most of them self-described moderates, protecting abortion rights and stopping Mr. Trump from pulling the country toward authoritarianism were the two main issues.

“I’m so outraged, I can’t even sleep,” said Jayne Berkes, 63, a registered Democrat who described herself as politically independent. Ms. Berkes finds Ms. Harris too liberal, but she sees Mr. Trump as an existential threat.

“I’m a single female, grew up without a father — you’re not going to tell me what I’m going to do if I get pregnant,” she said.

Walter Telly, 66, of Hilltown Township, Pa., in Bucks County, said he twice voted for Mr. Trump, but was somewhat grudgingly supporting Ms. Harris this year. Abortion rights was one factor, he said: “The government shouldn’t be telling her what to do. This is not a communist state.”

“Both sides do things I don’t like, but at least Kamala Harris’s side is looking at taking care of my Medicare, my Social Security,” added Mr. Telly, a machinist.

In Arizona, Ms. Wolfe talked her decision through with her husband this week.

“I didn’t feel like I was being emotional,” she said. “I felt like I was not being reactive. I had just come to sit with it and be OK with it.”

Her husband, she said, was still supporting Mr. Trump.

But, she added, “I have a few days to still try and influence him to do more research.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research. Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.