CNN anchor Jake Tapper was left reeling early Wednesday morning after discovering that Vice President Kamala Harris had failed to outperform President Biden’s 2020 results in a single state. In a moment that quickly went viral, Tapper’s stunned reaction highlighted just how poorly Harris performed in the critical battlegrounds that could determine the course of the election.
During CNN’s live coverage, Tapper asked CNN’s chief national correspondent, John King, to pull up a graphic showing where Harris had garnered at least 3% more votes than Biden did in the 2020 election. Expecting a colorful map lit up with states where Harris had shown her political strength, Tapper was met with a stark surprise: a gray map indicating no such improvement in any state.
“Holy smokes!” Tapper gasped in disbelief. “Literally nothing?”
“Literally nothing,” King confirmed, delivering the crushing reality of Harris’s dismal performance.
King then adjusted the graphic to show the results at the county level, where Harris had managed to outperform Biden by 3% or more in just 58 counties across the entire country. In comparison, former President Donald Trump had dominated with over 1,000 counties — a stark contrast that showed just how far Harris and the Biden administration had fallen out of favor with key voters in crucial regions.
The comparison was a blow to the already embattled vice president, whose performance has been under intense scrutiny ever since she was chosen as Biden’s running mate. As King pointed out, Harris only outperformed Biden in a single county in battleground Pennsylvania — a state that was crucial to Trump’s reversal of his 2020 losses. It’s safe to say that this kind of underperformance will raise serious concerns among Democrats heading into the upcoming general election.
“Just to be clear,” King added, “we just showed Donald Trump was over a thousand counties of the 4,600 counties and townships across America.” The overwhelming red map was a reminder of the power of Trump’s enduring influence, even as he faced baseless accusations and constant media attacks. While Harris struggled to make an impact in key states, Trump’s support was wide-reaching and deeply rooted across the nation.
Former President Donald Trump had already secured a massive victory, reversing his 2020 losses in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that are vital to any path to victory. As the results came in, Trump’s appeal was clear: American voters were looking for a candidate who could represent their interests and restore strength to the country after the disastrous first term of the Biden administration.
This graphic, showing Kamala Harris’s stark lack of impact, serves as a powerful reminder of the political disarray within the Democratic Party. Harris, once heralded as the future of the party, has become a symbol of its failures, struggling to connect with voters and failing to inspire enthusiasm even among her own base. For many, her inability to even outperform Biden in key battleground states is a sign that the Democratic establishment is rapidly losing touch with the very voters it needs to succeed.
With Trump’s victories in these states and Harris’s woeful underperformance, the 2024 election is shaping up to be a referendum on the leadership of the Biden-Harris administration, and if this pattern continues, the result could be a decisive shift back to conservative leadership.
