When Joe Biden first picked Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020, he called her a "fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country's finest public servants."
The Biden-Harris team is set to appear on the ballot again in 2024's presidential election, when they will face the Republican presidential nominee, which (early) polls say is likely to be Donald Trump and a yet-to-be-named running mate.
With some polls currently putting President Biden and Trump neck and neck, Vice President Harris' performance and polling might expect more scrutiny than ever.
As was the case in a recent television interview...
The Claim
Kamala Harris told ABC News in an interview that aired on July 31, 2023, that some polls suggest she has "great approval ratings."
ABC News anchor Linsey Davis said: "There are reports that say you have the lowest approval rating of any vice president. I'm curious, how much of a role, if any, do you feel race and gender have in that?"
Harris replied: "Well there are polls that also say I have great approval ratings. I think the point that has to be made is that there are attempts to create distractions away from the accomplishments of our administration."
The Facts
The framing of Davis' questions does not explicitly state which polls she is referring to.
There is a chance too that Harris' response could be based on data from specific respondent populations. For example, a Leger poll conducted between July 14 and 17, 2023, found that 75 percent of respondents who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election approved of the way that Harris was handling her job as vice president.
However, it seems clear that the figures referred to in the context of the ABC interview are overall net ratings. On that measure, Harris has not had a "great" result for some time.
Polling analysts have found Harris to have had a consistently negative approval rating.
According to FiveThirtyEight, which provides a rolling average of net approval ratings that accounts for "recency, sample size, methodology and house effects," Vice President Harris has had a consistently negative approval rating since October 2021.
Her latest net approval rating from FiveThirtyEight, as of July 23, stood at -11.1.
FiveThirtyEight has not listed a single poll with a positive approval rating since a Saint Leo University poll of 1,000 adults, conducted from October 17 to 23, 2021, gave Harris a +2 rating.
Another polling analyst, RealClearPolitics, last gave Harris a net positive rating in June 2021. It currently gives Harris a current net approval rating of -15.5.
Her highest rating, according to its aggregation of polls, was recorded in February 2021, when she received a +21 net approval score in a poll by Morning Consult and Politico. The latest one, as listed by RealClearPolitics, to give Harris a net positive rating was conducted by The Economist/YouGov in June 2021. It stood at +1.
While the gap between her approval and disapproval ratings are slimmer than President Joe Biden's (although approval of Biden's performance is higher than Harris') this is not an endorsement that she has "great ratings."
Simply put, there does not appear to be any recent data that supports the vice president's statement.
The Ruling
False.
Although no poll is specified during the conversation, Harris' claim that some polls suggest she has "great approval ratings" does not appear to be supported by available evidence.
Aggregations of multiple polls suggest that she has not polled positively since at least October 2021.
Representatives for Vice President Harris were contacted for comment via email on August 1, 2023, to ask which specific polling the vice president was referring to. Newsweek has yet to receive a response.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
About the writer
Tom Norton is Newsweek's Fact Check reporter, based in London. His focus is reporting on misinformation and misleading information in ... Read more