Will Kamala Harris’ record as prosecutor help win over black women?

A woman with shoulder-length dark hair sits at a desk, talking and gesticulating with her hands. She wears a white suit and a double pearl necklace, and she holds a pen in her right hand.

Photo illustration: The cut

When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, her experience as a prosecutor seemed to hurt her with Democratic voters who were shifting left on criminal justice and labeling her “a police officer.” This time around, Harris is leaning into that record rather than downplaying it, reminding audiences across the country that she knows how to deal with “predators, fraudsters, cheaters” and drawing a sharp contrast between herself and Donald Trump, the first former president to be convicted of a crime. Harris’ positioning as a tough prosecutor is a tactic she is expected to continue using in Tuesday’s debate.

That message is resonating with Black women, too, according to a new Cut survey that found that 49 percent of Black women have a positive opinion of Harris based on her record as a prosecutor. Thirty-eight percent said that background didn’t change their opinion of Harris, while 13 percent said they had a negative opinion of her because of her background.

The survey is the third of four that The Cut is conducting ahead of the November election. It surveyed 1,200 Black women ages 18 to 55 between Aug. 28 and Sept. 3, after Harris was officially nominated at the Democratic National Convention. While the vast majority of Black women, 91 percent, plan to vote in the 2024 presidential election, the share of women who said they felt obligated to vote for the Black community declined slightly from 85 percent in August to 81 percent. The share of Black women who said they felt pressured to support Harris remained unchanged at 42 percent, while more than two-thirds agree that concerns about whether Americans are ready to elect a Black woman are true or honest.

The share of Black women who said they would vote for Harris if the election were held today — 83 percent — rose significantly after the DNC, up from 75 percent in August. Thirteen percent said they would vote for Trump if the election were held today. Eighty-three percent of respondents said they approve of how Harris is handling her job as vice president, up from 78 percent in August.

The survey also found a stark difference in enthusiasm between Harris and Trump supporters. Seventy-eight percent of Black women who plan to vote for Harris believe their vote will have a positive impact, while 46 percent of Trump supporters believe their vote will have a negative impact or no impact at all, up from 35 percent in August. These positive vibes extended to Harris’ vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz, who 44 percent of Black women viewed positively, while just 11 percent said they had a positive opinion of Trump’s vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance.

While much attention has been paid in recent weeks to Tuesday night’s debate — which marks the first and potentially only chance for Harris and Trump to go head-to-head in front of voters — Black women were divided over how much the event would influence their votes. Just 30 percent said the debate would have a strong impact on who they vote for, while 42 percent said the debate would have a moderate or slight effect on who they vote for. Twenty-eight percent said the debate would have no effect on their choice of candidate.

Before being elected senator and vice president, Harris served as attorney general of California and district attorney of San Francisco. In her 2009 book, Dealing with crime smartly: a career prosecutor’s plan to make us safer, Harris described herself as someone who was “tough on crime by being smart on crime.” A decade later, she began describing herself as a “progressive prosecutor,” even as her critics on the left accused her of failing to embrace criminal justice reform. During her campaign this summer, however, she began to focus on her record on dealing with violent crime, emphasizing that she had prosecuted “transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers.”

Graph: The Cut

That experience appears to resonate with Black women, 39 percent of whom cited racial justice and equality and 28 percent of whom cited public safety and crime as the most important issues for them. Twenty percent of Black women also said they had personally experienced gun violence or street crime, according to the survey, while 18 percent said they had personally experienced police violence.

Only 14 percent said they believe Black people are treated fairly in the U.S. justice system. The poll also found that Trump’s felony conviction and criminal cases have hurt Black women’s perceptions of him: 69 percent said the cases made them less likely to vote for Trump, compared to 61 percent in August.

Forty-eight percent of Black women said inflation and the economy are among the most important issues on their minds this election, up from 42 percent last month. Housing, racial justice and equality, health care and abortion rounded out the top five issues on Black women’s minds heading into November. (And While the share of Black women who see racial justice and equality as the most important issues has declined since August, 31 percent of Black women now say the country is moving in the right direction on these issues following Harris’ formal nomination, up from 24 percent last month.)

The survey also found that 38 percent of Black women have lost their jobs, 34 percent are struggling with student loan debt and 30 percent are housing insecure. Harris has recently begun rolling out economic proposals that address some of these issues, including building more housing and providing down payment assistance. The survey found that the share of Black women who said Harris would have the most positive impact on their personal finances increased from 70 percent in August to 80 percent this month. By comparison, just 16 percent of Black women believe Trump would have the most positive impact on their personal finances.

Even before Harris launched her campaign this summer, Trump tried to appeal to black voters by claiming that the Biden administration was letting immigrants into the country to take “black jobs.” Those accusations don’t appear to have helped him, as the survey found that the comments made 58 percent of black women have a more negative view of the former president. Twenty-six percent said the “black jobs” comments didn’t change their opinion of Trump, while 16 percent said they had a more positive opinion of him.

From left to right: Graph: The CutGraph: The Cut

Trump has also launched racist attacks on Harris since she became his opponent, including falsely claiming at the National Association of Black Journalists conference that Harris “just happened to turn black” a few years ago. The attack appears to have backfired with its intended audience, as 65 percent of black women said the comments about Harris’ race made them have a more negative opinion of Trump. Twenty-four percent said the comments did not change their opinion of Trump, while 11 percent said they had a more positive opinion of him.

One of Trump’s more recent tactics — calling Harris “comrade Kamala” in an attempt to paint the vice president as a communist — appears to be resonating with some voters, however. The poll found that 22 percent of black women agree with the label.