Where Harris has, and has not, rebuilt the Democratic coalition

CNN —

The Harris coalition is coming into focus.

When Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee last month, her twin challenges were to shore up support with the groups where Biden was weak and to maintain his standing with the groups where he was relatively stronger.

As she arrives at the Democratic convention in Chicago this week, a broad array of polls testify to her progress on both tests. In both national and battleground state surveys, she’s regained a solid amount of the ground that Biden had lost with such traditionally Democratic-leaning groups as Black and younger voters, and made a more modest recovery with Latinos.

Simultaneously, in both national polls and surveys of the critical Rustbelt battlegrounds of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, she is matching or exceeding Biden’s showing among older and working-class Whites — two groups in which Biden had largely maintained his 2020 level of support before quitting the race.

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Harris’ performance on each of these fronts has allowed her to pass former President Donald Trump in most polling averages measuring each candidates’ overall national support. More importantly, it has reopened the electoral map, providing her more pathways to 270 Electoral College votes than Biden had before he left the race. Her gains among younger and non-White voters have allowed her to put back into play Sunbelt battlegrounds that Biden’s struggles among those voters had moved largely beyond his reach. And in the Rustbelt battlegrounds that represented Biden’s most plausible path to 270 Electoral College