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Guest Essay

By Kristen Soltis Anderson

Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion’s series of focus groups.

There’s rarely a perfect time to be a pollster, but on Sunday afternoon, as my latest national survey of voters was wrapping up, President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

I’m sure I’m not the only pollster who was in the field, trying to measure the impact of the events of just the previous several days: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the selection of JD Vance as Mr. Trump’s running mate, the president coming down with Covid, the entire Republican National Convention.

Suddenly, the 2024 race has been turned on its head. And to get a full read on the effect of the change-up at the top of the Democratic ticket, we’ll need two things:

Clarity on the “who”: Democratic leaders seem to be coalescing quickly around Ms. Harris, and Democratic voters, so far, seem to be largely OK with this, though some may still pine for an alternative or a more deliberative process.

Time: The idea of Ms. Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee will take a few days to ripple through the public consciousness. Even then, it will take a few days for pollsters to go back out, ask people their views and then crunch the numbers.

We’ll get clarity on those things in the next week or so. But I think we can already start assessing what new challenges and opportunities Democrats have by moving on from Mr. Biden to an alternative candidate, particularly Ms. Harris; and since she’s the likely nominee — and........

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