Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, arrive to conduct their first appearance together in Wilmington, Del., on Wednesday.
Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

By Glynn Wilson –

A whopping 88 percent of Democrats say the announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s pick for Vice President made them hopeful, and roughly 4 out 5 say it makes them confident, proud, happy or “excited,” according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll just out Thursday night.

That’s the share of voters who said those emotions described how they feel about Harris as Biden’s running mate to take on President Donald Trump in November.

After hearing about Harris’ background and policy positions, a majority of 53 percent approve of her selection. Following the pick, 50 percentage of likely voters said they had a favorable view of Biden, his highest rating since mid-June.

The news of Harris’ placement on Biden’s ticket made a bigger initial splash than Hillary Clinton’s selection of Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate in 2016, according to the survey research data.

In Harris’ first full day on the ticket, 37 percent of voters said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” about Biden’s selection, compared with 17 percent who said they’d heard a lot about Clinton’s choice four years ago.

While President Donald Trump and his re-election campaign have sought to brand Harris as a radical liberal, that framing is being met with some initial skepticism among voters, according to the survey data.

The poll, conducted the day after former Vice President selected the California Democrat as his running mate, found that voters placed Harris just to Biden’s ideological left — and to the right of where voters placed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

This buzz on Facebook has been met with a flurry of activity on the part of trolls on the Socialist Democrat left, who were called “Bernie Bros” in 2016 in the disastrous fight for the Democratic Nomination. Some pundits are now calling them “Putin’s Puppets” for assisting the Trump campaign and the Russian hackers by smearing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Among Black voters and liberals, the sentiment was roughly the same in support of Harris.

While Trump has portrayed Harris as a candidate who will weaken Biden, calling her “my No. 1 draft pick,” nearly half of Republicans surveyed, 45 percent, said they were “worried” by Biden’s choice.

Harris was already a prominent figure in American politics, with 79 percent of voters at least recognizing her name in a survey conducted ahead of Biden’s selection. The latest survey found 94 percent of voters had heard of her following the announcement, and 45 percent view her favorably (up 12 points) while 37 percent hold unfavorable views (up 3 points).

Morning Consult polling of 3,820 likely voters conducted Wednesday found 50 percent have favorable views of Biden and 46 percent have unfavorable views, his best marks since mid-June. That survey had a margin of error of only 2 percentage points.