Hannah Yoon / The New York Times
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, speaks in Lancaster, Pa., on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
Sunday, June 28, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Joe Biden appears to face limited political pressure from voters about whom to choose as his running mate, with no contender emerging as a clear favorite and the great majority of people saying that race should not be a factor in his decision, according to polling conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.
Biden has pledged to select a woman as his nominee for vice president, and his advisers are vetting more than half a dozen people for the job. In recent weeks, amid ongoing demonstrations against racism and police violence, a number of prominent Democrats have pressed Biden to select an African American woman. And his search committee has been reviewing at least five Black women, one Latina and one Asian American candidate.
Earlier this month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a white moderate, removed herself from consideration for vice president after sustained criticism of her record as a prosecutor, and she publicly urged Biden to put a woman of color on his ticket.
In the Times poll, 4 in 5 registered voters said that race shouldn’t be a factor in Biden’s selection of a running mate. That group included three-quarters of the Black voters polled, and more than 8 in 10 white and Hispanic voters.
About a fifth of Black voters said they would like to see Biden choose a Black running mate. The largest group with that preference was very liberal voters, at 37%; 27% of voters with postgraduate degrees said the same.
The poll asked respondents if they thought Biden should choose a Black running mate or a white running mate or if race shouldn’t be a factor. The poll did not ask about the possibility that Biden could choose a Latina or an Asian American candidate, but he is seriously considering women of both backgrounds.
In the six most important battleground states, voters’ professed indifference to race was even stronger. Nine in 10 registered voters in those states said race should not be a factor in Biden’s choice of running mate, including 91% of Black voters and 85% of Hispanics.
The polls had margins of sampling error of 1.8 percentage points in the battleground states and 3 percentage points nationally.
Biden’s eventual choice is certain to face intensive scrutiny, in part because of Biden’s age. If he is elected, Biden, currently 77, would be the oldest president ever on the day of his inauguration, and he would turn 80 about halfway through his term, a reality that worries some voters.
Biden has said he is looking for someone who shares his overall approach to governing and who would be prepared for the presidency “on Day 1.” He has also said he would prefer a running mate with strengths that complement his own, as well as someone who would be willing to challenge him rather than being cowed by the office of the presidency.
Follow-up interviews with poll respondents suggested that many voters are in tune with Biden’s stated approach.
“I don’t believe that the problems in America can be solved just by having, for example, a Black president or a Black vice president,” said Garfield Campbell, 54, of Scottsdale, Arizona, a poll respondent. Campbell, who is Black, continued, “The right person has to be someone that can sort of counterbalance, or add value and strength, to Joe Biden, in areas where he may not be as strong.”
Biden’s wide lead over President Donald Trump in national polls — he was ahead by 14 percentage points in a Times/Siena survey this week — could give him an unusually free hand in choosing a running mate: He is not desperately seeking a sidekick who could help him shake up the race, as John McCain did in 2008 when he put the charismatic but obscure Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, on his ticket. Nor is Biden confronting questions about his own readiness for the presidency, as Barack Obama did when he selected Biden.
Christine Matthews, a Republican pollster who has been critical of Trump, said that the political impact of Biden’s selection might be limited because he is so far ahead in the race.
“It matters less this year, because of his large lead and his appeal to fairly broad constituencies,” said Matthews, adding that her own view was that Biden ought to choose a Black woman.
Yet the size and diversity of Biden’s emerging coalition presents delicate dynamics of its own, as his choice of running mate may well excite one element of his political base at the cost of upsetting another.
Of the women known to be under consideration, only a few have prominent national profiles. None of the better-known women appeared in the poll to be a runaway favorite with voters.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was the best-known contender, and she was seen favorably by 45% of registered voters and unfavorably by 42%. Warren inspired the strongest reactions of any candidate tested in the poll, with three-fifths of very liberal voters saying they had a very favorable view of her and an equal share of very conservative voters expressing a strongly negative view. A majority of moderate voters had a somewhat or very favorable opinion of her.
In the swing states, Warren’s favorability rating was evenly split, with 41% of people saying they had a favorable view and the same share saying the opposite.
Ellen Schiffman Adelstein, 78, of Tucson, Arizona, said she admired Warren’s work on consumer protection matters but worried that her positions on issues like health care were too far to the left, posing a risk to the ticket if Biden selected her.
“I want a new president,” Schiffman Adelstein said. “I don’t want anything to mess up getting a new president in there.”
But Khalil Skerritt, 30, of Tallahassee, Florida, said that Warren would push Biden to move urgently on promises of structural reform.
“She’ll be the one to be like, ‘No, we have four years to get stuff done,’” said Skerritt, who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California, another well-known candidate in the vetting process, had similarly mixed numbers, with 40% of voters expressing a favorable view and 35% seeing her unfavorably. Two-thirds of Black voters had a positive impression of Harris, a few percentage points better than Warren.
Harris was somewhat less well known in the battleground states and showed few pronounced points of strength or weakness there. Thirty-five percent of swing-state voters said they had a favorable view of her, and 30% said the opposite.
The public was far less familiar with two other Black women under consideration: Rep. Val Demings of Florida, a former police chief who is among the most serious vice-presidential prospects, was unknown to 4 in 5 voters both nationally and in her expansive home state. Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia governor candidate, was seen favorably by about a third of registered voters nationwide but was unknown to nearly half.
Allison Bryan-Harris, 41, of Eagle Lake, Florida, said she planned to cast an unenthusiastic vote for Biden — “I could vote for a box at this point,” she said — but expressed excitement about Abrams, calling her “forward-thinking” and “progressive.”
Wilfredo Torres, 71, a Hispanic military retiree from Charlotte, North Carolina, favored Demings for vice president, saying he believed “it’s a good time to have somebody African American on the ticket.” He also said her law enforcement experience was an asset.
Two white women from the Midwest who have spoken with Biden’s vetting team, Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, drew positive marks in their home states, suggesting that either could be well positioned to help Biden cement his lead in a key battleground.
But Biden is already leading both of those states by substantial margins, and it is not clear that he needs help from a running mate to lock up a local victory.
