As election results trickled in throughout Tuesday night, exit polls painted a grim picture of Vice President Kamala Harris' electoral chances in key swing states.
CNN exit polls found that the approval ratings of Joe Biden's administration were well below the national average in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Anchors Dana Bash and Jake Tapper called Biden's numbers "brutal" as they waited for results from the states his vice president needed to win to stay in the race.
“Six in ten in Wisconsin say that they don’t approve of the president,” Bash said. “There’s no other way to look at it. That is, no question, a big headwind for Kamala Harris."
Host Audie Cornish agreed, noting that the Trump campaign has "done an effective job in tying her" to Biden's record.
"You were in the room. You were always there," Cornish said, characterizing the Trump message. "You could have made a difference, and you didn't."
Bash and Tapper weren't alone on their network in pointing out the hill that Harris had to climb. Pointing to a 3-to-1 disapproval of the job Biden has done in office, Chris Wallace said a Harris win would be "a miracle."
“I got to say, I think that with the present conditions in the country – I mean, in conventional terms, it would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind,” he said. “If she is able to overcome those numbers and still win this election, then she has done a remarkable job of somehow separating herself."
In another segment, Wallace also criticized Harris for not doing more to separate herself from the Biden administration. He brought up the vice president's visit to "The View," in which she balked at offering any differences between herself and Biden.
"She said, 'Nothing comes immediately to mind,' which might not have been the best answer," he said.
Citing lower-than-expected margins of victory in suburban D.C., Democratic strategist James Carville was also not holding his breath for a Harris win. Stopping by Amazon's live election coverage and speaking to host Brian Williams, the Clinton campaign adviser said that "early indications here are not sterling."
On MSNBC, Steve Kornacki flagged some troubling results on a county level in Michigan. He said that Harris' performance so far looked "an awful lot" like Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016. Harris was winning suburban Detroit's Oakland County at the time of Kornacki's analysis, but with less of a margin than Joe Biden did in 2020. Biden carried the state in the last election.
The New York Times' vaunted (and occasionally maligned) "needle" forecast has shifted toward Trump as polls have closed in western states. As of this writing, Harris needs to sweep Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, though Trump holds a slight edge in the paper's forecasts for all three states.
