Kamala Harris has started winning over a large number of first-time and young voters, a cohort more likely to vote Democrat, although an expert on American politics has warned that nothing is certain in a presidential race that has hit uncharted territory.

Recent polling has shown Harris is either catching up to Trump or surpassing him in both general election polls and swing states, while also increasing Joe Biden’s lead with young voters.

More than eight million new Gen Z Americans will be able to vote for the first time in November, with around 47 per cent of them being people of colour, representing a potentially election-winning cohort if Harris manages to get them to the ballot box.

David Smith, Associate Professor in American politics and foreign policy at the University of Sydney, said that Harris made significant gains with young and minority voters in polling as soon as she entered the race.

“Biden himself had quite a strong personal following among older and whiter voters, which was unusual for a Democrat, and she may well lose some of those, but she will be relying on mobilising younger people,” he said.

“For a lot of younger Americans, the contest between two very old men was just not an appealing one at all and there was a significant danger for Democrats that a lot of them would have stayed home.”

No choice

Democratic lawmakers are latching onto the sense of excitement and change that has swung the momentum away from Donald Trump and towards their party, with some comparing it to Barack Obama’s 2008 victory.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, told USA Today that she would put “all her savings” on Harris resonating with young voters.

“This is the most diverse generation in American history, so I think a lot of young people see their story in her story,” she said.

“We expect that this will really increase motivation for young people to turn out this election, and also voters of colour.”

And, like Obama, Harris has embraced the power of social media to enhance and grow her campaign.

Harris joined TikTok on Friday morning (AEST) and by Friday afternoon already had 1.1 million followers. This came after she was trending on the platform earlier in the week.

Smith said that Harris has almost instantaneously revived a Democratic campaign that was demoralised and lacking enthusiasm.

“Democrats, over the course of around 40 hours, raised more than $100 million which is now more than $200 million,” he said.

“I’ve heard some Democrats describe it as they haven’t seen anything like it since Barrack Obama. At this point, it may not be sufficient to win the election, but it just wasn’t there for Joe Biden.”

Democrats are comparing the energy for Kamala Harris to Barack Obama’s 2008 victory over Mitt Romney. Photo: Getty

The race ahead

Traditional politics would dictate that all the momentum is on Harris’s side, with the Democratic convention and a VP pick still to come, although Smith points out that this is a race like no other.

“Trump is the first candidate to survive an assassination during an election campaign since 1912, so the kind of momentum that he’s had, we don’t know how long that will continue for,” he said.

“Lyndon B. Johnson was the last sitting president to withdraw from an election campaign in 1968, but he did it in March and left a wide-open primary contest.”

He said that polling after the attempted assassination has shown that Trump is having career-high popularity.

“In a New York Times/Sienna poll today, his approval rating was 48 per cent, which I think is the highest they’ve recorded since the very early months of the pandemic in 2020,” Smith said.

“Harris herself, it is not like she is young by conventional standards at 59, but she’s just so much more energetic, she’s more literate in the language of 21st century politics and she’s a lot more what people expect and want from a candidate than Joe Biden is.”