In the wake of President Joe Biden’s ouster from the Democratic presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris is surpassing her boss in swing state polls, but still trailing behind former President Donald Trump. According to an Emerson College survey released Thursday, Harris has outperformed Biden in Arizona by four points, Georgia by five points, Michigan and Pennsylvania by three points each, and Wisconsin by four points.

However, she is still trailing behind Trump by five points (49% to 44%) in Arizona, two points (48% to 46%) in Georgia, one point (46% to 45%) in Michigan, and two points (48% to 46%) in Pennsylvania. The two are tied at 47% in Wisconsin. Harris also trails behind Trump in favorability ratings across most swing states and in no instance does Harris have lower than a 50% unfavorability rating.

According to analysis by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), Trump is leading Harris in swing states by even wider margins: 7.2 points in Arizona, 4.6 points in Georgia, 2.2 points in Michigan, eight points in Nevada, four points in Pennsylvania, and less than two points in Wisconsin.

Although the Harris campaign team has attempted to shore up youth support by posting and encouraging TikTok and Instagram videos, even CNN analyst and statistician Harry Enten observed that it’s not working. “I looked into whether Harris has unique appeal to young voters. She doesn’t. She’s doing much worse against Trump than Biden did in 2020,” Enten said on social media, noting that Biden held a reported 21-point lead among voters under the age of 35 at the end of 2020, while Harris reportedly holds only a nine point lead. Enten continued, “Moreover, young Democrats are NOT disproportionately more motivated to vote than other Democrats because of Biden’s exit.” A Quinnipiac poll found that Trump actually leads Harris — by a margin of nearly 20 points — among voters aged 18 to 34.

“The fact is, Donald Trump is more popular now than he ever has been before. So, yes, Democrats can make this switch-a-roo, but they’re still going to have to beat Donald Trump — a Donald Trump who is stronger than he has ever been before,” Enten summarized. He continued, “Kamala Harris is going to have to do better than this if she wants to win the popular vote, but more than that, if she wants to win the Electoral College, which she’ll likely have to outperform how she’s done nationally,” adding that “the fact is, if you’ve got a tie in the national popular vote, that is probably not good enough if you are Kamala Harris.”

Harris for President campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, formerly the head of Biden’s now-dead campaign, released a memo on Wednesday claiming that the campaign has “multiple pathways” to victory, but relying heavily on young voters and the popular vote in a bid to win. “We continue to focus on the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, where the Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.

Polls cited by the Harris campaign in the memo left out valuable information. For example, the Quinnipiac poll referenced above was used to demonstrate that Harris maintains high favorability ratings among women, but ignored the fact that Trump is leading her nationally according to the poll, including by wide margins among young voters. That survey is also excluded from the “Young Voters” section of the memo.

Furthermore, despite the electoral risks her campaign poses and the fact that Harris did not win a single Democratic Party primary, Bloomberg reported this week that Democratic Party elites are attempting to change party roll call rules so that Harris can be nominated virtually, weeks before the Democratic National Convention. The plan follows Democratic Party elites reportedly pressuring Biden to end his reelection campaign, even threatening him with removal from office if he did not acquiesce to their demands.

According to those reports, Biden was hesitant to retire his reelection efforts because he did not believe that Harris had the political traction, popularity, and rhetorical skills necessary to combat Trump. Another recent report from the New York Post reveals that former President Barack Obama also has concerns over Harris’s political viability and preferred former astronaut and current Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) as Biden’s replacement. The Post suggested that Biden’s rapid endorsement of Harris may have been a spiteful attempt at revenge for being pushed out of the presidential race.

“Obama’s very upset because he knows she can’t win,” said one Democrat close to the Biden family. The source continued, “Obama knows she’s just incompetent — the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should have health insurance. She cannot navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.” The Post’s source added, “Wait until the debate… She can’t debate. She’s going to put her foot in her mouth about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine. She’s going to say something really stupid.”

“Obama knew this was going to happen, Joe knew this was going to happen. Now she is going to have to answer real questions,” the source said, adding that Obama was “shocked” and “furious” when Biden endorsed his vice president.

Trump and his allies have already begun attacking Harris’s far-left record, especially her disastrous tenure as Biden’s “border czar.” But while the Republican nominee for president predicts that Harris won’t be “too tough” to defeat in November, other conservatives are warning that the vice president is not a pushover. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned his fellow Republicans not to “vastly underestimate Kamala Harris,” noting that mainstream media already portray her as “a combination of Mother Teresa, Oprah and Gandhi.”

“We should not write off the menace of a Kamala Harris presidency simply because she has proven herself shallow and inept as a vice president,” cautioned National Review Institute senior fellow Dan McLaughlin. “On the one hand, there’s the Harris we saw as California attorney general, a senator, and a presidential candidate. That Harris was a dangerous authoritarian with an unlimited appetite for power who displayed contempt for the Constitution and no regard for the rights, dignity, faith, or reputations of anyone in her way.”