Jamaican-American U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has garnered enough support from Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey.
This development comes in the wake of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection.
Top Democrats swiftly rallied behind Harris, with prominent elected officials, party leaders, and political organizations endorsing her candidacy. Her campaign set a new 24-hour record for presidential donations on Monday.
By Monday evening, state delegations, including Texas and Harris’s home state of California, met to confirm their support. According to the AP tally, Harris secured the backing of at least 2,579 delegates, surpassing the 1,976 needed to win on the first ballot. No other candidate was mentioned by delegates contacted by the AP.
Despite this, the AP has not yet called Harris the presumptive nominee, as convention delegates are still free to vote for their preferred candidate during the convention in August or in a potential virtual roll call ahead of the gathering in Chicago.
The AP tally is based on interviews with individual delegates, public statements from state parties, and endorsements from individual delegates.
Securing the nomination is just the beginning of a significant political journey for Harris. Following Biden’s announcement on Sunday, Harris must now choose a running mate and shift a massive political operation initially built for Biden’s reelection to support her own candidacy.
On Sunday afternoon, Biden’s campaign officially transitioned to “Harris for President,” reflecting her takeover of his political operation, which includes over 1,000 staffers and a war chest nearing $96 million as of late June. Harris’s campaign reported raising an additional $81 million within the first 24 hours after Biden’s endorsement, a presidential fundraising record, with contributions from more than 888,000 donors.
Interest in Harris’s campaign surged following the announcement, with over 28,000 new volunteers registering, a rate more than 100 times the average from Biden’s previous campaign, underscoring the enthusiasm behind Harris.
If elected, Harris would make history as the first woman, first Caribbean-American, and the first person of South Asian descent to become President of the United States.
