Kamala Harris' longest-running campaign confidant could chart path to victory: Strategists

The presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could be the closest in more than a century, and one of the few people who knows just how close it could be is Harris' pollster David Binder, who furiously churns out snapshots of election outcomes, and he could carve out a path to her victory, according to strategists who have worked closely with him.

But little has been written about Binder, the only Harris confidant who has served in every race she has ever competed in. Despite holding the keys to some of her most coveted campaign secrets, and his critical efforts in both of former President Barack Obama's winning presidential races, few Americans understand how his work could impact the campaign's direction in these final weeks of the presidential race.

"His work informed everything that we did," Obama's former strategist David Axelrod told ABC News, saying Binder was one of the first people he called when Obama decided to run for president.

"David's unique talent was rich, deep, qualitative research, the best I had seen anybody ever do," said Axelrod, who added that Binder's early insights from Iowa focus groups were essential "when we were trying to decide whether he [Obama] should run... He is completely woven into the fabric of the Obama political journey."

Binder's work could now inform if Harris' presidential journey continues after November.

Binder didn't respond to ABC News' request for comment for this piece, but one former staffer shared an email from him that stated the obvious about the race: "Battleground polls are so tight."

The process

Axelrod said Binder was among a group of pollsters who took on quantitative research for the Obama campaign and also was the principal qualitative researcher who held focus groups three nights a week during the campaign with anywhere from 8 to 12 people. Binder would lead them through questions, Axelrod said, to understand their most deeply held beliefs that could guide a campaign toward certain messaging or movements.

"You sometimes in focus groups do multiple groups to see if similar sentiments or topics come up in different venues. 8 people in one group. 8 people in another. You go to a different city and repeat it. So some of it is looking for reoccurring themes," is what Binder told KQED in 2019.

Axelrod said Obama's 2012 reelection race was more "strategically challenging," adding: "We didn't really know how to talk about the economy in a way that people would accept it." He said he believed Obama was making progress at the time but that "people still were feeling the effects of the Great Recession, even though we were in recovery."

"Not unlike today," he added.

In the fall of 2011, when Obama's ability to win a second term was under question, Binder's focus groups around the country allowed Obama's team to develop what became "a roadmap for the campaign and how to discuss the economy," according to Axelrod.

There were other moments when Binder uncovered specific ideas that Axelrod said shifted the race's momentum.

Binder had been showing focus group participants a chart of jobs lost and gained during the Great Recession and recovery. Axelrod said Binder saw participants' economic outlook shift.

"No words, just a chart. We ended up using that chart in television advertising with very little narrative, and it was unbelievably powerful. And he was the one who said, let's try this out," Axelrod told ABC News.

But results only have value if they are well-received.

"To be a pollster, you have to have a very good bedside manner to do the job well," Brian Brokaw, Harris' former campaign manager for her attorney general race in 2010, told ABC News. "You will almost never encounter a pollster who says, actually, we're good, and you don't need to do anything."

That's where Binder's relationship with Obama appears to differ most notably from his relationship with Harris.

Ace Smith, the San Francisco chief strategist for a number of Harris' former campaigns, said Harris and Binder "have a very sweet personal relationship, going back to Democratic Club politics in San Francisco."

"He has had a long relationship with Kamala Harris that predates this presidential campaign... These things matter," Axelrod added.

Long shots and close races

Pollsters are often the first hires to check a candidate's viability, although Harris' first campaign consultant for her San Francisco district attorney race, Jim Stearns, said she did not conduct a viability poll.

"She was running," Stearns told ABC News. "That was a definite."

According to Stearns, Binder was one of the first five people Harris ever hired in politics.

The first poll he delivered to Harris -- a San Francisco District Attorney Survey with interview dates from March 16-19, 2003 -- did not even crack double digits, at merely 9% in the polls.

"... Out of 100," Harris would tell crowds over the years of this first poll.

Harris would end up winning the seat for San Francisco district attorney, with Binder's help.

Former chief strategist Smith said Binder is "reliably on the money, which speaks to why he's been such a fixture in Kamala Harris' world. He's incredibly accurate over a long period of time."

Seven years later, in 2010, Binder handed the team another challenging forecast ahead of California's attorney general race.

"David said, 'I think it's a jump ball. I can't tell you one way or another, and I think we're in for a long wait before we know the results," former campaign manager Brokaw said. "Not only was he right, he was prescient."

The race would take almost a month to tally, but Harris would pull out a narrow victory over Steve Cooley.

"In the history of California politics, it was one of the closest races in the state," Smith said.

It was a drawn-out process that some analysts and experts foreshadow could be the fate of this November's presidential results.

If Harris wins, Stearns says a big reason will be that data – and her pollster.

“When you win close elections it’s not just about the character of the candidate, but it means your numbers were right. It means you had the data to make really smart decisions.”