Earlier this year, we asked Americans to compare the performance of leading presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 20 nonpolitical contexts. When Kamala Harris officially replaced Biden on the Democratic frontrunner list, we asked these questions again and found that Harris both beats Trump in many areas—including dancing and handling spicy food—and outperformed Biden compared to him. While Harris is ahead of Trump in most of these nonpolitical areas, Biden and Trump have the edge in about an equal number of areas.
More Americans believe Harris would win a cooking competition and a dance competition than Trump. Harris is also considered to be better at handling spicy food than Trump and has a better fashion sense.
Compared to Trump, more people believe Harris would excel in personal areas, such as remembering birthdays, keeping secrets, and giving better relationship advice. Harris is also more likely to return a lost wallet and help a stranger. Harris beats Trump by a smaller margin on who would beat the other in a quiz and who would survive longer on a deserted island.
Trump beats Harris by 29 percentage points when it comes to which candidate Americans think would win an arm wrestling match against the other. More Americans also believe Trump would beat Harris at poker and that he would give better financial advice.
The vast majority of each candidate’s supporters believe their candidate has the edge in almost all scenarios polled. But 20 percent of people planning to vote for Harris believe Trump would win an arm wrestling match, and a similar share of Harris supporters believe Trump would be better than Harris at imitating celebrity voices.
Among Trump supporters, Trump and Harris are about equally likely to win a cooking contest or a dance competition against each other.
Harris supporters are about as likely to say that Trump spends more time getting ready in the morning as Harris does. Half of Trump supporters believe Harris spends more time getting ready, while 23% say Trump does.
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— Carl Bialik contributed to this article
Check out the results of this YouGov survey
Methodology: This poll was conducted online from August 16-19, 2024, among 1,143 U.S. adults. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to represent U.S. adults. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, voter turnout in the 2020 election and presidential election, base party affiliation, and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets are from the 2019 American Community Survey. Base party affiliation is the respondent’s last response before November 1, 2022, and is weighted according to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democrat, 31% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty
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