Kamala Harris has brushed aside suggestions that public figures such as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson currently have a better chance than she does of winning the White House, insisting in a new interview that she is “not done” with electoral politics and that her record of overcoming poor polling speaks for itself. Pressed about surveys and betting markets that now place the actor and entrepreneur ahead of her among potential 2028 contenders, the former vice president replied that she has “never listened to polls,” adding, “If I listened to polls I would have not run for my first office, or my second office – and I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here.” The remarks came during a BBC interview tied to the release of her campaign memoir, 107 Days, and marked her strongest public signal yet that a second presidential bid remains on the table.
Harris, 61, framed her comments around a broader defense of her political trajectory after a narrow defeat to Donald Trump in 2024, when she became the Democratic nominee following Joe Biden’s withdrawal. “I am not done,” she said, describing public service as “in my bones” and indicating she would decide on 2028 after continuing work to support other Democrats and engage voters. The BBC exchange, previewed over the weekend, situated her prospective future squarely alongside a spate of data points that have fueled speculation about a celebrity outsider’s viability four years from now, including prediction markets that in late summer nudged Johnson ahead of Harris in notional 2028 odds.
Asked specifically about those indicators—frequently cited by critics as evidence of her diminished standing with persuadable voters—Harris invoked earlier chapters of her career. She has pointed before to her 2010 run for California attorney general, which she won by less than a percentage point after trailing late, as a testament to grinding retail politics and late-breaking movement. In the BBC interview she again rejected treating polls as fate, casting the numbers as a snapshot rather than a verdict and reminding viewers that she has twice prevailed in statewide races in the nation’s largest state before her four years as vice president. “There are all kinds of polls that will tell you a variety of things,” she said, before pivoting back to her message that persistence, not headlines, determines outcomes.
The immediate spark for the comparison with Johnson is a cluster of market and media signals, some rooted in online wagering venues that track sentiment long before formal campaigns begin. In late August, the actor briefly overtook Harris in aggregated 2028 betting lines, an attention-grabbing data point amplified by outlets that monitor such markets. Johnson, who has entertained and dismissed political flirtations for years, has not declared an intention to run and has said his “goal is to bring this country together,” but the curiosity surrounding his political potential has persisted since 2017 and flared again after his 2020 endorsement of the Biden–Harris ticket. By 2024 he told interviewers he would keep his politics “to myself,” declining to reprise that endorsement; the ambivalence has not prevented his name from circulating whenever polls test fantasies about nontraditional candidates.
Harris’s new book provides the backdrop for her media swing and for the defensive crouch that sometimes accompanies it. 107 Days recounts the sprint from Biden’s exit to Election Day, when Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz amassed 226 electoral votes and 48.3 percent of the popular vote in a race decided by narrow margins in the Upper Midwest and Georgia. Early coverage of the book has highlighted her candid assessments of the 2024 cycle, including frustration with how long Biden remained the presumptive nominee and her insistence that she ran the shortest modern general-election campaign with discipline despite structural disadvantages. The publicity tour has doubled as a platform for questions about 2028; in multiple stops she has said she has made no decision but believes a woman will become president “in their lifetime,” referring to her grandnieces, adding that it could “possibly” be her.
The BBC interview also gave Harris room to rehearse lines of attack against Trump should she seek a rematch of their 2024 contest. She accused him of authoritarian tendencies, claiming he has “weaponized” institutions against critics, and warned of risks to media freedom—claims his allies dismiss as partisan framing. Those broadsides will be familiar to voters who followed the last campaign; if she runs, they signal a return to a contrast she believes remains salient even after defeat. For now, however, the more immediate political challenge is inside her own party, where early 2028 maneuvering among governors and members of Congress has begun in earnest and where donors will watch for evidence that she can rekindle enthusiasm in states where late-deciding voters drifted away last year.
Johnson’s shadow over that conversation is as much a commentary on the electorate as it is on Harris. His public posture has evolved from a 2020 video conversation with Biden and Harris—his first-ever presidential endorsement—to a 2024 insistence that he would not endorse anyone, a shift he attributed to a desire to lower the political temperature. He has been coy when asked about personal ambitions, occasionally feeding the rumor mill with jokes or noncommittal answers, then stepping back. That dance, coupled with his formidable name recognition and cross-demographic appeal built over two decades in wrestling, film, and business, explains why his name polls comparatively well when voters are asked to imagine alternative futures. Harris’s response—don’t read too much into it—amounts to a bet that celebrity heat fades as contests become real.
The comparison is not purely theoretical. Political markets and early informal surveys have, at intervals, reflected a measurable appetite for nontraditional candidates after successive cycles of polarizing politics, a dynamic that has alternately helped and hurt conventional figures depending on the moment. Harris’s allies argue that 2028 will look different from a speculative market four years out, that the Democratic bench is deep, and that the former vice president’s fundraising network and campaign infrastructure give her an instant advantage if she jumps in. Her detractors cite stubborn favorability numbers and the uneven public reception to her tenure as vice president as headwinds no memoir or media tour can quickly reverse. To the BBC she offered a version of what she has told party activists in recent months: that winning is a function of grinding organization and message discipline, not of novelty alone.
Harris’s insistence that she will not be guided by polls reprised a stance she struck throughout 2024 as she tried to stabilize a fractured coalition on short notice. At that time she crisscrossed the Midwest with a focus on union halls and suburban women while Walz worked gun-safety and health-care messages in battleground suburbs. The ticket narrowed deficits with late advertising that trained attention on abortion rights and on Trump’s temperament. After November she retreated from daily politics, occasionally surfacing to campaign for down-ballot Democrats and to preview themes that now run through her book: that the condensed timeline imposed unique constraints, that key Senate and gubernatorial surrogates came on board late, and that the coalition that delivered 81 million votes in 2020 proved harder to reassemble than party leaders anticipated. Those explanations, fair or not, now frame how she wants 2028 speculation to be read.
Her critics within the party, meanwhile, warn that treating celebrity polling as noise misses something real about the electorate’s mood. A tranche of 2024 voters that resisted both parties’ standard-bearers remains skeptical of Washington veterans and is quick to flirt with outsiders, whether entertainers or business figures. Harris knows this from experience; she struggled to consolidate younger voters and non-college men even as she improved on Biden’s 2020 margins among college-educated women. Against that backdrop, the Johnson comparison functions as a proxy for a larger question: can a familiar Democratic figure reconnect with the voters who drifted, or will the appetite for novelty dominate another cycle? In dismissing the poll gap with Johnson, Harris is also attempting to short-circuit a narrative that could harden if left unanswered.
Still, there are countervailing signals. As Johnson has stepped back from overt political engagement—telling interviewers in 2024 that he would “keep my politics to myself”—the infrastructure of a real campaign has not materialized around him. He has continued to juggle business ventures, film commitments, and ownership stakes in sports properties, none of which suggests a pivot to retail politics or policy rollouts. That reality undercuts the premise that a hypothetical Johnson run is imminent, even as his name remains a convenient stand-in when pollsters test celebrity potential. Harris’s rejoinder—that politics ultimately rewards durable organization—rests on a familiar lesson from her decades in California and Washington.
In the shorter term, Harris is using the book circuit to reset parts of her public image that hardened during her vice presidency, including critiques of her communications style. Her BBC interviewers pressed her on whether she should have more forcefully counselled Biden not to run earlier; she has suggested in print that leaving the decision solely to the president and first lady was unwise, while also stressing loyalty once he chose to seek reelection. Those passages have drawn fire from some Democrats who prefer to avoid reopening 2024, but they have also allowed Harris to argue that she can absorb criticism, learn from it, and move on—an argument she will need if she enters a field with governors and senators eager to present fresher stories. For now she is leaning on discipline: focused answers about service, an open mind about 2028, and a studied refusal to dignify celebrity hypotheticals with more than a reminder that polls are not destiny.
For Johnson, the political calendar may be as important as sentiment. If he were to seek office, 2026 and 2027 would be the period to test a network in early states, roll out policy advisers, and demonstrate appetite for the scrutiny that comes with a serious bid. Nothing in his public posture points in that direction. The last time he waded decisively into presidential politics was 2020, when he endorsed Biden and Harris; the intervening years taught him, he has said, that the cost of overt intervention may outweigh the benefit. That stance makes the polling comparison more of a cultural indicator than a practical one. It is that gap—between cultural wattage and political mechanics—that Harris is betting voters will see more clearly as 2028 approaches.
Harris’s allies say the coming months will be devoted to party-building and to causes that sharpen a contrast with Trump’s governing style, whether or not she runs. She has vowed to campaign for Democrats down the ballot in 2026 and to use her platform to argue for abortion rights, voting protections, and economic messaging aimed at working- and middle-class families. In that context the BBC interview reads as a marker rather than a launch: a reminder that she remains a national figure with options, and a signal that she will not allow early celebrity-infused polls to define her. She ended one of her answers with a sentiment that doubles as a thesis for any future campaign: “There are many ways to serve.” For a politician who has learned to calibrate expectations, the immediate task is to keep the conversation on service rather than on a scoreboard that, for now, lists a movie star ahead of her in a race that has not begun.
If Harris does decide to run, her handling of this episode suggests the contours of a strategy. She will attempt to make the choice a referendum on governing competence and democratic norms, not on celebrity. She will use her record—California prosecutor and attorney general, U.S. senator, vice president—to argue that experience matters when policy and crisis collide, and that rallies, bets and social-media buzz are poor proxies for building durable coalitions. And she will keep answering the horse-race question the same way she did when asked about whether The Rock has a better shot: with a curt dismissal of polls and a reminder that the only numbers that matter are cast on Election Day. The book, the interview and the early jousting with punditry all point to a familiar claim: that politics rewards those who stay in the arena. Whether Democratic voters agree in 2028 remains to be seen; for now Harris is content to meet the celebrity question with an old-fashioned political answer—do the work, and let the rest take care of itself.