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October 11, 2024 - 6:30pm
This is the race Democrats feared. Less than a month before the US election, Donald Trump is regaining the slight edge he held before Democrats convened in Chicago to nominate Kamala Harris. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average in battleground states, Trump trailed Harris from late August until late September. Now, though, he’s back on top at 48.4 to 48.1. His lead may be fractional — and Harris is up two points in the popular vote — but the numbers have Kellyanne Conway feeling good.
Alongside a picture of the RCP numbers, the pollster argued this week that Trump is “in his best polling ever era, even as media outlets are likely undercounting his voters — again”. On CNN, Harry Enten crunched the numbers too. “Let’s say we have a polling miss like we had in 2020. What happens then?” he asked on Tuesday. “Well, then Donald Trump wins the election in a blowout with 312 electoral votes.”
In his Wednesday column, Charles Blow of the New York Times lamented that FiveThirtyEight now gives Harris and Trump “close-to-even chances” of winning. “The campaign doesn’t need a post-joy strategy,” he wrote, “but it definitely needs an in-addition-to-joy strategy.” FiveThirtyEight‘s win probability chart mirrors RCP‘s battleground chart in that as Harris’s DNC bump has waned, Trump’s numbers have gone up, closing the gap significantly in just the last few weeks.
Harris’s media blitz this week clearly sought to reverse the trend. New York Times political correspondent Michael Bender noted on Wednesday that data in a recent poll found “voters wanting more information about Ms. Harris were primarily young and Black or Hispanic.” What’s more, “they typically did not identify with either political party and largely consumed news from social media or online outlets rather than newspapers or cable networks.” Bender added: “Ms. Harris’s schedule was essentially a media map of those specific demographics.”
Harris, Bender wrote, “keeps answering the question she wants, not the one that was asked”. For Democrats, it’s been a week of tightening polls, media flops, and poor reviews in the paper of record. When the party was eagerly working to push Joe Biden out of the race after his June debate performance, one Democratic megadonor told Politico: “Be careful what you wish for.”
That story was one of many that revealed Democrats were wary of ousting Biden in large part because Harris, for a number of reasons, would likely assume the mantle. Her numbers were similar to Biden’s, and his were not good. She’d become something of a joke in the memeverse. She’d proven to be a weak national candidate ahead of the 2020 election. So it seems as though two things will prove to be simultaneously true: the “joy” of the Harris campaign was real and it sustained her for about a month, but it couldn’t last forever under the unforgiving campaign spotlight.
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SubscribeThe problem for the Dems wasn’t ousting Biden. There’s no way he would win the election IMO. The problem was anointing Harris with no primary process. Either way, we’re left with two crappy candidates.
Donald Trump may not be everyone’s dream candidate, but he did win a hard-fought primary season. What Republican candidate would be less crappy?
And Kamala Harris, though I’m no fan, is at least as good as her putative Democratic competition.
Seems to me we have a couple of good candidates to choose from. May the best man win!
I would much prefer DeSantis or Vance.
Vance was not running then and DeSantis made the mistake of running as everyone’s’ second choice. The abortion law he signed in Florida right before the campaign did not help his electability and making the first thing he did on the campaign trail sucking up to the GOP megadonors made it so the populists did not trust him. Then the party’s establishment/Bush/Romney wing threw him under the bus because he was not neocon enough right until it was too late to realize that he was the only alternative to Trump voters would actually go for. I don’t feel too bad for the guy. It seemed like he was pressured into running for the presidency when all he wanted to do was just be governor of Florida and now he gets to stay where he’s at.
I’m not saying Trump didn’t deserve to win the candidacy. I’m just saying I would prefer someone else. I also think the republicans would have an easier path to victory with someone else.
Fair enough but I would argue with the assumption that the republicans would have an easier path to victory with someone else. Other than DeSantis who just was unable to get the nomination, the rest of the primary challengers were an embarrassment. The other reason why I think the discussion of another Republican candidates chances is kind of a pointless discussion is love him or hate him, Trump has a noticeably different voter collation than can be expected of most Republican candidates. I honestly have no idea how it would turn out but I think DeSantis would have by far the best chance..
kamala is a complete moron, a total clown. And Trump has his own issues
Kamala will be the dumbest US president by a long way
Are you a bot?
There never was a honeymoon, Just a ritualistic self humiliation ritual with half-hearted, spiritless astroturphing campaign fueled by money and political maneuvering.