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 had by far the best chance.
It’s going to be a Trump landslide absent some October Black Swan event pulled off by the deep state.
Yep, like him or loath Trump, it has to be admitted he is a polarising character.
What is with all the downvotes? Even the people voting for him know that!
Donald Trump is polarizing, but he doesn’t mean to be. In policies he is a moderate, and is always lookng to compromise, to do a deal. The people who don’t like him are put off by his personality, ignoring his demonstrated ability to get things done that should have every voter checking his box on the ballot.
I don’t know Donald Trump but I don’t like his tweets. Same with Elon Musk, what I know of him I don’t like. But I think both men are geniuses, and we need more of them and fewer Kamala Harrises, Tim Walzes, and even JD Vances.
Vance is presidential timber. The Democrats may try to refurbish Kamala for another try at something or other, but they will have to find a way to erase the screw-her-way-to-power past that has come to light in this campaign.
To me Harris is just as polarizing. Think about her sexualized career path and listen to her explain things. Can you imagine her running against Eisenhower, Kennedy, Truman, Reagan, or even Bush-2? And yet, here she is.
Also, the polarization is multi-leveled, and primarily at the party level, but with gender, racial, cultural, class and religious elements. And it’s mostly artificial in that it’s all media driven.
Somebody sane who actually supports democracy would be nice.
I am a civil liberties voter. My vote this year is straight republican. How does it feel to be in the totalitarian party.
Trump’s win, if it comes to fruition, will do more for democracy than has been done by any candidate in generations. Why? Because it is poised to break the hold of racial identity politics over any more serious consideration. (Now if only we could find a way to address gender identity politics…)
I think shrill, shrieking young single white women with cats and causes are a deviation from the norm that will disappear.
No one else would have the chutzpah to do what it would take to actually win.
John McCain spend eight years sulking because he wasn’t the nominee in 2000 and did everything he could to undermine the Bush administration. Then when he became the nominee, he punted on first down.
The Democrats hate Trump because he doesn’t understand that Republicans are the Washington Generals and they only exist to put on a show and then lose to the rightful owners of the government
DeSantis is not a billionaire and completely relies on donors. Donors fund those they think can win.
Why is that important? Because if DeSantis were the nominee, he would have faced the same Democrat playbook used against Scott Walker and Rick Perry before the 2016 election, and Donald Trump during this election. He and/or many of his allies, would have been sued, or indicted and prosecuted.
Because DeSantis doesn’t have an extremely large number of people with a well established, strongly held, unshakable position about him, nor does he have a way to go around the media to defend himself while the media and memes crucify him as, “the currently under federal indictment Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis” his polling numbers would have tanked.
As a candidate with declining numbers and little chance of winning, the donations would stop, and he would be left fighting charges alone, facing a choice between bankruptcy and a plea deal admitting guilt.
It’s hard to believe even a tough SOB of a billionaire like Trump could survive what he’s been put through, but he’s done it, and is on the cusp of winning an election as a person uncontrolled by any other elites, with a VP and policies the elites despise.
As another recent example, the Dem elites disposed of RFK Jr with simple civil lawsuits, and did not have to move on to bogus criminal charges. But they would have, if that was required to destroy him.
No one, I repeat, no one else could have done what Trump has done!
The party for you is the Libertarian. It exists to throw close elections to the Democrats.
SO tired of Republicans being villanized for the abortion thing. (I am pro-choice and would favor a ban after 15-18 weeks with exceptions for physical health. The phase of development where a fetus starts feeling pain- by 18 weeks the nervous system is fully developed.) In every state, the number of women voters exceeds the number of male voters. Why is that so treacherous an environment to figure this out?
I am pro-choice but the choice takes place BEFORE getting pregnant.
Because rape would – maybe – invalid that choice, then yes, there should be exceptions for rape. However, knowing how the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are supposed to operate, I find it difficult to believe that a woman would be able to conceive in the case of a trauma such as rape.
The caveat is that is that if the perp is a Democrat, it can’t be rape
Thanks Emily,,,, 2024 was all Trumps, DeSantis, (the best Gov in the USA), will have a shot in 2028 for sure.
Bumbling Biden was exposed and they went to the DEI hire and got less than they Dems hoped for. They should have had a short run off but now they are stuck and rightfully so. If Biden/ Harris had something good to run on she’d be shouting it from the rooftop.
I don’t feel sorry for DeSantes either, he has a long, likely succesful, political career ahead of him. I feel sorry for conservative Republican voters who are deprived of voting for someone who we could feel deserved our vote and would have been a good president.
Surely not DeSantis! Does the US really need a President who wears lifts in his boots?
Well, France has one – which I suppose kind of supports your point.
so that is how you base your vote? Just stay home on election day. You are not qualified to be a voter
Both Ron DeSantis and JD Vance are Ivy League-trained lawyers who have little experience in how to get things done. I’m tired of lawyer politicians like them. They live in an abstract world, not the real world. Bobby Kennedy is also of their ilk.
What a vacuous and uninformed statement. DeSantes is a two term governor who has and is currently dealing with very real world problems and is getting things done quite well. Just ask anyone living in Florida right now. Before entering politics he was a Jag officer serving with special forces in Afghanistan. Doesn’t get any more real world than that.
Let’s take Ron DeSantis then. He was indeed a military lawyer who for one of his five years in the military served with a Navy SEAL unit in Afghanistan. What did he do as a lawyer? Legal work. He made sure that captured detainees were treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and US military regulations. He was acting as an individual contributor, not as an executive. He was an advisor, he was not a leader. He did not get things done, he complied with the law.
The president of the United States leads the country. It is a very practical job, similar to the chief executive of a company. The president has to pick a team and lead it, as well as act as an individual contributor in making decisions for his side and in making deals with opponents. Lawyerly skills are not very helpful. People skills are much more important.
I should know, I’ve been a lawyer and worked closely with CEOs at about 20 client companies, and once inhouse as chief legal counsel for a public company.
Ideas do not matter to a chief executive. Actions matter. Debate skills are orthogonal to the ability to get things done as the chief executive officer of a big business. A good CEO might be a good debater or a bad debater. A good debater might be a good CEO or a bad CEO.
Nostalgia doesn’t have a vote.
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
Only if she were to win. I wouldn’t put any money on that now.
I won’t be surprised if she gets more votes than Biden
And keep in mind that Biden was able to get more votes than Obama
Well, since the US population has increased quite a lot since Obama’s elections, that’s entirely possible. Even probable.
In any case, it doesn’t matter since that’s not how the US system works. First rule of politics: learn how to count. The Democrats have had ample time and opportunity in the past to change the voting system if they don’t like it.
Are you a bot?
“…May the best…”
They certainly are two crappy candidates. I fail to understand how the USA cannot come up with better Presidential candidates. Maybe it doesn’t matter and others make the important decisions.
I think Trump makes his own decisions. Harris is run by the machine. Biden was run by the machine. Obama made his own decisions and now he runs the machine. Bush was run by the machine.
Agree, and if Trump does get up, then perhaps that is his role in history- to expose the machine, drain the swamp ( and to hopefully restore some international stability).
He didn’t do that during his last term. Why would he during this one?
To be fair, when he was in charge the world was much more stable, and as for the swamp, I imagine he first had to find what he was dealing with, just how deep the rot went.
Oh, sweet summer child….
Harris is running for Obama’s fourth term in office.
He does what his handler Valerie Jarrett tells him passing on orders from the Ayatollah.
Bibi has three weeks to force a regime change in Tehran and we – and the Democrat Party- may finally be free of of their reign of terror
This is the necessary end result of having way too much democracy injected into the Republic that the Framers gifted us.
Federalist X specified that the majority is not always right and so the purpose of the federal system was to protect the voters from themselves.
We have let our guards down and allowed the cancer of democracy metastisize and we may not survive
Back when harris was running in the primaries one democratic strategist penned a opinion piece making the case for democrats to unite behind biden , the most noteable line from this was the statement that people did not know harris as well as biden and that the more voters got to know her the less they like her !
The real issue is that democrats dont have a pool of candidates to pick from that have the ability to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters , since obama was elected in 2008 the party has undergone a ideological realignment to the far left , when the progressive movement emerged blue dog democrats were either primaried out of existence by progressive challengers who then lost to republicans or were defeated in the general election by republicans .
The party pushed by progressives embraced more and more radical policies focusing on pleasing progressives and the ultra left wing of their constituents at the expense of ditching center left voters , in addition they shifted away from catering to blue collar voters to focusing on college educated whites while trying to make up deficiencies by also focusing on minorities and creating new “disadvantaged ” groups .
Now as the last “moderates” including folks like manchin, kennedy , gabbard and a few others have left the party they are stuck with the cookie cutter leftist candidates including harris and newsom the problem however is that none of them flies in swing states too well ! IMO democrats have to lose this fall not just by losing the presidency but also the senate , maybe a red wave that extends from the state level all the way up to congress and the WH will trigger a long overdue soul searching by the party
Great comment.
There never was a honeymoon, Just a ritualistic self humiliation ritual with half-hearted, spiritless astroturphing campaign fueled by money and political maneuvering.
This week also had the Obama intervention which was a pretty big sign of nervousness among the Democrats. The way he got after black men for not sufficiently supporting Harris and putting on the guilt trip by implying reluctance to vote for her was driven by some kind of unconscious allergy to having a female president…it was unbelievably patronising. The Obama charm (which wore off some time ago) only ever worked for him, it’s not transferable.
And of course now there are responses from black men across the social media universe. To encapsulate, the response is “Obama can kiss my black ass.”
Check out the YouTuber Anton Daniels. He’s very good, straight down the line.
The gushing media enthusiasm for Harris shows some of the characteristics of a stock market pump and dump scheme.
Getting the sense that Trump’s going to win this one. And that Harris has at least one gaffe in her before the election as she’ll feel forced to do something (finally) in the tight final weeks.
Yes, I think so too. I don’t know a lot about how the polls are done or if the methodology has changed in the past few years. But historically, Trump has underpolled. So the fact that the polls look tight would indicate that he’ll win on the 5th.
Polls are rub by journalists and professors and they are always biased to the left.
When Bob Schieffer said the Friday before the 2016 election “I have no idea how this is going to turn out”, I was cautiously confident that Trump was going to win, because if a journalist has even the slightest motion that the Democrat would win they would be writing the headline in bold letters in advance
Word is JarJar was forced out and Michelle was to be anointed in Chicago but he pulled a fast one and tweeted an endorsement of his VP taking the wind out of their plot.
Then he dons a MAGA in Pittsburgh.
It is looking more and more that – outside of Bibi’s preemptive strike on Tehran- that the October surprise will be him getting revenge by sabotaging her campaign
Now that she has weakened in the polls, Kamala may feel “joy” that she is “unburdened by what has been.”
Meanwhile, Obama, angling for a fourth term, has lectured “brothers” that they are not obeying voting instructions from the Dem machine, and are flirting with Trump. Taking a similar tack, Hillary has called for re-education of the voting public to insure they do not vote the wrong way as in 2016.
If the tide is turning it is because uncommitted voters can see that KH has very little to offer. If DT had one good outing on, say, 60 Minutes he might pull it off. Going back to Butler was psychologically a good move for Trump. It steadied him and helped prepare him for the final furlong.
Anyone who didn’t realize that Joe Biden was giving the Democrat party a big Eff-U when he called for Kamala to replace him during his resignation speech, well, they were a person who didn’t really know Joe Biden. And the recent moves of sabotage by him (telling the world she was right there for every decision, putting on the MAGA hat and posing for photos, talking up the competence and graciousness of Republican Governors managing the hurricane aftermath while Kamala herself wanted to make political jabs over being excluded from their consideration) make it all the more apparent. He knew as well as anyone that Kamala would be a less compelling candidate.
When asked what she would have done differently she says she can recall anything.
Translation: she wouldn’t be allowed to. She, like JarJar did , would have been taking the same orders from Martha’s Vineyard which in turn came from the Ayatollah
No one but DJT could have successfully outed the RINOs as he’s done. No one else had the will or the skill. His mannerisms are definitely annoying but apparently that’s what it took for many patriots, myself included, to see the light!
We’re picking a president, not a role model, prom queen, Mr. Popularity or even a guy to have a beer with. It’s who will defend the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights. That’s Trump, not the folks who think government has to “suggest” censoring political stories, violating the 1st Amendment. Democrats routinely violate the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments, at least partially because Democrats who identify as journalists let them. Trump will be held to a higher standard.
“Democrats who identify as journalists”. Good one!
Harris is on a fairly steep glide path to defeat.
This week Pew Research reported that for the first time since at least 1992 there are more registered Republicans than Democrats. They are not registering as Republicans to vote for Harris.
Also reported this week, early voting, voting by mail and requests for absentee ballots by Democrats have fallen off a cliff while the same for Republicans have soared.
Harris’ national lead has fallen to under two percent. In both 2016 and 2020 Trump’s actual vote share exceeded his polling by 4 – 5 percent. At this date in 2016, Hilary Clinton was 6.2 percentage points up on Trump. She lost.
So will Harris.
Harris is gonna lose.
She is an incompetent fool with no moral compass, no principles.
There is just nothing there. Which may have been her strongest asset, she could be whatever people wanted her to be. And if that is the best you got and not being Trump, you are gonna lose.
The democrats have really screwed themselves. I would not be at all shocked to see Trump win, the republicans take the senate and keep a narrow majority in the house. Just would not shock me.
You nailed it. That is exactly what is going to happen.
I’m starting to wonder if the election will hinge, not on who will be president, but who will be VP based on (purely an outside viewpoint as I’m English and have no skin in the game) both of them seem far more credible than either presidential candidates.
Interesting observation. But the accepted wisdom is that voters vote for presidents, not vice presidents, and I think the accepted wisdom is right. We will never know, though, as there is no way to know.
To boot, my opinion is that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are much better candidates than JD Vance and Tim Walz.
… the accepted wisdom is that voters vote for presidents, not vice presidents, and I think the accepted wisdom is right…
Normally I would agree with you but this time the focus on the running mate (and hence potential VP) seems to be of much greater interest to people and also appears to have had a greater effect on peoples declared voting intentions (at least from my observation from this side of the pond.)
Certainly a number of Americans I have spoken to (not a definitive sample I’ll be the first to admit) on both sides of the political divide, plus a few “pox on both their houses” position, all seemed to agree that the VP debate gave the impression of two grown ups presenting different policy solutions to agreed issues rather than “Yah boo sucks” ad hominem attacks on their opponent.
You still seeing the psychologist under court order or are you another Carlos Danger? You know what I mean.
Trump is panicking and its isn’t pretty. His increasingly unhinged rantings serve only to alienate everyone except the MAGA loons.
Harris in a landslide.
And for those who have drunk the Harris-is-dumb koolaid, have you already forgotten how she made Trump look utterly ridiculous (eve mores so than usual) in the debate?
I think you’ve been cracking into the cases of champagne that you got for election night.
He might as well, won’t be needing them on the 5th.
Harris will win, of course. They’ll cheat. And they won’t feel even the slightest modicum of guilt or shame about it, having convinced themselves that Trump is such a threat to American democracy that literally any action they take to stop him is justified.
Vastly reduced opportunities to do so. They will certainly still try but things are way more buttoned up in most all the swing states. And this time the RNC isn’t enjoined from doing anything about it like they were in 2020. (Seriously, the judge that had the RNC under a stay order from 1982 where they couldn’t challenge anything, well that judge has now died.)
The polls always undercount the Republican vote. Kamala’s appearance on Univision, the Spanish-speaking network, had 3400 comments the last I looked. All — all — were negative. Put another way, none were positive. It’s all over, folks. Trump by a landslide.
Wide open borders, criminal incompetence in the Afghan withdrawal, loss of deterrence resulting in wars everywhere, reckless inflation inducing spending, DEI over merit, WOKE radicalization: What did Democrats expect?
The more I read about America the less I believe it actually exists.
Like a lot of journalists writing for the European market — and like American journos domestically — Emily spends too much time absorbing the opinions and influences of the East Coart elite, legacy so-called mainstream media — the NYT, WaPo, Atlantic magazine, MSNBC, etc –and trying to winkle out some new angle of conventional wisdom handed down from on high to market to the foreigners who have only a passing interest in US politics.
I don’t trust Donald Trump. He might be harmless, but there is also the possibility that he might be the most dangerous person ever to hold the office of president of the US. I’m voting for Harris even though I really don’t like her. I’d rather have four more years (or eight more years) of the same old same old than screw the pooch with Donald. I’ve never been less enthusiastic about voting for a presidential candidate. I suspect a great many others feel exactly the same, and that will likely be the reason that Harris ends up losing badly. That kind of apathy will translate into folks just not bothering to vote.
Um, you are aware he was president once beforre? Good times, quiet times.
The last paragraph is just an admission of what a crap candidate Harris is. I’m sure she’ll be eager to cash in on her defeat the same way Clinton did. There are plenty of sad, angry cat ladies out there.