Aug.02

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Reading the Tea Leaves: National Trendlines Looking Good for Harris

While the future is uncertain for J.D. Vance, Kamala Harris continues to get good news. We've had a number of swing state polls this week, and we'll have more next week. For now, however, we'll highlight a few different macro-indicators:

• Money Matters, Part I: Yesterday afternoon, the Trump campaign announced its July haul: $138 million. That is a massive number. Yesterday evening, the Harris campaign announced ITS July haul: $310 million. That is an absolutely staggering number.
  
  The Harris tally comes with a couple of qualifiers. First, it also includes the money donated to Joe Biden in July before he left the race. Second, there was a burst of enthusiasm when she took over the ticket, which boosted her total into the stratosphere. That is, at least in part, a one-time thing. That said, the Trump figure also reflects the influence of a black swan event, namely the assassination attempt. Also, two-thirds of the money Harris brought in was from first-time donors, and 94% was donations of less than $200. Oh, and the difference between $138 million and $310 million is 172 MILLION DOLLARS.
  
  
• Money Matters, Part II: There never has been, and probably never will be again, a presidential race that can be gauged by the price of a single stock. But this is not your normal year. The value of Donald Trump's social media company is tied up almost entirely with his presidential aspirations. If he regains the Oval Office, there will be many potential income sources, some of them not terribly legal. If he does not, then the platform is close to worthless. When he appeared to be in command of the presidential race, the stock's price was consistently in the $30-$35 range. Its price has dropped for each of the last 5 days, and yesterday it closed at $27.20 a share, while after hours trading suggests it will open today at $26.20 a share. Or, to put it in terms that could make Trump cry, since Kamala Harris became the Democratic candidate, his net worth has dropped by... $900 million.
  
  
• Wanna Bet?: Yesterday, for the first time since Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee of her party, she was favored to win the election on Predict it. According to bettors there, she's 52.3% to win, as compared to 47.7% for Trump.
  
  
• Silver Medal: Earlier this week, Nate Silver updated his prediction model, and announced that Donald Trump remained an overwhelming favorite to win the election, with a 61.3% chance for him as compared to 38.1% for Harris. We almost wrote an item at the time, wondering how Silver could possibly make such a projection, given how few polls have been produced with Harris as the Democratic candidate.
  
  Yesterday, Silver announced that the race is now a "toss-up;" his number crunching now says it's 54.9% for Trump to 44.6% for Harris. We continue to wonder how it's possible to make a projection with so few polls. We additionally wonder how another couple days' worth of polls could change the projection so significantly. Nonetheless, we pass this news along, in case it is of interest.

As long as we are on the subject of the Harris campaign, her VP announcement is less than a week away. And there's every chance it will leak out a bit early (as happened with J.D. Vance), due to the arrangements that have to be made once a person gets tapped. For what it is worth, Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) has cleared his calendar for the weekend, while Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) has also canceled several planned events. (Z)