Aug.06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Harris Continues to Rise in the National Polls

As she announces her VP pick, and then heads into the Democratic National Convention, things continue to come up roses for Kamala Harris, polling wise. Here are the four new national preference polls published since Friday of last week:

There remain many reasons for caution. It's still early in the Harris candidacy, and she's still in the honeymoon period. National preference polls are an imprecise instrument for predicting an election that will be decided by 50 state-level elections (plus D.C.). Polls in general are semi-imprecise instruments, particularly when the likely electorate is in flux.

All of this said, one cannot avoid certain observations. First, Harris clearly has momentum, and there will be every chance for her to continue that in the next couple of weeks, thanks to today's announcement and then the DNC. She is also approaching, or in, "victory" territory. That is to say, a Democrat has to win the popular vote by roughly 3 points to win the Electoral College. And Harris is on the cusp of that kind of lead.

Thanks to a wave of good polls, Harris is now leading in almost all of the main national polling average trackers. RCP now has her up 0.2%. The New York Times has her up by the same margin. 270toWin has her leading by 1.8%. FiveThirtyEight has her leading by 1.9%. Only The Hill still has Donald Trump in the lead... by 0.1%. Also, for what it's worth, Nate Silver announced yesterday that his formula has Harris as a favorite for the first time, 51% to 48% (with the other 1% being "a tie"). Silver then turned around and blasted his former platform, FiveThirtyEight, claiming (without evidence) that their forecasting model is still suspended because it has Trump winning, and the staff wants to wait until it has Harris winning. This makes very little sense, since their model is based substantively on fundamentals (which favor Harris) and partly on polling input (which favors Harris, too, at least right now).

Whether one believes these various numbers are meaningful in terms of their predictive value, there is one way in which they are unquestionably meaningful. And that is in their impact on the conduct of the campaigns. The Harris campaign, for its part, has interpreted the data as indicating that both the northern route and the southern route are viable, and so it's worthwhile to pursue both. Put another way, the Biden campaign was investing its resources mostly in the northern swing states. The Harris campaign, in command of the largesse that is $300 million in donations in 10 days, is now investing heavily in the southern swing states. If you live in Georgia or Nevada or Arizona, and you hate being bombarded with presidential campaign ads, well, this is not good news for you.

More importantly, the Trump campaign is responding to the polling numbers. And that is because its candidate is responding to the numbers. It was remarkable the extent to which Trump '24 had become a disciplined, professional operation. Donald Trump was backing only viable candidates, and not any nutter who kissed his rear end. He was remaining on-message and, perhaps even more amazing, kept his mouth closed while Joe Biden dug himself into a giant hole.

It is now remarkable how quickly that all fell apart. With a couple of years to plan, the Trump campaign had Project 2025 for the base, plus a boatload of anti-Biden ammunition for everyone else. Someone got to Trump himself and persuaded him to play along. But in just 2 weeks, it's all out the window. Trump has tried to disown Project 2025, and he's whined and moaned about Biden's departure from the race, and the alleged "coup" staged by... someone? He's signaled his unhappiness with his own VP pick, chosen for very different circumstances. And, most importantly, he's reverted to trusting his gut. The problem here is that his gut, perhaps more than most, has sh** for brains. It is his gut that produces disasters like what happened with the NABJ last week. It is his gut that causes him to lash out against Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), when doing so has many downsides and no upsides.

We're not the only ones who see this. Many Republican politicians and operatives are distraught at what some are calling a "public nervous breakdown." This could well turn into a doom loop, in which Trump does something id-driven and ill-advised, his numbers drop, and that causes him to do something else id-driven and ill-advised. Rinse and repeat.

If nothing else, Trump's flailing around means that he is having zero success with creating a framing for who Harris is. The "Sleepy Joe Biden" thing had stuck pretty well, and obviously "Crooked Hillary" proved to be a home run. If the former president wastes this window, which is prime-time for establishing a framing for Harris, that may be unrecoverable. Her campaign will dominate most of the next 15 or so news cycles. By the time we are on the other side of that, it may be too late for Team Trump to define her and make it stick. (Z)