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PollWatch 2024, Part XII: Harris Has a Tiny Swing State Lead in the Final NYT Poll

We have 866 presidential polls from 96 pollsters in our database as of this morning. The NYT/Siena College poll is one of the better ones. It is being guided by two very experienced people at the Times, Nate Cohn and Ruth Igielnik. Here is their final version for the swing states:

Kamala Harris has small, but essentially meaningless, leads in four states, is tied in two and trails in one. The thing that is important here are the shaded error bars. Harris' vote share could be anywhere in the gray or blue shaded part. Donald Trump's vote share could be anywhere in the red or gray shaded part. There is considerable overlap. In short, it is probably slightly better to be Harris than Trump right now, but other good polls have different results (see the new polls at the bottom of the page). Anything is still possible, including a blowout for either candidate or races that need three recounts before getting an answer.

The article linked to above compares their own polling with 10 other pollsters, two of which we don't trust (AtlasIntel and Susquehanna). They are all over the map. For example, in Wisconsin, it varies from Trump +1 to Harris +6. That's not possible. It can't be both. All we can say is that Harris appears to be doing somewhat better in the Blue Wall than in the Sun Belt, but that might not be true either. If you came here today to learn who is going to win, we are going to have to disappoint you. It's close to a coin flip unless there is something going on that is not visible now. But keep reading. (V)

PollWatch 2024, Part XIII: Ann Selzer Has Released Her Final Poll, Too

Let us start this item by taking a look at Ann Selzer's track record in every presidential election this century:

Year	Selzer R	Selzer D	Selzer Gap	Actual R	Actual D	Actual Gap	Error
2004	43%	48%	D+5	50%	49%	R+1	6 points
2008	37%	54%	D+17	44%	54%	D+10	7 points
2012	42%	47%	D+5	46%	53%	D+6	1 point
2016	46%	39%	R+7	51%	42%	R+9	2 points
2020	48%	41%	R+7	53%	45%	R+8	1 point

As you can see, Selzer does make some mistakes. Or, at least, she used to, back when her firm was relatively young (she opened for business in 1996). But she's been exceedingly accurate for well over a decade. And that track record is not just based on presidential elections. Since 2012, she's also done gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections, as well. That's a total of eight statewide elections, and in them, her biggest miss is... 3 points (the 2020 U.S. Senate race, when Selzer had Sen. Joni Ernst, R-IA, winning by 4 points, and Ernst actually won by 7).

We note this as prelude to our discussion of Selzer's final poll of the cycle, which most readers will have heard about by now. In an absolutely stunning result, Selzer projects that Iowa will go for Kamala Harris, 47% to 44%. Selzer knows this is a stunning result, and has already done interviews in which she explains her results. In short, independent and women voters are breaking heavily for Harris this cycle, relative to past cycles. Further, the undecideds are now deciding, and the majority of them are backing Harris.

And although we describe the result as "stunning," it's actually not THAT stunning. As you can see in the table above, Democrats won the Hawkeye State—and bigly—as recently as 2012. Further, Selzer's other poll of the Harris-Trump matchup, released at the end of September, had Donald Trump at 47% and Harris at 43%. That means that the new poll result probably isn't explained by a wonky sample.

It is also worth noting that Selzer's results account for the 9% of voters who do not appear in the Harris or Trump columns. Roughly 3% are voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., less than 1% are voting for Chase Oliver, 1% are voting for someone else, 3% are not sure and 2% would not reveal their voting plans. This makes the Selzer numbers even more plausible, since RFK Jr. is mostly taking votes out of Trump's hide, while the two folks most likely to take votes from Harris, namely Jill Stein and Cornel West, are not on the ballot. It's also worth noting that Selzer's numbers, if right, don't give Trump much of a path. He would either need to take virtually all of the don't know/won't say voters, or else convert some voters from another candidate.

Obviously, if Harris were to actually win Iowa, and its 6 EVs, that would be a very nice get for her. However, that's not the most important storyline here. Even if Selzer and her team goofed with their model, and even if we allow for the margin of error, it is very unlikely she's missed by more than 4 or 5 points. And Iowa tends to correlate pretty well with the bluer Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Not perfectly, but pretty well, even if we account for the things that make Iowa unusual this cycle, like no lefty third-party candidates on the ballot. What this should mean is that if Iowa is close, then the three bluer states should be safe for Harris.

Again, people make mistakes, and Ann Selzer is certainly not immune. But there's a very good chance she's either right, or well within the ballpark. And if so, that's likely to be very good news for Kamala Harris' hopes in the Midwestern swing states. (Z)

PollWatch 2024, Part XIV: Is Polling Like Sheep Farming In Scotland?

In sheep farming, "herding" is the act of getting all the sheep to move in the same direction, preferably the one the farmer wants. Sometimes, dogs are trained to help out. In polling, "herding" is the act of looking at all the other polls and then somehow massaging your data to make it look more like the other ones. In sheep farming, herding is good. In polling, herding is bad.

Nate Silver used to run his own show, then went to work for The New York Times, then for ABC News, and is now back to running his own show, Silver Bulletin. He just wrote an interesting column about herding, complete with an illustrative photo of it in one of these two domains:

Silver analyzed the polling data for October in the seven swing states, ran some math on them, and concluded that there should be more outliers. Basically, in a sample with a mean (average) M and a standard deviation S, 95% of the data should fall between M-2S and M+2S. Five percent should be outliers, half below M-2S and half above M+2S. He didn't observe this in the data. When pollsters quote a margin of error of 4, this is (by convention) two standard deviations. In polling terms, 2.5% of the time the true mean will be outside the margin of error on the high side and 2.5% of the time it will be outside the margin of error on the low side. This has nothing to do with bad polling methodology or shy voters. It's just math and also applies when estimating the number of pages in a library book by sampling 1,000 books in a library. Sometimes you get a freaky sample and the mean is way off. This is normal and expected.

How could herding happen? If a polling team gets a result that is way different from other published results, the team may begin to question its methodology or sample and begin to wonder if it did something wrong. All polls are corrected to make sure the gender, age, partisan, race, education, income, and other distributions match the expected electorate. The team may then begin fiddling with the corrections to make their results look like everybody else's. It may not be malicious. The team members may just be afraid they did something wrong and want to fix it.

Put in a different way, suppose you collect 20 polls of Wisconsin from different pollsters, each sampling 1,000 people. If all 20 showed an exact tie, your reaction should be: I smell something fishy (or maybe sheepy) here. Math doesn't work like that. Silver published this table showing how many polls showed the candidates within 2.5 points and what the odds are of so many polls being that close, even if the state is a true tie:

Wisconsin is the worst of the bunch. The chances of 92% of the polls being within 2.5 points, even if the voters really are exactly equally divided, is 1 in 2.8 million. The chances of 193 out of 249 polls being that close is 1 in 9.5 trillion.

There are a couple of explanations. First, there is curbstoning, the practice of a pollster just sitting on the curb outside and making up the numbers and not actually conducting a poll. This is basically fraud. Silver is moderately picky about which pollsters he allows (and we are even pickier). We doubt this is a factor.

Second, the pollster could muck with the data or the model of the electorate to get a "better" result. That is easy to do and easy to justify internally ("We think women will be very motivated by abortion, so let's assume 54% of the electorate will be female this time, even though it was 52% last time.")

Third, if a pollster gets an unexplained strange result, the pollster (or sponsor) might just decide not to publish it. This biases the aggregates by not including valid data that should be included. If you want to measure the average height of American men and then throw out all measurements below 5'4" as improbable, your average will be too tall.

Fourth, pollsters may be terrified of underestimating Trump again, so they "correct" the data. One scheme we had considered for our map and rejected is to compute how much the polls under or over estimated Trump in 2020 and apply that correction. So if polls predicted Trump would get 44% in Wisconsin in 2020 and he got 49%, then a pollster could simply add 5 points to the sample. Ditto for all the other states.

Herding, either intentional or otherwise, reduces the accuracy of the aggregates because the underlying assumption is that the polls are independent. If half the polls are in effect copying the other half, they aren't independent. Silver concludes by noting that in his simulation model, the chance that all seven swing states end up within 2.5 points is about 0.02. In other words, expect some blowouts, possibly in opposite directions in different states. (V)

PollWatch 2024, Part XV: Could Pollsters Be Missing Some Voters?

We are not done with polling today. In truth, for so many reasons, including herding, shy voters on both sides, and more, we are less sure of the polling results than we ever have been before. There are so many factors pulling in different directions that any of them could be dominant. If Trump wins, everyone will be yelling: "You knew about the young Black men voting for him. Why did you ignore that?" If Harris wins, everyone will be yelling: "You knew abortion was going to motivate millions of women. Why did you ignore that?" Thanks for the advice.

Politico Magazine has a guest op-ed from Justin Brown, who goes with the latter line of thought. His point is that pollsters have had 8 years to figure out how to find and measure Trump's voters, even the "shy" ones. They will probably get it more-or-less right, especially since many Trump voters now are not only not shy, they are in-your-face loud and outspoken. The pollsters have had only 100 days to figure out how to sample Harris' supporters. That might not be long enough.

There are a couple of categories of voters the pollsters may have missed. One is life-long Republicans who never voted for a Democrat in their entire lives, but who hate Donald Trump with the heat of 1 million suns. These are the 20% of Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley after she dropped out. They might be too tormented internally to tell a pollster: "Yup, I'm over it. I'm moving to Team Harris." They might not actually decide until they are in the voting booth. But some unknown number of Haley fans, especially women, might actually mark the box for Kamala Harris. How can a pollster capture voters who do not themselves know how they will vote? The use of "recalled vote" weighting this year will work to minimize them because they will tell the pollsters that they voted for Trump last time and then will be included in the sample as Trump voters, which they may not be this time.

A second group consists of the "uncommitted" voters who are protesting the war in Gaza. They will almost certainly not tell pollsters they are for Harris because they want to make everyone think she is weak on account of Joe Biden's foreign policy. But when they actually vote, many of them will realize that Trump will give his second-best friend, Bibi Netanyahu (after #1 friend Vladimir Putin), all the weapons he wants and a whole additional bunch he hasn't even asked for. Trump has publicly said he wants Israel to "finish the job," which is code for either killing all the Gazans or at least driving them out of Gaza so Young Jared can develop it into Miami Beach East (or maybe even Monaco). When they finally realize how horrific a Trump presidency would be for the people in Gaza, a fair number of "uncommitteds" may bite their tongues, hold their noses, vote for Harris, run outside the polling station, and throw up. But those votes still count.

A third group consists of married working-class women whose husbands are very macho and gung-ho, all-in for Trump, and are proud of how big their... truck is. Some of these women secretly really want a woman as president, just to show all men that women are quite capable of doing any job. Some may have had an abortion or know someone who did and this is a Big Deal for them. They would never tell a pollster they were voting for Harris because when Hubby later asked about it (assuming he wasn't in the room at the time), she wouldn't want to lie to him. But in the secrecy of the voting booth, she might just vote for Harris. The Democrats understand this and, as we have noted several times, are actually running ads saying: "Whether you voted or not is public information, but how you voted is private" to encourage these women (like the ad below).

No doubt all of these are true, only we don't know how big the groups are. Sorry about that. (V)

Harris Releases Her Final Ad

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are ending their respective campaigns on totally different notes. As in, oriented 180 degrees from each other. On Saturday, Harris released her final ad, which played during NFL games yesterday, including the one between the Wisconsin Packers and the Michigan Lions (we're a political site; we care about states, not cities, at least when V is writing). Here is the ad:

If you don't want to watch it, suffice it to say that it is very upbeat and uplifting. It is entitled "brighter future" and focuses on unity, and describes Americans as neighbors, not enemies. It has Harris speaking to the camera with many cutaways showing Harris talking to ordinary Americans in ordinary settings, people working, people shopping, people playing, all with Harris doing voiceovers. She keeps repeating that Americans are good people who believe in each other. There are many scenes with children while Harris says we can "build a brighter future for our nation." There is nothing negative in the ad and no mention of Trump at all. (Z) watched the Packers game, and can confirm the spot aired at least once per quarter.

In contrast, Trump doesn't have a single final ad, but his Madison Square Garden speech and all his current ads are intensely negative. They depict America as a failed Third World country and it's all Harris' fault. They are all about fear—immigrants, crime, prices—it's doomsday in America. Probably in a week we will know if fear trumps hope. Historically, hope wins. Remember St. Ronnie of Reagan and "Morning in America"? Republicans weren't always so negative.

In case you weren't aware—which means that either: (1) you don't go out to public places much or (2) are a man—what with having a billion dollars to spend on ads, Harris' campaign is in the toilet. Literally. OK, well, the bathroom. As we've noted a couple of times, there is a grassroots campaign afoot in which women are attaching sticky notes to the inside of bathroom stalls in stores, airports, hair salons, colleges, and many other places. They all say something to the effect: "Your vote is private. Your boyfriend/husband doesn't have to know who you voted for. Vote Kamala." As we have also noted, the grassroots campaign to deceive boyfriends/husbands is now widespread enough that Vote Common Good, a non-profit organization, made an ad with voiceover from Julia Roberts encouraging it. Here it is again:

In short, a woman walks into the polling place with a man, presumably her husband. Then she locks eyes with another woman and marks the ballot for Harris. Then the man asks: "Did you make the right choice?" and she says: "Sure did, honey."

Republicans are going bonkers about the sticky notes and ad. Daniel McCarthy, editor-at-large of "The American Conservative" wrote: "In the eyes of Team Harris, any woman who isn't openly supporting the Democrat must be a hostage to false consciousness—or to an ogre husband." Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, called the ad "the embodiment of the downfall of the American family." Imagine, a woman making her own choices. Fox News host Jesse Watters told viewers that his wife secretly voting for Harris would be like her having an affair. If so, a lot of women are having affairs. Polls show that 1 in 8 women have voted differently from their husbands and not told them. This year it could be a lot more. (V)

Trump Ends His Campaign on a Dark, Angry, Rambling Note

Yesterday, Kamala Harris continued her uplifting message by going to a Black church in Detroit and channeling the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by saying the nation was "ready to bend the arc of history toward justice." Meanwhile, Donald Trump held a rally in Lititz, PA where he threw out his prepared speech and adlibbed it, attacking the polls as fake and the Democrats as demonic. He also hinted that he wouldn't mind reporters being shot, although his campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, later tried to walk that back to undo the damage. It was Trump at his darkest and angriest. The contrast with Harris couldn't have been greater if he tried (and maybe he was trying).

The speech was full of lies, but that's not news, so we won't even bother listing them. He did say that he shouldn't have left the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, despite Congress having finally certified the electoral vote late on Jan. 6, 2021. This kind of language is something new, even for Trump; basically, that elections don't matter anymore and the peaceful transfer of power is for weaklings. According to the Constitution, once Congress has certified the electoral vote, the show is over, even if there was fraud—and over 60 court cases showed that there wasn't any to speak of.

It is hard to know if Trump is going so dark intentionally or he is just losing it due to all the stress of the campaign and likelihood he will go to prison if he loses, given all the criminal cases against him. Does he think that going so dark at the end is going to get him more votes? His base is going to turn out, no matter what. What we are thinking is how is this ending going to affect the Nikki Haley voters who are planning to vote in person tomorrow? Surely some of them are going to say "this is about six bridges too far."

When former Alabama governor George Wallace ran for president in 1968, he famously said: "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties." Even accounting for inflation since 1968, we think that if Wallace had observed how the two campaigns are ending this year, he might have raised that to $100. (V)

What Each Candidate Needs to Do to Win

Lots of publications are putting out stories about what Kamala Harris and Donald Trump need to do to win. Here is a list for Harris:

• Get close to the 92% of Black voters and 59% of Latino voters that Biden got.
• Have abortion drive women to the polls in huge numbers.
• Increase Democratic support in the suburbs among (former) Republicans.
• Neutralize Trump on the economy and immigration.
• Run a superior ground game to Elon Musk's amateurs.

Is that easy? Probably not in the final 2 days, but she has been working on these things for months.

Now, what about Trump? What does he need to do? Here is his to-do list:

• Narrow Harris' lead with Black and Latino voters.
• Crack the blue wall and pick up one or more of the three key Rust Belt states.
• Get Nikki Haley voters to come home to the party in the end.
• Have young men turn out in unprecedented numbers.
• Hope his gamble on outsourcing his ground game to Elon Musk works.

He's been working hard on all of these as well. The problem for both candidates is that there is so much to do and so little time (left) to do them. (V)

Could Harris Lose the Popular Vote and Still Win the Electoral College?

It has been an article of faith among political operatives for years that a Democrat needs to win the popular vote by about 3 points to win the Electoral College, which tilts toward the Republicans due to the disproportionate effect of there being more medium-sized red states than there are medium-sized blue states. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.1%, but fell short in the Electoral College. But this year, there are signs that things could be different. Is it possible that Kamala Harris could win the popular vote by a very small margin, or even lose it, and still get at least 270 electoral votes? Maybe.

What happened? Republicans have made gains in California, New York, and Florida in recent years. That might get them more popular votes and House seats, but it doesn't flip any of those states, so it won't buy them any extra electoral votes. Narrowing the popular vote margin doesn't help unless entire states flip. Part of the changes are due to how different groups are identifying. Oddly, Harris is not doing as well with minority voters as Joe Biden, but she seems to be improving with white voters. Politicians aren't the only ones who are weird.

That small shift could work in her favor because the three Blue Wall states are very white, and winning them could be enough, even if she loses the more diverse Sun Belt states and even if she loses the popular vote. If Harris wins the popular vote by the same amount Hillary Clinton did, she stands a good chance of winning the three Blue Wall states and the election, but even if she does so badly among minority voters that she loses the popular vote, she could still win the very white Rust Belt states and the election.

One scenario where Trump wins the popular vote but loses the election is by his really running up the score with Latinos in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida but doing less well with whites in the Rust Belt. This would upset all previous models, but it is a real possibility. (V)

Could a Third-Rate Comedian Do What Harris' Millions of Dollars in Ads Couldn't?

The fallout from so-called "comedian" Tony Hinchcliffe's set at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden rally is still reverberating. Mike Madrid, a long-time GOP strategist, has talked to a number of GOP consultants who are distressed by the comments about Puerto Rico and Trump's failure to roundly condemn Hinchcliffe in no uncertain terms. Madrid thinks that Hinchcliffe may have achieved what millions of dollars of Kamala Harris' ads have failed to do, namely drive Latino voters away from Trump and toward Harris. The reason Trump has not come down hard on Hinchcliffe, of course, is that he is afraid that doing so would not sit well with his racist supporters and he is running a base-only campaign.

The racist "jokes" are having another, unexpected, effect as well. Bishara Bahbah, who leads Trump's outreach to Arab Americans, spoke to the father of Tiffany Trump's husband, Massad Boulos. Bahbah believes the racist remarks have hurt Trump with Arab Americans. They suggest that Trump views all minorities with disdain. Trump had been making some progress with Arab Americans, but some of that may be lost now.

Republican politicians are also sounding the alarm. Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-NY) was none too happy. He said: "My mom was born and raised in Puerto Rico. It's a beautiful island with a rich culture and an integral part of the USA." Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) went on Fox to attack Hinchcliffe: "Look, he's an imbecile. He's an idiot." Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) tweeted: "This is not a joke. It's completely classless & in poor taste."

But it is not only politicians who are angry. Nicky Jam, a Puerto Rican singer who campaigned for Trump in September, has now rescinded his endorsement of Trump. Other Puerto Rican celebrities who have endorsed Harris since the MSG rally include Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, Don Omar, Luis Fonsi, and superstars Jennifer Lopez and Bad Bunny. Lopez even took part in a rally with Harris last week. Together, this list has over 390 million followers on Instagram, undoubtedly including a fair number of Puerto Rican voters in the swing states. Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio) is an especially important catch due to his popularity with young Latino men. Trusted celebrities like these are more important to many young voters than long lists of Nobel Prize winning economists they have never heard of.

The flashpoint may come in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, a nonpartisan group, has urged voters to reject this disrespectfulness when they vote, although they didn't endorse Harris by name. Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San José, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit supporting the local Latino community, said: "No matter how hard we try, how educated we are, how much we don't speak with an accent, how light our skin is—they will always, always remind us that we are not one of them. And this is a perfect example of how they did that."

Ruiz believes that turnout among Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania will be the highest it has ever been. There are over 600,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, about 8% of the population. If they turn out in huge numbers as a result of Hinchcliffe's "joke," they will get the last laugh.

Hinchcliffe is clearly aware of the firestorm he started. He tweeted: "These people have no sense of humor." Our observation is that Hinchcliffe has a tin ear. That is just about the worst possible thing he could say, short of using some despicable ethnic slur. His tweet is going to breathe new life into the story and make it worse. That said, his main goal is not to elect Donald Trump, it's to have a career as a comedian. There is a whole ecosystem of venues and audiences where right-wing, often openly racist, comedians can make a living. The comedian Gallagher, who was once famous for smashing watermelons on stage, went hard-right late in his career (particularly Islamophobic) and performed exclusively in those kinds of venues. We suspect Hinchcliffe is about to learn a lot about that circuit.

It would certainly be ironic if the net effect of the MSG rally is energizing 100,000 otherwise disinterested Pennsylvania Puerto Ricans and getting them to vote and their votes swing Pennsylvania and thereby cost Trump the election. (V)

Why Is North Carolina Always One Election Away from Turning Blue?

Ever since 2008, when Barack Obama won North Carolina, Democrats have dreamed of turning the state blue, just like they did its neighbor to the north, Virginia. And by the same mechanism: migration to the state of college-educated professionals, to NoVa in Virginia and to the Research Triangle in North Carolina. But although it is always very close, Democrats can't seem to get that last 1%. Why?

Western North Carolina used to have thriving textile and furniture industries, but they are long gone. But Davidson County and the surrounding areas have had a revival. An Austrian company opened a $700 million particle board factory in 2018. Nucor Steel is building a $350 million plant. Toyota is finishing an $8 billion battery plant. And Siemens is going to make passenger railroad cars there. It is a rebirth of the area and serves as a counterbalance to the growth in Charlotte's Mecklenburg County and Raleigh's Wake County. All of those factories attract blue-collar workers, who bring their political views with them, just as do the white-collar professionals in the Triangle. Why is it so successful? It is partly due to low taxes, cheap land, and I-85, which gets products all over the Southeast, and plenty of workers who are used to factory jobs.

But the balance of power may be held by counties on the fringe of urban areas, so far out that few Democrats want to move there. The local politicians call them "countrypolitan counties." The voter rolls are growing faster than the populations there, presumably because Donald Trump got people to register for the first time.

Donald Trump sees the area as prime MAGA territory. He has saturated Davidson and surrounding counties with ads designed to get conservatives worked up into a rage. Many of the ads are largely about Kamala Harris' 2019 position supporting taxpayer-funded gender-confirming surgery for prisoners. The number of prisoners requesting such surgery is microscopic and the cost to each taxpayer is maybe a penny or two, but it gets everyone's blood boiling. Trump is a genius at getting people very angry about issues that do not affect their lives in any way and making them forget issues that affect them big time.

The DNC is aware of all this and is fighting back. It is running ads narrated by DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. He notes that he is from a small town in South Carolina and says that Harris wants to help people in small rural towns—for example, by fighting to keep rural hospitals running.

Both Harris and Trump realize that North Carolina could go either way and both are ending their campaigns spending a lot of time in the state. They have both been there this past weekend and will make appearances there today as well. Trump's rallies have been in Gastonia, Greensboro, and Kinston, with one in Raleigh today. He has been in the state nine times so far and his running mate J.D. Vance has been there six times. Harris is focusing on Charlotte. The fact that both campaigns are putting so much effort into the state until the last possible minute indicates that both of them think it will be really close.

One big question mark is the effect of Hurricane Helene, which caused massive damage to roads and infrastructure in the conservative western part of the state, where many Trump voters are. It didn't cause much damage in the Triangle, where many Harris voters live, but the overall effect won't be known until the county-by-county results are in. If many people in the western part of the state can't get to the polls because the roads were washed out, it could be significant. (V)

It Wasn't Always Like It Is Now

Only seven states seem to matter this year, although Ann Selzer's poll of Iowa suggests many more may be in play. It wasn't always like this. For 100 years, Missouri was the ultimate bellwether, voting with the presidential winner 25 of 26 times from 1904 to 2004. Now it is a deep-red state and the only national politician campaigning there is Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who doesn't have to campaign very hard since he is a shoo-in in deep red Missouri.

Many of today's safe states (like Missouri) were once swing states and vice-versa. Zachary Wolf at CNN dusted off old election data back to 1976 and compiled a list of states that were won by less than 5 points, meaning they were probably seen as competitive during the election. Here is the list:

Year	Democrat	Republican	States won by the Democrat by <5%	States won by the Republican by <5%
2020	Joe Biden	Donald Trump	AZ GA MI NV PA WI	FL NC
2016	Hillary Clinton	Donald Trump	CO ME MN NV NH	AZ FL MI NC PA WI
2012	Barack Obama	Mitt Romney	FL OH VA	NC
2008	Barack Obama	John McCain	FL IN NC OH	MO MT
2004	John Kerry	George W. Bush	MI MN NH OR PA WI	CO IA NV NM OH
2000	Al Gore	George W. Bush	IA MN NM OR PA WI	FL MO NV NH OH TN
1996	Bill Clinton	Bob Dole	AZ KY NV TN	CO GA MT NC SD TX VA
1992	Bill Clinton	George H.W. Bush	CO GA KY LA MT NV NH NJ OH TN WI	AZ FL NC SD TX VA
1988	Michael Dukakis	George H.W. Bush	NY OR WA WV WI	CA IL MD MO NM PA VT
1984	Walter Mondale	Ronald Reagan	MN	MA RI
1980	Jimmy Carter	Ronald Reagan	HI MD MN WV	AL AR DE KY ME MA MS NY NC SC TN WI
1976	Jimmy Carter	Jerry Ford	HI MS MO NY OH PA TX WI	CA IL IA ME NV NJ NM OK OR SD VA WA

Some of this is familiar, Some of it is not. Here are the states that swung at least four times since 1976: WI (8), NV (7), NC (7), FL (6), OH (6), PA (6), MN (5), VA (4), TN (4), OR (4), NM (4), NH (4), MO (4), and CO (4). Wisconsin was in eight times and Nevada and North Carolina each seven times, so they are historically swing states. But Minnesota, Virginia, Tennessee, Oregon, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Colorado certainly are not anymore. Stuff changes.

Which safe states will be swing states in 20 years? Maybe Florida will swing back to competitive? Maybe Texas? In the long term, maybe every state will be locked down and no state will be competitive. If that happens, the party with the fewest electoral votes will start lobbying for eliminating the Electoral College and perhaps we will get an Amendment calling for a direct popular vote for president. (V)

Both Teams Lawyer Up for Armageddon

The lawyers on both sides are ready for battle. They all know that while the voters can give their input if they like, the real decisions these days are made by the courts (and maybe Congress). As soon as he got out of prison for refusing to obey a congressional subpoena, the first thing Steve Bannon noted is that the Democrats had hired Marc Elias to oversee their legal strategy. He said Elias is the toughest election lawyer in the country and you only hire him when you want to go to the mattresses. That implies that Alina Habba or whoever Donald Trump picks as his lead lawyer is only #2 at best. Trump is not going to like that. Elias agreed and said: "My team of lawyers is better than the GOP's. And we're ready to beat them again in 2024." There is little doubt in anyone's mind that Elias is indeed very sharp. Trump may have trouble finding anyone as good—and will probably have to pay him or her in advance.

If you are an election law nerd, you probably know these already, but if you are a wannabe election law nerd, you might want to bookmark DemocracyDocket.com, which was founded by Elias to inform the public about voting rights, redistricting, election law, and other democracy-related legal issues. The other go-to election site is Election Law Blog, which was founded by UCLA Law Professor Rick Hasen, who has written many books about election law and related topics. Hasen has never publicly stated if he is a Democrat or a Republican, but he often opposes attempts to prevent people from voting, so we doubt the Republicans would even try to hire him to match off against Elias.

Elias has assembled a top team to work with, including two former solicitors general, Seth Waxman and Don Verrilli, as well as Joe Biden's personal lawyer, Bob Bauer. In addition, the Harris campaign has engaged some of the country's top law firms for additional assistance.

RNC co-chair Lara Trump said the GOP election litigation operation is functioning smoothly. Actually, there isn't much of a GOP operation in house. Instead they have hired Jones Day and the Dhillon Law Group. Jones Day is one of the biggest law firms in the country, with over 2,000 lawyers. Major clients include R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, North American Coal Association, and the Arizona Republican Party, but also NPR. In 2012, it challenged the Affordable Care Act in court. The Dhillon Law Group was founded by Harmeet Dhillon, an immigrant from India. See? Trump loves immigrants. Dhillon is currently an RNC member from California. While these are certainly high-powered firms, they are just hired guns who are in it largely for the big bucks. Guys like Elias, Waxman, Verilli, and Bauer certainly like the money, but for them, it is also about fighting for democracy. And the Democrats also have the advantage that they have an insider, Elias, who is running the legal show and can make tough decisions. The Republicans have two good firms, but there could be conflicts between them on strategy.

The lawfare has already begun. There are already 200 election-related lawsuits pending, mostly in swing states and mostly about who can vote and which votes count. By Friday there could be 400 of them, mostly frivolous. We have to hope the courts throw the frivolous ones out quickly. (V)

How Would Recounts Work?

If some of the swing states are close, there could be recounts. The rules vary by state. Here is a quick summary of how it works in the swing states. Older readers may remember Florida in 2000 and how that went.

• Arizona: Candidates can't request recounts in Arizona. State law determines when they are done. Under current law, a margin of under 0.5% between the top two candidates forces an automatic recount. In 2020, the threshold was 0.1% but the legislature raised it since then. In practice, if either candidate wins by about 17,000 votes or more, there will not be a recount.
  
  
• Georgia: Unlike Arizona, candidates in Georgia can request a recount within two business days of certification if the difference between the top two is 0.5% or less. Election officials may also ask for a recount if they think there is a need for one. The secretary of state can also order one if he believes there is good reason for one.
  
  
• Michigan: If the difference between the top two candidates is 2,000 votes or fewer, there is an automatic recount. However, if a candidate has a good-faith belief that he or she would win in a recount, the candidate may request a recount. Can you imagine the state Supreme Court having to rule on what a "good-faith belief" is? We can. Can you imagine what the testimony might be like? We cannot. But anyone hawking Trump Bibles outside the courthouse would make out like a bandit.
  
  
• Nevada: There are no automatic recounts in Nevada, but any candidate who wants one can request one within 3 days of certification. However, that candidate has to pay for the recount.
  
  
• North Carolina: Recounts are automatic if the top two finishers differ by 0.5% or less. However, if three voters in a precinct demand a recount of that precinct, they are entitled to it. Expect there to be a recount in every precinct that Donald Trump loses. Experience shows that recounts rarely change the total very much.
  
  
• Pennsylvania: Like several of the other states, there is an automatic recount if the winner's margin of victory is 0.5% or less. As in North Carolina, voters can force a recount in any precinct if they suspect fraud or error. Expect many such recounts.
  
  
• Wisconsin: Any candidate can demand a recount, but if the candidate lost by more than 0.25%, the candidate has to pay for it. If the margin is less than 0.25%, the state pays for it. In 2020, Trump requested a partial recount and had to pay $3 million for it. It didn't change anything and he still lost.
  

Will we see recounts? If it is close, probably. Note that in most states a recount cannot be requested until the vote is certified. At the very least, there are psychological effects here. Once the secretary of state has declared that someone won the state and it is official, many people are going to be inclined to believe that. In the court of public opinion, once the vote has been certified and the media are reporting the results, the challenger becomes the underdog. (V)

Charlie Cook Shifts Eight House Races

The race for president gets most of the attention, and the Senate gets the rest. The House is kind of ignored, but is clearly important. If the party not occupying the White House captures either chamber of Congress, the president can stand on his/her head, but almost nothing will get done because the "out" party wants the president to fail. Remember when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said his top goal was to make Obama a 1-term president? Nothing has changed.

Several pundits track House races. One of them is Charlie Cook (and his team). He just changed his predictions on eight House races as follows:

Six of the eight changes favor the Democrats, but three of the calls are the most important, namely the three that change a toss up to a lean. Cook thinks the Democrats will oust Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-NY) but lose Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)'s seat. Changes between Lean and Likely don't mean so much.

With the House so close and so many tight races in New York and California, in even a small blue wave, the Democrats have a decent chance to capture the House, but probably with a small majority. If that happens, they will have to stick together to get anything done. With cat-herder-in-chief Nancy Pelosi no longer herding the cats, it won't be easy. (V)

Today's Presidential Polls

It's all over the map. What can we say? Harris has consistently trailed in Arizona, which surprises us since Biden won it and Arizona is a very diverse state. Maybe it is the many veterans who liked the old white guy but don't like the young Black woman. But remember, abortion is on the ballot.

State	Kamala Harris	Donald Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Arizona	45%	49%	Oct 25	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Arizona	48%	48%	Oct 21	Oct 30	Morning Consult
Florida	46%	51%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Georgia	48%	47%	Oct 24	Nov 01	Siena Coll.
Georgia	48%	50%	Oct 21	Oct 30	Morning Consult
Massachusetts	60%	34%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Maryland	64%	31%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Maine	52%	41%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Michigan	47%	47%	Oct 29	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Michigan	49%	48%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
North Carolina	47%	49%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
North Carolina	48%	46%	Oct 28	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
New Hampshire	51%	46%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Nevada	49%	46%	Oct 24	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Ohio	44%	53%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Pennsylvania	48%	48%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Pennsylvania	48%	48%	Oct 29	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Pennsylvania	49%	47%	Oct 27	Oct 30	Muhlenberg Coll.
Rhode Island	54%	40%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Texas	45%	52%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
Vermont	63%	31%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Wisconsin	48%	48%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
Wisconsin	49%	47%	Oct 25	Nov 02	Siena Coll.

Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.

Today's Senate Polls

Control of the senate will probably come down to five states: Florida, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas. The Democrats need to win at least two of them.

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Arizona	Ruben Gallego	50%	Kari Lake	42%	Oct 21	Oct 30	Morning Consult
Arizona	Ruben Gallego	50%	Kari Lake	45%	Oct 25	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Florida	Debbie Mucarsel-Powell	45%	Rick Scott*	48%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Massachusetts	Elizabeth Warren*	60%	John Deaton	37%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Maryland	Angela Alsobrooks	49%	Larry Hogan	42%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
Maine	Angus King*	50%	Demi Kouzounas	35%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Michigan	Elissa Slotkin	48%	Mike Rogers	46%	Oct 29	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Michigan	Elissa Slotkin	49%	Mike Rogers	41%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Nevada	Jacky Rosen*	52%	Sam Brown	43%	Oct 24	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Ohio	Sherrod Brown*	46%	Bernie Moreno	47%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	46%	David McCormick	43%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	49%	David McCormick	46%	Oct 27	Oct 30	Muhlenberg Coll.
Pennsylvania	Bob Casey*	50%	David McCormick	45%	Oct 29	Nov 02	Siena Coll.
Rhode Island	Sheldon Whitehouse*	54%	Patricia Morgan	40%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Texas	Colin Allred	44%	Ted Cruz*	47%	Oct 22	Oct 31	Morning Consult
Vermont	Bernie Sanders*	64%	Gerald Malloy	27%	Oct 29	Nov 02	U. of New Hampshire
Wisconsin	Tammy Baldwin*	49%	Eric Hovde	47%	Oct 23	Nov 01	Morning Consult
Wisconsin	Tammy Baldwin*	50%	Eric Hovde	46%	Oct 25	Nov 02	Siena Coll.

* Denotes incumbent

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