In 99 days, America will choose a new president. Since Democrats forced incumbent President Joe Biden out of the race, in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, how has the polling shifted? And should Trump supporters feel optimistic or pessimistic moving forward? Thus far, Democrats's decision to nullify their primary elections and swap out their nominee midstream has been beneficial to their polling position. When Biden exited the race just over one week ago, he was trailing his predecessor by approximately three percentage points in the RealClearPolitics head-to-head average. In a five-way field, the gap was just over four percentage points. Trump led Biden in all seven major swing state averages by margins ranging from two points (Michigan) to nearly six points (North Carolina). Biden was on track to lose re-election.
Harris has now replaced Biden at the top of the ticket, instantly rejuvenating enthusiasm among her party's previously-moribund base -- especially among journalists, perhaps the most loyal group of Democratic activists. This newfound sense of hope has resulted in something of a mass catharsis. We've seen sweeping relief among beleaguered Democrats, who have translated that emotion into a gusher of fundraising and near-euphoric hero worship of their new standard bearer. Many of these people have been underwhelmed by Harris, even in the very recent past. The party soundly rejected her 2020 presidential campaign, killing it off through back of support before a single vote was cast. Quite a few still harbor concerns about her viability, given her astounding and vast Greatest Hits catalogue of radical views and proposals. But they're all in now. The explosion of propaganda on her behalf has been breathtaking, including some of the most aggressive and brazen gaslighting I've ever seen.
After about a week of this, the deficit she inherited from Biden has been almost cut in half, as she trails Trump by a little under two percentage points in the RCP head-to-head average (the five-way field margin is almost identical). State level polling is relatively scant so far, but based on what we've seen, those crucial contests either look fairly similar to how they did when Biden was the nominee, or Harris has drawn closer to Trump. A handful of polls out of 'reach' states, where Trump had been expanding the map, have shown movement toward Democrats. It's too early to make any declarative statements, but the likelihood of Trump winning in places like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Virginia, or even New Mexico appears to be notably diminished. It's possible that he could regain that ground over the coming weeks, but at least for now, we're witnessing a reversion to the mean in such states. The tightening in other major battlegrounds also reflects a more competitive race since Biden was shown the door.
Where does this cycle go from here? Given the head-spinning events of the last month or so, making confident predictions seems rather foolish. It's entirely possible that the race has reset, voters have re-adjusted, and the contest will be locked into a new status quo, in which Trump remains favored -- albeit less heavily than he was on July 20th. Remember, the overall dynamic of the Trump-Biden race was frozen in place for months, no mater what the intervening news cycles looked like. But if things are more fluid now, let's explore optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, from the Trump campaign's perspective. The case for pessimism goes like this: The scrambling of the race has already moved the needle toward Harris and the Democrats. Yes, she is still trailing, but well within the margin of error, and she's only been in the race for about a week. She will also select her running mate prior to August 7, which will give her another big pop of attention and glowing media attention (she will likely select someone who could help her in an important state), followed by the weeklong infomercial of the DNC. The Republican convention was largely oriented to oppose an erstwhile Democratic nominee who is no longer relevant. Democrats will have about a month to prepare a convention that will unite their party, after weeks of unpleasant friction, and savage the locked-in GOP ticket. The early debate that ultimately knocked Biden out, plus the later convention, both benefit the ruling party.
Trump may be more popular than ever, but he's still deeply polarizing. If Harris can turn in a decent debate performance against Trump (she was pretty good against Mike Pence, who is a more prepared and disciplined debater than Trump), and if Trump starts to remind swing voters why they grew weary of him and voted him out in 2020, she could overtake him. Her myriad flaws, including holding what should be politically-fatal stances on a whole host of issues, will be papered over and denied by many in the 'news' media. The so-called honeymoon she's enjoying right now may well last for weeks, through the convention. Her boosters in the press know all they have to do is ignore or mitigate her glaring problems for a few months. They will try to keep her on 'honeymoon' footing into November. They will vet and litigate JD Vance (whose vulnerabilities and downsides seem more apparent after Democrats' reset of the race) much more fervently than anything they do to Harris. He has not emerged as a popular pick for Trump, and the media smells blood. Combine these factors, and it's not hard to envision a pathway to Democrats holding the White House in November, with possible down-ballot consequences to boot. That's especially true in light of Democrats' systemic advantages on turnout and ballot operations, a point I've been harping on for months.
The case for optimism is just as plausible -- if not more so. Despite the Democrats' machinations and the strenuous efforts of the news media, Harris still looks like the underdog in the national and state-level polling. The built-in polling bounce events (VP rollout and convention) may not result in much or any real movement. Even though Team Blue has been raking in gigantic fundraising hauls, so has Team Red, which hasn't spent heavily until very recently. The onslaught is just starting. With the media running cover for Harris, television and digital ads featuring her own words will be essential in defining who Kamala Harris is: The most extreme leftist ever nominated. This sort of spot is only the beginning:
NEW: The Trump SuperPAC - Make America Great Again, Inc - is up with two new digital ads on Google targeted in swing states going after Kamala Harris (both below).
— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) July 27, 2024
First one goes after Harris for being a liberal prosecutor.
"Kamala Harris, a dangerous San Francisco liberal" pic.twitter.com/XE3lOMTo7g
Harris' failed 2020 cycle run began with a burst of energy and buzz, strong fundraising, and a substantial polling surge. Then her own party's voters saw more of her, and her campaign petered out before the calendar even turned to the election year itself. If she's basking in a sugar high right now, and maybe for the next few weeks, it could wear off after Labor Day. Voters will finalize their focus on whether they'd prefer someone whose policies they prefer on the top two issues facing the country (the economy and immigration), and whose presidency they view strikingly favorably, in retrospect -- or someone whose insane proposals would add destructive rocket fuel to both inflation (adding nearly $10 trillion in new annual spending from her Green New Deal and outlawing of private health insurance alone) and the border crisis (decriminalizing illegal immigration, abolishing ICE, and providing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded healthcare plans). It's not difficult to envision the margins creeping back in the other direction. World events also play a role, and a new war in the Middle East could deepen certain fissures within the Democratic coalition, some of which may be on full display in the streets of Chicago next month.
Also bear in mind that as of this week, four years ago, Joe Biden had built a nine point polling lead over Trump. His final polling advantage was more than seven points. Trump over-performed that margin by almost three percentage points, and came within less than 50,000 votes (spread across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin) from an electoral college tie. Trump trailed in three 'blue wall' states of the upper Midwest by polling margins that substantially exceeded the actual results. In Wisconsin, for example, the polling average forecast a Biden win by 6.7 percent points. Biden carried the state by less than a point. In 2016, Hillary Clinton led Trump by seven points in the mid-October RCP average. That gap closed, but Trump was behind in nearly every single public poll down the campaign's final stretch. He slightly over-performed his national polling position, and beat expectations in a handful of important states. The rest was history. Even in a somewhat pessimistic scenario under which Harris is tied or slightly ahead by November in national polling, Trump would have a good chance of winning. One X-factor is whether Trump's propensity to outperform general election polling will be less relevant in 2024 than it was in 2016 or 2020, as the 'Trump stigma' (which may make supporters less willing to admit their private preferences to pollsters, or anyone else) seems less potent than ever.
In short, Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden has bolstered Democrats' chances of retaining the presidency, but Donald Trump remains slightly favored to win his old job back. As Team Harris starts to pretend that her stated-out-loud, toxic positions from the last campaign no longer matter, I'll leave you with this:
She even says, on video, “I have a history of working on this issue” — “this issue” being completely banning fracking. It wasn’t just a one-off flub. https://t.co/r84AJxbAnw
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 27, 2024
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