I’m not in the business of making campaign projections, Save Jerseyans, but when you’re on the radio and run a site like this one, people understandably want to know where yours truly believes the presidential race stands.
I won’t do that.
What I will do… tell you five things we KNOW as of this morning and you can thereafter draw your own conclusions…
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(1) Objective battleground data is ominous for Democrats.
America is already voting so the opinion polls, while still interesting, are no longer our only measure of where this thing is at. In battleground Pennsylvania, the Democrat statewide voter registration advantage has shrunk by hundreds of thousands of voters over the past four years. The past month alone has seen the Democrats’ edge shrink by another 25,000-ish registrants. To put things in perspective, Trump only lost PA by 88,000 votes in 2020. Bucks County alone has moved nearly 20,000 votes in the “R” direction since last cycle. Meanwhile, in Virginia (a “blue” state but one which COULD tip if it’s a big Trump night), Democrats continue to perform well below their 2022 early voting pace while GOP participation has ticked up, besting the party’s performance in both 2020 and 2022.
What does all of this tell us? That there’s anecdotal evidence of a favorable GOP turnout picture (especially if these are “low propensity” Republicans).
(2) The national polls are tightening in Trump’s direction.
There’s a new TIPP poll out today showing Harris +3, which is probably the minimum she’d need to win the national vote by in order to carry the Electoral College… but her margin is down 1-point from September. Meanwhile, YouGov (Yahoo) was at +4 Harris in September. Today, it’s tied (47-47). On October 7, 2020, Joe Biden led the RCP average by +9.7 and, four years earlier, Hilldawg was ahead by 4.7%. Kamala is only leading by 2.1% this morning. She’s actually leading by LESS than a point if you average the five most recent-in-time surveys with some October data backed into them. So yeah… not good for Team Coconut. It’s highly unlikely that Trump loses the national vote by less than 2 points and fails to reach at lrast 270 electoral votes.
(3) The pre-post mortem stories are all cropping up on the Left side.
Politico lamenting Kamala’s “Pennsylvania problem” and blaming white men. James Carville reportedly tongue-lashing Harris-Walz staffers. The Mighican Democrat Senate nominee telling donors that Harris is “underwater” in her state. Democrats complaining about Harris’s campaign schedule. At this point in most races, we begin to hear/see negative pre-post mortem stories surfacing in the Media. Some of it an (arguably) noble attempt to wake up one’s own camp when you think they’re losing. Some of it is self-serving… to say “see, I told you so” after the close and deflect blame. A lot of it is sloppy. But when it’s all happening on one side? That’s when you know something is probably happening and the insiders see it.
(4) Betting markets are suddenly swinging to Trump.
Election betting markets are the new frontier of the digital age of campaigns. Popularized by social media use, sports betting enthusiasm, and the declining reputation of traditional polling, many believe they may be more accurate (in terms of predicting the final result) than “scientific” surveys. At the moment? They’ve all swung hard towards Trump with no easily identifiable inflection point to explain “why.” In light of everything you just read in this post above? The most logical explanation is that people with money think Trump is ahead, or moving ahead, and Harris’s window to define herself favorably is closing… or closed?
(5) Campaign behavior suggests Harris’s people knows she’s struggling.
I’d argue this is the single most important item because campaigns pay a ton for high quality internal polling which is USUALLY better than the public polls which you and I get to see. For starters, they’re daily tracking polls (like Rasmussen) which are therefore often more reliable. We don’t get to see them, though it’s been rumored that BOTH camps’ respective internals show Harris in trouble.
Where are the campaigns at the moment? Based presumably upon their own data?
Trump is barnstorming the battlegrounds and paying particular attention to states like Wisconsin which, in theory, he won’t need if he holds on to GA, AZ, NC, and PA (he’s believed to be ahead in all four at the moment). Kamala, in turn, is barnstorming safe media outlets like the View, the “Call Me Daddy” podcast and 60 Minutes after months of hiding and hoping she could get to November without having to expose herself to scrutiny. Politico’s Saturday story said it all: “Trump is everywhere. Anxious Dems wonder why Harris isn’t.”
She’s also still begging for another debate because SHE is the one who needs a momentum-changing event, not Trump.
In short, she’s not acting like the one who’s ahead. Trump is behaving like the guy who is trying to consolidate a lead a pick up some insurance states.
