Models Moving Trumpward
A modest disturbance in the force.
Despite urging from Ezra Klein and others to ignore the polls, it’s the nature of the political junkie to stay attuned. Oddly, while Donald Trump seems to be melting down before our very eyes and Kamala Harris seems to be running a perfectly smart campaign—and Democrats doing quote well in most of the swing state Senate races—the models suddenly have him ahead in the Electoral College race.
The Nate Silver-less FiveThirtyEight:
For the first time since 538 published our presidential election forecast for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump has taken the lead (if a very small one) over Harris. As of 3 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 18, our model gives Trump a 52-in-100 chance of winning the majority of Electoral College votes. The model gives Harris a 48-in-100 chance.
The change in candidate’s fortunes came after a slow drip-drip-drip of polls showed the race tightening across the northern and Sun Belt battlegrounds. In our forecast of the popular vote in Pennsylvania, the race has shifted from a 0.6-point lead for Harris on Oct. 1 to a 0.2-point lead for Trump; In Michigan, a 1.8-point Harris lead is now just 0.4 points; And in Wisconsin, a 1.6-point lead for Harris is now an exact tie between the two candidates. Meanwhile, Arizona and Georgia have flipped from toss-ups to “Lean Republican” states.
Still, a word of caution: You might be tempted to make a big deal about our forecast “flipping” to Trump, but it’s important to remember that a 52-in-100 chance for Trump is not all that different from a 58-in-100 chance for Harris — both are little better than a coin flip for the leading candidate. While Trump has undeniably gained some ground over the past couple weeks, a few good polls for Harris could easily put her back in the “lead” tomorrow. Our overall characterization of the race — that it’s a toss-up — remains unchanged.
The caveat is surely bigger than the swing: it’s still essentially a 50-50 race. But I’d certainly prefer that the trend be moving in the other direction.
I saw the headline about 538’s move a couple days back and didn’t bother to write about it. Mostly, I’ve been busy with work and some minor chaos on the home front. But it was, after all, just one prediction model.
Until now.
The Economist (“Why Donald Trump has moved ahead in our election forecast“):
For the first time since August, Donald Trump has overtaken Kamala Harris in The Economist’s statistical model of America’s presidential election. Our latest forecast shows that Mr Trump has a 54% chance of returning to the White House, up six percentage points during the past week. Although the race still remains more or less a coin toss, it is now weighted slightly in Mr Trump’s direction.
The shift in our model reflects a steady narrowing of Ms Harris’s lead in national polls during the past month. Shortly after she became the Democrats’ presumptive nominee in July, a chunk of respondents who had previously said that they were undecided or backing third-party candidates started supporting her, increasing her national vote share from 46% to 49%. Many of these voters were probably disillusioned Democrats.
Now, Mr Trump appears to be benefiting from similar partisan consolidation, as Republican-leaning undecided voters “come home” to their party’s nominee. Whereas Ms Harris’s support has been flat for two months, Mr Trump’s has ticked up from a low of 45% in August to 47% now. This has cut his deficit in the national vote from a high of 3.7 percentage points to just 1.6.
Our forecast still gives the vice-president a 74% chance of winning the popular vote. However, the reason that Mr Trump has pulled ahead is his advantage in the electoral college. State-specific polls published in the past week confirm that Mr Trump’s position has strengthened slightly in the plausibly decisive states, just as it has nationwide (see chart). The data do not support the claim by some Democratic partisans that Republican-aligned firms are “flooding” polling averages with Trump-friendly results: the former president has also gained ground in surveys by pollsters that tend to publish good numbers for Democrats.
Just as in 2016 and 2020, the Democratic nominee is faring worse in swing-state polls than in national surveys. The candidates are roughly tied in Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Mr Trump is up by almost two percentage points in Arizona and Georgia. As a result, our model now estimates that Ms Harris needs to win the national popular vote by at least 2.5 percentage points to be favoured in the electoral college, up from 1.8 points in August.
Again: the movement here is small:
But, also again, the trendline is in the wrong direction.
The Economist‘s proferred rationale is plausible: these aren’t really “undecided” voters being persuaded that Trump is the better candidate but regular Republican voters who ostensibly gave Harris a chance to win them over and were unpersuaded. Presumably, these are also the subset of those telling pollsters they plan to vote for Trump who are least likely to actually show up to the polls and do so.
The aforementioned Nate Silver also shows a modest Trumpward trend. The analysis is behind a paywall, but Newsweek reports,
According to Silver’s model, last updated on Sunday, Kamala Harris still leads nationally and in three key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, the candidates are tied in Pennsylvania, and Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.
But compared to the same model’s aggregate polling from one month ago, almost every state tracked has shifted slightly toward Trump, including nationally and in all seven battleground states.
The biggest swing in a battleground state, was in Michigan, where Trump narrowed Harris’s lead to an average of 0.5 points, a swing of 1.9 points toward Trump in the last month.
Sure enough:
The national race, though, has been remarkably steady since the model’s launch in late September.
But, of course, we don’t elect Presidents by a national vote.
For what it’s worth (and I honestly don’t know, not having paid attention to them in a long time), the Daily Mail/J.L. Partners model has also moved Trumpward. I won’t bother to dissect it.
I continue to be befuddled that the race is even close. Trump was an awful President who tried to steal the 2020 election after he was defeated. He’s a convicted felon. He’s melting down before our eyes. And yet he’s doing better in the pre-election polls than he ever did in 2016 or 2020.
I don’t expect Republicans to abandon him in droves for Harris. But you’d think any on-the-fence voter would have done so long ago. But nope.
Indeed, on my social media feeds, I’ve seen a tiny handful of really bright people that I’ve followed for years, at least one of whom is a professional Democrat (a Latina woman) who is suddenly supporting him. As best I can tell, Harris and Walz flaws—which I acknowledge—are being cited while Trump’s rather obviously much more serious flaws are being shrugged off.
While I hold out hope for a Harris landslide—basically, a sweep of the swing states—and a thorough, hopefully final repudiation of Trump and Trumpism, I suspect it’ll be the race we’ve expected for months, with it all coming down to Pennsylvania.
Wow. Weird. Wild.
wtaf.
This 20% difference in probabilities is also a profound reminder of how our presidential electoral system is ultimately minoritarian in nature.
@Kurtz: I honestly don’t get it. It’s like five people, so hardly “data.” But something weird is going on beyond my understanding. I do think the gender issue—the larger discussion of masculinity and the various controversies surrounding transwomen—is a key factor but it’s hard to say for sure.
@Matt Bernius: Yup.
I continue to be befuddled that the race is even close.
I don’t want to be insulting but that’s probably because you, James Joyner, stopped caring about anyone who wasn’t like you a long time ago.
War in Ukraine.
War in the Middle East.
Higher inflation.
Out of control illegal immigration.
More people dying of COVID under Biden than under Trump.
Rising crime rates (which has now been confirmed by the FBI).
A years-long conspiracy to lie to the public and cover up Biden’s declining mental and physical condition.
Handing the Democratic nomination to someone who didn’t win a single primary vote.
Harris going more than a month after becoming the nominee before actually answering any substantive questions from the press.
The whole transgender issue, where Harris and the Dems are clearly on one side and Trump and the GOP are on the other.
And this list could go on.
It is one thing to say you don’t agree with why folks might be trending towards Trump. But to not understand it? That’s essentially admitting you are no longer capable of understanding that other people, WHO ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOU, actually exist.
When you were voting from John McCain and Mitt Romney, did you really not understand why people were voting for Obama? Or is this just part of the “othering” of Trump and his supporters that allows you to keep pretending that “everything is fine except for that damn Trump.”
The RyGuy forgot to blame Biden for hurricanes, the flu, and an increase in Big Foot sightings. Send smarter trolls, please.
“Gift NYT”
I suppose it’s rude to quote a competitor blog extensively, but I’ll just be rude:
“LGM”
There is another post at LGM by Cheryl Rofer that has more on this.
@James Joyner:
Clearly this is all my fault. Sorry everyone. /sarc
@TheRyGuy: are you deliberately picking bad-faith examples, or do you actually believe all that?
@TheRyGuy: I’ve certainly blogged a lot about these issues, so I’m certainly aware of them.
First off, there’s zero indication that significant number of Americans are voting on these issues. Second, it’s not at all clear that Trump’s policies are better in any way than Biden’s.
While I don’t think Biden can reasonable be blamed for most of this—it was, after all, higher in just about (if not every) major Western economy—it was clearly a driving factor in Biden’s low approval numbers. But he’s not running.
It’s been out of control for decades and was arguably worse under Trump.
There was one year of COVID under Trump and four under Biden. It math.
The FBI has completely changed its reporting system, making comparison next to impossible.
While overstated, there’s truth to this. But, again, Biden ain’t running. Neither is the news media.
Technically, she was on the ticket. But, yes, I’ve argued that this was a problem. The thing is, though, her numbers are higher than Biden’s.
While I thought that problematic, I doubt most voters even care. Further, she’s now making the rounds and doing just that while Trump is very much not.
I do think this, along with broader masculinity issues, is partly driving the modest realignment of young Black and Hispanic men toward the GOP. But the folks voting on this issue were overwhelmingly already Republicans.
Just 2 weeks out from the election and Jon Stewart is making jokes about Kamala and Liz Cheney. “We don’t like the Cheneys”. I was wondering why they didn’t invite Dick out for the Walz quail hunting video. Dick could’ve helped Tim handle his shotgun. Sure, he shot a man in the face, but that means Dick was able to load his shotgun properly.
It’s gonna be a rough couple weeks as the pollsters who hope to have credibility next cycle move their numbers toward Trump. Of course, the pure partisan ones will keep it close to provide a justification for a late night ballot dump.
But it looks like this vote will churn the mix. Win or lose, it looks like the Trump vote is going to expose the party realignment. Likely Trump will do very much better, if not win, the popular vote. Showing an unexpected turnout of non-Democrat voters in deep Blue like CA and NY. Wouldn’t that scramble some people’s ideas?
I heard that early voting was down. I hoped that Trump voters would vote early, but this could just be Democrats not showing up as they have in the past. Fun times.
An thing to watch is when Antifa/BLM, etc roll out to protest Trump’s election, it might look bad for them to burn black neighborhoods if the black vote shifts significantly to Trump. Might give the appearance of retaliation by Democrats.
RyGuy offers a pretty good explanation of why Trump is competitive. He illustrates the general truth that the electorate are a box of rocks. And more specifically he illustrates that being a box of rocks largely manifests through the cum/post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
If you look at the data, inflation (inflation, not headline inflation) started ramping up in January of 2021, before Biden had begun his supposed spending spree or done anything except get elected. And inflation’s been essentially over for a year. But people don’t look at data, their feelz on inflation started in late ’21 and Biden was president. And the feelz persist. End of story. Similarly, Biden hardly caused Ukraine or Oct 7/Gaza, but he’s prez.
I find it seriously problematical that so many voters find stunts like Trump pulled yesterday at a McDonalds entertaining, so they vote based on liking an interesting fun guy for President.
Well, that, along with resenting the smug elitists who share condescending thoughts about them.
@TheRyGuy:
It hasn’t been confirmed by the FBI and thank you for the kick in the pants to finish that article.
@James Joyner:
It’s a bit more complex than that FWIW. We can still look at trends from that data set (while acknowledging that 2021’s data is unreliable). And that is only one of a number of data sets to determine crime is going down overall.
[Edit: Here’s that post]
What @RyGuy demonstates is that most voters know which side they prefer and instead of amassing a list of reasons to vote for their side, they amass a list of reasons not to vote for the other. He would have provided another list if Biden was the nominee.
I would note that he, and his allies who show up, have never give a serious positive argument for Trump, let alone explain any his obvious problems. No one will, for example, defend the clip I posted this morning, or anything else.
He is also demonstrating which “news” sources he trusts.
@TheRyGuy:
Among the many other lies, this one is particularly egregious. The FBI revised data for 2022. The FBI has not revised data for 2023 or 2024. Crime is near or at 50 years low right now.
The unstable, exhausted, elderly Trump attracts voters who lie as much as he does. The fact that they have to invent an alternate reality and lie about the record of the Biden-Harris administration does not indicate confidence in their exhausted old candidate — a mentally-deteriorating rapist who left office with COVID failure and record job — nor his closing message of faking work at McDonald’s and ranting about Arnold Palmer’s penis.
@James Joyner: Kudos for trying to address the list.
I expect it all falls on deaf ears.
I have read early voting is up. I have read early voting is down. I have heard trump has an edge. I have heard Harris is making gains. Some really smart people are saying there’s a good possibility it’s a landslide election. Apparently both trump and Harris are heading for victory.
Here in my neck of the woods it is decidedly different than 2020. Trump thumpers were driving around in pickups with trump flags flying and music blaring. Not a peep this cycle. The HOA frowns on political yard signs, but that normally doesn’t stop the thumpers. This year only two put up trump “revenge tour” banners.
I have no idea what this means.
@Steven L. Taylor: basically the trolls lament is “Look what you made us do!”
@Steven L. Taylor: Oh, I have no doubt of that. But, to the extent quasi-reasonable points are raised, I try to address them.
@gVOR10:
You’re right that, for most people, “inflation” isn’t about the trendline but how it feels. But that’s actually perfectly reasonable: it’s genuinely more expensive to buy a house, rent an apartment, buy a new or used car, go out to dinner, buy groceries, and many other things than was the case four years ago. That paychecks have more-or-less gone up accordingly doesn’t factor into the feels, though, because people think they’ve earned the pay raise and it generally seems meager, while paying twice what one thinks is “normal” for things pisses people off.
The only conclusion I can reach is that a large subset of Americans actually want fascism. The worse he gets, the more they like him.
Whether or not Biden caused inflation (America did much better than Britain which was until recently led by conservatives), and whether Harris would support the same policies as Biden is not really material to most voters. A large percentage of people are struggling more than they did four years ago – that is always bad news for the incumbent party. They don’t have to understand any complexities at all, they just want something to be different.
The rest of the list is fluff or outright lies. At most seven or eight people blame the U.S. leadership for Russia’s invasion or the semi-permanent unrest in the Middle East, and even fewer care enough to vote based on those issues.
The part of this that doesn’t make sense is the popular vote. Yeah, swing states are tight.
Biden, though won the popular vote by 7 million votes. The polls show the margin much smaller. This means people who voted for Biden are now voting for Trump. Who are those people?
James mentions one, but it, again, doesn’t make sense. It takes something big to move a strong partisan like that, so what is it? What was that big thing?
Information warfare is a thing, it has been used repeatedly by our opponents. How far does it go?
We voted yesterday. My wife, a practicing licensed professional counselor, advised me that she thinks I need to stop looking at polls and listening to podcasts. For my personal mental health. So other than OTB, I am following that advice.
So music and history podcasts it is.
So. What does Kamala Harris say about this?
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/21/kamala-harris-against-despair/
@JKB:
Red Wave 2022!!11!!
This is what happens when you get your news from Breitbart and Stormfront newsletters, as they push to make to Putin and Musk president through their sputtering puppet, Trump.
The first week of early voting in Georgia set daily records (AJC)
North Carolina Officials Report Record Turnout for First Day of Early Voting (NYT)
Now why is Trump cracking-up mentally while his benefactor Musk and MAGA sycophants grow more unhinged? Because of stuff like this:
Harris lead among young voters grows to 20 points in new poll (The Hill)
KFF poll: Abortion is now the top election issue for young women, among shifts that favor Harris (PBS)
And this, via Forbes:
And this, at USA Today:
And this, from the Wall Street Journal: Republicans rush to bolster Trump’s ground game, meaning the RNC is scrambling as on-the-ground operatives and local campaigns panic over Musk/MAGA’s sputtering and anemic GOTV efforts.
And especially this:
Harris edges out Trump on key economic questions, new poll shows (The Guardian):
Exaggerating crime and screaming about inflation didn’t work out so well for Trumpers in 2022. Neither did their misplaced confidence in models and topline averages manipulated by junk Red Wave polls. 2024 will only be marginally different.
It’s almost like someone wrote an entire post about that recently…
What I will say, and my one ray of hope, is that lack of serious positive argument demonstrates a support gap that we didn’t see in either 2016 or 2020. In both those years, commenters who supported Trump tended to do so with their full chests. This year feels much more like a “vote against” year for Republicans–and even then it seems like a much more “resigned to vote against” than excited to.
That mirrors what I’ve been seeing in terms of yard signs, especially as one gets further out into the rural areas I live near by. There are far, far, far fewer Trump signs than in past years. Yes, there are still “those houses” but they’re increasingly the exception.
This isn’t to say that you can’t win elections by voting against the party in power. But I really question if this lack of enthusiasm will ultimately be tied to lower turnout from MAGA and Trump supporters.
@Scott:
Any recommendations?
@DK:
Yes, kinda… It’s a bit more complex than that. And we should expect more revisions for 2023 (2024 data won’t be released until 2025).
Estimates of crime are definitely trending lower and close to those lows (with some exception areas). For all the reasons I point out in this post, we really should only be talking in terms of trends rather (because all of those data are estimates). And we can also say with confidence that violent crime has returned to the rates we saw for most of the 2010’s.
For a more detailed explanation, see: https://outsidethebeltway.com/why-we-can-say-crime-is-down-despite-the-fbi-upward-revision-2021s-crime-estimates/
@DK: Regular podcasts I listen to are Hardcore History (a large back catalogue) and Sound Opinions, a long running weekly music podcast by Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot, two former Chicago newspaper music reviewers.
@Jay L Gischer:
Or not voting, maybe.
@charontwo:
Above, @gVOR10: I make an argument based on the timing of inflation. I wrote it to this audience. If I offered the same argument to any of my MAGA relatives they would reject it, thinking I was just a pointy headed liberal rationalizing the reality they feel. No point even trying.
Maybe it is hopium/copium but…
From Bad Faith Times:
From that Threads link:
and
For all the criticisms, Ryguy is correct about people being different, having different priorities, and living in different information/media bubbles. It’s important to remember that the people reading, commenting, and authoring this blog are the strange ones (me included), the minority of Americans for whom politics is a hobby and who spend a lot of time on what amounts to “inside baseball.” The majority of the public either isn’t aware of or doesn’t care about the inside baseball, probably because they have more important things to do.
And, just like 2016, IMO, there’s been this failure to deal with this reality. There still seem to be many detractors who believe that somehow, by repetition, after almost nine years of negative Trump media coverage, minds will finally be swayed that he’s a fascist or whatever.
For example, Trump is justifiably portrayed as a racist, especially toward Latin-American immigrants. What explains his high and improving poll numbers among American Latinos? What explains his improving (albeit still low) support among Black Americans compared to moderate Republicans of the past?
I’m going to guess that most will give the same explanations given for these past 9 years – Fox News, biased media, and a stupid public.
I also think David Brook’s latest column has a lot of truth to it. Politics has become very tribal and quasi-religious. Our primary system has both enabled and exacerbated this. And for those who have promoted the idea of “identity politics” as something to strive for, this is the entirely predictable result.
Secondly, yes, Harris is now the candidate. And, as I thought would likely be the case, she’s doing a lot better than Biden and better than her detractors said she would. But she still has some non-trivial disadvantages:
– A late entry to the race. After she became the candidate, her reluctance to get out there in the public eye and answer questions early was understandable, considering she needed to get a campaign strategy and team together first so the message would be coherent. But the downside is that people are already voting, and now she’s getting out there, which may be too little, too late, and will magnify the impact of any mistakes she makes.
– Being part of the unpopular Biden admin. She’s trying to surf the line between riding the coattails of the administration’s successes while distancing herself from its failures. That’s not easy in the best of conditions, especially when the Biden administration has roughly the same unfavorables as the Trump admin before it did. This is particularly true with the Biden administration’s immigration policies, which was a huge unforced error in that they maintained a broadly unpopular stance until earlier this year. Harris says she’ll be a law-and-order President, but at the same time, she can’t throw Biden under the bus. It’s a tough position to be in!
– She’s got the baggage of her 2019 primary run. She can’t answer why she’s fundamentally shifted (at least rhetorically) on so many issues because there is no good answer. I think most everyone who follows the “inside baseball” understands that she was triangulating in 2019 for the expected zeitgeist of the Democratic primary voter back then, which was foolish for someone with her experience and resume to do. It’s still hurting her now, and it’s a pickle she can’t easily get out of.
Just to be clear, I’ll be voting for Harris, but I can understand why some people genuinely prefer Trump or would rather take the known quantity of Trump instead of Harris.
@Andy: The known quantity of Trump is a rapidly decompensating fascist with early signs of dementia and a disturbingly specific interest in the late Arnold Palmer’s wang.
And yet, you’re not wrong. May God help us.
@DK: I have also voted already. I’m listening to Kris Kristoffersen related music.
@Andy: I think your broader point is correct, but would argue that: She’s got the baggage of her 2019 primary run. She can’t answer why she’s fundamentally shifted (at least rhetorically) on so many issues because there is no good answer. – this is some serious Inside Baseball: nobody actually cares about this, they care about where she is now. (Or, more perniciously, they want to hear where the press molds her positions for now, which is a whole other problem.)
Which leads me to: Harris says she’ll be a law-and-order President, but at the same time, she can’t throw Biden under the bus. It’s a tough position to be in! This is the crux of most of her problems. She needs to be both a loyalist – she’s currently the #2 in the party – and a leader. It’s hard to distinguish your position when you can’t fully criticize the current policy, even when you know it’s a loser. It’s hard to talk about what you would do as captain when the current captain also has a job to do.
The resulting sentiment feels more “not-Harris” than “yes-Trump”.
For example, Muslims largely consider Trump a terrible prospect, but Harris is so fully lockstep with the Biden admin and trying to tightrope around questioning Israel that she’s losing Muslims who want her to stand up against Israel’s genocide and the expanding ME war. Most of them aren’t voting for Trump, but it’s hard for an otherwise pretty conservative group to be encouraged to pull the lever for Harris if she won’t go to bat on this.
At the same time, she needs to appear where voters actually are. A ton of low-key Trump voters honestly have no idea what Harris has to say. The Fox News interview was a great start, and I think something like Joe Rogan would be a fine closer, especially if she goes on right after Trump and listeners get to hear that contrast.
Polling …
I saw a poll this morning showing that Harris made up ground and now narrowly leads Trump on the issue of who would better manage the economy.
That said, the same poll showed that Trump led when the issue was who would do better with tariffs. People believe that the guy who does not realize that tariffs are paid by American consumers will better manage tariffs.
Please tell me more about ‘Wisdom of The People.’
@Andy:
“identity politics” is politics. Plain and simple. Everyone no matter who indulges in it, anyone who has ever talked about NASCAR Dad’s, Hockey Mom’s, LGBTQ, yellow, black or white is talking about politics and when you want to smear the other side you call it Identity politics.
@al Ameda: You’re assuming that the people in question realize who pays tariffs. Or even what they are.
@Andy:
Exit polls in 2016 and 2020 showed Trump doing worse with Latinos than the previous Republican president, who won ~45% of the Latino vote in 2004. Trump won slightly less than 30% of the Latino vote vs Clinton, slightly more than 30% vs Biden.
So I’m guessing some public pollsters continue to have problems capturing people of color and/or weighting their responses accurately.
We last saw this manifest in 2022, when the narrative reliably informed us that, per public polls, Republican support among Latinos was growing. When the dust settled, Republicans won about the same share as usual — exceptions among some communities in Texas and Florida.
Now, barely two years later, we’re hearing the same drumbeat about the same black and Latino voters based on the same scattershot polls. A poll that focuses on just Latinos, rather than trying to weight responses from too-few Latinos, tells a less dramatic story:
If Trump finally wins a third of Latinos in 2024, it would represent a typical and usual level of GOP support for this bloc — and around ten points worse than Bush.
@JKB:
Are you really saying Cheney deliberately shot someone in the face? Or just that he only knows how to load a shotgun?
And what about gun control in the NRA sense?
@ptfe:
Judging from the GoP-aligned media and ads being run in swing states that focus on some of her 2019 statements, it’s not inside baseball at all. Focusing on “flip-flops” has a long tradition in American politics (those of a certain age may remember the Kerry windsurfing ad from the 2004 campaign). It’s not inside baseball if the opposition is actively weaponizing it and signal boosting the discrepancy to voters in swing states.
I agree with the rest of your comment, though.
@DK:
From the GQR poll you cite:
Those numbers do generally look better than 2020 exit polls, and let’s hope they’re accurate.
But I’m a bit skeptical, not only because it’s a D-leaning polling firm, but also because it’s not the only one that isn’t “scattershot.” There’s this NBC news/Telemundo poll, for example which paints a different picture. The NYT/Sierra polls have large sample sizes, including for Latinos, showing a shift. Now it could be that those shifts are in states that don’t matter in determining the winner. The GQR poll has the advantage of specifically looking at swing states.
I guess we’ll find out the reality in a month! (Hopefully)
The race is close enough that even a small shift in specific demographics can be decisive. We won’t know until we know, but the election could well come down to (again) a relative handful of votes in a couple of states. Even if Trump treads water and gets the “typical and usual level of GoP support,” – that is still remarkable and pretty amazing for a candidate who many believe is super racist and hates Latinos, especially immigrants!
@Rick DeMent:
Fair enough!
@DK:
Or modeled to not be voting.
Pollsters are looking where the predicted and actual voting population diverged in previous years, and adjusting with various fudge factors to try to not make those errors this year. A time-honored engineering style process that I am not in any way disparaging — it’s the best you can do, and it adds another source of potential error on top of small sample sizes.
So while I was getting a haircut in my very red rural area I had an interesting conversation with the hair stylist (white youngish female). Started off talking basically code about how people need to keep their nose out of each other’s business. By the end of the conversation/hair cut we had stopped talking in “code” but still talking in a low volume so as to not be overheard. She was pro choice and pro LGBTQ rights so I commented that a very important election was coming and she should vote. She said she didn’t know who to vote for because she heard bad things about both candidates. Despite having just spent the entire haircut complaining about everything the GOP does she isn’t sure who to vote for. I ended up just telling her to google Project 2025 and know that Trump fully supports it.
I wish I could continue the conversation with her because I’d love to know what the bad stuff she heard about Kamala and the democratic party were. It’s utterly mind blowing as one side is absolutely against what she wants yet she still can’t decide.. I’m really hoping it’s not because Kamala is black and/or a female.
So the propaganda army of the right seems to be in full force here.
@Andy:
I guess it depends on how much faith one has in people’s decision-making ability. To me, it’s silly anyone of any background would rationalize giving nuclear codes to a man they wouldn’t hire to clean their own toilets, due to his manifest unfitness and untrustworthiness.
But having grown up in Georgia around the types of people who vote for Trump, I have long been acquainted with the ignorance, bigotry, and dishonesty. So the silliness doesn’t shock me. I don’t get why some are “baffled.” Have they never met unintelligent or uninformed people? Are they in denial about racism or sexism?
Trump has been running for president for nearly a decade. It’s not that extraordinary on his third time he may *finally* have worn down people not mentally or morally tough enough to keep saying no.
If MAGA, who couldn’t quite reach the standard Republican third of Latinos before, finally does so after nine years of bombarding them with rightwing- and Russian-propaganda, that would be more rote than remarkable.
@Matt:
This reminds me of this scene in The Big Bang Theory.
Yes, it’s mean.