No Joe-mentum
The Democrats are in a good place heading into their convention.
After lagging the obvious polling trends for a few days, RealClearPolitics finally shows Kamala Harris with a slight lead over Donald Trump:
At this point, there’s just little doubt that the momentum is on her side. The replacement of a befuddled octogenarian with an energetic 59-year-old has simply upended the contest.
Longtime Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini hits the nail on the head here in explaining why the hypothetical polls about Harris (and others) replacing Biden didn’t predict this:
[T]hese polls got the psychology of the electorate wrong, suggesting a replacement would fare almost as badly as Biden, with all of the downsides Flaherty outlined in his memo.
What polls didn’t capture was the enormous sense of relief that would wash over the Democratic Party once the Biden drama was resolved, leading at least for now to a consolidation of the party’s base behind Harris. Three weeks ago, the party was anything but unified, so the polls taken at the time, with their dejected and despondent Democratic samples, weren’t that helpful in making the case for a switch.
What was needed to finally push Biden out was not data, but vibes. Nate Silver has been pilloried by the left this cycle for becoming something of a “vibes” guy, but his common sense read on the situation was absolutely correct. Simply going from a moribund candidate to one who could actually wage a vigorous campaign transformed the psychology of the party almost overnight—even if Harris was not the ideal candidate.
Similarly, his more famous competitor, Frank Luntz, observes:
‘Make no mistake, Trump’s advantage with the Republican Convention after that ended is gone. It is wiped away. And if the election were held today, I actually believe that Harris would beat Trump. That’s how much things have changed over the last two weeks,’ he said.
[…]
‘If this campaign is about inflation and immigration, Donald Trump wins. If it’s about the attributes of the candidates, Kamala Harris wins,’ he said.
[…]
He has been polling in national elections since 1990s.
‘In the end, voters tend to vote for the more optimistic candidate,’ Luntz noted.
She’s portraying herself as a “joyful warrior” right now, while Trump is flailing about trying to recapture the media’s attention. Advantage: Harris.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which had been bearish on Biden’s chances even compared to the national polls, also shows a “reset.” They shift Georgia from “Leans Republican” to “Toss-up” and shift both Minnesota and New Hampshire from “Leans Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.”
[I]t appears that at least in the short term, Harris has reversed the slippage—or has at least been able to stop the bleeding—that Democrats have seen since the Biden-Trump debate in June. Looking nationally, Harris currently leads in all national polling aggregators. When Biden left the race, he was generally polling behind Trump. Harris making the race into more of a 50-50 proposition means we should adjust our own ratings to better reflect the state of the race.
Before this week, one of the more recent changes we made to our Electoral College ratings was when we downgraded Democrats’ prospects in Walz’s Minnesota. Our reasoning was that the Gopher State was just not that much bluer than Michigan, a state we simultaneously moved in the Toss-up column. But some recent Fox News polling was telling: while Harris was tied with Trump in Michigan, her 52%-46% lead over Trump in Minnesota was close to what Biden carried the state by in 2020. Shortly after that Fox poll came out, a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll gave Harris an even more comfortable 50%-40% lead in Minnesota. So, from what we can tell, while Michigan (along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) remain on a knife’s edge, Minnesota is true to its usual form, as a state that typically leans a few points bluer than the nation as a whole.
Though we wrote last week that vice presidential candidates, on average, deliver only marginal home state boosts, we feel that Walz’s placement on the Democratic ticket, combined with recent polling, provides more than enough justification to move the state into a firmer rating category. We are moving Minnesota from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.
In the 2020 presidential election, the state that voted closest to Minnesota was New Hampshire, which was actually a few tenths of a point bluer. Though its electoral votes helped to put Republican George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, in the Trump era, New Hampshire’s federal politics have taken on a mild, but consistent, shade of blue. We would also note that with educational attainment becoming increasingly synced to voting preference, New Hampshire has a slightly more college-educated population than Minnesota. And, as with Minnesota, the sampling of Granite State polling that we’ve gotten over the last few weeks suggests an overall picture similar to that of 2020. So New Hampshire also goes from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.
One recent ratings change that we made came in the state that hosted the pivotal first debate: Georgia. When Biden was in the race, it seemed clear that his (narrow) path to reelection would run through the Midwest, as several Sun Belt states that he carried in 2020—specifically Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada—were slipping away. Still, we, somewhat charitably to Biden, kept Arizona, where Democrats are favored in a key Senate race and where an abortion ballot measure may help them, and Nevada, where Democrats have some history of beating their poll numbers, in the Toss-up category. But we pushed Georgia, which is hosting a relatively low-stakes set of down-ballot races this cycle, into the Leans Republican category in mid-June.
Now, this is hardly a slam dunk. Indeed, Trump still holds a slight lead in their Electoral College projection:
The key battlegrounds all remain “toss-ups.” But the fact that Georgia, where most polls had Trump up by 5 points (and some had him up by double digits) before the switcharoo, now joins them is an indicator of a changed race.
I haven’t trusted a poll in quite some time, mainly because of cell phones. Dobbs multiplied their deficiencies. I’m sure they have value to campaigns but not to this everyday schmuck.
‘If this campaign is about inflation and immigration, Donald Trump wins. If it’s about the attributes of the candidates, Kamala Harris wins,’ he said. He = Frank Luntz, the wordsmith who changed the anodyne term “undocumented alien” into “illegal immigrant” and gifted the GOP with a cudgel. Of course Harris has pointed out how the bipartisan immigration reform bill was torpedoed by Trump, and more importantly, WHY he did so: because to him immigration is not a serious problem, it is campaign gold. Harris and her team have to hammer Trump for his self-absorbed approach to immigration (and everything else). She could ice the cake by saying the bipartisan bill is her first step toward immigration reform.
There are a couple of factors that make me very optimistic. Trump is going to be sentenced in September, which puts his multiple felony convictions back on the front page, and Judge Chutkan may hold an evidentiary hearing (as instructed by the Supreme Court) in the January 6 case, which would do the same for those charges.
And while there isn’t an incumbent as such in the race, Trump is kind of a de facto incumbent (having already been president)–and if that’s the case, it’s more likely than not that undecideds will break for Harris. I think Trump is at his ceiling, and the only real question is whether VP Harris can consolidate and turn out the voters who don’t like him (who constitute a majority).
@Charley in Cleveland:
That first ad they did, on immigration, spoke directly to this point, and IMO did it very well.
The fact that every single major pundit, those Savvy Insiders who smugly and confidently tell us what is happening and give unsolicited advice to the candidates on what they “must do” (invariably “pivot to the center” i.e., adopt the pundit’s own preferred policies), should cause us to take every future column written by them with utmost skepticism.
I am seeing a younger generation much more aggressively taking on Trump’s ridiculousness – and I’m here for it.
Biden is from my father’s generation. Too polite and proper to get down in the mud with a guy like Trump. Stays above the fray, maintains his dignity, lets his actions speak louder than his words.
The sort of guy Trump has taken advantage of all his life.
Harris is not afraid to call Trump what he is. Walz told Vance to get off the couch. Trump is panicking with fake stories about how Biden wants back in the race – and his minions are trying their best to echo that silliness.
We will not be complacent though. We learned our lesson in 2016.
@Chip Daniels:
I almost wrote a post about “pivot to the center” the other day, because I find it such a useless admonition. It is such a simplistic view of the median voter theorem, and also one that ultimately ignores the state-by-state nature of it all, not to mention the poorly defined nature of left, right, and center.
And you are quite correct about what the definition of “center” usually is in these pieces.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I honestly don’t think it’s worth the effort trying to analyze the political benefits or lack thereof for the mythical “pivot”, because the real benefit of such a call is not to the candidate but rather to the pundit. Modern punditry seems to consist solely of gossiping with “highly placed sources” and then writing something that protects access to those sources. A “pivot to the center” is absolutely the safest thing to write about while still coming across as a “serious person”.
Whenever I read one of these I’m reminded of years ago when Boutrous Boutrous-Gali was leading the United Nations and his name became the but of jokes on Saturday Night Live amongst other places. He was outraged and let it be known to multiple media outlets. I happened to be watching a Sunday morning talking heads show and they had an American born and raised Egyptian expert on talking about something or other. The questions were intelligent and he addressed them in a competent and workmanlike way, with Boutrous-Gali coming up both as an Egyptian diplomat and as head of the UN. Then, apropos of absolutely nothing the host asked him about the jokes on Boutrous-Gali name. The expert grew very stern and said it was an outrage and the US Congress should investigate and “people held responsible”. As an American, did he really believe such tripe? Of course not. But it was obvious he wanted to preserve his access to Boutrous-Gali and the host was perfectly willing to help by throwing him the appropriate question. Ever since then I’ve looked at every column and talking heads panel holding that in the back of my mind and ask myself, “How much does what they say have to do with preserving access to “important people”?
@Charley in Cleveland:
The Harris/Walz campaign can hit Trump on inflation, too. And using similar tactics.
Inflation and immigration are effective cudgels because people are unhappy about these issues generally and blame goes to the current administration. Harris is pointing out with specific details how Trump is blocking bipartisan legislation that could improve the border situation. Good tactics.
In the same way, Harris can point out that Trump has offered nothing beyond his personal awesomeness as remedy for inflation, while some of the specific policies he is touting – especially tariffs and mass deportation – will be inflationary.
As some Democratic surrogates are pointing out, the Republicans don’t have any answers on the key issues for voters, so they pound on how bad things are and harken back to a time when they were supposedly better “because Trump.” The Harris/Walz push for a better future is a great angle for counter that messaging. That messaging is working much better than Orange Man Bad and a Threat to Democracy.
@Chip Daniels: @Steven L. Taylor: The other day Nate Silver, in criticizing the selection of Walz, seemed to adopt a rather odd definition of the word “triangulate“:
“But I believe he’s probably the wrong choice, a step back toward the Democratic Party’s instincts to triangulate instead of the boldness the Harris campaign has displayed so far.”
Let’s recall the history of that word in politics: it’s credited to Dick Morris when he pushed Bill Clinton to move to the center in response to the disastrous 1994 midterms. Silver is using the word to suggest Dems are playing to their base instead of reaching out to swing voters–practically the opposite of what the word has traditionally suggested.
Of course I’m no prescriptivist and I recognize that words can change meaning over time, but Silver’s use of the word seems like an Orwellian inversion, an attempt to seize on the word’s connotations of compromise and concession in order to argue for the Clintonian centrism that the Democratic Party abandoned a long time ago for good reason.
Three months left. People blame the media for creating narratives, but everyone craves reversals. Biden was down, now Harris is up, but there’s no way that this equilibrium will continue without a counter.
I don’t think this Walz military service story has legs, but we will see. The good thing for the Democrats is that the GOP is not connecting with normal voters. They lost the language when Trump left the office, if not before, and they really don’t know anything about people.
Regarding centrism, someone pointed out that the reason Walz’s record came off as progressive is that he passed stuff people wanted, which includes a ton of progressive wishes. Centrism has been reduced to guys (and I do mean guys) who are cheering on Harris for standing up to a protestor, as if there were another option, like offering a heckler a job. It’s all token gestures and symbols which work perfectly if you are on social media 24/7, but otherwise not so much.
I’m not surprised at the narrative change or the direction of the polls, but the emotional intensity is amazing. In a heartbeat the initiative switched from Trump to Harris. Democrats went from defense to offense. And as I hoped, the race has been recast as future vs. past, young vs. old, hope vs. fear. If the American people can’t figure that out, we deserve to lose our democracy.
Mockery is still the best response to Trump for the time being:
Tim Walz unleashes hell on Earth
Courtesy of Alexandra Petri
@Tony W: Anecdatally, I attended a Dem club meeting in a deep red county in SW Ohio last night that usually field 20-30 people. There were at least 70 attendees, not counting Landsmann and Brown reps, by my count, and a table full of young people who’d clearly arrived as a group. Lots of enthusiasm and hope in that crowd.
@Kylopod: Silver is an impressive data analyst. He is less so as a pundit/analyst (save when he is talking numbers).
@Modulo Myself:
The Harris campaign needs to cultivate and/or create opportunities that nurture enthusiasm while paying attention to when early voting starts.
There is some rumbling that Trump has not invested much in his ground game in swing states, which could be a challenge when it comes time for GOTV efforts, particularly in early voting states.
@Modulo Myself:
One thing I found amusing is hearing Trump and Vance the other day trying to paint Walz as a “San Francisco liberal.” It’s not just that they’re pushing a totally incongruous geographic stereotype; they’re also trying to fuse a long-time distinction in the whole left vs. center conception. The most divisive elements of the left have always centered on finger-wagging cultural critiques that, rightly or wrongly, cause a lot of people to bristle: the image of a female academic (often of color) accusing others of mansplaining and microaggressions. Call it the Annoying Left. It’s nothing new; it’s existed for generations and is a big part of what initially enabled the right to turn “liberal” into a dirty word, by associating it in people’s minds with a particular character type, the condescending, self-righteous, joyless scold who thinks they’re smarter than you and wants you to know it. And a lot of that stereotype was centered on California, particularly SF, famously the gayest American city, and not in the old sense of the word.
But a simple, pro-union politics from a white, straight, Christian male from the Midwest has always had a certain level of immunity from those kinds of aspersions. It’s a milder, more reassuring political identity that doesn’t have the same taint of self-righteous faultfinding as the Cali lefties. The Republicans are trying desperately to muddy that distinction, but I don’t think it’s something they can get people to “feel.”
@Kylopod:
Yeah, what they mean is somebody who went to SF (or NYC or LA) and didn’t become a total asshole who starts screaming because of a homeless person or twenty minutes of a DEI presentation at a job.
It’s a jab at people who, for whatever reason, can make sense of the world.
@Jen:
There’s reporting that the campaign is hiring private firms to do GOTV. One may hope that these independents, like many MAGA leaders, will steal every penny.
@gVOR10: Oh, yes. I read the WaPo article.
Sounds like they totally have it ready to go.
@Modulo Myself:
Do normal voters still exist to any mass effect? I think most of us are weirdos now. The unseriousness of our politics reflects that. An electorate of normies would choose candidates and ultimately leaders based on who is most qualified, reflected by their CV and accomplishments.
We care about slogans, feels, vibes, leg tingles, and who we want to have a beer with. This is not a normal or serious way of choosing someone to do the world’s toughest job, but you have to play to the electorate you have not the electorate you want.
Democrats have gone from being slightly behind nationally and slightly behind in the Electoral College, to being a hair’s breath ahead nationally and still slightly behind in the Electoral College — but feeling better about it, especially among liberals in coastal cities. Okay, cool.
Still, the Democrats should be running away with this election, and should have always been so the moment Trump announced — because Trump is demonstrably unqualified and unfit to be president — who already failed at the job.
But that was true also in 2016. It does not reflect well on anybody that Trump is still a thing. Republicans happen to be creeps on top of everyone’s general weirdness, so hopefully that will keep undecided voters breaking Democrats’ way.
New Marquette poll:
Identical for registereds and likelies. Which makes me wonder about their LV screen, but that aside, great for this point in the race. Caveat: one poll, albeit a highly-rated one.
@Charley in Cleveland:
Impressive example of the classic Ad Hominem attack (as if the fellow invented a term… or its usage, if only there might be a data analysis in say documented usage. As Mr Luntz seems to have born in 1962… Not having a particular opinion or feeling about him a such.
@Tom Hilton: ) Why such a thing makes you lot more optimistic rather escapes. These cases and events have largely been to his near term political benefit as rather too easily portrayed (portrayed is the verb, note, not the verb is or are) as persecution etc. and motivating to his voters.
The people moved by these things are already Pre Sold on the Democrats, you need to sell to new audiencies – and notably with a laser focus on the Swing geographies or you are running a nasty chance of 2016 again.
@Kylopod: your annoying Left is what we call the BoBo Left, the arch tedious Left pseudo bohemien bourgeousie, typically in tendancy
so hardly an American feature alone, rather it seems to arise from the particular socio-economic tendancy of when uni educated urbane urbanites trending Left.
Trump is giving some sort of Mar a Lago press conference and he has made one thing clear: he doesn’t seem to be able to retain Walz’s name. He had referred to him a number of times, but never by name. He refers to both Biden and Harris by name though. Another sign of cognitive decline: inability to absorb new information.
My wild ass guess is that post-convention, barring black swans, Harris will settle into a 5 point lead and carry that to election day. The actual vote will be a point or two better. I think Trump is an old act playing the old hits vs. Kamala Swift.
Here’s an even wilder WAG: Texas will move from its current Likely R to Leaning R.
Anyone notice how absent JKB and Jack have been? Their party line is confused. They need guidance from Fox News and Truth Social. And I suspect they don’t want to have to defend Cadet Bonespur’s hasty retreat from debate.
Spoke too soon. Trump is agreeing to the Sept 10 ABC debate. His internal polling must be really bad.
@Kylopod: “San Francisco liberal” is a “Nancy Pelosi” dog whistle to his own constituents. By the time another election cycle rolls around (maybe even the next Congressional one in ’26) no one will remember why “San Francisco liberal” is a slur.
I don’t know why their communication seems mired in preaching to their choir, but it seems to be their style. To the degree that I’ve even followed the campaign at all.
@Michael Reynolds:
Is he, though? Or will he make it conditional on debating her on Fox ahead of time and the cancel after that one? I’ll believe it when I see it
@Lounsbury: I should be clear that I consider myself part of the Annoying Left.
@Just nutha ignint cracker
The dog whistle goes back a long way. In the 1986 Maryland Senate race, Linda Chavez called Barbara Mikulski a “San Francisco liberal,” and most people understood it as a way of implying Mikulski was a lesbian.
@MarkedMan:
Actually:
IOW he wants Fox a week earlier so his pet network can rig it for him, he can declare victory, and refuse to do another debate. So, yeah, he’s wimping out.
@Kylopod: Though indirectly, my point exactly. I’m old enough to remember the earlier usage of SF liberal==lesbian and didn’t. Two different periods. Two different dog whistles. One audience for both, though. And still cared about only by the choir. Mikulski won. SF liberal and all.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I don’t think it’s a different dog whistle at all. It’s not that they’re necessarily trying to imply Walz is gay, but that they’re trying to associate him with what they view as a mecca of degeneracy. And a lot of is still centered on their hatred and terror at the LGBT community, as exemplified by their attempts to make “Tampon Tim” a thing.
@Kylopod: I was thinking solely in the chronological sense. My bad. I should have been more detailed.
@Kylopod: I had no other impression. It is the dominant demographic of commentators here now by far