# How can Donald Trump win at this point? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump, kamala-harris\ **Created:** [August 6, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351 "2024-08-06T21:13:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 154
**Author:** ![Akaj](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/akaj/32/145_2.png) [@Akaj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Akaj)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2024, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3070 "2024-10-21T20:02:33Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > And the Oval office has little control over inflation anyway. I’d downgrade that to “virtually none.” Except of course if the occupant of said office were to impose massive tariffs on our largest foreign supplier, in which case inflation would skyrocket. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > There’s a strange dichotomy going on where the average American says their personal financial situation is ok (maybe not great but not bad) but they believe the general economy is bad. We’ve had a number of threads on this topic, and my take is that regardless of the numbers, today’s economy is very challenging for a lot of people. But if you automatically connect “challenging economy for me or others” with “Welp, better vote for a different president,” you’re an idiot. > [@JRDelirious](#): > > > [@Akaj](#): > > > > If Trump promised $2 gas and $1 eggs, a lot of voters would believe he could actually deliver. (In fact, I wonder why he hasn’t.) > > Because that’s an actual measurable number he could be held to? Like all the other promises he not only failed to keep, but never even attempted to? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2024, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3071 "2024-10-21T20:05:10Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > Whether they’re upset about “prices” or inflation," my question is whether that’s truly voters’ number one issue. There’s no way to prove this one way or the other, but: it’s a fact that most people want to give ‘socially acceptable’ reasons to pollsters. Not to mention that most multiple choice polls will NOT offer the option ‘_my main concern is that The Little Mermaid isn’t black, dammit, that’s ridiculous, and that uppity woman at the store disrespected me, and there’s too much Spanish in all the forms I’m given, and I see those drag queens and my skin crawls, and I’m worried about who might be moving in down the street._’ **They just don’t offer that option**. But they do offer ‘_the economy is my number one issue._’ ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2024, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3072 "2024-10-21T23:35:23Z")
> [@flurb](#): > > “You know, things really were cheaper under Trump.” And Mussolini made the trains run on time. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3073 "2024-10-22T00:29:07Z")
> [@Akaj](#): > > I’d downgrade that to “virtually none.” The three covid free bonus checks/money all boosted inflation a bit, and the ideas came from the president, iirc. However, of course Congress had to pass them. Two were trumps, one was Biden. ---
**Author:** ![TeroSunbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terosunbear/32/14748_2.png) [@TeroSunbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeroSunbear)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3074 "2024-10-22T12:07:24Z")
Tiktok lady analyzes the McDonalds stunt > **[Masc AJ (@oceanblue72) on Threads](https://www.threads.net/@oceanblue72/post/DBaFUhnvF_G?xmt=AQGzzdIjqpXktCuGgqRD0UmFWZwTeFuEea4R4lB23WHL6A)** > > As a teacher of almost 30 years, I can say without a doubt, this is how you handle disruptive minors. > I know, I know, he's an adult, but he acts like a spoiled child, so I'm going to let it slide. > Enjoy! ---
**Author:** ![TeroSunbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terosunbear/32/14748_2.png) [@TeroSunbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeroSunbear)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3075 "2024-10-22T14:11:13Z")
He has a plan: Trump’s Pitch to Women: You Don’t Need Autonomy, When You Have Daddy and…he, Trump, is the “father of IVF,” an absurd claim he boasted three separate times. [Election 2024: Trump's pitch to women voters on abortion and IVF is grotesque, but it makes sense.](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/10/trump-women-abortion-ivf-reproductive-rights-election-republicans-democrats.html?sid=5ef1be8c3315cb681f5b357e&email=7e9f6e89ecd604af516287e7b533f49858b5dccb8f19a8e5d36a1c011e87b28d&email2=c27af07d201ae03c6fc4ee0766098345&email3=f8a3694623e09e0827a74a9c295df1c2e4d51631&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=TheSlatest) ---
**Author:** ![TeroSunbear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terosunbear/32/14748_2.png) [@TeroSunbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeroSunbear)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3076 "2024-10-22T14:28:14Z")
Musk fans! Who knew? techies are actually low information voters too! Video at: [https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/video/elon-musk-rally-donie-osullivan-digvid](https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/21/politics/video/elon-musk-rally-donie-osullivan-digvid) ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3077 "2024-10-22T16:49:07Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > > [@Akaj](#): > > > > Whether they’re upset about “prices” or inflation," my question is whether that’s truly voters’ number one issue. > > There’s no way to prove this one way or the other, but: it’s a fact that most people want to give ‘socially acceptable’ reasons to pollsters. Not to mention that most multiple choice polls will NOT offer the option ‘_my main concern is that The Little Mermaid isn’t black, dammit, that’s ridiculous, and that uppity woman at the store disrespected me, and there’s too much Spanish in all the forms I’m given, and I see those drag queens and my skin crawls, and I’m worried about who might be moving in down the street._’ > > **They just don’t offer that option**. But they do offer ‘_the economy is my number one issue._’ They don’t have any problem saying they are concerned about immigration. It’s a little late in the game to look at it now but for months leading up to the election the two biggest concerns for voters were the economy/inflation and immigration. I don’t see any reason to not believe people. ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3078 "2024-10-22T16:54:11Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > They don’t have any problem saying they are concerned about immigration. But “immigration” doesn’t cover the discomfort with the Little Mermaid being black or the uppity woman at the store or the drag queens (all from my example, above), or from any other cause of feeling insecurity about one’s presumably-God-given place at the top of the hierarchy. A lot of people may use “immigration” as shorthand for “gay people make me nervous” or “women aren’t deferential enough to me” or “I don’t want a black family to move into my neighborhood”-----but it’s a mighty shaky shorthand. And, as I implied, polling isn’t capturing all this very well. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3079 "2024-10-22T17:02:42Z")
Yeah, there’s a strong generalized fear of the “other” that is captured in those numbers and sussing how much of that is actually about immigration is difficult. This is a country where people, including elected officials, unironically tell Native Americans to “go back to where you came from”, after all. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3080 "2024-10-22T18:38:28Z")
538 now has them tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump’s winning, IMHO, albeit by a nose. The Democrats have to do SOMETHING. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3081 "2024-10-22T18:42:46Z")
They are, it’s called GOTV. The Republicans are flat-footed on this. The Dems aren’t. There’s nothing on the Pubbie side like [Mobilize.us](http://Mobilize.us). ETA: Will it be enough? Who knows? But I’m tentatively suspecting it will. Nothing has changed in the last 24-48 hours to suddenly think Trump is winning now when he wasn’t before. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3082 "2024-10-22T18:45:57Z")
That seems like wishful thinking, but I hope you’re right. Early voting trends aren’t terribly encouraging right now. It seems Republicans are turning out in early voting - or asking for the ballots, anyway - more than they used to in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3083 "2024-10-22T18:47:48Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > That seems like wishful thinking, but I hope you’re right. An organized GOTV campaign _isn’t wishful thinking_. Like, I said, will it be enough? Who knows. But the Dems are, in fact, “doing something.” ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3084 "2024-10-22T18:49:03Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#): > > A lot of people may use “immigration” as shorthand for “gay people make me nervous” or “women aren’t deferential enough to me” or “I don’t want a black family to move into my neighborhood”-----but it’s a mighty shaky shorthand. Yeah. I _know_ people who just wave at random brown people and start ranting about “illegal immigration”. They neither know nor care if those people are immigrants at all, much less undocumented ones - because immigration isn’t actually the point. Bigotry is. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3085 "2024-10-22T18:57:36Z")
[A bit more on Harris’ vs Trump’s GOTV campaign, from The Hill six days ago:](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934604-kamala-harris-ground-game-gotv/) > As early as July, Harris [boasted](https://www.thedailybeast.com/harris-campaign-touts-massive-battleground-operation) “more than 260 field offices in swing states” including “more than 1,300 staffers.” That number has ballooned in the two months since. Harris’s field team now numbers “2,500 staff members located in 353 offices,” [according to reporting](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/us/politics/trump-harris-campaign-ground-game.html) out this week from the New York Times. Last week alone, the Harris team reported knocking on more than 600,000 doors and completing more than 3 million phone calls into swing states. That ground game is one reason Harris’s team is brushing off concerns about tightening polls. > > “We’ve opened the offices, we’ve built the teams, and now we’re mobilizing volunteers to go talk to voters,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman [Ben Wikler](https://wisdems.org/our-party/meet-our-chair/) told me. “We’re running phone banks every day and door-knocking shifts every day. We know who the voters are that we have to talk to, and we’re flooding the zone with hundreds of thousands of direct voter contacts every single week.” > > Wikler says direct voter contacts in Wisconsin alone now number “in the millions,” with a focus on voters who are casting ballots for the first time. For Wikler, that means not only helping voters register and secure a ballot, but engaging those new voters on why they feel motivated in the first place. > > “We call it ‘persuade to participate,’” Wikler says. “We connect with them at the level of their values, whether that’s the freedom to make their own decision about abortion, issues around the economy, around price gouging. Once we connect on that level, then we start a conversation about making a plan to vote.” > > None of that nuance is present in Trump’s threadbare national get-out-the-vote operation, much of which his campaign has outsourced to untested third-party groups. That’s especially true in Wisconsin, where billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC is paying [up to $30 an hour](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/10/elon-musk-led-group-takes-over-wisconsin-voter-operations-supporting-trump/75579667007/) for inexperienced volunteers. Musk’s effort has been [riddled with problems](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/10/15/musk-america-pac-door-knocking/) since the beginning, the Washington Post reports, draining scarce GOP funds while offering producing results. > > Not even Republicans are convinced Trump’s on-the-cheap effort will work. As early as last year, some party insiders griped that “[nobody wants to admit](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/republicans-are-spending-millions-turnout-operations-are-deeply-flawed-rcna74920)” the former president’s efforts are not yielding winning results. “That’s why we’re losing elections,” one veteran GOP strategist told NBC News. > > They aren’t wrong. Studies [dating back to 2007](https://sites.temple.edu/nickerson/files/2017/07/Quality.Nickerson.2007.pdf) have shown that volunteer canvassers who join a campaign because they are highly motivated outperform even highly paid field mercenaries. That shouldn’t be too surprising: Volunteers who feel they are fighting for their values will work harder and care more about the outcome than canvassers simply in it for the paycheck. In their effort to leverage billionaire fortunes as an organizing force multiplier, Republicans have hired a wave of apathetic, disconnected canvassers. While we may not like the polling numbers right now, the ground campaign numbers for Harris are astonishing and should give us hope going into the final fortnight. But, I do agree that swing state polling numbers aren’t going in the right direction for Harris. She’s worse off now than she was before the September debate. I’m just hopeful that the difference will be made with GOTV. Harris has it, Trump doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3086 "2024-10-22T19:01:37Z")
With that sort of GOTV and the other usual advantages, Kamala has this in the bag. In. The. Bag. Nevertheless, it’s important for Ds to run up the score. There’s a big difference between winning by 40 electoral votes and winning by 110. Just like you don’t want your sports opponents “dignifying the score” by getting a garbage-time touchdown to make the result look better than it was, Kamala should not let Team Trump portray this race (historical revisionism) as a closer thing than it actually was. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3087 "2024-10-22T19:10:48Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > 538 now has them tied in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump’s winning, IMHO, albeit by a nose. Since you posted this – literally in less than 45 minutes – Harris has “pulled ahead” at 538 by ONE simulation 🙃 [![](https://i.imgur.com/H98qKTr.jpeg) ](https://i.imgur.com/H98qKTr.jpeg) OK … now that’s _a coin flip_. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3088 "2024-10-22T19:25:53Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Nevertheless, it’s important for Ds to run up the score. This. It is most emphatically not in the bag, since my gut feeling is that there is only around a 70% chance for Harris to win the contest. That’s good enough to declare it “in the bag” for events with a large number of runs or minimal importance, but not enough to get complacent about for a single high importance event. Plus, that’s just a 70% chance that she will _win the election_. That’s different from _Being President at the end of January_. The greater the margin of victory, the less seriously ordinary people will take election interference claims seriously, with the obvious dangers that entails. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351/3089 "2024-10-22T20:07:52Z")
> [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > Nothing has changed in the last 24-48 hours to suddenly think Trump is winning now when he wasn’t before. Well, Trump has captured the “Arnold Palmer had a massive Dong” vote. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351.md?page=153) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-donald-trump-win-at-this-point/1005351.md?page=155)