Not at all. Early-to-mid October is still very much in the peak of hurricane season. (I recall Gilbert in ‘88, to name just one.) The season is basically August 15 to November 15.
As for election effects of Milton, if the federal response is seen as inadequate by many in other states, that could help Trump a little…but in Florida itself, it hardly matters, because that state is looking out of reach for Harris no matter what. Here’s a gift link to Nate Cohn’s analysis of a new Times/Siena poll in Florida.
I know - it’s “just one poll.” Read the article. Harris will not win Florida. Period.
As of Sept. 16, Democrats made up 44% of registered voters in the commonwealth, down from a 2009 high of 51.2%, while Republicans were at 40.2%, up from 36.9% in 2009. Unaffiliated and third-party voters have boosted their numbers even more, from 11.9% in 2009 to 15.7%.
It isn’t isolated to Penn. Florida numbers look particularly bad for Democrats. There are also early vote numbers in Virginia which show Democrats voting less as early as a percentage as well.
That stuff may or maybe end up being meaningful… You can find reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism pretty easily. Objectively this is a really close race that Harris probably has a slight advantage, and that is unlikely to change in the next month. Getting anything else from this race right now is wishful thinking (or doomcasting)
Changes in voter party registration tend to be a trailing indicator – i.e. voters who have been voting Republican for the last several years but nevertheless had registered as Democratic or Independent finally get around to changing their registration. I don’t think there’s a lot of predictive value in it.
A Florida data-point: the CBS affiliate in Central Florida, WKMG, pre-empted 60 Minutes during the part of the show featuring Harris and Walz. Instead, they showed a guy standing in front of a map of the Gulf of Mexico, with the storm depicted. Note that as of 10/7 night, there were NO effects of Milton in the state of Florida.
As soon as the Harris/Walz segments were over, WKMG went back to showing 60 Minutes.
A GOP head-of-station? A head-of-station hoping to please the notoriously vindictive Ron DeSantis?
Possible at the local level. Looks like the station is part of the Graham Media Group which seems neutral or slightly left. It has a lineage from the Washington Post but they aren’t connected now.
Interesting. If ‘neutral’ is true then it’s still possible that the Governor’s office has let it be known that they look with favor on affiliates who don’t show Harris interviews.
She’s supposed to be on Colbert tonight–again, CBS–and I confidently expect that show to be preempted by, again, the guy standing in front of a map showing NO effects (yet) on Central Florida.
To be sure, most Floridian viewers are more interested in the guy standing in front of the map than in the election right now. Something immediately life changing could suddenly show up on that map while a political interview is 99% predictable and won’t have any impact whatsoever for several weeks, months or years.
Obviously I agree with this article’s take on Harris’ choice of media to reach voters. She needs to think outside the box with the limited time that she has left, and podcasts or Colbert are a good choice. Will it irritate the traditional news channels? Possibly, but being told “no” once in a while is good for everyone.
The podcast she did gets 5 million listeners per episode, and they are likely not to be followers of traditional political media. It’s a completely different venue than bouncing from the New York Times to Anderson Cooper to Martha Radditz to Jonathan Karl to Jake Tapper.
And how a generation of children too young to have seen Arsenio knew that about Clinton due to constant theme song repetition five afternoons a week for three or four years.
Due to his polarization of the electorate, I highly doubt many current undecideds will go to Trump. I think Harris’ strategy should be to convince undecideds to vote for her and not third party. Could you imagine if Harris lost because 10K voted for Jill Stein in key swing states or because she lost Georgia because Chase Oliver picks up votes?
@DSeid would have to confirm if he meant Clinton’s 1988 appearance on Johnny Carson. Clinton played the sax THAT night, as well. Seems that 1988 appearance has been largely forgotten, while Clinton’s June 1992 appearance on Arsenio Hall remains iconic to this day.
Some background:
In 1988, Bill Clinton bungled the biggest speech of his young career during the Democratic National Convention.
Harry Thomason, Arkansas-born television and film producer and longtime friend of the Clintons, remembers the ill-received speech and his wife Linda’s idea to have Clinton redeem himself by going on the Johnny Carson show.
Clinton’s appearance on Carson, where he played the saxophone and joked about his rambling convention speech, revitalized his image and brought him back into the political forefront.
