Kamala Harris and the runup to the 2024 Presidential Election

Politics & Elections
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For a running survey of the state polls, you could try https://www.electoral-vote.com/

They keep a running total of the most recent polls, state-by-state, and produce a map of the electoral votes based on their polls. Of course, that means that the polling data for some states may lag a bit, especially for smaller states that don’t get polled very much.

Unlike Nate, they don’t have a “secret sauce” where they try to weight polling results by an algorithm, and they don’t use national polls.

Their focus is on making sure that the polling groups that produce polls for a state are reputable and not biased, so they exclude polls from polling groups that primarily work for either party, new groups that don’t appear to have a track record of any sort, and so on. They then use the most recent two or three polls for each state, to give a current projection for the electoral votes for each state.

They are left-leaning in their commentary, but their reporting on the polls themselves seems pretty even-handed, and they have a good track record for past elections. They missed it in 2016, but then, the polls that were being produced that year also missed it.

They have an unfortunate tendency to use “humorous” ethnic slurs in their commentary, so I don’t read them much, but I check their electoral vote projections now and then.

As of this morning (August 2), based on the most current polls, their electoral vote tally is:

Trump: 270

Harris: 247

By comparison, their tally on July 21, the date of Biden’s announcement, was:

Trump: 310

Biden: 218

I know a few other Dopers frequent that site.

202

My belief is the more the news cycle is filled with anything other than Trump blathering, especially real news that reflects positively on either Harris directly or even indirectly by way of good for the Biden team, the stronger Harris becomes.

Problem of course is that Fox focus is unwavering and some of the target populations only get their news there.

203

But some things - like hostages being freed from Russia - are undeniable.

Didn’t Trump boast about how he would be able to get them freed, just months before? Now it happens under Biden/Harris. Even Fox won’t ignore that it happened.

Absolutely! The more things are consistently positive right now, with a government just humming along, the more that Harris benefits.

204

Trump’s citing polls to explain why he doesn’t want to debate Harris. Same old song.

205

I agree - I posted this in the Biden thread, but it’s relevant here, too:

This is such a good story to have dominating the news because it positive and “feel good” and Biden and Harris were both clearly involved in making it happen. It’s a direct contrast to the “government is evil” gloom and doom the GOP is selling.

206

I don’t think this little episode from last week has been posted here.

On July 25, Trump made a call-in to Fox , and spent the call attacking Harris.

Within minutes of the call ending, the Harris campaign issued a press release:

“Statement on a 78-year-old criminal’s Fox News appearance”

The press release then listed several bullet points about Trump, flagging that Trump was lying, threatening, wants to ban abortion, and other things, “Trump is old and quite weird”, and ending: “If anyone wants an alternative, Kamala Harris is offering one.”

Full story, and the press release here:

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That’s the kind of stuff they need to keep doing. React swiftly.

208

I really like that. Thanks for posting.

209
off-topic, please do not reply in this thread. {WE?}

Just to be clear, when Nate Silver left he retained the rights to his model but not the name 538. 538 now is using (because they have to) an entirely new model. No reason to give it extra credibility based on Nate’s prior work.

210

I don’t know how intertwined WABC radio is with Fox, but several Fox hosts (Jeanine Pirro, Brian Kilmeade) have talk shows on WABC. This morning, the non-Fox host was saying that russia went ahead with the prisoner swap deal now before Trump wins, because Trump is such a tough negotiator that they would have never got such a sweet deal as they got with the Biden administration.

211

Rasmussen nationwide poll has Harris +5:

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Off-Topic, no more on Silver. {WE?}

The biggest thing that makes Silver’s model stand out over others is that he assumes that changes in different states will be correlated. If you’re ahead in a whole bunch of swing states, but only by a small amount in each of them, there’s a significant chance that most or all of those states might turn against you at once.

213

Confusingly … that’s not THE “Rasmussen poll”. There’s Rasmussen Reports which carries on Scott Rasmussen’s namesake and still does THE “Rasmussen poll” you’ll see referenced on poll aggregators like RealClear Polling.

Scott Rasmussen left Rasmussen Reports 11 years ago. Since then, he started the Rasmussen Media Group (though nothing seems to be published or released on that page – just links to follow on Twitter/X). Today, the Rasmussen Media Group’s polling is not THE “Rasmussen poll” – it is instead a competing polling service.

214

FWIW the Rasmussen poll has Trump ahead, but losing ground. It is notoriously GOP leaning.

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I think this thread is the best choice for the following.

Trump had been making modest headway specifically with younger Black men compared to Biden. Harris will hopefully improve turnout of those portions of Black voters most strongly loyal parts of the coalition (especially Black women and older Black voters) but does her identity help at all with the relative loss of support among younger Black men?

The reality of identity is complicated and Black voters are far from monolithic in how they view it. There was Smerconish but on the radio yesterday doing a Black barbershop focus group, mostly younger men, (worth little but interesting) from before Trump’s journalist bit that had the participants mostly saying that they aren’t sure they consider her Black. Minimally they didn’t identify much with her.

Independent of her mixed heritage and white husband, her economic status may impede any automatic sense of solidarity. See this ‘21 Pew bit below.

Should she spend much effort reaching this particular group? They tend to be relatively infrequent voters. If so, how? Identity alone is going to be insufficient. Or does she focus on increased turnout of the segments that vote more reliably and more consistently D?

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OK, enough with the Nate Silver stuff. This thread is not about Nate Silver or 538. In fact if you search you will find one that is. Do not post any more on Nate Silver.

Moderating:

217

Harris has snagged David Plouffe, one of Obama’s key campaign advisors:

218

And I think this announcement is significant:

219

One of the biggest challenges Harris has is reorienting the Biden campaign apparatus to accommodate her particular political style and strategy. With less than 100 days to go, she can’t simply wholesale replace the people and structure that Biden put in place based on the campaign he was planning to run (the campaign headquarters is still in Delaware!). As she brings in her own team, it will be crucial to manage how they work with the Biden loyalists who make up the existing team. There’s a lot of ambition and fragile egos in a campaign staff. And during her primary run, she got some criticism over how she managed her campaign staff. Hoping she learned some lessons.

220

Today’s economic report is bad news for Harris, though. People vote with their pocketbook.