I sometimes engage with the voters who are unhappy about the economy. Trump’s tarrifs will hurt them, and everyone knows that Mexico didn’t pay for the wall, and i feel i can make a case for why they should vote for Harris.
I sometimes point out to the anti-immigration voters that trump killed the bipartisan border-control bill because he WANTED the country to be in bad shape to help his election odds, and he doesn’t care about anyone but Trump. But honestly, a lot of them are “deplorables”, and feel aligned with trump.
There should be few who expected polling based modeling to ever be telling us something other than that this election was going to be too close for the models to confidently predict an outcome for. Trump has gotten about 47% twice before, winning and losing with similar numbers, and each time with narrow results in a couple of close states being determinative.
His support hasn’t disappeared. Sure he’s lost a few. And gained a few.
Anyone being surprised that he is supported by nearly half of the voters is surprising at this point.
Harris is a good candidate who has run a good campaign but she also has headwinds that are unavoidable. If she was polling very much better I’d be surprised. I think she will get about 51% of the national vote and that expectation is well within the model forecasts.
The interesting bit to me in that article is the same too close to call knife edge forecast is celebrated as a likely win by Republicans and causing panic attacks of we are doomed by Democrats.
Maybe it is because we see it as more of an existential threat. And maybe it is because our respective leaderships peddle those narratives to us to help get us out based on who they think their supporters are. Or both. Or other. But there is nothing fundamentally different from where any rational person should have expected this to be: either one of them could win this. Not shocking to be at this place at this time.
The Democratic message in those swing states is that every single vote absolutely matters to the future of this country and the world, so VOTE. Not “be on the winning team.”
The third option is people think just because polls were underestimating Trump the last two elections that means he for sure is going to over perform current polls, so a tie before the election means a certain Trump win.
(Off topic - yesterday did a simple 500 piecer of political buttons - which I used to collect as a kid. Was surprised one of them was for Reagan, saying "Make America great again. Most surprising was one of Jimmy Carter with a beard and long hair saying, “JC can save America”!)
My hunch - so take it for what it’s worth - is that women will break heavily for Trump, and if there is a “shy voter” effect, it’s going to be amongst Republican women who end up voting for Harris.
(My opinion, by the way, isn’t because women are so eager to vote for a fellow woman, but because the trump/vance team is so misogynistic. I also think abortion rights is a healthcare issue for many women, and that is going to motivate turnout).
Which as I understand is about the same as saying that having had the last two coin tosses being heads means the next is likely to heads. I can make a better argument for the … obverse: despite the long run of flips on systemic error being 50 50 reality is the pollsters try to control for past errors. I would argue that having the error go the same way two times in a row they are going to be very biased to not making the same error again, and may, if anything, over correct.
I see nothing that makes this Trump election much different than the other two. No reason to expect Trump to do much better or worse. Maybe a bit worse but only maybe. Fewer small donations so maybe less enthusiasm. And I see no reason to expect Harris to do much better or worse than Biden or Clinton.
I do see Team Harris running a better campaign, certainly than Clinton did, and IMHO than Biden 2020 had. More focus on where it needs to be. I see more enthusiasm. So maybe doing a bit better.
For the past week or so, I had become resigned to a Trump victory, and expecting a widnow on America’s hastened decline.
But reading through these threads it came to me that thinking about the upcoming election sorta reflects my trust/faith in the decency of my fellow Americans. And, for whatever reason, on this brilliant fall day I’ve decided that ENOUGH Americans (50% +1 in enough states) will be decent enough, that they will realize we really don’t NEED to elect Trump, and that we really ought not.
The level of decency I expect is mighty low. Not saying we need a majority of folk to have any high ideals or anything. Just feeling today like ENOUGH people needed to push Harris over the EC bar will realize that Trump really isn’t the person who ought to be president, and that voting for Trump really reflects their own worst natures.
Apologies for not saying much of value or interest - and for saying what I do say unclearly. Just felt the urge to share what has come over me today. I have no doubt that sometime over the next week will find me crying into my oatmeal…
Along with what you say, I’ve been convinced for months that not only does Harris have the much stronger GOTV and party apparatus and overall power, but there will be a big break in her favor - as someone else pointed out, probably Republican soccer moms or young Republican women breaking against their usual norms and voting for Harris over Trump.
I imagine that some proportion of those women are nominally Republican because they are matching their husband’s vibe. But it means that they’ve been exposed to Trump’s derangement, too. Perhaps they also see how he brings out more coarse behavior within their family. Granted, this is a hugely broad brush colored with stereotypes, but I don’t think it’s inherently far fetched.
Yeah. That’s what I thought you probably meant. I was going Whaaattt. Made no sense. I can’t imagine a woman voting for Trump. Or anyone voting for him.
There’s already been polling that 12% of registered Republicans in Pennsylvania will vote for Harris. Don’t see why that wouldn’t be a common theme. Trump’s not getting all those Haley voters back. Some, but not all.
I just saw another reason for optimism (not sure if this is starting to hijack the thread or is in keeping with the original spirit).
Jake Tapper’s interview with JD Vance is great, in the sense that Tapper asks follow-up questions and points out the absurdity of many of JD’s answers. Tapper is not as skilled at doing this as, say, Mehdi Hasan, so JD sometimes wriggles through, but the point is, Tapper’s trying to do the right things and he’s coming ready to fight.
So, while there are many, many negatives about the success of MAGA, even if Harris wins the election, one positive for me is a quick development of the US media. Yes, taking years is still “quick” in the grand scheme of things. We’re seeing more of these well-prepared, aggressive interviews.
Yes, this. Presidential elections have been getting closer and closer for a while now—it doesn’t necessarily matter who is running.
No matter how unfit Trump is, he will get the votes of millions of white Americans who are living in daily anxiety about the demographic make-up of the USA. And it wouldn’t have mattered if the Dems had run a (youngish) white male instead of Harris: unless that white male was saying the hateful-toward-the-Other stuff Trump is saying (and he wouldn’t have been saying that stuff if a Democrat)----the race would still be just as tight as this one is.
This is a fact of our times. It’s going to be 50/50 for a while.