Editors’ Blog

I wrote a lot earlier in the month about the questions marks surrounding the Republican and Trump ground operations in this election. To recap, the campaign outsourced most of its efforts to a series of super PACs, which has ended up mainly being Elon Musk’s America PAC. The initial driver of the whole thing was Turning Points Action, which critics rather presciently predicted didn’t have the organizational heft or experience to do something at that scale. The Trump campaign itself has focused on what is at least a pretty unconventional approach, largely ceding conventional ground operations in favor of focusing on Trump-identified non-voters. My read on that whole question is that there are lots of red flags and lots of smoke. But just what it will all mean or the impact it will have I’m not sure. TPM Reader CH wrote in today to ask me what is going on on the Democratic side. Do we assume Harris has a strong ground operation or is that a wobbly assumption?

Here’s what I told him.

A couple weeks ago I spoke with TPM’s developers, Matt Wozniak and Jacob Harris, about everything from the evolution of the site’s tech stack to books they’d recommend to living in Florida under the DeSantis regime. You simply cannot tell the story of TPM without Woz, as we call him, who has had the heroic challenge of managing TPM’s tech infrastructure for over 12 years. When Jacob came aboard several years ago, it was a true turning point for the organization. A lot of the work they do isn’t sexy but it’s all extremely important and directly correlates to our ability to be lean and efficient, which ultimately helps us survive and thrive. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

The DeSantis administration lawyer who sent out those letters threatening TV stations with criminal charges and jail time over pro-choice ads himself resigned shortly after sending out the letters. The Miami-Herald got a hold of his resignation letter and it appears he didn’t feel like he could back the policy. John Wilson, former chief lawyer of the state Department of Health, wrote: “A man is nothing without his conscience. It has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.”

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the campaigns’ media strategies in the waning days of the race and make the case for why — contra the potentially Elon Musk-inflected vibes — there are reasons to be bullish on Kamala Harris’ chances.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

I was just replying to a note from TPM Reader RG who was telling me about the situation in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. It reminded me to remind you just how helpful I find these updates and additionally how much I enjoy reading them, especially in these final weeks of a general election campaign. I know about that race in the most general way; I know who the candidates are. But RG got me down into the details on who’s spending, what the ads look like, what the media markets are, etc. And we’re not talking about inside information. I don’t have the sense that RG is a political professional in any way, though he appears to be volunteering with one of the campaigns, just a politics-focused concerned citizen who knows his neck of the woods politically. In other words, probably like you and so many other TPM readers. So if you, like RG, have information I’d really love to know. There’s probably more going on if you’re from a swing state or in a state or district with other contested races. But let me know regardless.

I wanted to add a short post-script to the post below about Democratic freak outs. I realized in this context it might be read as “don’t worry! Kamala has this!” I don’t think that’s a fair or logical reading. But people understandably read things and interpret them in the context of the moment. So let me be clear: I’m not saying that. My point is more that there’s very little evidence that anything has changed or changed more than very marginally since two or three weeks ago when the mood was pretty dramatically different. Indeed, I not only hear from people thinking Harris is now going to lose the election. They’re already on to the mistakes she made that led her to lose the election.

My own take is one of very cautious optimism. That’s in part based on the current polling information and various hunches I have about turnout, polls, recent election cycles etc. Those hunches could be totally wrong. Which is why I don’t tend to write about them. By the hard evidence in front of us — which is itself not that hard — the race could easily go either way. Indeed, I’d add an additional point. People say this race is super close, maybe the closest ever. I’m not even sure that’s true. What we have is a very high uncertainty election. That’s not the same thing. I think it’s quite possible that either candidate could rack up a pretty sizable winning margin, at least in the Electoral College. There are just so many untested or minimally tested assumptions upon which the “closest election evah” hypothesis is based.

But again, back to my point. I’m not saying, don’t freak out, Kamala’s got this. I’m saying the race is very similar to where and what it was in the second half of September. Close then, close now.

Recently a reader asked me why I focus on polls rather than political betting markets for insights into the race and whether I thought polls were more reliable. I was honestly baffled by the question. To me this was like asking whether I thought a scale was a better way to measure weight than dead reckoning. And I’m not trying to be critical of the reader, who is probably reading this. I gave him my answer and we had a good exchange. But I thought it was worth sharing my thoughts on this question.

My analogy about scales is certainly imperfect in a number of ways, just as polls are imperfect. Indeed, it isn’t even really a question of which is better. The most important thing to understand about the relationship between polls and political betting markets is that the latter is largely downstream of the former. Most bets in political betting markets are driven by people looking at polls and betting accordingly. So by definition they can’t be better. Because the bets are derived from the polls.

But there are a few other points that are worth noting and which are worth considering in a broader context.