I’m a broken record on this. But I’m struck by the relative stasis of the Harris-Trump presidential campaign. It hasn’t always felt like that of course. It’s hard on the nerves. And it’s not like nothing has happened. We’ve had a sitting president drop out of the race, a mind-boggling two assassination attempts, a smackdown of a debate, two conventions. And yet stability in the polling numbers has been the calling card of this race. Joe Biden was behind. He fell further behind starting about two weeks after the June debate. After he dropped out Harris immediately moved the race into a tie. Then over a couple weeks she opened up a lead of roughly three points. It’s basically stayed right there for the last two months. The minor undulations have been so small as to likely represent little more than churn and statistical noise.
Of course this is what the polls are telling us. They could be misjudging the race in one of several ways. But it’s the one metric we have. And again, that stability is striking in itself. We hear again and again that anything could happen in the last 30 days. And that’s right. What’s less clear to me is whether “anything” would matter. As Kate put it in yesterday’s pod, if two assassination attempts, a historic smackdown of a debate and a bunch of other stuff haven’t really shifted the race, what would exactly?
Famous last words of course. But still, this fixity, this stasis, both in the nationwide top lines as well as in the seven key states, remains striking.
One final point is that all polls — at least the good ones — include undecided voters. But there’s no undecided option on the ballot. You have to choose. And sometimes those choices fall decisively in one direction.
