Member Newsletter
We’ve now had a round of polls of the Harris-Trump race since she became the Democrats’ de facto nominee. All of these polls must be viewed as snapshots in an extremely fluid and unsettled political moment. But we can draw out some early patterns. I averaged all the post-Biden drop-out polls and they come out to Trump up by 4/10ths of one percentage point. That’s about the high water mark that Biden ever got to all year. That average also includes CNN and Times, which have been two of the worst polls for Democrats this year. So the mix of just who has released a poll probably slightly favors Trump.
More interesting to me are the polls out of the swing states, which we’ve already gotten a decent number of. They now show all three Blue Wall states (MI, WI, PA) as ties. Notably, they now show Georgia as a margin of error race, with Harris one or two points back. That’s a major shift. Trump has held a consistent lead of 5 or 6 percentage points there. I only saw one poll each out of Arizona and Nevada and those didn’t show the same shift. Unclear whether that’s unique to these states or whether more polls will show a clearer pattern. The relevant point is that early evidence seems to show Harris significantly growing the map, giving her multiple potential paths to an electoral college win.
Another point. I think people are underestimating the importance of Trump’s impulsive and telling move, right out of the gate, to pull out of the September debate once it was clear Harris would be the nominee. He didn’t need to do that. There was plenty of time to wiggle out of that meeting if he wanted to. It sent a crystal clear and, for the moment, defining message of weakness.
As we’ve discussed before, we tend to look at presidential campaigns in too literal of a fashion. They’re actually a series of image-moments of performative power. Much of the campaign comes down to how well each campaign or candidate can engineer these. Republicans tend to understand this dimension of campaigning more intuitively. Democrats, really focused on governance, often get hung up on the libretto of a campaign when what really drives it forward is the score. On that front the first week has all gone in Harris’s direction. Far beyond my expectations, the candidate switch really knocked the wind out of Trump and his campaign. They’ve clearly been at a loss for just how to respond to the new dynamic. They’ll certainly find their footing. But so far they’ve struggled with it.
Trying to wriggle out of the debate has been central to this. And again, Trump went there — I think really on his own — right out of the gate. The Trump campaign and its online influencer-supporters have been making lots of arguments or really excuses for why this makes sense. The agreement was with Joe Biden, not his replacement, they say. And there’s definitely a logic to that. But it’s beside the point. Those are rationales for pulling out of the debate. What comes through loud and clear is that he doesn’t want to debate. And that’s what matters. Harris is currently dominating Trump and like a boxer with a stronger opponent he doesn’t want to let her get close to strike a wounding blow.
Final point. Someone asked me yesterday: can she really keep this up for three months? Well, obviously not. As people who have just lived through one of the most shocking months in presidential campaign history, with a historically game-changing debate, an attempted assassination and unprecedented candidate withdrawal, it would be absurd to imagine a straight-line progression from today to November 5th. But as any campaign professional will tell you, the next two to three weeks will define Harris in the public mind. Once that definition takes hold, for good or ill, it will be hard to shake. She’s off to a good start on that front but that’s what to focus on to understand the contours of the campaign going forward.