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I guess the good news for Harris is that the polls are juicing Trump’s support so hard that it’s difficult to imagine them overestimating him again (which seems to be the intention). I worry about Trump’s activity in non-traditional media and the “manosphere” because that is an area where I could conceivably see him driving turnout among people who don’t vote or aren’t expected to vote. But generally it’s hard to see another Trump polling miss.

The other optimistic take for Harris is that looking at state polls, district polls, and a small selection of actual election results seem to suggest that the suburbs might just be out of grasp for the GOP/Trump right now. She’s showing consistent leads in all three rust belt states and even polls of places like IA or NE look pretty grim for Trump in terms of margin. PA is scary, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Harris actually has the rust belt locked down, which is all she needs.

As far as popular vote goes, there are reasons to think the EV/PV gap is shrinking. It looks like cities are seeing a bit of a red shift across the board. Also, I was entertaining this when Biden was the nominee but it seems to apply to Harris too, I think there is a world where Harris gets to 270 and the PV is tied or Trump ahead. If she narrowly wins all three rust belt states and NE-02 but loses every other swing state, that gets her to 270 and probably not a big PV lead. I wouldn’t count on it personally but it’s not impossible. I think Nate Silver gives her 80% chance of winning the EC if she’s winning the popular vote by 2 or more, so I don’t think she has to overcome as much of a gap as Hillary and Joe did.
 
Mosh said:
I guess the good news for Harris is that the polls are juicing Trump’s support so hard that it’s difficult to imagine them overestimating him again (which seems to be the intention). I worry about Trump’s activity in non-traditional media and the “manosphere” because that is an area where I could conceivably see him driving turnout among people who don’t vote or aren’t expected to vote. But generally it’s hard to see another Trump polling miss.
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One thing that's going to be diferent and I don't know how polls will be able to guess it - all things considered, the Catholic vote (small and potentially insignificant as it is) is going to be different from last time, IMHO. While I see the same disillusionment I would personally feel and there are more people openly saying they'll either support a third party candidate or won't vote at all (despite it being more or less our religious duty if an acceptable option is available), still despite his abortion-friendliness (which technically might have made him excommunicated laete sententiae, but whatever), Biden was still a Catholic and closer to the moderate side; I have seen not an insignificant amount of people saying they're definitely voting for Trump this time around, in the circles I move in.
 
22% of the American electorate still identifies as Catholic, but what percentage of that is *functionally* Catholic, I have no idea. But that's good news from Judas for sure.
 
So Nate Cohn wrote a NYT article that gets in to a lot of what I was talking about regarding the popular vote: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/upshot/trump-electoral-college-harris.html

Some relevant passages:
One piece of evidence: Times/Siena polling this year. If this year’s national surveys are aggregated together — including the polls when Mr. Biden was the nominee — there’s a clear relationship between Mr. Trump’s gains and how well Republicans fared in the midterms.

Although there’s less data from the three Times/Siena polls since Ms. Harris became the nominee, they nonetheless show the same pattern: Mr. Trump makes large gains where Republicans posted above-average results in the midterms, but he makes few or no gains elsewhere in the country.
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Why did the Republicans do so well in some places, but not others, back in 2022?

At the time, the best explanation seemed to be about the issues at stake. In many key battlegrounds, the Republicans nominated MAGA-backed stop-the-steal candidates and threatened to take away abortion rights. Where they did, Democrats excelled. Elsewhere, the story was often very different. In many blue states, abortion rights were safe and the threat of a stolen election seemed distant, but many voters were concerned by crime, housing shortages and homelessness, resentful of pandemic-era restrictions and frustrated by a perceived failure of Democratic governance. Many conservative and more religious states, meanwhile, weren’t so upset by the end of Roe and remained supportive of Mr. Trump; there, the “red wave” sloshed ashore, unimpeded.

None of this necessarily seemed likely to affect a national presidential election. But if the 2022 patterns really do hold in this year’s election, it might suggest that the shifts in the midterms weren’t just about the issues focused on by different campaigns in different states, but about how new issues altered people’s political allegiances.

It would suggest that the social, economic and political upheaval in the wake of the pandemic, inflation, Jan. 6 and the end of Roe left a lasting political impact — one that was felt very differently in different parts of the country and among different constituencies.

With the polling predictably focused on the battlegrounds, we may not have a great idea on this until the final results arrive in November. If the results wind up looking somewhat more like the midterms, I won’t be surprised. Much crazier things have happened.
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No, the midterm election didn’t turn out to be a “red wave,” as had been prophesied. Democrats held firm in key battleground states. But a red wave really did materialize in many parts of the country.

Republicans ran far ahead of Mr. Trump’s 2020 performance in New York, Florida and much of the Deep South. They also ran well ahead of Mr. Trump — say, by 5 to 10 points in the House popular vote — in many less competitive states across the South and West, including California and Texas.

As a result, Republicans won the popular vote for U.S. House, even though Democrats were only a few seats away from retaining control of it.

While the evidence is inconclusive, there are signs that Mr. Trump is excelling in many of the places where Republicans won big in the midterms.
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If this all holds true, this could be the closest popular vote margin we've seen with Trump on the ballot and Harris can still win the EC.
 
Very sad to see a place I called home for a number of years, Asheville, be decimated by these storms. I hope a large scale aid effort is being coordinated right now. I haven’t heard from a number of my friends I still have out there. Frightening times.
 
Yeah, it's terrible what's happened to Asheville. FEMA is underway, I am sure, but they were also very deployed to Florida, and Asheville was not...where they expected, I guess. That's the cruelty of climate change. It makes everything like this worse.
 
It’s still so bizarre to me Asheville got hit this hard. It’s a good 5 hour drive to the coast. Certainly an unprecedented disaster. Atlanta got hit hard too but not as hard as Asheville.
 
Well, it's the rain that got them. Helene was a fast moving storm, her winds had faded but she still had so much rain. As you know, Asheville sits in a bowl in the mountains around, so all that rain got poured in the bowl...and with only one river to drain, through hills...the bowl filled up.

Storms didn't used to be like this. That's why we need to work to reduce climate change.

Good news, though, Connecticut is on the case: https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news...ne-disaster-relief-in-north-carolina/3396140/
 
Yeah my partner’s grandparents live out there, and we had just visited a couple weeks ago. Didn’t get back into contact with them till late last night, and they’re lucky to live high up enough that the flooding didn’t affect them nearly as much as others, but they’re still effectively cut off from the world right now. It’s wild.
 
In case you were wondering how Donald Trump really feels about overtime:

politicalwire.com

Bonus Quote of the Day

"I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I shouldn't say this, but I'd get other people in. I wouldn't pay."-- Donald Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania.
politicalwire.com politicalwire.com

“I hated to give overtime. I hated it. I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay.”
 
This would kill a democrat in PA. Will it affect people’s perception of Trump? Hard time seeing it catch on, his businessman persona is so engrained for people.
 
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Catching up on the VP debate. Vance's performance was pretty much a trainwreck, which was to be expected, but still impressive how much he fumbled some of the answers. I also don't think the "excuse me, I thought we agreed not to fact check" is in any way a good look.
 
Vaenyr said:
Vance's performance was pretty much a trainwreck
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On substance, sure. But superficially he came off far better than Walz’s abortive word salad, especially in the first half.

Both candidates had multiple painful dodges and Walz missed a lot of opportunities to chop up Vance’s nonsense. Walz’s response about his own chronic misspeaking was particularly painful to watch. Vance appeared more polished across the board and did a pretty good job of applying lipstick to the pig of Trump’s record, which is about the best anyone could have expected him to do.

Trump would be smart to leave this as the final debate impression for his ticket. It might have actually moved the needle slightly in his direction among undecideds.
 
VP debates usually won't do anything at all, maybe move the race a point if there's a decisive winner - which this apparently didn't have. Both Vance and Walz I'd say achieved their respective goals going into this. Walz's goal was to introduce himself more to the electorate in a favorable light while Vance had to show he wasn't a nut and had to sane-wash Trump a little bit.

Vance's answer on January 6th and him whining about being fact-checked won't play well, whether it'd have any sort of impact, we'll see. Likely not.
 
Jer said:
On substance, sure. But superficially he came off far better than Walz’s abortive word salad, especially in the first half.

Both candidates had multiple painful dodges and Walz missed a lot of opportunities to chop up Vance’s nonsense. Walz’s response about his own chronic misspeaking was particularly painful to watch. Vance appeared more polished across the board and did a pretty good job of applying lipstick to the pig of Trump’s record, which is about the best anyone could have expected him to do.

Trump would be smart to leave this as the final debate impression for his ticket. It might have actually moved the needle slightly in his direction among undecideds.
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I don't particularly trust TV focus groups, but CNN's only had one person decide out of this and it was someone moving to Harris-Walz. CBS had more people move towards Harris-Walz. I think barring his 'I thought there would be no factchecking' moment, Vance played it as perfect as he could. The contrast between the two is Vance is perfect made for TV moments in front of a screen with no audience, but comes off incredibly impersonal in front of people or in real-life deals. Walz is the exact opposite.

Of note was just how civil the debate was as a whole. It does serve as a good contrast between Trump and Vance... but Vance isn't at the one at the top of the ticket. I don't know, again I don't think VP debates ever really do much, but the contrast with Trump's constant rambling could potentially hurt him, but, again, I doubt it.

I will say Vance announcing in advance that he'd be appearing in the spin room after the debate last night gave me a chuckle. It was to normalize Trump showing up unannounced to try spinning his disastrous debate against Harris.
 
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The VP debate was more evidence that the GOP has a problem with the top of the ticket. JD Vance did very well, stayed on message, and came off as a normal person who was actually interested in winning over people in the middle rather than riling up the extreme factions of his base. If Trump was capable of doing this, he would have had a better debate against Harris and this whole election might not be so close. The message about Kamala Harris being VP for four years and tying her to the Biden administration is an effective one, but it's a message Trump himself has failed to deliver. I would be worried about that resonating. On the other hand, it seems like the part of the debate that resonated the most with a lot of people is Vance on January 6, which really was a low moment and opens up one of Trump's greatest vulnerabilities. If that is the one takeaway from Vance, his performance kinda becomes a net negative IMO.

With all that being said, I think it largely comes down to a draw. Walz wasn't great but he also didn't have any major faceplants. The Tiananmen Square stuff wasn't great, but I don't think it's the sort of thing people are going to care that much about in the long run, nor does it really say that much about his overall character. Generally I think you can look at the contrasts in two ways:

1: Vance is smart but smarmy and out of touch. Walz seems more like a "normal" guy and is more in touch with the average American.

2: Walz is somebody who I would like to get a beer with, but he seems in over his head. Vance seems more qualified and like someone I would rather see in the White House.

Not really sure what the general impression ends up being among voters, but I imagine it's somewhere on that spectrum. Either way though, both candidates needed a do no harm election and I think they both got there. The expectations are different because the top of the ticket candidates are so different. Trump needs a moderating force and someone who looks qualified/even-tempered, Harris doesn't.

I wonder if there's a way for Democrats to turn this debate against Trump by making the case that this type of debate and the level of civility is what a post-Trump politics world looks like. If we remove Trump from the political scene once and for all, we can get back to these sorts of policy focused and more respectful "agree to disagree" style of rhetoric. It seems like a tricky case to make, but I think one of Harris' greatest advantages is appealing to the majority of Americans who are ready to move on from Trump.
 
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