Where Are We Now?
Eighty-two days remain in the 2024 presidential election season. Early voting in many states will be starting much sooner than that, of course. "Election Day" has become "Election Season" in much of the United States right now, and regardless of what anyone thinks of that — I hate it — that is the political reality we are faced with.
Another reality we are faced with is the ups and downs in polling. Granted, we should take any given poll with a grain — or a pound — of salt, depending on who the pollster is. I'm fond of pointing out that no individual poll is particularly meaningful, but RealClearPolitics does a compendium of polls in their RCP average, and that can be interesting; averaging out a range of polls can normalize the data, partially erasing some of the biases and differences in technique, and more important, it allows one to easily look at broad trends.
As of this writing, 82 days before the election, the trend is not going Donald Trump's way. Let's look at some specifics.
The Battlegrounds
The RealClearPolitics averages of the battleground states — Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia — should be very concerning for Team Trump right now. Trump is behind in two of these states; in Wisconsin, he trails Harris by 1.2 points, and in Michigan by 2.4. These are narrow margins but only recently Donald Trump was leading by narrow margins in these states. He maintains narrow leads in the remaining states: Arizona by 0.8 points, Nevada by 3.5, Pennsylvania by 0.6, North Carolina by 2.4, and Georgia by 0.6 points — all far too close for comfort.
RealClearPolitics' no-tossup map, based on current numbers, still gives Trump/Vance a narrow Electoral College victory of 287-251. Again, that's far too close for comfort. In this scenario, if Trump loses Pennsylvania, that hands Harris/Walz a razor-thin 270-268 Electoral College victory. Pennsylvania, right now, is the key battleground state. Trump can lose North Carolina and win 271-267; ditto for Georgia. But as of this writing, the Trump/Vance campaign simply must have Pennsylvania. Unless things change dramatically in the upper Midwest in the next few weeks, if Pennsylvania goes for Harris/Walz, we may as well all turn in for an early night.
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Recent Trends
Polling this week won't be lending the Trump campaign much comfort. Polling on Tuesday appears to show battleground states swinging more to the left. The Cook Political Report's surveys of these states show Harris pulling away in all but Nevada, where Trump still leads by three points. But in Arizona, Harris is now ahead by two points, Georgia is tied, Harris leads in Michigan by three, North Carolina by one, and (most disturbingly) in Pennsylvania by one; Cook also gives Harris a three-point lead in Wisconsin.
This appears to show a rather dramatic shift in the state of the race. Running against Joe Biden, the advent of "Trump 2, This Time It's Personal" seemed all but assured. But changing the candidate, no matter how shady that process was, seems to have done the Democratic ticket a lot of good — so far.
This brings up two questions:
First: Is the Trump campaign still retrenching after the assassination attempt? Trump's greatest strength is in his massive rallies; the man knows how to fire up a crowd. But a close call like that would make anyone take a step back, and while that one powerful, iconic photo from that incident is inspiring, one has to wonder if the Trump campaign is taking a good, hard look at their security situation before ramping up the rally schedule.
Second: Has the Harris/Walz campaign already realized the usual post-convention bump in polling? This is a well-known phenomenon, going back as long as modern polling; but part of the convention bump generally arises from the release of the VP candidate (at least, assuming the choice of VP helps rather than hurts) and the convention itself. The Harris campaign released the VP choice well in advance of the convention, and there is a palpable relief among Democrats and, probably, among some independents that the obviously failing old Joe Biden is no longer the candidate.
Conclusions
This race is still very, very close, and no matter what happens, there will be no landslide victory for either side. This thing will be fought down to the wire, with a 2000-style outcome much more likely than a 1972 or 1984-style drubbing. Both sides will, certainly, be planning to keep up the pace until the very end.
There is one thing that may well tip things back Trump's way: the debates. Donald Trump would do well to take a few lessons from Tulsi Gabbard on how to utterly destroy Kamala Harris on the debate stage, as she has some experience in that; also, Kamala Harris is an abysmally poor speaker, and when not given prepared remarks on a teleprompter she's even worse. There is the possibility that Joe Biden's shambling, disoriented, dementia-ridden performance in the first debate will make her look better by comparison, but only by comparison. Trump would be well-advised to show up for the debates fit, rested, practiced, and loaded for bear. While a debate doesn't always turn around an election's results, it has the possibility of doing so. Right now, things are not trending in favor of Team Trump, and the clock's a-ticking.
