Which is nothing new. Lest we forget it took the 1929 Wall Street Crash to make federal government social programs to be political acceptable in the USA beyond far left circles. Not to mention the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack for the majority of Americans to support direct entry into WWII.
That was a big theory to explain the weirdly divergent results in different states in 2022 - I.e., Dems collapsed in places like CA, NY, and NV, but they vastly outperformed the typical midterm mood in a lot of swing states and red areas.
And the 6 week ban in IA went into effect in July, after the June Selzer poll showing Biden down 18. The September Selzer poll showed Harris down by just 4. Also, per Selzer interview they've been seeing indications of leftward swing in IA-01 for at least a year. IA-01 has seen heavy ad spending in the congressional race focused on the GOP member's vote for a national abortion ban without exceptions and other extreme positions. Remember too, we've won three of four CD's in IA as recently as 2018, after the Trump realignment began.
Like I said on the other thread, I think it is simply people are sick and tired of trump and all his hate mongering and the fact that he is not the same candidate they voted for 8 and 4 years ago. Also, Kamala Harris is a totally unique candidate: aside from being a woman and a woman of color. She has conntected with people!
Yeah, I actually know 2 family members who are quite conservative and always vote Republican who didn't vote for him in 2020 and will actually vote for Harris this year simply because they want Trump to go away. Of course, they are college educated professionals in suburban Columbus, Ohio, a group that's been running away from Republicans since 2016, but still.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually an increasingly common sentiment tbh. Like, he's been running for office for the past 9 years and just won't go away. I think Biden's "Will you shut up, man?" resonates with more and more people as time goes on.
Forget about just holding the Senate, if that Selzer poll is anywhere close to true, Democrats may actually net gain seats in the chamber. I don’t think they will, but they could and that’s mind blowing to me.
Winning Iowa would mean ungodly high levels of Midwestern whites voting for Harris. If true, congratulations would be in order to Tester for winning reelection and to Kunce and Osborn for flipping seats. I'll throw in Gov. McCormick (D-IN) just for good measure.
Basically, my personal definition of the "cultural/political Midwest" is "plains, trains, and suburban gains," with the first referring to rural but relatively nonreligious whites, often in farming/ranching, the second referring to industrial Rust Belt urban cores, and the last being self-explanatory This admittedly extremely broad interpretation would include the standard Midwest, the Dakotas + Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, and western Pennsylvania. CO and WV are out for being too mountainous, MO and KY for being too religious/Southern, etc. Is this all fairly arbitrary? Sure. Does it make sense in my head anyway? Yeah.
Montana is WAY closer to Iowa than any of the blue wall states. If Harris loses Iowa by 5 or less, she’s also made up ground in Montana up to maybe a 45-55 deficit. That’s something Tester can overcome. 15 points is where things get dicy for him.
Yeah except for education levels, suburban sprawl, minority vote, urban centers and non-coll WWC voter share of the electorate. I’m sticking with Montana is closer to Iowa than the blue wall states.
That's missing the point. Small towns (and small cities, and suburbs, etc) in Iowa are much more like small towns in Wisconsin than in Montana. Shifts in various areas in Iowa are more likely to translate to similar shifts in Wisconsin than in Montana.
Eastern Montana (most of the state area) is part of the Great Plains, Western Montana part of the Rocky Mountain states. Conventionally, CO, WY, and MT are Mountain West states, but each of them has its eastern prairie. Tester is a dirt farmer in the Mississippi River watershed.
Depends how you draw the line between east and West, but only about 10% in the true prairie (including where Tester lives). Probably 40% east of the continental divide.
The Continental Divide is in the mountains, right? So while that's a logical east/west dividing line, it doesn't divide the mountains from the prairies.
If Dan Osborn is elected to the Senate in Nebraska, he would be the third independent along with Angus King and Bernie Sanders. He'd also likely caucus with the Democrats as the message of getting corporate money out of politics is something that resonates with Democrats.
Osborn has said multiple times he won't caucus with Dems if he wins. He also literally tricked the Dem state party into not running a candidate then bait and switched on the eve of their endorsement and told them to eff off. The state Party hates him.
We may well have his support on labor issues but probably not much else. I imagine he would be like dealing with Manchin on steroids. But the headache may be worth it for a majority. But I feel like he would be highly unpredictable.
To Gina Mann's point on Osborn potentially becoming another Manchin, I don't see a problem with that if it means there are issues where Osborn can be able to work with Democrats on while working with Republicans on issues as well. Considering how the Democratic Party is not helping Osborn's Senate race, it wasn't as if we were looking at NE as a race for Democrats to win in the first place anyway.
If Osborn gets elected, he may have no choice but to caucus with Democrats. If he choses to caucus with the GOP, then he'll likely be another Lisa Murkowski type with being an Independent as the only real difference between the two.
First off, Osborn has to be elected as a Senator. He's running in NE, not in ME or VT which by contrast to the state are more friendly to Democrats and even independents like Osborn. I get what you have described about Osborn burning bridges with the NE Democratic Party but NE also happens to be a red state.
That said, if we're taking into account issues Osborn has in common with Democrats where he can work with them on, then he may be a key swing vote. However, just by looking at Osborn's campaign website most of the issues he stands for have direct correlation with the Democratic Party's agenda.
The only thing I disagree with Osborn on is term limits in Congress. Term limits for Supreme Court justices absolutely but term limits on Congress prevents both Democrats and Republicans from getting the chance of building seniority for key positions in the House and Senate.
I would trade any current Republican Senator for Joe Manchin in a heartbeat. It's Nebraska. If my options are a Senator who votes with Dems 5% of the time vs. a Senator who votes with Dems only 30% of the time, I'll take 30% of the time any day. I don't see a world in which Osborn is worse than Fischer or any other Republican that would get elected in Nebraska.
Winning Iowa negates any hypothetical loss in Nevada at the presidential level. Moreover, it strongly beats back against the moronic narrative that somehow Harris/Democrats are losing whites or anti-white. At the very least, Harris leading or competitive in Iowa means strong signs of potential gains of 1-3 congressional seats. Selzer is the gold standard of pollsters when it comes to Iowa. This is a great November surprise.
If Anne Selzer is right – and she almost invariably is spot on – this signifies nothing less than a political earthquake and a Blue Wave election. If Iowa truly is in play, then so is Florida (as Christopher Bouzy has long claimed). Heck even Texas might be in play.
I’m pinching my arm, pouring myself a shot of Balvenie!
Top story on Axios: "Shock poll: Harris grabs last-minute Iowa lead over Trump"
It’s interesting because Selzer’s final poll has always been one of the most accurate state polls done anywhere in the nation, even during the Trump era, and she has also been willing to show big Trump leads in 2016 and 2020 that were not in line with much of the other polling and was proven right both times. I say interesting, because Mark puts more stock in Selzer than any other poll, so this definitely deflects the abject gloom with which he views the race. The thing is, I would say that even if the final result is 50-47 Trump, that would mean Selzer hit the result pretty closely and it would also be a disastrous result for Trump and indicative of a terrible night for Republicans. Democrats would probably also be able to pick up both their targeted house seats.
One thing I noticed about Mark and several others pessimism is the way they keep presenting as an evidence…basic campaign strategies? Like after 2016 and 2020 when both times Democrats acted like they had an insurmountable lead and played prevent defense with a narrow and boring strategy that ignored potential weaknesses, this time Harris has been very proactive about targeting certain demos, including Black men and Latino voters. I don’t understand why Dems or damned if they do and damned if they don’t, because Mark will criticize Democrats for ignoring demographics and not targeting groups vulnerable to Trump’s message, but when they do it, it’s evidence that they are desperate. In many ways, Harris has shored up her vulnerabilities and run a very good campaign (though her inability to not fall into meandering nonsense word salads when asked the most basic questions in a live interview still remains mostly intact).
I’ll be clear, I told Mark and my prediction is that Harris wins 52-46, largely expanding modestly on Biden’s margins in all the swing states. North Carolina will be the closest state this year. Brown narrowly wins reelection, but Dems do lose control of the Senate narrowly, while winning the House. The trends we say in recent elections towards Dems are accelerated. For instance, I noted that in Louisiana, I expect the top lines to about the same, but with a marked shift towards Trump in most of the rural areas of the state while in more educated suburban areas of Ouachita, Bossier, Shreveport and Baton Rouge Parishes there will be movement towards Harris, who will also do better than Biden in places like Metairie and Kenner in Jefferson Parish. Similarly, I think overall, that even in states like Arkansas and Mississippi, the movement is towards Harris in net, with a marginal reduction in Trump’s margins of 1~2%. In Arkansas, this is largely based on the Little Rock metro and of course, Washington County (Fayetteville) and Benton county (Walmart territory) continuing to trend towards Harris. I expected Washington and Benton counties to have the most movement, but those are also some of the fastest growing and highest turnout areas of the state, and Arkansas is a relatively small state so those two big counties moving 4~6% in Harris’s direction more than offset any losses in the rural regions.
As for why Harris is focusing on the protect democracy theme…well, my response is generally that they aren’t idiots. They have large scale polling and survey teams and analytic software. The Harris campaign isn’t targeting the biggest issues because most people who say they care most about the economy or immigration are hard partisans. They are pushing the democracy issue because it’s a largely nonpartisan issue and their data most certainly shows its the most effective at moving undecided and soft voters, who are a small portion of the electorate but far more likely to rate that issue as very important to them.
Priceless words when it fell to WaPo’s humor columnist, Alexandra Petri, to endorse Harris – after Bezos blocked The Washington Post from endorsing her:
"I like elections, and I want to keep having them."
Which word salads do you mean? But yeah, going on tangents is something intelligent people can do and idiots/demented people can do, and it's often easy to tell the difference.
This was a response to Asahi2015, who wrote: "In many ways, Harris has shored up her vulnerabilities and run a very good campaign (though her inability to not fall into meandering nonsense word salads when asked the most basic questions in a live interview still remains mostly intact)."
I think Selzer has to be off by 10+ for Trump to win. I don't think Trump can carry any of WI, MI and PA if he wins Iowa by 5
Edit: Did anyone else see the poll numbers and just glance at them and assume it was Trump +3? Because I did and I was pretty happy with that and not until several minutes later did I realize I had inverted the numbers.
My big issue is that they’ve always been: The state voted for Trump by 8, so for Dems to win, the benchmarks are shifted 8 points to the left in all the counties. Basically. When in truth, there’s much bigger variability. Beshear needed to improve on Biden’s percentage of the vote by 12% in order to win reelection, but in practice in all the big urban and suburban areas he improved by between 18~20% on Biden, while in much of the rural parts of the state outside of Appalachia (where he was also aided by his high profile and well-lauded response to flooding and tornados), he only improved on Biden marginally, by margins of 4~6%.
You need to be mindful that Iowa is a rather small state population wise. Mathematically, a small change in either direction for a candidate is much more potentially impactful and easier to achieve a net gain for an opposing candidate than a net gain or swing in larger states like Texas, Pennsylvania or North Carolina. It's also the same reason it's far easier to campaign in smaller and rural states - the media market and demographics are much smaller, so there's fewer venues and potential voters candidates need to focus on.
IIRC, the best places to watch in Pennsylvania are Northampton County, PA-07, Erie County, and PA-10. The first two are bellwethers for the state as a whole, and the latter two are slightly to the right of the state as a whole.
Definitely two important counties to monitor. Otherwise, I'll be looking for Kamala run up the score in Allegheny and the Philly collar counties, with target margins of +25 in Allegheny, +30 in Montgomery and Delaware, +20 in Chester, and +5-10 in Bucks. Will also keep an eye margins in Cumberland, York, and Lancaster while checking Luzerne, Washington, and Westmoreland for possible erosion with working class whites.
I would also add to this that we should check Philly turnouts for just sheer numeric margins; it would seem to me that these later polls show an enthusiastic base(if that's real, then Philly may swamp Trump in overall numbers)
I doubt it, and I also wonder if we're really placing too much importance on a single poll, as good as Selzer's Iowa poll usually is. We really ought to retain a healthy level of dispassion about any individual poll.
It's pretty irresponsible of campaign staff to be circulating around a highly dubious pollster and just conveniently glossing over the crosstabs, methodology and backgrounds of said pollster. Granted, they could just be using negative polls to scare staff and donors into working harder. I see it all the time on YouTube political ads - close poll numbers plastered on the ads that either give you a sense of hope or scare you into donating.
I'm not one to use crosstabs to "disprove" polls, but uh there's something about having Trump at 65% with Black voters, and the only reason the state is close is because Harris is close to winning white voters. I'm sure the underlying data is fine and it all balances out!
Perhaps AtlasIntel could only reach Kanye West, Herschel Walker and Mark Robinson (never mind what states they happened to be in), and they extrapolated from there.
Mark, it sounds as though you’re saying the Harris Campaign is using AtlasIntel, a Brazilian pollster, for its internal polling. That would be absolutely stunning – but I seriously doubt that’s true.
Not sure. Unless they did two separate samples....one for private and the other for public. Seems dubious though since Spicer was describing the same results in the private poll as we're seeing now in the public poll.
This is a very good question. I prefer the Washington Post aggregation because you don't see Atlas Intel in it. In 538, it dominates, with an absolutely predictable result. Republican candidates are like legacy admits at Yale.
there are Brazilian pollster that typically finds right wing candidates doing very well in every election they poll around the world. They were accurate in 2020, but not 2022.
They've also had some really bad misses in foreign elections since 2020 as well. In 2022 in France, they were basically the only pollster that showed Marine Le Pen leading Macron ever. Their last poll had Macron up just 53-47, and he won 59-41. More recently in Mexico, there final poll had Sheinbaum at 48% and Galvez at 35%. Sheinbaum won 61% to 28% for Galvez.
I was pessimistic about 2016, and I'm strangely optimistic now. I'm not sure if my optimism is reality-based or a defense mechanism against premature despair. I'll get my answer soon.
Being the single politics & math nerd that I am, I decided to have fun & run a scenario where Harris wins Iowa like J. Ann Seltzer says. Here are Harris' winning formulas:
PA+any two of NC, GA, MI, WI, AZ
PA+NV+(NC or GA or MI)
GA or NC+any two of NC or GA, MI, WI, AZ
GA+NC+NV
all four+ state combinations
269-269 tie: Trump wins PA + each win one of GA or NC + each win one of (MI+NV) or (WI+AZ)
To piggyback off that I've been wondering if she indeed won Iowa could she get to 400 EV's and it would be possible, but you'd need Florida.
Biden states + Iowa, North Carolina and Texas get you to 365. If she wins Iowa then I think Ohio is very plausible and now you're at 382. I don't see a path to getting those final 18 without Florida.
That would require a swing state sweep plus TX &/or FL. Too bad I quit betting on sports after OU/WVU decided to score 3 points in 22 minutes four years ago.
What I was doing was more thought exercise than anything else. I'm not really that much more optimistic about the race than I was 4 hours ago. But if we're talking about winning Iowa, if Biden had won Iowa and every place that voted to its left he'd be at 413
The argument I've seen FOR Iowa being in this direction as opposed to the poll being junk is that Iowa has a slightly larger white, 65+ female population than other states like it. The swing states might seem a little more to the left now but that's about it.
If Kamala wins Iowa or if Iowa is a 1-2 point race in Trump's favor, she's got 270 EV's locked in. She's not going to improve 6+ points in Iowa and do worse in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Its possible that whatever gains she's having are largely constricted to the Midwest/Rust Belt/Big Ten states. That seems unlikely to me, but I won't dismiss it.
I think that even with the one poll result, some of these ratings are pretty nuts, though I hope we see them play out.
I wonder if Mike Johnson saying he’d repeal Obamacare is driving the Iowa poll, and perhaps the Wisconsin cnn poll as well
Iowa voters liked Obama partly because of health care. They are culturally conservative but economically liberal.
How much do you think that has entered the public consciousness? I'd tend to doubt most people have heard about it, but you may know better.
On Twitter, someone pointed out that Iowa has a strict abortion ban in a state that's relatively pro-choice and argues that could be a driver.
Seems to me that might be it. Might explain why Wisconsin, Michigan and penn haven't also moved a couple points left.
You mean because abortion isn't illegal in those states?
yea
That would be kind of amazing. People can be so myopic that they don't understand risks until something hits them smack in their faces.
Which is nothing new. Lest we forget it took the 1929 Wall Street Crash to make federal government social programs to be political acceptable in the USA beyond far left circles. Not to mention the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack for the majority of Americans to support direct entry into WWII.
That was a big theory to explain the weirdly divergent results in different states in 2022 - I.e., Dems collapsed in places like CA, NY, and NV, but they vastly outperformed the typical midterm mood in a lot of swing states and red areas.
And the 6 week ban in IA went into effect in July, after the June Selzer poll showing Biden down 18. The September Selzer poll showed Harris down by just 4. Also, per Selzer interview they've been seeing indications of leftward swing in IA-01 for at least a year. IA-01 has seen heavy ad spending in the congressional race focused on the GOP member's vote for a national abortion ban without exceptions and other extreme positions. Remember too, we've won three of four CD's in IA as recently as 2018, after the Trump realignment began.
Like I said on the other thread, I think it is simply people are sick and tired of trump and all his hate mongering and the fact that he is not the same candidate they voted for 8 and 4 years ago. Also, Kamala Harris is a totally unique candidate: aside from being a woman and a woman of color. She has conntected with people!
Yeah, I actually know 2 family members who are quite conservative and always vote Republican who didn't vote for him in 2020 and will actually vote for Harris this year simply because they want Trump to go away. Of course, they are college educated professionals in suburban Columbus, Ohio, a group that's been running away from Republicans since 2016, but still.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually an increasingly common sentiment tbh. Like, he's been running for office for the past 9 years and just won't go away. I think Biden's "Will you shut up, man?" resonates with more and more people as time goes on.
"Like, he's been running for office for the past 9 years and just won't go away." Part of why I can buy the undecideds breaking towards Harris.
Exactly; voters have made up their own minds on Trump
Avedee, I think there’s a word for that: "Unflushable."
Forget about just holding the Senate, if that Selzer poll is anywhere close to true, Democrats may actually net gain seats in the chamber. I don’t think they will, but they could and that’s mind blowing to me.
Winning Iowa would mean ungodly high levels of Midwestern whites voting for Harris. If true, congratulations would be in order to Tester for winning reelection and to Kunce and Osborn for flipping seats. I'll throw in Gov. McCormick (D-IN) just for good measure.
Tester isn't Midwestern, though.
By the standard definition, no, but culturally/politically I'd argue yes.
If Montana is culturally Midwestern, which other Mountain states do you think are? I don't think Colorado is.
Basically, my personal definition of the "cultural/political Midwest" is "plains, trains, and suburban gains," with the first referring to rural but relatively nonreligious whites, often in farming/ranching, the second referring to industrial Rust Belt urban cores, and the last being self-explanatory This admittedly extremely broad interpretation would include the standard Midwest, the Dakotas + Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, and western Pennsylvania. CO and WV are out for being too mountainous, MO and KY for being too religious/Southern, etc. Is this all fairly arbitrary? Sure. Does it make sense in my head anyway? Yeah.
Isn't MT more about mining than Rust Belt urban cores? Which are the Rust Belt cities in MT?
Montana is WAY closer to Iowa than any of the blue wall states. If Harris loses Iowa by 5 or less, she’s also made up ground in Montana up to maybe a 45-55 deficit. That’s something Tester can overcome. 15 points is where things get dicy for him.
Wisconsin is much more culturally similar to Iowa than Montana is, and I would argue that Michigan is too.
Yeah except for education levels, suburban sprawl, minority vote, urban centers and non-coll WWC voter share of the electorate. I’m sticking with Montana is closer to Iowa than the blue wall states.
That's missing the point. Small towns (and small cities, and suburbs, etc) in Iowa are much more like small towns in Wisconsin than in Montana. Shifts in various areas in Iowa are more likely to translate to similar shifts in Wisconsin than in Montana.
Eastern Montana (most of the state area) is part of the Great Plains, Western Montana part of the Rocky Mountain states. Conventionally, CO, WY, and MT are Mountain West states, but each of them has its eastern prairie. Tester is a dirt farmer in the Mississippi River watershed.
Point taken. Do you know about what percentage of Montana's population is in the part of the state that's in the prairies?
Depends how you draw the line between east and West, but only about 10% in the true prairie (including where Tester lives). Probably 40% east of the continental divide.
The Continental Divide is in the mountains, right? So while that's a logical east/west dividing line, it doesn't divide the mountains from the prairies.
If Dan Osborn is elected to the Senate in Nebraska, he would be the third independent along with Angus King and Bernie Sanders. He'd also likely caucus with the Democrats as the message of getting corporate money out of politics is something that resonates with Democrats.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/30/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/dan-osborn-harry-dunn-caucus-democrats-00186308&ved=2ahUKEwiql-yzm7-JAxXigIQIHSuBKVEQxfQBKAB6BAgMEAI&usg=AOvVaw2Wwl0Xh2QU-06iPucXS4bJ
Osborn has said multiple times he won't caucus with Dems if he wins. He also literally tricked the Dem state party into not running a candidate then bait and switched on the eve of their endorsement and told them to eff off. The state Party hates him.
We may well have his support on labor issues but probably not much else. I imagine he would be like dealing with Manchin on steroids. But the headache may be worth it for a majority. But I feel like he would be highly unpredictable.
If he really doesn't caucus with either party, he would have no committee memberships. Do you think he'd really be that stupid?
To Gina Mann's point on Osborn potentially becoming another Manchin, I don't see a problem with that if it means there are issues where Osborn can be able to work with Democrats on while working with Republicans on issues as well. Considering how the Democratic Party is not helping Osborn's Senate race, it wasn't as if we were looking at NE as a race for Democrats to win in the first place anyway.
If Osborn gets elected, he may have no choice but to caucus with Democrats. If he choses to caucus with the GOP, then he'll likely be another Lisa Murkowski type with being an Independent as the only real difference between the two.
Osborn is being supported by Democrats and party staff
Really? Then surely Osborn would ideally caucus with Democrats in the Senate if he is in fact being supported by the Democratic Party base.
First off, Osborn has to be elected as a Senator. He's running in NE, not in ME or VT which by contrast to the state are more friendly to Democrats and even independents like Osborn. I get what you have described about Osborn burning bridges with the NE Democratic Party but NE also happens to be a red state.
That said, if we're taking into account issues Osborn has in common with Democrats where he can work with them on, then he may be a key swing vote. However, just by looking at Osborn's campaign website most of the issues he stands for have direct correlation with the Democratic Party's agenda.
The only thing I disagree with Osborn on is term limits in Congress. Term limits for Supreme Court justices absolutely but term limits on Congress prevents both Democrats and Republicans from getting the chance of building seniority for key positions in the House and Senate.
The term limits issue is because of his opponent
What does this have to do with Senator Deb Fischer? Is there something I'm missing here?
She broke her 2 term pledge and Osborn has hammered her with it
I would trade any current Republican Senator for Joe Manchin in a heartbeat. It's Nebraska. If my options are a Senator who votes with Dems 5% of the time vs. a Senator who votes with Dems only 30% of the time, I'll take 30% of the time any day. I don't see a world in which Osborn is worse than Fischer or any other Republican that would get elected in Nebraska.
Amen.
I guess it's good that some folks are buying his schtick, it's the only way he'll get elected in a red state.
I predict that if elected, Dems will prefer him to Deb.
If Harris wins Iowa by 3, we probably knock off Cruz and Scott.
Maybe even Hawley.
Winning Iowa negates any hypothetical loss in Nevada at the presidential level. Moreover, it strongly beats back against the moronic narrative that somehow Harris/Democrats are losing whites or anti-white. At the very least, Harris leading or competitive in Iowa means strong signs of potential gains of 1-3 congressional seats. Selzer is the gold standard of pollsters when it comes to Iowa. This is a great November surprise.
not looking at any other numbers after that Selzer poll.... gonna ride that hopeful wave into my dreams tonight..... 😂
Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!
I'm going to let this night live forever in my mind!
If Anne Selzer is right – and she almost invariably is spot on – this signifies nothing less than a political earthquake and a Blue Wave election. If Iowa truly is in play, then so is Florida (as Christopher Bouzy has long claimed). Heck even Texas might be in play.
I’m pinching my arm, pouring myself a shot of Balvenie!
Top story on Axios: "Shock poll: Harris grabs last-minute Iowa lead over Trump"
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/03/harris-iowa-poll-trump-women
It’s interesting because Selzer’s final poll has always been one of the most accurate state polls done anywhere in the nation, even during the Trump era, and she has also been willing to show big Trump leads in 2016 and 2020 that were not in line with much of the other polling and was proven right both times. I say interesting, because Mark puts more stock in Selzer than any other poll, so this definitely deflects the abject gloom with which he views the race. The thing is, I would say that even if the final result is 50-47 Trump, that would mean Selzer hit the result pretty closely and it would also be a disastrous result for Trump and indicative of a terrible night for Republicans. Democrats would probably also be able to pick up both their targeted house seats.
One thing I noticed about Mark and several others pessimism is the way they keep presenting as an evidence…basic campaign strategies? Like after 2016 and 2020 when both times Democrats acted like they had an insurmountable lead and played prevent defense with a narrow and boring strategy that ignored potential weaknesses, this time Harris has been very proactive about targeting certain demos, including Black men and Latino voters. I don’t understand why Dems or damned if they do and damned if they don’t, because Mark will criticize Democrats for ignoring demographics and not targeting groups vulnerable to Trump’s message, but when they do it, it’s evidence that they are desperate. In many ways, Harris has shored up her vulnerabilities and run a very good campaign (though her inability to not fall into meandering nonsense word salads when asked the most basic questions in a live interview still remains mostly intact).
I’ll be clear, I told Mark and my prediction is that Harris wins 52-46, largely expanding modestly on Biden’s margins in all the swing states. North Carolina will be the closest state this year. Brown narrowly wins reelection, but Dems do lose control of the Senate narrowly, while winning the House. The trends we say in recent elections towards Dems are accelerated. For instance, I noted that in Louisiana, I expect the top lines to about the same, but with a marked shift towards Trump in most of the rural areas of the state while in more educated suburban areas of Ouachita, Bossier, Shreveport and Baton Rouge Parishes there will be movement towards Harris, who will also do better than Biden in places like Metairie and Kenner in Jefferson Parish. Similarly, I think overall, that even in states like Arkansas and Mississippi, the movement is towards Harris in net, with a marginal reduction in Trump’s margins of 1~2%. In Arkansas, this is largely based on the Little Rock metro and of course, Washington County (Fayetteville) and Benton county (Walmart territory) continuing to trend towards Harris. I expected Washington and Benton counties to have the most movement, but those are also some of the fastest growing and highest turnout areas of the state, and Arkansas is a relatively small state so those two big counties moving 4~6% in Harris’s direction more than offset any losses in the rural regions.
As for why Harris is focusing on the protect democracy theme…well, my response is generally that they aren’t idiots. They have large scale polling and survey teams and analytic software. The Harris campaign isn’t targeting the biggest issues because most people who say they care most about the economy or immigration are hard partisans. They are pushing the democracy issue because it’s a largely nonpartisan issue and their data most certainly shows its the most effective at moving undecided and soft voters, who are a small portion of the electorate but far more likely to rate that issue as very important to them.
Makes sense, since anti-gerrymandering issues tend to do well in all states
Priceless words when it fell to WaPo’s humor columnist, Alexandra Petri, to endorse Harris – after Bezos blocked The Washington Post from endorsing her:
"I like elections, and I want to keep having them."
. – Alexandra Petri
Harris’ meandering word salads still cannot compete with Trump’s "The Weave".
Which word salads do you mean? But yeah, going on tangents is something intelligent people can do and idiots/demented people can do, and it's often easy to tell the difference.
This was a response to Asahi2015, who wrote: "In many ways, Harris has shored up her vulnerabilities and run a very good campaign (though her inability to not fall into meandering nonsense word salads when asked the most basic questions in a live interview still remains mostly intact)."
I think Selzer has to be off by 10+ for Trump to win. I don't think Trump can carry any of WI, MI and PA if he wins Iowa by 5
Edit: Did anyone else see the poll numbers and just glance at them and assume it was Trump +3? Because I did and I was pretty happy with that and not until several minutes later did I realize I had inverted the numbers.
I first saw the poll on CNN tv and immediately thought Trump was ahead and felt relieved it was only 3 points
Any chance David and co. will post swing state county benchmarks? Those have always been amazing reference materials during election night.
My big issue is that they’ve always been: The state voted for Trump by 8, so for Dems to win, the benchmarks are shifted 8 points to the left in all the counties. Basically. When in truth, there’s much bigger variability. Beshear needed to improve on Biden’s percentage of the vote by 12% in order to win reelection, but in practice in all the big urban and suburban areas he improved by between 18~20% on Biden, while in much of the rural parts of the state outside of Appalachia (where he was also aided by his high profile and well-lauded response to flooding and tornados), he only improved on Biden marginally, by margins of 4~6%.
You need to be mindful that Iowa is a rather small state population wise. Mathematically, a small change in either direction for a candidate is much more potentially impactful and easier to achieve a net gain for an opposing candidate than a net gain or swing in larger states like Texas, Pennsylvania or North Carolina. It's also the same reason it's far easier to campaign in smaller and rural states - the media market and demographics are much smaller, so there's fewer venues and potential voters candidates need to focus on.
IIRC, the best places to watch in Pennsylvania are Northampton County, PA-07, Erie County, and PA-10. The first two are bellwethers for the state as a whole, and the latter two are slightly to the right of the state as a whole.
Definitely two important counties to monitor. Otherwise, I'll be looking for Kamala run up the score in Allegheny and the Philly collar counties, with target margins of +25 in Allegheny, +30 in Montgomery and Delaware, +20 in Chester, and +5-10 in Bucks. Will also keep an eye margins in Cumberland, York, and Lancaster while checking Luzerne, Washington, and Westmoreland for possible erosion with working class whites.
I would also add to this that we should check Philly turnouts for just sheer numeric margins; it would seem to me that these later polls show an enthusiastic base(if that's real, then Philly may swamp Trump in overall numbers)
I wonder if other pollsters will feel like they now have cover to post more D-friendly results if that’s what they’re actually seeing.
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if NYTimes-Siena will follow the lead
I doubt it, and I also wonder if we're really placing too much importance on a single poll, as good as Selzer's Iowa poll usually is. We really ought to retain a healthy level of dispassion about any individual poll.
The thing is - we are seeing similar results elsewhere. Ohio within 3. Kansas within 5.
True. Among many others, though.
What is AtlasIntel? Their polling is showing we lose every battleground and Lake wins in Arizona.
That second result is a pretty big hint. Gallego's margin is quite possibly going to be closer to 10 than 0; that race isn't really competitive.
Brazilian pollster that was accurate in 2020 and off to the right in 2020
There was chatter of ugly internal polls for Harris a couple of days ago, and I think I heard "AtlasIntel" mentioned as the source.
It's pretty irresponsible of campaign staff to be circulating around a highly dubious pollster and just conveniently glossing over the crosstabs, methodology and backgrounds of said pollster. Granted, they could just be using negative polls to scare staff and donors into working harder. I see it all the time on YouTube political ads - close poll numbers plastered on the ads that either give you a sense of hope or scare you into donating.
If it's irresponsible, I think most campaigns are routinely irresponsible.
Not a surprise. They can join the dancing chorus of Rasmussen, Trafalgar, Insider Advantage, Cygnal, Echelon, SoCal Strategies, Quantus, and others.
I wouldn't lump Cygnal in with those others, they seem to be polling in good faith.
I'm not one to use crosstabs to "disprove" polls, but uh there's something about having Trump at 65% with Black voters, and the only reason the state is close is because Harris is close to winning white voters. I'm sure the underlying data is fine and it all balances out!
https://x.com/jdabre11/status/1852904563868635176
lolol.
Perhaps AtlasIntel could only reach Kanye West, Herschel Walker and Mark Robinson (never mind what states they happened to be in), and they extrapolated from there.
I was canvassing in Milwaukee yesterday in some predominantly Black neighborhoods. Let's just say that 65% is ten times too high. Minimum.
Mark, it sounds as though you’re saying the Harris Campaign is using AtlasIntel, a Brazilian pollster, for its internal polling. That would be absolutely stunning – but I seriously doubt that’s true.
No, it was Trump's internal pollster according to Sean Spicer.
Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. But why are the aggregators treating Atlas like a neutral pollster?
Not sure. Unless they did two separate samples....one for private and the other for public. Seems dubious though since Spicer was describing the same results in the private poll as we're seeing now in the public poll.
This is a very good question. I prefer the Washington Post aggregation because you don't see Atlas Intel in it. In 538, it dominates, with an absolutely predictable result. Republican candidates are like legacy admits at Yale.
Are you saying Atlas Untel was doing internal polling for Harris? If so I highly doubt that.
there are Brazilian pollster that typically finds right wing candidates doing very well in every election they poll around the world. They were accurate in 2020, but not 2022.
They've also had some really bad misses in foreign elections since 2020 as well. In 2022 in France, they were basically the only pollster that showed Marine Le Pen leading Macron ever. Their last poll had Macron up just 53-47, and he won 59-41. More recently in Mexico, there final poll had Sheinbaum at 48% and Galvez at 35%. Sheinbaum won 61% to 28% for Galvez.
I've been pessimistic about basically every election since 2016, and I'm starting to become worryingly optimistic this time around...
I was pessimistic about 2016, and I'm strangely optimistic now. I'm not sure if my optimism is reality-based or a defense mechanism against premature despair. I'll get my answer soon.
Being the single politics & math nerd that I am, I decided to have fun & run a scenario where Harris wins Iowa like J. Ann Seltzer says. Here are Harris' winning formulas:
PA+any two of NC, GA, MI, WI, AZ
PA+NV+(NC or GA or MI)
GA or NC+any two of NC or GA, MI, WI, AZ
GA+NC+NV
all four+ state combinations
269-269 tie: Trump wins PA + each win one of GA or NC + each win one of (MI+NV) or (WI+AZ)
To piggyback off that I've been wondering if she indeed won Iowa could she get to 400 EV's and it would be possible, but you'd need Florida.
Biden states + Iowa, North Carolina and Texas get you to 365. If she wins Iowa then I think Ohio is very plausible and now you're at 382. I don't see a path to getting those final 18 without Florida.
Anything is possible. 400 EVs is as likely as either of my union coal miner grandfathers coming back from the dead & voting straight Republican.
If you give me good odds, I bet Kamala wins with at least 330 EV.
That would require a swing state sweep plus TX &/or FL. Too bad I quit betting on sports after OU/WVU decided to score 3 points in 22 minutes four years ago.
I’m not really a betting man, but this would do it:
MI, WI, PA, NE-02, AZ, NV, NC + FL = 332.
(And I haven’t mentioned Georgia or Iowa.)
(If she wins GA, then NV + AZ are not needed.)
What I was doing was more thought exercise than anything else. I'm not really that much more optimistic about the race than I was 4 hours ago. But if we're talking about winning Iowa, if Biden had won Iowa and every place that voted to its left he'd be at 413
The argument I've seen FOR Iowa being in this direction as opposed to the poll being junk is that Iowa has a slightly larger white, 65+ female population than other states like it. The swing states might seem a little more to the left now but that's about it.
If Kamala wins Iowa or if Iowa is a 1-2 point race in Trump's favor, she's got 270 EV's locked in. She's not going to improve 6+ points in Iowa and do worse in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Its possible that whatever gains she's having are largely constricted to the Midwest/Rust Belt/Big Ten states. That seems unlikely to me, but I won't dismiss it.
Correct; elections don't take place in a vacuum(if Iowa is actually close, or even a Harris win!!, then this election is over)
And IA is a midwestern state, so there you go.
Speaking of Saturday night, Kamala is in NY tonight sparking lots of chatter that she'll be on SNL tonight
pretty much confirmed she is on SNL...all over social media...surprise visit, of course.
There seems to be much more basis to this, but it was also all over social media that Beyonce would be at night 4 of the DNC
Rumor mill is heavy T Swift is appearing in Philly Monday night too