This doesn’t make any sense. Harris doing best in Arizona and worst in Nevada.
When I've commented here, I tend to have had a pretty pessimistic take on things but this time around I have no clue what to make of polling and what’s going to happen this election. My gut tells me it’s a close race but Harris is favored. And ultimately we have to ignore the polls and focus on the most important aspects in my mind for winning, all of which Harris is doing:(1) appealing to the center; (2) generating enthusiasm primarily within the party; (3) and creating an impressive get-out-the-vote machine. I don’t know what more to ask of any Democratic candidate to defeat Trump and reading into these flip-flopping nonsensical numbers that keep pulling us one way and then back to the other is exhausting. It just doesn’t make sense to me that Sherrod Brown can lead in an Ohio poll with Harris holding herself to essentially Biden’s margin in Ohio…but then the same pollster shows her behind in the blue wall. It just doesn’t compute or reflect any type of consistency…unless there is some mad realignment going on where swing states are getting more red and the rest of the country is standing still??
Largely I think to a degree pollsters are probably herding to a tossup race in the swing states bc they don’t know how to model this race given the inconsistencies with 2016, 2020, 2018, and 2022. My best bet is the electorate will look like an average of all of those elections? *throws arms up in air*
Anyways keep the faith; it’s close but we can certainly win. End rant.
Isn’t NV considered a tough state to poll? That’s really the only state that appears to be an outlier compared to the rest of the polling we’ve seen so could just be a bad sample / bad modeling.
I concur with the general ambiguity of the race based on schizophrenic polling data, but will say the profile of the late-breaking vote seems Trump-friendly/challenger-friendly. Anybody who has yet to be persuaded in the Democrats' direction by the critical mass of abortion rights messaging seems unlikely to be motivated by it in the next 25 days. Either these voters aren't being correctly counted by pollster modeling or.....the Democrats are in deep shit.
As for Ohio, I'd be very skeptical of polling there showing Harris overperforming. I was gonna say that I can't remember the last time pollsters didn't badly undersample Republicans in the Buckeye State, but then I remembered when they last got it right....in 2012. Ever since then, Republicans have decisively outrun the polls in every statewide Ohio contest. I'd mentally prepare myself for a double-digit Trump win and a decisive Moreno win.
I promise I don’t just seek out your posts to disagree with them, but I have a completely different view of the late breaking voters. Who are the undecided Trump voters? Are there really that many people who haven’t made up their mind about him?
Undecided Harris voters though? Yeah, I can imagine a lot of them. People are still making up their mind about her, partly because of the ludicrous claim that she is avoiding the media and not providing any details of how she will govern, but also because of the way she became the candidate, and, sadly, because she is also a woman of color.
I think it is far more likely than not the undecided voters will break for Harris by a significant amount.
As far as OH polls, agree with you there with the exception of 2022 Senate. As the election approached Vance’s lead increased and the final aggregate (6.2) was spot on (Vance won by 6.1). So it’s possible that the errors of 2016, 2018, and 2020 have been addressed. A double-digit Trump win I could see, but I think Moreno’s ceiling is a 2-3 point win.
Yeah Harris got into the race in July more voters seem not sold on her than undecided on Trump. most of the focus groups are some form of "I can't vote for him but I don't know enough about her" again who knows maybe they're all missing Trump shy voters but based on what limited data we have, it seems like most of the undecideds have ruled out Trump but have not committed to Harris yet.
Between this theory of the undecides, the pollsters' expectation that they've solved the 2016 & 2020 D+ leans, and Harris' supposedly* bigger turnout machine, I think Harris' vote percentage is more likely to grow than Trump's.
But that could be countered by the sheer volume of lies spewing from Trump and spreading unskeptically throughout the RW media sphere. Plus, I put an asterisk above, in case Musk's $180 million turnout operation makes up for the RNC shortcomings.
Exit polls show that the late-deciding voters broke to Trump in 2016 and even more decisively to Trump in 2020. It won't be the same subset of voters but there's certainly precedent for Trump closing well. So who are they? Low-information populists, mostly white and not terribly political but who fall squarely into that disproportionately sized quarter of the electorate who is socially conservative and economically liberal insofar as they have any cogent ideology at all. They want all the jobs to stay in America but make sure to buy the cheapest, Chinese-made option whenever given a choice. They want to expand government to do a number of things on their behalf but bristle at the prospect of paying one more penny in taxes. They want to get record annual raises but still think goods and services should cost what they did when they were children. They have some problems with Trump, but "....oh that Trump economy was wonderful...kind of...I think....when was Trump President again?"
Undecided Harris voters? It's a tougher call for me. Maybe center-right women who don't agree with her on policy but don't like Trump and would love to see the first woman President. And yeah, maybe a small sliver of misogynistic male Democrats who've voted for a black man and (probably) a number of white women before but who draw their line at a black woman. I still think this is a microscopic number, but I often underestimate people's prejudices.
Ultimately I think Harris pulls would-be undecided voters from the smallest ideological quadrant of the electorate.....socially liberal and economically conservative. They have an oversized footprint in the chattering class and in corporate boardrooms so we overestimate their electoral muscle before elections. I don't like her chances of picking off more late deciders than Trump does.
I checked it out and you're right that the final round of 2022 Ohio Senate polling wasn't far off. I had remembered Ryan running closer to Vance but those polls must have been earlier in the cycle.
Can agree with your take on the Trump voter, but I doubt very many people fitting your description are still undecided, they’re all in for Trump and probably have been since Biden was the nominee.
But for Harris, what about Haley voters? First time / infrequent voters who are still deciding whether they’re going to make the effort to actually vote? Dead-end Biden supporters who are still upset he is not the nominee (I doubt there are many of them but possible). I can think of a lot of folks who will probably end up supporting Harris who may not be ready yet to admit it, but still don’t see those people for Trump.
I've always assumed the Haley vote would ultimately break toward Trump even if Harris got a decent percentage of them, but it's a deceiving metric because it's unclear how many of the Haley voters were just Democrats and left-tilting independents trolling Trump. As for your other groups, it's hard for me to reconcile statistically significant numbers of voters who still haven't seen enough to disqualify Trump but will see enough in the next 25 days.
It's always been a reasonable thesis that people would head to the polls and the gravity of the situation would become real to them, rendering them incapable of filling in that circle for Trump. But since that didn't happen in the past and his tactics have been normalized for nearly a decade, it's even tougher to imagine late-breaking voters having crises of conscience preventing them from voting for him this time.
I hadn't even considered dead-end Biden voters. You expressed skepticism of there being many, and I'd see your bet and raise it to... pretty much zero. Interesting thought though
That's a very coherent post, but do you really think there isn't a significant number of Haley voters and other principled Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are wrestling with the question of whether to vote for a Democrat for President for the first time?
I think there is. The unresolved question is how many of these people there are proportional to the ongoing collapse that seems to be happening among downscale voters. There could well be more than I think, but the dot diagram of economically conservative and socially liberal voter allocation leads me to believe there's fewer of these types of voters than conventional wisdom suggests. Before Trump, it strikes me that Mitt Romney was counting on the same demographic that Harris is now to pull him over the finish line but there simply weren't enough of them.
Fair. It’s possible I’d put it on the very end of the bell curve with about equal probability of a 7 point win for Brown. I think the current polls are probably pretty accurate and Brown ends up holding on by a point or two.
I might have to think about it a little more but initial thought is an Osborne win in NE is about as likely as a decisive (5 pt) Moreno win in OH. That’s probably a little bit too optimistic but not by much.
You could easily make the opposite argument - Trump has been around for 3 goes now - if people were going to support him they already would. The undecided voter could just be a Trump hater who is skeptical of Democrats/liberals/women/non-white people/Kamala Harris in particular who they still likely dont know much about.
There's no proof either way (the consistently shifting partisan divide in early voting has made judging anything off of it completely useless and polls arent proof).
To put it another way - Trump in two attempts hasnst topped 47% nationally, and theres no reason to expect him to this time.
One should expect this result - Trump will get between 47 and 50 percent in the swing states (PA, WI, MI, NV, AZ, NC, GA) and Harris will get between 48.5 and 50.5% in those same states. The actual outcome - who knows - each candidate could win all of those states or none or anything in between in almost any combination. Harris is more likely to win, but its by far not a given.
Moreover, consider the fact that Trump underperformed polls, often significantly, in just about every Republican primary this year. This alone indicates massive Republican discontent with their MAGA candidate.
It also indicates that something is seriously wrong with polling. Pollsters have adjusted for their perceived misses in 2016 and 2020 – but have, IMHO, failed to adjust to the post-Dobbs reality where it is Democrats who have overperformed in the Midterms Elections and almost every special election since Dobbs.
Case in point: Women account for approx. 55% of the Early Vote!
The campaign has also deviated sharply from the Clinton approach (and imo Biden) by going to less “safe” areas. Wisconsin rallies in places like Eau Claire, the Fox Valley and Ripon; Walz going to Macomb today. This is reminiscent of the Obama approach even if there’s no chance we’re looking at 2008-style results
Any info on the professionality of this pollster? My impression is that there is now a flood of bad polls from questionable pollsters that aim to influence the polling averages. We saw the same before the 2022 Midterm Elections creating the illusion of a Red Wave that never arrived.
"Weighting" the polls doesn’t solve the problem. If you "throw them in the average" they are still going to have an adverse effect on the average.
Neither pollster has a particularly good rating from either the Silver or new 538 ratings, but on the other hand, being willing to publish numbers that look a little noisy and weird does suggest the right approach. There will always be noise in polls.
They're definitely not herding. The Nevada number is the one that sticks out, but Nevada has always been really difficult to poll. But Kamala doing better in GA and AZ than WI and PA, even if it is within the MOE also sticks out as well.
Kudos for the focus on the Minnesota State Supreme Court! These are the sort of races that all too often fly beneath the radar – but, fortunately, never on Bolts and never on DK Elections / The Downballot.
Which is a hell of a lot closer than I think anyone on here would have predicted at the beginning of the cycle. So why is it (potentially) that close? Is it as simple as he’s running as an Independent instead of a Dem? I’m sure that factors in but there’s got to be something else as well. Fischer is pretty non-controversial as an incumbent isn’t she?
Just trying to figure out if there is anything to be learned here for future races in NE or KS.
I think that's definitely part of it. Osborn has a REALLY compelling story and that's certainly part of it. Deb Fischer is pretty uncontroversial and seems like a decent fit for the state, but she's also super milquetoast and she's been in elected office since 1990 and so it makes for a good contrast for Osborn.
I definitely see some similarities between this and the 2016 MO-SEN race. Its not a perfect comparison because Kander ran as a Democrat but also ran as a much more conventional candidate. But there's that macro comparison generationally but also in terms of their life experiences.
An big unknown factor is turnout in Nebraska’s "Blue Dot" (NE-02), given the considerable investment here, e.g. from the Hopium community. That leads me to believe we’ll see elevated Democratic turnout in NE-02, which may well lift Osborn considerably!
"With 25 days to go before EDay the strategic advantage of progressive coalition embracing early vote continues to play out in 2024. As of yesterday's [note: Wednesday’s] data update, nearly 34% of a projected high turnout environment is in absentee ballot requests (over 2m).
"Reminder, MI is a non-party registration state; any analysis is based upon modeling. Likely Democratic supporters outnumber likely Republicans by over 462k ballot requests; almost 40% of this advantage comes from voters with infrequent vote histories!
"Frequent likely Democratic voters outnumber likely Frequent Republicans by ~285k requests... 45% of all requests are from likely Democratic voters; only 22% from likely Republicans.
"55% of registered, likely Frequent Democratic voters have requested a ballot vs. just 30% for likely Frequent Republicans. Nearly 18% of registered, likely Democrats with sporadic or infrequent vote histories have requested v. just 8% of likely Republicans
"There are another ~650k voters who have requested an absentee ballot we know less about. They account for ~32% of requests; these types of voters broke heavily for Biden & Whitmer in early vote in 2020 & 2022. 45% of these voters w/ frequent vote histories have requested a ballot.
"Doing napkin math from requests, Dems could enter Election Day with more than 1.2-–1.4m votes banked. What this currently means is the progressive/democratic coalition still has a ton of work to do; yet, the lift for Republicans feels much larger to mobilize a set of infrequent voters.
"We'll also know more as additional returns come in and early, in-person voting comes online across the state. Just under 400k voters had cast a ballot based upon yesterday's data update."
[Note: Based on numbers per 9 October. "Yesterday" is referring to wednesday.]
McDonald’s Early Vote for the state shows that women account for a massive 55.7% of those who have voted in Michigan so far. As of this morning, a total of 543,650 votes have been cast in the state – second only to Virginia in the Early Vote.
Also encouraging is Tom Bonier’s "Modeled Party" breakdown, which indicates that Democrats have returned 8% of their Mail Ballots, Republicans only 4.2%.
I believe this is the first time the Democratic Party has ever run an attack ad against a third-party presidential candidate; I don't remember any Democratic ads attacking Ross Perot in the 1990s.
Operates on the assumption that people will vote for Harris if Stein were not on the ballot. Which, as I have maintained, is a generally faulty assumption.
Not that faulty. Is the number 100%? Of course not -- but it is more than 0. If 25% of Stein voters vote for Kamala instead that could be the difference in a close race.
Curious why you think that. Aren’t there a significant number of young idealists who support the Green Party? 96 was my first election and I honestly can’t remember at the moment if I voted for Clinton or Nader. I picture a lot of college kids who consider themselves to the left of the Democratic Party but are too stupid to realize they’re throwing their vote away.
Stein may be a little different since her supporters have come out and said she’s a spoiler for Trump, but I would suspect a good portion of her voters see “green” and think environmentalism and are just informed enough to know Dems are the party that is closest to what they believe in.
Doubtful. The Democratic Party has more ownership of the base of the left than the Green Party does. This isn't just because the years of Nader have been long over but Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in the 2016 Democratic Primaries.
Either Democrats win over the young idealists, or they end up being independents. Selectively, yes, there are centennials who are drawn to the GP, but I have yet to see they represent a sizeable percentage that this is the case.
I’m skeptical that Dems would spend so much effort to get the Greens off the ballot if the vast majority of them would vote for Trump as a second choice.
Mark Robertson, not Mark Robinson. I had the same impression when I first read it. More coffee helped. It is still an unfortunate (for Robertson) similarity in names.
I’ve mentioned it before but the most unfortunately named elected official in the country has to be NY Assemblyman Harvey Epstein. When your name conjures up not one, but two of the most infamous sex criminals of our time, that’s not great.
Yes, but Epstein is a very common Jewish name, and there are a lot of Harveys. It's almost like someone named John Smith turned out to be a serial killer.
Very disappointing if John Smith can’t weld a cracked woodstove, or if Roy Cooper can’t make a decent wood-barrel, or if Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07 can’t make enough good arrows to fill a quiver.
Disappointing to see Jon Tester down 6-8 points from Tim Sheehy (and Busse down double digits from Gianforte). My once-purple state is moving into single party GOP governance. Ugh.
It shouldn't be surprising though. Montana from 1968 onward has gone Democratic in a Presidential Election ONCE (in 1992) and split ticket voting in this country - especially at the federal level - is now the exception, rather than the rule.
It seems like Montana has gone from libertarian right to fill on MAGA. Gianforte was the first sign of that IMO. Dude assaulted a reporter and still got elected.
Goldwater had no problem sucking up to bigots in his 1964 run for President though. Lest we forget he made comments about how "Negroes run this country" as if that were a bad thing. The Republican Party didn't go from receiving 32 per cent of the African American vote in 1960 - and BTW that was AFTER JFK called Coretta Scott King and got Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver to release MLK Jr from prison - to SIX per cent in 1964 for nothing.
I'm well aware of his appeals to segregationists, though I didn't know he made that horrible lying remark about who ran the country. However, he was dead-set against any entanglement of religion and state, supported abortion rights and gay rights, took the constitution as he saw it seriously, and didn't hesitate to work with Democrats, notably including his friend Ted Kennedy, on legislation of mutual interest. He was not close to MAGA.
Hard to say whether it's the new transplants causing this or the locals. At the very least tho MT-01 remains very competitive and the colleges and universities continue to draw in more educated people and students. So at the very least Montana won't go full stupid like Idaho or the Dakotas. Also with fairer redistricting now, there will be at least more left leaning representation at the state level. Much work to be done in Montana and elsewhere.
Hard to say. It was definitely growing and potentially becoming a tech and urban hub pre-pandemic. But the pandemic slowed it down a lot and all the deaths in places like Idaho seemed to scare off many potential newcomers. Several of my cousins once even considered moving to Boise, but ultimately the problem with places like Boise are they lack infrastructure and development around them. My cousin from San Diego whose going to med school in Iowa complains that it's boring and there's nothing to do out there. You may attract some conservatives and retirees to these places but the majority of the wealthy and young want places they can not just save money with, but also have a family, have fun and enjoy.
I was skeptical we could maintain a pace of 30k per day in building the spread but here we are. At this pace (unlikely but I’ve already been wrong) we’d achieve the firewall by this time next week
I hate to be Johnny Raincloud, but should PA go for Orange Slob, there's going to be a LOT of talk about how "Kamala should have picked Shapiro." Don't expect that to go away anytime soon.
I mean maybe at the time the expectation was that presidential candidates would win their states regardless of the states partisanship, but clearly that is long dead.
But the poster is correct - should Harris lose PA by less than 1% the decision to pick Walz over Shapiro will loom enormous.
But everyone expected it to be close. Whatever you think of how we should be blowing Trump out - no one in three tries has figured out how to break his spell over his followers. Not in the GOP primary and not in the general.
If she loses there will be alot of - did Harris bowing to left wing pressure to not pick Shapiro (basically because he's Jewish and thus presumed to be more Israel friendly than Walz or Harris or any other mainstream Dem who has more or less the same opinion on Israel/Gaza) cost her the election.
VPs dont bring alot - but the half a percent or so that a popular governor would bring in his home state might be definitive in PA whereas its useless in Minnesota.
The only way to "break his spell" is for Trump to betray his followers *in ways they actually care about*.
They don't care about taxes, or corruption, or cuts to essential services. They care about punishing people for daring to be women, minorities, or gay.
Trump wholeheartedly believes that too, though, so he won't - he can't - betray them here. It's just not going to happen, because he is one of them.
I would argue that they DO care about those things. They just want THEIR issues to be addressed and not "those people"'s. The New Deal was popular precisely because it almost exclusively benefitted White southerners and (White) "ethnic" voters in the Northeast and Midwest. The only way Ye Olde New Deal Coalition would and will ever be recreated is if the national demographics just magically reverted back to what they were in the 1930s/1940s.
If polling is to be believed the issues with Michigan Arab voters is baked in regardless of the VP. That said, the voucher thing could and would have been a major distraction, and he himself seemed to agree with Harris that he wasn’t the best at being a Number Two
There’s also the sexual harassment scandal. Now I will freely admit it has been quickly forgotten since he has no longer been a candidate. So it’s possible there was a lot more smoke than fire. But if he had been picked that smoke would have been even thicker and had the potential to have a significant cost.
I know this sounds quite morbid, but the simplest way to break Trump's spell is for him to effectively no longer run for office and go away (whether via death or just disappearing from the media which he won't). No Republicans have been able to match let alone replicate Trump's levels of support no matter how MAGA they go, not DeSantis, not Noem, not nobody. Once he's gone, his impact likely evaporates too. Except the stain of his legacy will continue to poison conservative politics and Republicans for years.
I hope you are right but even if Trump loses, imo he will still have a certain percentage of Republican\MAGA politicians that still embrace him(obviously for their own selfish reasons)
Sure but in this hypothetical she's lost PA but would have won it with Shapiro. Assuming Michigan is close enough that picking Shapiro moves it to hte loss column that still means she has more paths to victory (for example - winning WI and AZ and NV, or WI and one of NC and GA - both of which would be losses if she won MI and lost PA).
The pace is going to start slowing down Wednesday or Thursday next week. Not a astronomically but probably by 50% to D+10-12k/day. The ballots returned so far are from voters who are so motivated that they signed up to automatically receive a ballot or application for a ballot. However, the slowdown will be temporary & will jump up again once in-person ballot drop off locations start opening. The 390k firewall probably won't be achieved next week but most likely the week after and my personal firewall of 450k by a week before Election Day with the ultimate firewall being between 485-510k.
That is true but some offices are a bigger hassle than others. Allegheny County, for example, would require a trip to Forbes Ave in Downtown Pittsburgh. The County is running drop-off & satellite voting locations starting Tuesday in & near the city then about ten live drop off locations open all over the county everyday from Oct 29-Nov 4.
I do so love the inescapable dry humor in this paragraph @davidnir and @jeffsinger:
"But Phillip Izon, the activist behind the repeal campaign, insists that his side will prevail in this 'David and Goliath story' thanks to what he argues is a massive advantage in enthusiasm. Izon isn't around to experience such energy firsthand, though: He spoke to Stremple from Hawaii, where, as she explains, he's 'taking a monthslong break.'"
Given the weird crosstabs we've seen for months, take this for whatever it's worth:
Pollster John Della Volpe to Semafor: “[...]There’s not a lot of daylight in the policy between Harris and Biden, but there’s just a tremendous amount of confidence in Vice President Harris that you can feel from this data. There’s a genuine enthusiasm for voting among Democrats now.”
Journalists ought to be looking for daylight between Trump and Vlad Putin. On such issues as Ukraine, NATO, the rule of law, corruption, human rights, freedom of the press (or lack of it), etc. Hint: very difficult to find any.
Senate candidates this cycle are largely steering clear of the debate stage, in some cases avoiding it altogether, marking a major change from past years as campaigns question the debates’ importance.
For years, it was common for top Senate races to feature multiple debates. That is far from the case this year, with Ohio serving as a prime example.[...]
“Debates below the presidential level have only rarely mattered, and they matter even less today,” said Joshua Karp, a Democratic operative. “In the past, debates have offered an opportunity to break through the noise and maybe have an outstanding moment on an important issue, but two can play at that game and the other side gets to talk too in every debate.”[...]
Another reason for the downturn is that some operatives increasingly see more value in spending the precious time that would be devoted to preparation or debates themselves on other ways to reach voters, including barnstorming their state or doing interviews.
The operatives acknowledge the potential impact of debates has taken a hit, given how voters consume media. Most voters will not watch any portion of a debate live and will learn about them via viral clips or back-and-forth exchanges that occur. [Unquote]
My thoughts: "Debates," as they are done now on U.S. television, are not real debates and a lot of bullshit and, in a phrase Gary Peters uses elsewhere in the article, "canned messages," are flung in so-called debates. But considering what happened in the presidential race this year, for anyone, let alone a Democratic operative, to claim that they don't matter is bizarre and suggests an ability to ignore that your nose is part of your face because you can't see it without looking in a mirror.
William, there were only a few exchanges, totaling perhaps a minute, in that YouTube clip. And moreover, that was not a one-on-one debate.
The Missouri Independent article says Kunce has agreed to debate in late October. I couldn’t find indication that Josh Hawley has agreed to the debate. In fact, despite the headline, the article states:
“No word yet from Josh Hawley.”
– Mark Maassen, Executive Director, Missouri Press Association
The two candidates running, both Democrats, are as follows:
John Bauters
Nikki Fortunato Bas
Both Bauters and Fortunato Bas have sizeable endorsements as Democrats although if there's one thing that's a liability for Fortunato Bas it's her vote to defund the Oakland City Police.
Swing states poll by
@Fabrizio_Lee
(R) & GBAO (D) for Wall Street Journal
2-WAY
Michigan - 🔵 Harris 49-47%
Arizona - 🔵 Harris 48-46%
Georgia - 🔵 Harris 48-46%
Wisconsin - 🟡 Tie 48-48%
North Carolina - 🟡 Tie 47-47%
Pennsylvania - 🔴 Trump 47-46%
Nevada - 🔴 Trump 49-43%
——
FULL FIELD
Arizona - 🔵 Harris 47-45%
Michigan - 🔵 Harris 47-45%
Georgia - 🔵 Harris 46-45%
Wisconsin - 🔵 Harris 46-45%
North Carolina - 🔴 Trump 46-45%
Pennsylvania - 🔴 Trump 46-45%
Nevada - 🔴 Trump 47-42%
This doesn’t make any sense. Harris doing best in Arizona and worst in Nevada.
When I've commented here, I tend to have had a pretty pessimistic take on things but this time around I have no clue what to make of polling and what’s going to happen this election. My gut tells me it’s a close race but Harris is favored. And ultimately we have to ignore the polls and focus on the most important aspects in my mind for winning, all of which Harris is doing:(1) appealing to the center; (2) generating enthusiasm primarily within the party; (3) and creating an impressive get-out-the-vote machine. I don’t know what more to ask of any Democratic candidate to defeat Trump and reading into these flip-flopping nonsensical numbers that keep pulling us one way and then back to the other is exhausting. It just doesn’t make sense to me that Sherrod Brown can lead in an Ohio poll with Harris holding herself to essentially Biden’s margin in Ohio…but then the same pollster shows her behind in the blue wall. It just doesn’t compute or reflect any type of consistency…unless there is some mad realignment going on where swing states are getting more red and the rest of the country is standing still??
Largely I think to a degree pollsters are probably herding to a tossup race in the swing states bc they don’t know how to model this race given the inconsistencies with 2016, 2020, 2018, and 2022. My best bet is the electorate will look like an average of all of those elections? *throws arms up in air*
Anyways keep the faith; it’s close but we can certainly win. End rant.
Isn’t NV considered a tough state to poll? That’s really the only state that appears to be an outlier compared to the rest of the polling we’ve seen so could just be a bad sample / bad modeling.
I concur with the general ambiguity of the race based on schizophrenic polling data, but will say the profile of the late-breaking vote seems Trump-friendly/challenger-friendly. Anybody who has yet to be persuaded in the Democrats' direction by the critical mass of abortion rights messaging seems unlikely to be motivated by it in the next 25 days. Either these voters aren't being correctly counted by pollster modeling or.....the Democrats are in deep shit.
As for Ohio, I'd be very skeptical of polling there showing Harris overperforming. I was gonna say that I can't remember the last time pollsters didn't badly undersample Republicans in the Buckeye State, but then I remembered when they last got it right....in 2012. Ever since then, Republicans have decisively outrun the polls in every statewide Ohio contest. I'd mentally prepare myself for a double-digit Trump win and a decisive Moreno win.
I promise I don’t just seek out your posts to disagree with them, but I have a completely different view of the late breaking voters. Who are the undecided Trump voters? Are there really that many people who haven’t made up their mind about him?
Undecided Harris voters though? Yeah, I can imagine a lot of them. People are still making up their mind about her, partly because of the ludicrous claim that she is avoiding the media and not providing any details of how she will govern, but also because of the way she became the candidate, and, sadly, because she is also a woman of color.
I think it is far more likely than not the undecided voters will break for Harris by a significant amount.
As far as OH polls, agree with you there with the exception of 2022 Senate. As the election approached Vance’s lead increased and the final aggregate (6.2) was spot on (Vance won by 6.1). So it’s possible that the errors of 2016, 2018, and 2020 have been addressed. A double-digit Trump win I could see, but I think Moreno’s ceiling is a 2-3 point win.
Yeah Harris got into the race in July more voters seem not sold on her than undecided on Trump. most of the focus groups are some form of "I can't vote for him but I don't know enough about her" again who knows maybe they're all missing Trump shy voters but based on what limited data we have, it seems like most of the undecideds have ruled out Trump but have not committed to Harris yet.
Between this theory of the undecides, the pollsters' expectation that they've solved the 2016 & 2020 D+ leans, and Harris' supposedly* bigger turnout machine, I think Harris' vote percentage is more likely to grow than Trump's.
But that could be countered by the sheer volume of lies spewing from Trump and spreading unskeptically throughout the RW media sphere. Plus, I put an asterisk above, in case Musk's $180 million turnout operation makes up for the RNC shortcomings.
No worries. Different takes are always welcome.
Exit polls show that the late-deciding voters broke to Trump in 2016 and even more decisively to Trump in 2020. It won't be the same subset of voters but there's certainly precedent for Trump closing well. So who are they? Low-information populists, mostly white and not terribly political but who fall squarely into that disproportionately sized quarter of the electorate who is socially conservative and economically liberal insofar as they have any cogent ideology at all. They want all the jobs to stay in America but make sure to buy the cheapest, Chinese-made option whenever given a choice. They want to expand government to do a number of things on their behalf but bristle at the prospect of paying one more penny in taxes. They want to get record annual raises but still think goods and services should cost what they did when they were children. They have some problems with Trump, but "....oh that Trump economy was wonderful...kind of...I think....when was Trump President again?"
Undecided Harris voters? It's a tougher call for me. Maybe center-right women who don't agree with her on policy but don't like Trump and would love to see the first woman President. And yeah, maybe a small sliver of misogynistic male Democrats who've voted for a black man and (probably) a number of white women before but who draw their line at a black woman. I still think this is a microscopic number, but I often underestimate people's prejudices.
Ultimately I think Harris pulls would-be undecided voters from the smallest ideological quadrant of the electorate.....socially liberal and economically conservative. They have an oversized footprint in the chattering class and in corporate boardrooms so we overestimate their electoral muscle before elections. I don't like her chances of picking off more late deciders than Trump does.
I checked it out and you're right that the final round of 2022 Ohio Senate polling wasn't far off. I had remembered Ryan running closer to Vance but those polls must have been earlier in the cycle.
Can agree with your take on the Trump voter, but I doubt very many people fitting your description are still undecided, they’re all in for Trump and probably have been since Biden was the nominee.
But for Harris, what about Haley voters? First time / infrequent voters who are still deciding whether they’re going to make the effort to actually vote? Dead-end Biden supporters who are still upset he is not the nominee (I doubt there are many of them but possible). I can think of a lot of folks who will probably end up supporting Harris who may not be ready yet to admit it, but still don’t see those people for Trump.
I know focus groups are unscientific but this seems to be what both Longwell and Luntz’s work suggests.
And that for most undecideds it’s a question of Harris or the couch, rather than Harris or Trump
I've always assumed the Haley vote would ultimately break toward Trump even if Harris got a decent percentage of them, but it's a deceiving metric because it's unclear how many of the Haley voters were just Democrats and left-tilting independents trolling Trump. As for your other groups, it's hard for me to reconcile statistically significant numbers of voters who still haven't seen enough to disqualify Trump but will see enough in the next 25 days.
It's always been a reasonable thesis that people would head to the polls and the gravity of the situation would become real to them, rendering them incapable of filling in that circle for Trump. But since that didn't happen in the past and his tactics have been normalized for nearly a decade, it's even tougher to imagine late-breaking voters having crises of conscience preventing them from voting for him this time.
I hadn't even considered dead-end Biden voters. You expressed skepticism of there being many, and I'd see your bet and raise it to... pretty much zero. Interesting thought though
Also, voters angry about support for Israel who realize Trump would hurt them and people they love here in the U.S.
That's a very coherent post, but do you really think there isn't a significant number of Haley voters and other principled Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who are wrestling with the question of whether to vote for a Democrat for President for the first time?
I think there is. The unresolved question is how many of these people there are proportional to the ongoing collapse that seems to be happening among downscale voters. There could well be more than I think, but the dot diagram of economically conservative and socially liberal voter allocation leads me to believe there's fewer of these types of voters than conventional wisdom suggests. Before Trump, it strikes me that Mitt Romney was counting on the same demographic that Harris is now to pull him over the finish line but there simply weren't enough of them.
I have to say, a ~5-point win by Moreno would be shocking but not that surprising. I have to believe that's possible.
Fair. It’s possible I’d put it on the very end of the bell curve with about equal probability of a 7 point win for Brown. I think the current polls are probably pretty accurate and Brown ends up holding on by a point or two.
I might have to think about it a little more but initial thought is an Osborne win in NE is about as likely as a decisive (5 pt) Moreno win in OH. That’s probably a little bit too optimistic but not by much.
I can see it sure, but imo if Brown were to lose it would be by a razor thin margin(5 seems kinda high to me)
You could easily make the opposite argument - Trump has been around for 3 goes now - if people were going to support him they already would. The undecided voter could just be a Trump hater who is skeptical of Democrats/liberals/women/non-white people/Kamala Harris in particular who they still likely dont know much about.
There's no proof either way (the consistently shifting partisan divide in early voting has made judging anything off of it completely useless and polls arent proof).
To put it another way - Trump in two attempts hasnst topped 47% nationally, and theres no reason to expect him to this time.
One should expect this result - Trump will get between 47 and 50 percent in the swing states (PA, WI, MI, NV, AZ, NC, GA) and Harris will get between 48.5 and 50.5% in those same states. The actual outcome - who knows - each candidate could win all of those states or none or anything in between in almost any combination. Harris is more likely to win, but its by far not a given.
Moreover, consider the fact that Trump underperformed polls, often significantly, in just about every Republican primary this year. This alone indicates massive Republican discontent with their MAGA candidate.
It also indicates that something is seriously wrong with polling. Pollsters have adjusted for their perceived misses in 2016 and 2020 – but have, IMHO, failed to adjust to the post-Dobbs reality where it is Democrats who have overperformed in the Midterms Elections and almost every special election since Dobbs.
Case in point: Women account for approx. 55% of the Early Vote!
You should prepare yourself for Brown winning.
The campaign has also deviated sharply from the Clinton approach (and imo Biden) by going to less “safe” areas. Wisconsin rallies in places like Eau Claire, the Fox Valley and Ripon; Walz going to Macomb today. This is reminiscent of the Obama approach even if there’s no chance we’re looking at 2008-style results
I don't think Harris ny 6-7 is off the table.
8-9 may be pushing it, though. I think she wins by more than Biden in terms of %.
Any info on the professionality of this pollster? My impression is that there is now a flood of bad polls from questionable pollsters that aim to influence the polling averages. We saw the same before the 2022 Midterm Elections creating the illusion of a Red Wave that never arrived.
"Weighting" the polls doesn’t solve the problem. If you "throw them in the average" they are still going to have an adverse effect on the average.
Fabrizio is Trump's pollster, but here he's working jointly with the Democratic GBAO group for the WSJ.
Neither pollster has a particularly good rating from either the Silver or new 538 ratings, but on the other hand, being willing to publish numbers that look a little noisy and weird does suggest the right approach. There will always be noise in polls.
They're definitely not herding. The Nevada number is the one that sticks out, but Nevada has always been really difficult to poll. But Kamala doing better in GA and AZ than WI and PA, even if it is within the MOE also sticks out as well.
Kudos for the focus on the Minnesota State Supreme Court! These are the sort of races that all too often fly beneath the radar – but, fortunately, never on Bolts and never on DK Elections / The Downballot.
Minnesota judges simply never lose reelection. As a Minnesotan, I see no reason around that this year changes that.
We noted in the piece that no sitting justice has lost since the 1940s.
Thank you! And glad you got your login situation resolved!
Two more Nebraska Senate internal polls. Fischer says she’s up by 6. Osborne says he’s up by 3.
The Osborn one has Trump up 20, he won it in 2020 by 19, so they're definitely not getting an overly Harris-friendly sample.
It is 46-43 which fits where I think this race will probably end up which is Fischer and 52-53 and Osborn at 47-48.
Which is a hell of a lot closer than I think anyone on here would have predicted at the beginning of the cycle. So why is it (potentially) that close? Is it as simple as he’s running as an Independent instead of a Dem? I’m sure that factors in but there’s got to be something else as well. Fischer is pretty non-controversial as an incumbent isn’t she?
Just trying to figure out if there is anything to be learned here for future races in NE or KS.
I think that's definitely part of it. Osborn has a REALLY compelling story and that's certainly part of it. Deb Fischer is pretty uncontroversial and seems like a decent fit for the state, but she's also super milquetoast and she's been in elected office since 1990 and so it makes for a good contrast for Osborn.
I definitely see some similarities between this and the 2016 MO-SEN race. Its not a perfect comparison because Kander ran as a Democrat but also ran as a much more conventional candidate. But there's that macro comparison generationally but also in terms of their life experiences.
Let's remember that kander smoked Blunt(keeping him under 50%); if that happens here, Osborn wins
An big unknown factor is turnout in Nebraska’s "Blue Dot" (NE-02), given the considerable investment here, e.g. from the Hopium community. That leads me to believe we’ll see elevated Democratic turnout in NE-02, which may well lift Osborn considerably!
And Trump pulled out of NE-2
For Fischer, that's kinda weak actually
EARLY VOTE MICHIGAN – analysis by Patrick Schuh
"With 25 days to go before EDay the strategic advantage of progressive coalition embracing early vote continues to play out in 2024. As of yesterday's [note: Wednesday’s] data update, nearly 34% of a projected high turnout environment is in absentee ballot requests (over 2m).
"Reminder, MI is a non-party registration state; any analysis is based upon modeling. Likely Democratic supporters outnumber likely Republicans by over 462k ballot requests; almost 40% of this advantage comes from voters with infrequent vote histories!
"Frequent likely Democratic voters outnumber likely Frequent Republicans by ~285k requests... 45% of all requests are from likely Democratic voters; only 22% from likely Republicans.
"55% of registered, likely Frequent Democratic voters have requested a ballot vs. just 30% for likely Frequent Republicans. Nearly 18% of registered, likely Democrats with sporadic or infrequent vote histories have requested v. just 8% of likely Republicans
"There are another ~650k voters who have requested an absentee ballot we know less about. They account for ~32% of requests; these types of voters broke heavily for Biden & Whitmer in early vote in 2020 & 2022. 45% of these voters w/ frequent vote histories have requested a ballot.
"Doing napkin math from requests, Dems could enter Election Day with more than 1.2-–1.4m votes banked. What this currently means is the progressive/democratic coalition still has a ton of work to do; yet, the lift for Republicans feels much larger to mobilize a set of infrequent voters.
"We'll also know more as additional returns come in and early, in-person voting comes online across the state. Just under 400k voters had cast a ballot based upon yesterday's data update."
[Note: Based on numbers per 9 October. "Yesterday" is referring to wednesday.]
https://nitter.poast.org/PatrickSchuh
https://nitter.poast.org/PatrickSchuh/status/1844407841152696469#m
(Nitter is a way of accessing Tweets on X / Xitter.)
McDonald’s Early Vote for the state shows that women account for a massive 55.7% of those who have voted in Michigan so far. As of this morning, a total of 543,650 votes have been cast in the state – second only to Virginia in the Early Vote.
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/2024-general-election-early-vote-michigan/
Also encouraging is Tom Bonier’s "Modeled Party" breakdown, which indicates that Democrats have returned 8% of their Mail Ballots, Republicans only 4.2%.
https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2024?calc_type=turnoutPercent&count_prefix=current_eav_voted_count_&demo_filters=%5B%7B%22key%22%3A%22modeledParty%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22All%22%7D%5D&state=MI&view_type=state
Is it mean to wish for a beautiful snowstorm in MI, especially the (rural) UP, on Nov 4-5?
Nope, imo it's a great idea
Harris campaign/DNC joint TV ad attacking Jill Stein: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DA_BsGJJpZw/?igsh=MXdkbThiYzZ2MXNsOQ== The disclaimer says the ad was paid for by the DNC and authorized by the Harris campaign.
I believe this is the first time the Democratic Party has ever run an attack ad against a third-party presidential candidate; I don't remember any Democratic ads attacking Ross Perot in the 1990s.
Operates on the assumption that people will vote for Harris if Stein were not on the ballot. Which, as I have maintained, is a generally faulty assumption.
They probably wont - but it seems much more likely that they will vote Trump. So probably its a net benefit, even if its a small one.
Not that faulty. Is the number 100%? Of course not -- but it is more than 0. If 25% of Stein voters vote for Kamala instead that could be the difference in a close race.
I’d put it at 10%. Maybe.
Bull. Look at Dem performance in races on the same ballot with and without a lefty 3rd party alternative.
Let’s see it.
Feel free.
Curious why you think that. Aren’t there a significant number of young idealists who support the Green Party? 96 was my first election and I honestly can’t remember at the moment if I voted for Clinton or Nader. I picture a lot of college kids who consider themselves to the left of the Democratic Party but are too stupid to realize they’re throwing their vote away.
Stein may be a little different since her supporters have come out and said she’s a spoiler for Trump, but I would suspect a good portion of her voters see “green” and think environmentalism and are just informed enough to know Dems are the party that is closest to what they believe in.
What “supporters” have said that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1fygc1d/jill_stein_and_former_seattle_councilmember/#lightbox Kshama Sawant apparently stated that Stein is only in the race to prevent Harris from winning.
Isolated statement.
Do you think it’s not true?
Doubtful. The Democratic Party has more ownership of the base of the left than the Green Party does. This isn't just because the years of Nader have been long over but Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign in the 2016 Democratic Primaries.
Either Democrats win over the young idealists, or they end up being independents. Selectively, yes, there are centennials who are drawn to the GP, but I have yet to see they represent a sizeable percentage that this is the case.
I’m skeptical that Dems would spend so much effort to get the Greens off the ballot if the vast majority of them would vote for Trump as a second choice.
Yes, that is simply untrue. There are only a handful who would do that.
It also shows that Harris has plenty of dough; and this ad has zero downside
Wait a second...does the GOP nominee in NV-1 share the same first and last name as the GOP nominee in the North Carolina gubernatorial race?
Mark Roberson I think his name is? He was the nominee in 2022 where Dina Titus beat him 52% - 46%?!
💙🇺🇲
Mark Robertson, not Mark Robinson. I had the same impression when I first read it. More coffee helped. It is still an unfortunate (for Robertson) similarity in names.
I’ve mentioned it before but the most unfortunately named elected official in the country has to be NY Assemblyman Harvey Epstein. When your name conjures up not one, but two of the most infamous sex criminals of our time, that’s not great.
Yes, but Epstein is a very common Jewish name, and there are a lot of Harveys. It's almost like someone named John Smith turned out to be a serial killer.
Very disappointing if John Smith can’t weld a cracked woodstove, or if Roy Cooper can’t make a decent wood-barrel, or if Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07 can’t make enough good arrows to fill a quiver.
/s
OTOH, maybe Robinson can move from NC to NV next year, so good for him
Disappointing to see Jon Tester down 6-8 points from Tim Sheehy (and Busse down double digits from Gianforte). My once-purple state is moving into single party GOP governance. Ugh.
It shouldn't be surprising though. Montana from 1968 onward has gone Democratic in a Presidential Election ONCE (in 1992) and split ticket voting in this country - especially at the federal level - is now the exception, rather than the rule.
It seems like Montana has gone from libertarian right to fill on MAGA. Gianforte was the first sign of that IMO. Dude assaulted a reporter and still got elected.
Probably wouldn't have won if 70% of voters hadn't already cast their ballots before the reporter assault. Live by the gimmick, die by the gimmick.
"libertarian right" was always "MAGA."
I disagree. Goldwater was libertarian but far from MAGA.
Goldwater wasn’t exactly a libertarian.
He was literally the face of libertarianism.
He was probably closer to the libertarian ideal than anyone else who served in the Senate in the 20th century.
Goldwater had no problem sucking up to bigots in his 1964 run for President though. Lest we forget he made comments about how "Negroes run this country" as if that were a bad thing. The Republican Party didn't go from receiving 32 per cent of the African American vote in 1960 - and BTW that was AFTER JFK called Coretta Scott King and got Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver to release MLK Jr from prison - to SIX per cent in 1964 for nothing.
I'm well aware of his appeals to segregationists, though I didn't know he made that horrible lying remark about who ran the country. However, he was dead-set against any entanglement of religion and state, supported abortion rights and gay rights, took the constitution as he saw it seriously, and didn't hesitate to work with Democrats, notably including his friend Ted Kennedy, on legislation of mutual interest. He was not close to MAGA.
Imo Goldwater would have been appalled by MAGA ideology
Hard to say whether it's the new transplants causing this or the locals. At the very least tho MT-01 remains very competitive and the colleges and universities continue to draw in more educated people and students. So at the very least Montana won't go full stupid like Idaho or the Dakotas. Also with fairer redistricting now, there will be at least more left leaning representation at the state level. Much work to be done in Montana and elsewhere.
When you talk about Idaho, how is Boise doing politically? Isn't it still a growing, fairly liberal city?
Hard to say. It was definitely growing and potentially becoming a tech and urban hub pre-pandemic. But the pandemic slowed it down a lot and all the deaths in places like Idaho seemed to scare off many potential newcomers. Several of my cousins once even considered moving to Boise, but ultimately the problem with places like Boise are they lack infrastructure and development around them. My cousin from San Diego whose going to med school in Iowa complains that it's boring and there's nothing to do out there. You may attract some conservatives and retirees to these places but the majority of the wealthy and young want places they can not just save money with, but also have a family, have fun and enjoy.
If you are in Montana; are you helping Tester?
Yes, of course. Phone banking, canvassing, LTE, signs & sending $$.
Great job👍
Joshua Smithley has the updated Pennsylvania Early Vote:
Pennsylvania - 2024 General Election - Day 5
📥 416,652 votes cast
🔵 DEM: 285,072 - 29% returned
🔴 GOP: 95,666 - 21% returned
🟡 IND: 35,914 - 18.9% returned
VBM Splits: 🔵 68.4% / 🔴 23% / 🟡 8.6%
🔷 DEM firewall: +189,406
📈 Return Edge: D+7.9
https://nitter.poast.org/blockedfreq/status/1844744545059139924#m
I was skeptical we could maintain a pace of 30k per day in building the spread but here we are. At this pace (unlikely but I’ve already been wrong) we’d achieve the firewall by this time next week
I hate to be Johnny Raincloud, but should PA go for Orange Slob, there's going to be a LOT of talk about how "Kamala should have picked Shapiro." Don't expect that to go away anytime soon.
And Al Gore should have won Tennessee.
You're certainly right about the post mortem in that case, but it'll just be pundits talking to talk. Too many variables.
I mean maybe at the time the expectation was that presidential candidates would win their states regardless of the states partisanship, but clearly that is long dead.
But the poster is correct - should Harris lose PA by less than 1% the decision to pick Walz over Shapiro will loom enormous.
It should never be this close and picking one person over another should not be the main issue. There will be worse reasons than a vp pick.
But everyone expected it to be close. Whatever you think of how we should be blowing Trump out - no one in three tries has figured out how to break his spell over his followers. Not in the GOP primary and not in the general.
If she loses there will be alot of - did Harris bowing to left wing pressure to not pick Shapiro (basically because he's Jewish and thus presumed to be more Israel friendly than Walz or Harris or any other mainstream Dem who has more or less the same opinion on Israel/Gaza) cost her the election.
VPs dont bring alot - but the half a percent or so that a popular governor would bring in his home state might be definitive in PA whereas its useless in Minnesota.
The only way to "break his spell" is for Trump to betray his followers *in ways they actually care about*.
They don't care about taxes, or corruption, or cuts to essential services. They care about punishing people for daring to be women, minorities, or gay.
Trump wholeheartedly believes that too, though, so he won't - he can't - betray them here. It's just not going to happen, because he is one of them.
I would argue that they DO care about those things. They just want THEIR issues to be addressed and not "those people"'s. The New Deal was popular precisely because it almost exclusively benefitted White southerners and (White) "ethnic" voters in the Northeast and Midwest. The only way Ye Olde New Deal Coalition would and will ever be recreated is if the national demographics just magically reverted back to what they were in the 1930s/1940s.
It’s not presumed; it’s a fact. Not to mention that he supported school vouchers. He would have cost her thousands of votes in Michigan alone.
If polling is to be believed the issues with Michigan Arab voters is baked in regardless of the VP. That said, the voucher thing could and would have been a major distraction, and he himself seemed to agree with Harris that he wasn’t the best at being a Number Two
There’s also the sexual harassment scandal. Now I will freely admit it has been quickly forgotten since he has no longer been a candidate. So it’s possible there was a lot more smoke than fire. But if he had been picked that smoke would have been even thicker and had the potential to have a significant cost.
Exactly. You see how they've blown very minor things in Walz's bio into BIG DEALS...imagine what they'd do with actual chicanery
I know this sounds quite morbid, but the simplest way to break Trump's spell is for him to effectively no longer run for office and go away (whether via death or just disappearing from the media which he won't). No Republicans have been able to match let alone replicate Trump's levels of support no matter how MAGA they go, not DeSantis, not Noem, not nobody. Once he's gone, his impact likely evaporates too. Except the stain of his legacy will continue to poison conservative politics and Republicans for years.
I hope you are right but even if Trump loses, imo he will still have a certain percentage of Republican\MAGA politicians that still embrace him(obviously for their own selfish reasons)
We have to realize that there are 7 close states and must work to win them all
And then you’d have to explain why she lost Michigan.
Michigan is smaller than Pennsylvania and you would expect his impact there to be smaller than his impact in PA.
If she doesn’t win both of them, she’s unlikely to win.
Sure but in this hypothetical she's lost PA but would have won it with Shapiro. Assuming Michigan is close enough that picking Shapiro moves it to hte loss column that still means she has more paths to victory (for example - winning WI and AZ and NV, or WI and one of NC and GA - both of which would be losses if she won MI and lost PA).
The pace is going to start slowing down Wednesday or Thursday next week. Not a astronomically but probably by 50% to D+10-12k/day. The ballots returned so far are from voters who are so motivated that they signed up to automatically receive a ballot or application for a ballot. However, the slowdown will be temporary & will jump up again once in-person ballot drop off locations start opening. The 390k firewall probably won't be achieved next week but most likely the week after and my personal firewall of 450k by a week before Election Day with the ultimate firewall being between 485-510k.
Thank you for this context! I agree it seems likely that the slowdown in growth will come, it more or less has to
You can already drop off mail ballots at county election offices. I dropped mine off last week.
That is true but some offices are a bigger hassle than others. Allegheny County, for example, would require a trip to Forbes Ave in Downtown Pittsburgh. The County is running drop-off & satellite voting locations starting Tuesday in & near the city then about ten live drop off locations open all over the county everyday from Oct 29-Nov 4.
That's like IL - Chicago vs 'burbs and other places. I could vote now, but it'd be a huge hassle. In a couple weeks it'll be simple.
Return edge is the 2-party differential of the ratio of returned to requested, right?
I do so love the inescapable dry humor in this paragraph @davidnir and @jeffsinger:
"But Phillip Izon, the activist behind the repeal campaign, insists that his side will prevail in this 'David and Goliath story' thanks to what he argues is a massive advantage in enthusiasm. Izon isn't around to experience such energy firsthand, though: He spoke to Stremple from Hawaii, where, as she explains, he's 'taking a monthslong break.'"
I agree with Barbara Lee(on recalls)
So in other words, Barbara Lee speaks for me ..??
I don't agree with (what she is saying about the recall power), but I wish she were going to be my Senator anyway.
Recalls are one of those issues that you just decide for yourself
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/11/trump-agrees-to-womens-issues-event-on-fox-news/
I could see this being a train wreck, except that I doubt they'll let anyone ask difficult or hostile questions.
Softball questions all I'm betting
He could still muff his answers to them.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/11/trump-to-brand-deportation-push-operation-aurora/
"Trump is rallying in Aurora — a city he has demonized as overrun by migrant crime."
Is Aurora even particularly dangerous?
I don't know but I love that he's campaigning in a non competitive state; I hear he's doing some event at MSG also; I'm hoping that continues
Yup, the more campaigning Trump does in places such California and New York, the better.
The Republican Mayor of Aurora has basically said that Trump is full of BS
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/11/young-voters-have-moved-solidly-to-kamala-harris/
Given the weird crosstabs we've seen for months, take this for whatever it's worth:
Pollster John Della Volpe to Semafor: “[...]There’s not a lot of daylight in the policy between Harris and Biden, but there’s just a tremendous amount of confidence in Vice President Harris that you can feel from this data. There’s a genuine enthusiasm for voting among Democrats now.”
Journalists ought to be looking for daylight between Trump and Vlad Putin. On such issues as Ukraine, NATO, the rule of law, corruption, human rights, freedom of the press (or lack of it), etc. Hint: very difficult to find any.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4927392-senate-candidates-debates/
[Quote:]
Senate candidates this cycle are largely steering clear of the debate stage, in some cases avoiding it altogether, marking a major change from past years as campaigns question the debates’ importance.
For years, it was common for top Senate races to feature multiple debates. That is far from the case this year, with Ohio serving as a prime example.[...]
“Debates below the presidential level have only rarely mattered, and they matter even less today,” said Joshua Karp, a Democratic operative. “In the past, debates have offered an opportunity to break through the noise and maybe have an outstanding moment on an important issue, but two can play at that game and the other side gets to talk too in every debate.”[...]
Another reason for the downturn is that some operatives increasingly see more value in spending the precious time that would be devoted to preparation or debates themselves on other ways to reach voters, including barnstorming their state or doing interviews.
The operatives acknowledge the potential impact of debates has taken a hit, given how voters consume media. Most voters will not watch any portion of a debate live and will learn about them via viral clips or back-and-forth exchanges that occur. [Unquote]
My thoughts: "Debates," as they are done now on U.S. television, are not real debates and a lot of bullshit and, in a phrase Gary Peters uses elsewhere in the article, "canned messages," are flung in so-called debates. But considering what happened in the presidential race this year, for anyone, let alone a Democratic operative, to claim that they don't matter is bizarre and suggests an ability to ignore that your nose is part of your face because you can't see it without looking in a mirror.
Here’s one debate I sincerely wish took place: Lucas Kunce vs Josh Hawley.
they did debate back in September and will again in late October
https://youtu.be/fzoiHEZPa2s?si=yP6LPRe9HSmomNT3
https://missouriindependent.com/briefs/josh-hawley-lucas-kunce-agree-to-missouri-senate-debate-just-days-before-election/
Gallego just debated Kari Lake while Hobbs did not in their governor’s race 2 years ago
Cortez-Masto did not debate Laxalt and still won while Rosen is scheduled to debate Brown in Nevada.
Was this debate televised? If I recall Hawley would not debate on tv??(am I remembering wrong??)
William, there were only a few exchanges, totaling perhaps a minute, in that YouTube clip. And moreover, that was not a one-on-one debate.
The Missouri Independent article says Kunce has agreed to debate in late October. I couldn’t find indication that Josh Hawley has agreed to the debate. In fact, despite the headline, the article states:
“No word yet from Josh Hawley.”
– Mark Maassen, Executive Director, Missouri Press Association
I hope anyone I annoyed or dissed this year will forgive me, and I wish to anyone who's observing Yom Kippur an easy fast.
that would include me in a different lifetime at dke...but that has been long forgotten...and I wish you an easy fast as well!
Thank you. I don't know what your DKE moniker was.
Alameda County, CA Supervisor Race
The two candidates running, both Democrats, are as follows:
John Bauters
Nikki Fortunato Bas
Both Bauters and Fortunato Bas have sizeable endorsements as Democrats although if there's one thing that's a liability for Fortunato Bas it's her vote to defund the Oakland City Police.