Part Two: Why Kamala Harris could win the 2024 presidential election

Yesterday, we discussed why Donald Trump could win the 2024 presidential election. Today, we complete the analysis and tell Republicans what they don’t want to hear: There are compelling reasons to think Kamala Harris could be the 47th president.

When Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Trump had comfortable leads in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina, and smaller but consistent leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Harris has the momentum; she’s climbed from the Biden position of a near-certain defeat to the current neck-and-neck status. Her momentum may well have stalled, at least in those swing states. But Biden hadn’t led a poll in North Carolina since 2023, leading to my frequent contention for the first seven months that the Tarheel State wasn’t really a swing state, and Georgia didn’t look all that competitive, either. Harris has led six surveys in North Carolina since the switch, and four in Georgia with another four ties, effectively putting both states back in play.

And while we don’t have a national popular vote, Harris’s lead in the national polls is roughly the largest it has been since the race began, in both the RealClearPolitics average and the FiveThirtyEight average. One calculation estimates that to reach 270 electoral votes, a Democrat like Harris needs to win the popular vote by at least 2.1 percentage points. As of this morning, she’s ahead by an even two points in the RCP average, three in the 538 average.

You may not agree with the messages or strategy coming from the Harris campaign, but it is, so far, a textbook example of a disciplined, focused campaign. The campaign rarely must clean up gaffes, in large part because Harris and Tim Walz do so few interviews or press conferences.

The Harris team has a plan, and she and her campaign staff are executing it. Harris appears to have sufficiently distanced herself from President Biden with her slogans, “It’s time to turn the page,” and “a new generation of leadership for our country” and her relative youth, compared to Biden and Trump. (In what is likely to be the lone presidential debate, Trump didn’t focus on Harris’s having been vice president for the past three-and-a-half years until his closing statement.)

To the extent Harris focuses on issues, she focuses on abortion. Many of her ads are soft-focus, but positive: “I intend to be a president for all Americans.”

There are several key factors that point to a Harris victory. For starters, the Trump campaign decided to rely on groups like Turning Point Action, America First Works, and the Elon Musk-backed America PAC for much of its get-out-the-vote operation, and you don’t have to look far to find Republicans who think that plan isn’t working.

Semafor:

Multiple party leaders, former RNC members, and lawmakers have privately trashed what they see as a lack of a clear operation, and expressed concerns about how it could affect not just the fate of the presidential race, but down ballot races as well. . . .

A third Republican strategist in a swing state said they’ve seen “no ground activity at all” and complained more typical volunteer work had been crowded out by “election integrity” efforts.

“They’re really only focused on recruiting folks to volunteer to be poll watchers,” the third Republican strategist said. “I mean, they do a lot of that s***. But what’s the point of watching the vote if you haven’t turned out the vote?”

NBC News:

More than a half-dozen Republicans, many with experience in field operations and GOTV efforts, said there is fear the Trump team doesn’t have enough action going on on the ground, particularly as Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign dwarfs their operation in terms of battleground field offices and staff and as Democrats can count on unions and other issue groups to boost their on-the-ground efforts. They also expressed worries that the outside groups, which have been tasked with so much of the voter engagement portfolio, aren’t doing as much as initially hoped for.

“There have been some of us who always thought it was a bad idea, but wanted to trust the decision and not make waves,” said a veteran Republican who has expressed concerns to Trump’s team about outsourcing so much of the operation. “I think we are seeing some of those concerns become reality to an extent.”

“I think Trump still can and will win, but there are needless complications we are seeing,” the person added.

Just this morning, the New York Times reports that America PAC replacing the canvassing firm it hired in Arizona and Nevada out of exasperation with the firm’s progress:

[America PAC] which was founded by the billionaire Elon Musk, has cut ties with the canvassing firm it hired to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors and turn out Republican voters. The super PAC’s leadership decided in recent days to replace that firm, the September Group, according to three people with knowledge of the move. . . .

The PAC felt the group was not reaching enough voters quickly enough, the people said. The PAC has increased the number of doors it hopes to hit, according to the third person, reflecting the group’s belief that the switch will allow it to scale up and help Mr. Trump in the long run.

Also note that, per Reuters:

The Trump campaign and its allies are putting an unprecedented focus on targeting these infrequent voters in the seven battleground states that could decide the Nov. 5 election against Democrat Kamala Harris, according to interviews with three dozen Trump campaign staffers, grassroots groups allied to the campaign, Republican county party chairs, donors and a previously unreported donor call.

This focus, which has not been previously reported in detail, is a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy that could bring in a wave of new voters but could also fall short if their targets ultimately stay home, one Republican official and one academic expert warned.

Back in 2016, at the Democratic National Convention, Senator Chuck Schumer said of the forthcoming matchup between Trump and Hillary Clinton, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” In 2016, that looked like a terrible trade. But in 2018, 2020, and 2022, it worked out significantly better for Democrats. When the parties traded chunks of the electorate in the Trump era, the GOP picked up voters who are less likely to vote, and Democrats picked up voters who are more likely to vote.

Harris’s arrival as the Democratic nominee has spurred a surge of new voter registrations, and while obviously not all those voters are Harris voters, the majority likely are. The electorate that existed the day before Biden withdrew from the race is slightly different than the one that will exist by Election Day. (Voter-registration deadlines vary by state, but most are in the month of October.) It will have at least slightly more young Latinos in some of the key swing states.

The organization Voto Latino, which works to promote voting among Hispanics, has increased voter registration by 200 percent since Harris took over from Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.

As of today, Voto Latino claims to have registered 112,000 new voters. The majority of those registered, 56%, are young people between the ages of 18 and 29, and three-fifths are between 18 and 39 years old. The states where there has been the most registration activity are Texas, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. In addition to young people, women have been the main drivers of the registration movement.

I don’t know whether Taylor Swift ought to be considered a serious factor in the presidential election, but a five-figure jump in voter registration in one day is nothing to sneeze at.

On Tuesday morning, the singer posted a short message on Instagram encouraging her 272 million followers to register to vote. Afterward, the website she directed her fans to — the nonpartisan nonprofit Vote.org — recorded more than 35,000 registrations, according to the organization.

“I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my U.S. shows recently. I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories. “Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!” Her post included a link to register at Vote.org.

Note that 36 states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. As of April 2024, 21 states ask for a photo ID, and 15 states also accept non-photo IDs. The other 14 states have non-photo ID requirements, such as confirmation of legal address, or verification of birth date, legal name, etc.

Then there’s the Democratic cash advantage. A presidential race rarely comes down to spending; Hillary Clinton raised and spent about twice as much as Donald Trump did back in 2016.

But with that said, you’d rather have more money than less, because it gives you a lot more options. If you want to run television ads in an expensive market in a long-shot state, or hire more door-knockers, or distribute more yard signs, you can do it. And Harris is on pace to have way more money to spend in the closing weeks: “As of September 6, the Harris campaign reported that it and affiliated groups raised $361 million with $404 million in cash on hand — far surpassing the $130 million Trump and his groups reported raising last month, with $295 million in cash on hand.”

The gender gap is now a regular feature of American politics, and there’s no doubt Democrats have their own weaknesses because of their inability to appeal to men. But if you wanted to win elections and could only appeal to one gender, you would have better odds if you had an advantage among women. Women turn out to vote in greater numbers than men do — in 2020, 63 percent of women voters turned out, and 59.5 percent of men turned out. The personas of Trump and Harris are likely to exacerbate the gender gap — and on balance, unless there is a sudden change in male and female turnout patterns, that will work to Democrats’ advantage.

Finally, there’s no getting around the fact that while the Republican nominee has a high floor of support, he also has a hard ceiling. To paraphrase what I wrote at the end of July, “On a really good day for Trump, about 47 or 48 percent of poll respondents will say they feel favorably toward Trump. On the bad days, it’s in the mid 30s. Most days it’s in the mid 40s. Just about every day, well over 50 percent of poll respondents say they feel unfavorably toward him.”

That makes it really tough to win the election.

Some readers complained that writing two articles is wishy-washy. But the race is close, and the data and indicators are contradictory. If I told you that everything we know points to one candidate winning, I’d be lying to you.

Right now, I could easily see an Electoral College map where Trump wins all or three of the four Sun Belt swing states (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina) and Pennsylvania and wins with 281 or 287 electoral votes. I could also see Harris holding all three of the “blue wall” states and having either 270 or 276 electoral votes, depending on how Nevada shakes out.

Here is another little tidbit to think about. If Harris doesn’t win Nebraska’s House district, but Trump does win Maine’s second house district, and Trump wins all the Sun Belt swing states, the race could finish with a 269-269 tie, which would mean the new House selected the president and the new Senate selected the vice president. Which means it is at least theoretically conceivable (although not likely) we could have President Trump serving alongside Vice President Walz, or President Harris serving alongside Vice President Vance.