Pundits and political observers are struggling to come up with new ways to say, “it’s tied.” No one who isn’t auditioning for a role in a future White House will tell you anything different. But with just two weeks before the vote, we can safely compare the two campaigns’ strategic advantages and the tactics they are employing to secure them. Squint for long enough at that side-by-side comparison, and you’re more likely to come away from it with the impression that Donald Trump has the upper hand.
First, there are the polls. High-quality national and state-level surveys are all telling the same story: The race is so close that any change in one direction or the other can be sufficiently explained by sampling or methodological distinctions as much as actual movement among voters. That said, there has been a small but consistent shift toward Trump in the aggregate. If the former president has momentum, it’s coming at precisely the right time for his campaign.
Trump supporters are quick to remind their detractors that the polling has consistently underestimated the scale of the Trump vote that materializes on Election Day. Although not all pollsters have adjusted their procedures to capture more of those elusive Trump voters, many have. But is it safe to assume that most pollsters’ techniques are now fine-tuned enough to capture all the voters who will cast a ballot for Trump? That’s the assumption you’d have to make to predict that the polling is understating Kamala Harris’s support.
Nor is there much evidence that the polling averages favor Trump because a flood of low-quality surveys has gamed the system. New York Times elections analyst Nate Cohn and independent data guru Nate Silver found little evidence to support the notion that Republican-aligned pollsters are influencing the various polling aggregators for the simple reason that, if those polls are withdrawn, the averages don’t shift all that much.
The Trump campaign’s boosters are quick to add that the former president’s prospects are buttressed by poll after poll showing him overperforming among demographics that traditionally align more with Democrats. A USA Today/Suffolk survey released on Monday tells this familiar tale: Trump is winning Hispanic voters by eleven points and commands the support of 17 percent of black voters — a measurable advantage despite the large (nine-point) margin of error associated with breaking out small subgroups from one sample. Regardless of whether that survey is an outlier or not, it’s hardly the only poll that suggests these voters are moving in Trump’s direction.
Moreover, Trump has the issues on his side. Throughout this unconventional campaign, Trump never ceded his edge over Democrats on the most salient issues shaping voters’ perceptions. Beyond his strength on issues like the border and the economy, his campaign is bolstered by tailwinds elsewhere. Voters are not happy with the direction in which the economy is headed. Consumer sentiment is soft. Most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. More poll respondents believe government should do “less” than “more.” The Trump camp can point to these data and conclude that anti-incumbent sentiment will lead the undecided voters who are still out there on Election Day to break his way.
Finally, it is hard to avoid noticing which of these two candidates seem to be enjoying themselves more in the closing days of this race. The Trump campaign is sending its candidate into Democratic turf like Detroit, Mich., and there’s no better indicator of where the race stands than where the campaigns are committing their principal asset. Trump himself may be making a dubious closing argument, but his campaign is adroitly crafting a compelling denouement for the GOP’s standard-bearer.
The argument for the Harris campaign is objectively, albeit marginally, less persuasive.
The best argument in the vice president’s favor is strictly technical: Her campaign can count on an efficient, well-run, battle-tested get-out-the-vote operation. Yes, Harris herself is spending a conspicuous amount of time in the “blue wall” states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But, contrary to the grumbling of a few jilted Philadelphia-based machine politicians, few dispute the claim that the Democratic GOTV operation in Pennsylvania is superior to Trump’s. The Harris camp can boast of “millions” of voter contacts in Wisconsin, and an operation that wields granular data to zoom in on persuadable but unmotivated voters, get them registered, and put a ballot in their hands. The Harris operation in Michigan is more opaque, and the vice president’s multiple appearances in the state alongside the organized-labor leaders she’ll need to drive up turnout suggests softness in her campaign’s appeal among the state’s voters. But the Harris campaign is relying on the “educated and upscale voters” in Michigan’s suburbs to carry it across the threshold.
That’s not a terrible bet. The Harris campaign has a formidable advantage insofar as the voters on whom it is relying are more reliable voters than those upon whom Trump is relying. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in early October found Harris overturning an advantage among suburban voters who favored Trump when Joe Biden was still in the race. In addition, the Harris campaign is doing whatever it can to juice turnout among women. That demographic already supports Harris by prohibitive margins, and women turn out to vote in presidential elections on average by about three points more than their male counterparts.
If the Trump camp is counting on gains among traditionally Democratic voting blocs, the Harris camp seeks to generate its own demographic upset among white voters. Again, the problems associated with nailing down small sub-samples notwithstanding, Trump’s support appears to have slipped among all white voters — not just those with a college degree. The Trump campaign’s own literature betrays its fear that it is losing support among white voters by potentially unsustainable margins. And in the Midwest, where Trump’s minority-driven gains are weakest, he may not be gaining enough support among all other voters to make up the difference.
Lastly, it’s not just Trump who is on offense. While Team Harris is devoting a lot of attention to the so-called “blue wall” states, she’s also doing events in Georgia and North Carolina. Maybe that’s an effort to stanch the bleeding among African-American voters, or maybe it’s a gambit which, if successful, will all but cut off Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes (assuming the “wall” holds). She’s also making a play for disaffected Republicans and GOP-leaning independents by surrounding herself with figures like Liz Cheney. It’s safe to assume that the Harris campaign wouldn’t take such a risk if its internal data didn’t suggest these voters were gettable and could make a consequential difference in a close election.
Maybe the Harris campaign isn’t as mawkishly joyful as it once was, but Harris’s allies can point to her durable advantage over Trump when voters are asked which candidate they view favorably. If the election is as tight as it looks in public polling, anything that contributes to an enthusiasm edge for one candidate over the other — including simply liking one candidate more than the other — could make a difference.
If you were to plot all these advantages and disadvantages on a graph, you’d likely come away with the perception that Donald Trump is in a more comfortable position than his opponent. Given the environmental factors boosting the Republican ticket this cycle, that may be natural. It was Trump’s race to lose when Joe Biden was in the race, and Trump is still fully capable of fumbling the ball in the red zone. But it appears the stars may be aligning for his campaign at the best possible moment.
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