Why We Don't Know Who Will Win
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I recommend you watch the entire focus group I conducted Monday night with eight undecided voters from the various battleground states:
It is of course unusual to get to sample the opinions, qualitatively or quantitatively, of the actual citizens who will directly help pick the next president based on how they make up their minds in the final days of the campaign.
Polls are always of ALL registered or likely voters, and public-facing focus groups of the undecideds are very rare and usually include the voters from just one state.
So this is a rare opportunity.
For me, it was the most vivid experience I have had in trying to understand the dynamics of the Harris vs. Trump contest, some really textured explanations of how the undecideds think about both candidates and why it is such a difficult choice for them.
Ask yourself throughout, which of the two hopefuls has the better chance to address the concerns these voters are expressing about them?
Or, perhaps more accurately, whose flaws are more likely to be accepted as less unacceptable in the next president when the time comes to cast the ballot?
Part of what makes the contest so unsettled right now is that the facts on the ground – and how voters perceive them – are themselves quite unsettled.
The Dow is flying on the eve of an interest rate cut?
Should be helping Harris.
Politico reports this:
Migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border ticked up slightly last month but appear on track to reach the lowest annual total since the end of the Trump administration, Customs and Border Protection said Monday.
The Border Patrol recorded about 58,000 apprehensions between the ports of entry in August, an increase of several thousand from the month prior but less than half the total from a year earlier, CBP said in a monthly news release that has become highly anticipated in an election year in which migration has become a central issue.
Should be helping Harris.
But Israel (with Secretary Blinken in the region and trying again), Ukraine (with concerns about stalemate or, worse, escalation in the air), and the general sense of wrong track are all working against Harris now/still.
And into this morass of confusion comes the apparent assassination attempt and how it might impact the race.
Less than a news cycle after the news broke, Donald Trump basically accused Kamala Harris & Blue America of inspiring the alleged assailant – and John Podhoretz (no big Trump defender or supporter) validated a portion of that point of view, suggesting that the Dominant Media and the Democrats have been led by Trump Derangement Syndrome to have feelings about the prospect of the Republican nominee’s being killed by a gunman that are, at best, twisted.
Monday’s back and forth between Team Red (including Trump himself and his campaign apparatus) and Team Blue was a wrenching sight to behold, as the name calling and finger pointing reached unshackled heights, national unity in the face of near-tragedy be darned.
These two excerpts give you a strong sense of the Blue point of view, that Trump should shut his mouth and sheath his golf clubs:
After Trump criticized Biden and Harris online and on Fox News, some of his critics noted that he has long spread hateful rhetoric against his political opponents. In a post shared on X, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), who was part of a now-defunct House select committee tasked with investigating the deadly Jan. 6 riot, pointed to Trump’s political rhetoric as a source of tension.
“Look violent rhetoric is wrong, and has no place,” Kinzinger wrote. “But MAGA pretending they didn’t light this fire is gaslighting to the 100th power. Since Trump showed up our politics has gone to crap.”
“Literally just accused a group of people of eating our pets,” Kinzinger added, a reference to Trump’s baseless claims that Haitian migrants are eating their neighbors’ cats in Springfield, Ohio.
Opponents are pointing out that it is Trump and the MAGA Republicans, not the Democrats, who are stoking violence. Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel noted that in July 2023 Trump posted an address for former president Barack Obama on his social media network, prompting a stalker, and that in four different jurisdictions, Trump’s lawyers have argued that the First Amendment protects Trump’s right to attack the judges, prosecutors, and witnesses in the cases against him, as well as their families. Other’s recalled MAGA’s “jokes” about the brutal attack on then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul.
Trump supporter Elon Musk, who owns the social media platform X, wrote, “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” a post he later called a “joke” after observers asked about the national security implications of a defense contractor who has $15 billion in federal contracts suggesting the assassination of the president and vice president. Musk’s post had more than 39 million impressions before he deleted it.
After his own incendiary post, Musk wrote: “The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop.” Conservative lawyer George Conway retorted: “What utter nonsense.”
Indeed, the MAGA attempt to tie the shootings near Trump to the Democrats is pretty clearly an attempt to stop Democrats from talking about the issues of the campaign by claiming that any public discussion of Trump’s own unpopular policies and hateful words will gin up violence against him.
So both candidates go back on the trail to battleground states today, and it will be interesting to see if there is any restraint whatsoever in the rhetoric (Pro tip: bet on “no.”).
My premise remains: Trump can only win if he effectively paints Harris as out of the mainstream – and that he can only do that with both more discipline than he has shown and the at-least-partial cooperation of the Dominant Media, neither of which has appeared to have happened.
And yet the clear sense of the focus group participants, as you will see, is that Trump is mainstream in his views and Harris is both out of the mainstream and sneakily, troublingly evasive about it.
So one thesis, which is touted bigly at Mar-a-Lago, is that Harris is so far out the of the mainstream that Trump is in fact making the case effectively, a case so easy to make that he can do it in his own undisciplined manner and without the media’s help, and it will still happen.
One very reputable private poll of a battleground state I saw on Monday offers a confirming data point for this notion.
On the other hand, Nate Cohn of the New York Times surveys the public data and finds a post-debate bump for Harris, which you can see, for instance, in the Iowa poll and some other public data.
On the other, other hand, this RealClearPolitics chart:
In the end, if you want to have the best possible chance of knowing who will win (along with following the early vote, GOTV, and other mechanics in the seven states and NE-2), consider the most important facts on the ground.
No, not the Dominant Media tut tutting about who hangs out with Trump (as in Ruth Marcus on Laura Loomer or the New York Times on Corey Lewandowski).
Think more about the aspirations and fears of those voters in the battlegrounds, dealing, for instance, with still-troubled economies and worries such as inflation and housing, as in Nevada as chronicled by the New York Times.
Why can’t I tell you this morning who is going to win?
If bacon prices determined the victor, Trump would be headed back to the Oval Office for sure.
But, again, watch the focus group.
Strong feelings about Trump’s personality put a ceiling over his support (as does abortion rights).
But strong feelings about Harris’ suitability for the job put a ceiling over hers as well.
Those who have spent since January 6, 2021, thinking that Trump was doomed because of the lowness of his ceiling need to do some rethinking: the eventual, actual height of Harris’ ceiling might actually decides who wins this thing.
If you watch the focus group, you will, I think, come away as I did – having no actual clue who is going to get 270 electoral votes, but, also, with a better sense of why we don’t know and the weaknesses both sides need to address.
To be continued….
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ESSENTIAL VIEWING
* Donald Trump, on “Saturday Night Live,” hawking chicken wings.