The New York Times/Siena poll has always been very Trump friendly, but that changed almost overnight after Joe Biden dropped out. Here is today's poll compared to the previous one:
Among likely voters, Kamala Harris made up five points in the national poll instantly. She's still behind, and swing states are still a problem, but that's still pretty spectacular progress.
At this point, I suspect the race hinges mostly on the 12-15% of people who say they're either unsure or planning to vote for RFK Jr—especially among Democrats. If, as I suspect, they mostly come home, Harris will end up with 50-52% of the popular vote.
Is that enough? I don't know.
Well, it likely depends on Arab-Americans in Michigan. Harris has been more sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians than most "mainstream" Democrats while still agreeing with Netanyahu's minimal ask yesterday. (Yes, Israel has the right to insist on a government in Gaza that is not dedicated to Israel's elimination.)
There are a lot of peri-menopausal women in Gen X who have gone along with their generation's envy of / disgust with us Boomers and our piggish ways who might be willing to listen to Momala and her practical ways of living seriously while still having FUN!
suspect 50-52 is not enough in a two person race with trump to assure enough swing state support. may need a bit higher national percentage. Our curse is our dependence on voters who are basically christmas and easter people.
52% is close to enough. Especially if you throw some third-party vote, leaving Trump below 48%.
name the last candidate who got 50 percent or more of the popular vote and lost? even in a whacky system like ours, that doesn't happen.
i was going to say algore, but then I remembered nader.
Am currently of the opinion that Harris will be seen by voters as Generic Democrat (uncontroversial, expectations modest, stay the course) - which should be enough to defeat Trump. A centrist Dem, if she can distance herself a bit from the progressive wing - which I think she will.
????????????. To be honest, the fact that Trump is this close to becoming POTUS again is pathetic and a bit frightening. I'm glad to see Harris gaining ground and I hope it continues.
And beyond that it’s also kind of astonishing. Do I REALLY live in a country where anything close to half the voters think Trump is worthy of being president? I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here, but WTAF? If someone so manifestly unfit is even close to being electable I’m really not sure the US is fit for self governance.
>Do I REALLY live in a country where anything close to half the voters think Trump is worthy of being president?
Yup. That is the hard lesson. We are terrible.
Should totally give us sympathy for Germans in the 30s. At least they had WW I and hyperinflation to blame. We in the US are just terrible.
Yes, if anything good comes out of Trump’s initial election it is the perspective on history it gives us. We’ve long wondered how the German people of the 30s could possibly allow that horrible time to happen. After seeing how America reacted in the Trump years it’s now all too conceivable. It’s clear the sort of people who turned over their neighbors to the Nazis or aided the fugitive slave catchers of the 1850s are still living among us. The real shock is just how many of them there are.
Most people are idiots, it's one of the great nuggets of knowledge that the Founding Fathers had that we've chosen to ignore over the last couple of centuries.
People are ultimately selfish. They protect their own living standards. 1930s Germany was suffering from high unemployment and the Great Depression. Not unlike present day Russia under Putin, the desire to feel good about themselves led the German people to support leaders who promised to make them great again. Part of reinforcing that promise, was a movement to cast out all "others", which included religions, sexual orientations, non-Germans, etc...
Frankly, history may not repeat but it certainly rhymes and the same factors at work in the US and Russia were driving the German willingness to support Nazism in the 30s. They include a people who are economically depressed, distrustful of other religions, and protective of their own national identity.
I liked her press conference today on the I/P war...it was smart and nuanced and....true....the issues are complex. She did herself good in this speech. Traveller
She’s excellent in unscripted moments.
How could it be wrong when a whole FOUR DAYS have passed?
I'm starting to think Harris is going to win, because young voters are not going to stand for another Hillary outcome. Plus, the hard lefties know in their hearts that 2016 was their doing (Remember "Bernie or Bust!? Remember "No TPP!"?) and they are NOT going to do that again.
[ middle finger graphic ]
If Clinton had run a better campaign she would have won the Electoral College.
Only middle finger graphic should be pointed at gs.
There's a lot of you "my way or the highway" people. I'll vote for anyone I want, and I haven't missed an election in 50 years. I've been watching Ds track right ever since Clinton started triangulating - they laugh and say "Who else ya gonna vote for? Dole? Ha ha ha ha ha! Thbbbb!" Then the DNC uses money that I gave them to torpedo Sanders out of the race instead of letting the primary season play itself out.
Well, we have ranked-choice voting here and I don't have to put someone I don't like in the first slot.
If Comey hadn't re-opened the fake email server issue, she would have won the electoral college.
FIFY
"...won the electoral college."
You mean, "won the election"?
“ Plus, the hard lefties know in their hearts that 2016 was their doing “
Sure. If had nothing to do with the party trying to jam a horrible very unpopular candidate down everyone’s throats.
So unpopular that she won the popular vote by nearly 3 million.
This appears to be a new and unfamiliar use of the phrase "unpopular candidate."
+1
Exactly.
Hard left here. I would have voted for Bernie only in 2016 and thus didn’t vote. Won’t be voting for a cop in 2024 so again won’t be voting.
Good luck to all you clowns.
Your childish name-calling brings back memories of the rude (sexist?) Bernie bros blocking access to my library in 2016. Not all of the negatives originated in St. Petersburg or North Macedonia.
+1
I guess I just don’t understand how these polls work. I certainly get it that Trump might win the electoral vote. But Biden won California by 5 million votes in 2020. Does anyone think Harris will get much less? How does Trump make up that much ground in the popular vote?
Trump won 46.8% of the popular vote in 2020. So a “make up” that generates a 1.2 point increase in the popular vote hardly seems impossible (at least where this race seemed headed last week). With respect to how Republicans make up the advantage Democrats enjoy in states like California, obviously Republicans enjoy their *own* advantage in red states—none of which is as large as California, of course—but in the aggregate account for millions and millions of votes. And Republicans these days rarely have to *fully* make up the advantage enjoyed by Democrats in the popular vote given the monstrosity that is the Electoral College.
Since it’s unlikely to change much in California, where would it change to garner all those votes? Biden got 7 million votes more than Trump, most of which are pretty unlikely to change. I’m not arguing the danger with regard to the electoral college. A change of just a few 10’s of thousands could change everything. I still think Trump has a very good chance of winning, maybe he’s even the likely winner at this point. I just doubt he will win a majority of the votes. I would think more like his victory against Clinton. I distrust polls that say he is ahead in the raw vote.
Since it’s unlikely to change much in California...
I see what you're saying.
Before the ticket was reset, the polling indicated Trump was indeed ahead in the popular vote (sure, sure, the polls could have been wrong). I'm not sure why you conclude California was "unlikely to change much." AIUI Biden's margins among a lot of cohorts relative to 2020 had eroded (voters really hate higher prices!), and this was most evident among less affluent voters. So, I'd expect the pre-Harris trajectory pointed to a Biden loss that, in addition to losing multiple swing states to Trump, would also have seen reduced popular vote margins in the states that he did win, California included. No margin in any one state need change by massive amounts for the change in the aggregate to amount to several million votes. Whether that ultimately would have allowed Trump to win the popular vote is anybody's guess, and would have relied on multiple factors, including the third party share. My own hunch is that the polls would have tightened, and gotten very close (as usual) and that Biden would have eked out a popular vote win—but would have lost in the Electoral College.
We'll never know either way, of course, now that Joe Biden is no longer running. And hopefully this race has been well and truly upended by recent events. At minimum I'd expect the prospect of a Trump-Vance popular vote win is a lot less likely now, and the odds of a GOP Electoral College victory have been reduced (hopefully by enough to send Donnie packing).
The polls are crap. Listen to this podcast with Allan Lichtman.
https://guykawasaki.com/allan-lichtman-the-science-of-political-prediction/
they're either unsure or planning to vote for RFK Jr
Anyone who votes or gives money to Kennedy let me know who they are so I can sell them swampland in Louisiana.
His campaign has grift from the beginning a the fact he was in Milwaukee last week proves he's looking for a way out after cashing in. Only a fool would give him anything, votes or money.
It was also an anti-Biden campaign from the beginning and without Biden, no point to it.
I'm glad that the Kennedy coverage has started dying down; there's no point in covering a candidate who (a) has no particular message, and (b) has no chance of winning since they aren't on the ballot in enough states to win.
Kennedy was always a joke, and giving him national coverage as if he was a legit candidate was journalistic malpractice.
Enthusiasm is infectious. Give it some time.
People will contrast her constant smiling and laughter against Trump's constant frown and the absence of any laughter. Think back to the last 20 years -- have you ever seen clips of Trump laughing? A common trait of psychopaths!
Whereas Trump did not get any post-convention bounce -- he has hit his ceiling after all -- Kamala Harris got a big enough bounce to change the narrative of the race (or maybe it was the other way around and the narrative drove the bounce?)
Embracing Beyonce's Freedom as her campaign's official theme song, this is just getting started.
not true ... in some of those photos with jeffrey epstein he appears to be laughing
It's too late to issue a correction so....
* -- except in the presence of child molesters and fellow rapists
"Whereas Trump did not get any post-convention bounce -- he has hit his ceiling after all -- Kamala Harris got a big enough bounce to change the narrative of the race (or maybe it was the other way around and the narrative drove the bounce?)"
Think timing. Vance was announced as his VP prior to the convention. I think the lack of bounce is due partially to JD Vance NOT being liked by many republicans. Trump is all about optics and this leads me to something else.
If Harris DOES get a convention bounce I suspect trump the dump will get rid of Vance as his VP pick and go with someone else. Trumps ability to "play the room" has diminished as his pick of Vance has hurt, rather than helped him
Remember what Trump has said in the past. He's not the eye of the storm - he IS the storm
Now that Trump has lost his post convention momentum expect his to pull the unexpected - especially if Harris gets a big bump from the DEM convention. He needs to get back into the forefront of the news cycle and fast
Sigh....polls in July have practically ZERO predictive value. Everybody take a pill and wake up in September.
Yeah. We know. I like to bring them out cause several people here were using even more unreliable polls to make the case to reject Harris. … polls, even this early, are useful for spotting trends. Harris may not be ahead for real but she is surging.
Well I am on the #AnswerTheCall2024 White Women for Harris call, and there were over 100,000 attendees at one point. It was crashing zoom, so they had to utilize YouTube as well. They have raised $1.8 million in about two hours. This is giving me hope.
+1
????
Niiiiiiiiice!
The new narrative is impressive.
When Biden trailed by a few points, was tied or led by a few points, it was bad news that pointed towards disaster. Now, when Harris trails by a few points, its exciting progress, a good sign!
You don’t see a diff in the numbers and trend? “Few points” is doing a lot of lifting there . Is there no diff between Trump up 6-7 points in a few polls in early July and Harris ahead in at least 2-3 polls now?
The right frame of reference is to compare the current state of the polls and associated narrative with any point before the 'dump Biden' narrative hit full steam in early-mid July.
The poll numbers are basically the same, even this NYTimes poll can (should?) be interpreted as roughly no change given the margin of error, but the narrative is very, very different.
Its good to recognize how different narratives impact how we interpret the same basic information. Often when the narrative changes, we assume or pretend that some facts have changed to warrant the shift in tone.....but thats often not the case.