Here's another poll of swing states, this time from Bloomberg/Morning Consult:
This is even more optimistic than this morning's Emerson College poll, though note that the margin of error is about 4% in each state.
NOTE: We're close enough to the election that from now on I'll be reporting the results of likely voters whenever possible.
The orange menace will do anything to win. This time he has people in key positions to pull another January 6th style coup successfully. He will not go quietly for sure. Probably not peacefully either. I've never seen so many of my fellow Americans become so enamored with a douchebag like Donald Trump.
He's not president anymore so this will be a lot harder. Kamala will certainly certify her own election. And Biden will ensure that the Capitol building is secure. There will be shenanigans though I'm sure.
👍👍👍👍👍
It's good that Democrats hold the federal executive branch. On the other hand, a lot will depend on the new House: let's hope in the wake of a Harris victory Democrats take back this chamber. The critical variable, though, is in the states. Georgia's Republican Party (to cite probably the most egregious example) has all but announced they'll use their control of the elections board to ensure a legitimate Harris victory isn't certified in time for the Electoral College vote.
There will be much worse violence that J6, and it will come earlier in the process. They will try to derail certification of results in key states by cheating, threats and actual criminal acts (like attacking people and destroying ballots).
Previously Trump didn't push his supporters to do this until the end of 2020. This time he already does.
I fear that too, but the good news is that the places that "destroy[ing] ballots" makes the most sense is in cities where they are strongly Democratic. The local cops will probably keep the rioters under control.
SFAIC they can destroy all the ballots they want in Bumfuck County down in Southwest Georgia.
Not a good take. They will use the destroyed ballots in Bumfuck (plus threats and violence) to try to stop certification of the votes in all of Georgia.
Specifically about Georgia, not obvious that Kemp and Raffensperger will hold the line this time.
Nate Silver keeps saying the sky is falling in re Pennsylvania because Shapiro wasn't picked for veep.
And he insists that Pennsylvania is the tipping point state.
It's not the certification at the Capitol I'm worried about. It's the states delaying or sending out fake electors. I think that's where they'll try to cheat.
I'm worried about that as well, but I'm also worried about certification at the Capital. How much horse crap can Speaker Mike throw at the fan?
The newly elected Congress takes over on Jan 3. With any luck, Johnson will not be Speaker on Jan 6, the day the president is certified.
Pennsylvania most likely is the tipping point state.
You are probably right, but if Harris wins Georgia and one of the two western swing states, she wins even without Pennsylvania.
It's mathematically possible for Harris to win without Pennsylvania, sure, it's just politically highly unlikely, though, because if Trump takes Penn, he's overwhelmingly likely to win Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (all states where the polling has been less favorable to Democrats than PA).
I don’t pay any attention to polls except the ones on Election Day, but please, if there is a God…
Is Kevin happy now that Kamala did an interview, in which CNN asked totally pointless questions? Or did that not meet his requirements for a “serious” interview?
I think all Democrats should be happy. There were no "gotcha" gaffes suffered by the ticket, and, while nothing can stop MAGA from bitching about whatever it feels like, the "she's afraid to interview" attack has been effectively neutered as a potentially damaging meme. I recommend doing several more over the next few weeks, to further bury the issue, ideally with left-of-center liberal wonks who will focus on substantive policy (which is a snooze fest for most voters, which is good!).
Rope-a-dope.
The conventional wisdom is that polling averages are better representations of samples of public opinion because they combine more data from more sources, tending to lower statistical error.
But there is a situation where this doesn't work, and actually produces bigger error. In the case of rapidly changing data trends, relying on averages produces a systematic error because it includes old and obsolete data.
An analogy is like trying to measure the temperature of a pot of water that's being heated on a stove. Lots of different thermometers from different observers measure the temperature. But obviously, averaging old measurements with new does not improve accuracy, but gives a systematic error, i.e. always too low a temperature relative to the current true temperature.
This is possibly why the big polling average sites are showing Trump leading in states where the most recent data show Harris leading.
I think this is one of the reasons the post-hobbs polling has missed on referendums on abortion -- if you rebalance your poll based on who has voted in the past, you'll miss a change in voting demographics. Specifically, if women better understand the ramifications of refusing to treat miscarriages in ERs, they're going to vote in greater proportions than in previous elections.
Yes and no; you can't heat a pot of water on the stove to X degrees without first heating it to X-1 degrees (and X-2 degrees before that). Voting preferences aren't like that--there's no reason that Kamala being up by 5 has to be preceded by Kamala being up by 4, etc.
Moreover, there isn't necessarily a specific telos associated with voting preferences the way there is with heating water on a stove (i.e., a hot pot of water); there's just a cutoff (election) date. Since aggregate voting preferences can shift from day to day, multiday averaging could well be more "accurate" anyway.
Finally, given early voting, there is a point at which historical voting preferences become very important, since an increasingly large amount of the final tally is consumed by people who have already voted.
Interesting, Real Clear Politics which has had its pinkie on the scale for Trump is currently acknowledging that Harris is (slightly) ahead in the battleground states!
...
https://jabberwocking.com/harris-is-now-three-points-ahead
I caught just a few minutes of the CNN interview tonight, but there was something completely wrong about it. It was like they'd walked into an atmosphere of just massive hostility they were not prepared for.
CNN is trying hard to be more Nazi than the Nazis under a shallow pretense of objectivity.
Interesting here that Harris's numbers in Wisconsin are (finally) lining up with Tammy Baldwin's (who's been that 7-9 pts ahead all along).
Um, this morning's poll showed Trump up 1% in Wisconsin. This one has a ten point swing to Harris. Are there two Wisconsins? Who knew?
What's Trump doing in Wisconsin?
Harris only needs to win that Blue Wall -- Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania -- to win the race with exactly 270 electoral college votes. His campaign is betting that the Harris strategy is the Blue Wall, so if he can flip one of these states, they think Trump will win the race.
But that also means that Trump needs to win the rest of the swing states. Right now, that's an exceedingly difficult challenge.
If Harris loses Wisconsin, she only needs to replace it with a win in Arizona, North Carolina, or Georgia. If she loses either Michigan or Pennsylvania, she needs to win two of the four non-Blue Wall states (Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina).
Two states where Harris is within 5 points of Trump: Florida and Texas. These two states have been teasing purple but haven't yet turned. Worth a hard push with extra cash from aligned SuperPACs? If they can push the polls within the MoE, it'll force Trump to spend dwindling cash in defending states they assumed were safe.
As somebody who lives in Texas, I can tell you there is sadly no chance of Texas going blue this election. And Texas is a colossal place--spending meaningful money here means diverting money from like 5 other states where the votes are closer.
I'd be thrilled to be proved wrong. But Trump beat Biden here by almost 6 points. Maybe Harris can close that gap, but I doubt it.
Citing KD's favorite YouGov, before Biden quit the race, Trump was +9. Before the DNC, Trump was +5. Harris gained 5 points over Biden while Trump gained one point but appeared to hit his ceiling at 50%.
It's maybe not a coincidence that Ken Paxton made a move against LULAC that might be civil rights violations if not plainly illegal searches on a specious or blatantly false predicate.
A few more points and they'll be panicking.
The problem with "likely voters" is that it's backwards looking, and doesn't include the effect of the 2022 Dobbs decision. My guess is that Dobbs has made more people who care about reproductive rights, and the right for women to receive medical treatment for miscarriage into likely voters.
We'll see in November if women are OK with being treated solely as baby making machines.
How is it backwards looking? "Are you planning to vote in the 2024 presidential election?"
My heart would sing with joy if Harris wins North Carolina. 😉