Tomorrow is election day — finally! Remember when people thought Joe Biden shouldn’t step down because Kamala Harris wouldn’t have enough time to mount a solid campaign? That was 17 years ago! Since then, she’s raised over $1 billion in under three months. I was at a friend’s BBQ back in nineteen-dickety-dick when Donald Trump was shot in the ear, and all I could think was, “It’s Joever.” Remember saying, “It’s Joever,” way back during the Industrial Revolution? Honestly, how tired are we?
What else is there to say about the election? Most pollsters turned in their final results this weekend, though I’m not sure many even matter. I read about “herding” over the weekend from the Nates — Cohn and Silver — which reminded me of this concept I think we learn every Presidential election but forget until the next one: Polls often skew their results based on other polls, as no one wants to be an outlier. This is why polls start looking almost identical. Just when I’d wrapped my head around polling recall, I learned that firms shift results to avoid standing out. No wonder people don’t trust polls.
The New York Times/Siena team, however, doesn’t engage in herding, which is why their polls sometimes show outlier results. Several weeks back, they had Trump up by 13 points in Florida—a much larger lead than other polls suggested. But, considering every other blue-state Republican in America moved to Florida after COVID, it makes sense.
For what it’s worth, here are the New York Times’ final swing-state polls for Harris:
Nevada: +2
North Carolina: +2
Wisconsin: +2
Georgia: +1
Pennsylvania: Even
Michigan: -1
Arizona: -4
The good news is, if she wins Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada, as those polls suggest, she can afford to lose Pennsylvania and Michigan. But it all seems to come down to Pennsylvania. I’ve been to Philly a few times. Great city. I’d put my faith in the future of America in it! But I’ve also been to Pennsyltucky before — it was one of the most racist, homophobic places I’ve ever been. And I grew up in Arkansas.
The encouraging news is that Ann Selzer dropped a poll in Iowa over the weekend showing Harris up by three. In Iowa. That poll also doesn’t herd. While I doubt Harris will actually win Iowa, if she does, she could lose Nevada in the above scenario and still pull off a win.
The bigger takeaway from that poll however, is that if Harris is close in Iowa, there could be a lot of older white women in the Rust Belt voting for her who haven’t been accounted for. Another poll from Kansas, which also avoids herding, shows Trump up by only +5, hinting at a similar trend: Women who have had enough with this bullshit heading to the polls in droves (and there’s an outlier poll in Ohio suggesting the same). In the words of Adam Pally in Happy Endings: “Women be voting!”
Maybe this puts your mind at ease? It does for me. A little. But half the country has already voted. The other half hasn’t, though, and I’d like to think thousands of men between 45 and 55 who’ve been waffling are watching Trump in these final days and thinking, “Woof. No thanks! I think I’ll just stay home today.” It’s not just what he’s saying, though that’s part of it — there’s the Puerto Rico incident, his fantasizing about shooting Liz Cheney, joking about members of the media being shot, and saying he shouldn’t have left the White House in 2020.
But the guy is also just running on fumes. His speeches are labored, he’s barely coherent, his rallies are half-full in some cases, and there were countless clips yesterday suggesting a campaign in free fall. The guy isn’t all there. This one stands out.
Post by @aaron.rupar
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He’s angry, rambling, and there’s infighting within the campaign. Trump reportedly told his campaign manager Chris LaCivita he’s “dead to me,” Roger Stone and Laura Loomer are clashing, and the Trump-RFK, Jr. alliance already seems tense (the campaign says RFK won’t be in the White House, RFK says otherwise). If Trump loses (if), I bet the relationship between he and Elon Musk sours immediately.
Of course, none of this will matter if a flood of Trump-leaning voters show up tomorrow, prove the polls wrong again, and hand Trump the win, with RFK replacing fluoride in our water with tea tree oil. But, a day out, I have to believe that slightly more people have come to their senses, even if it’s just because our echo chamber seems a bit more confident than theirs. We got Robert DeNiro canvassing in the parking lot of a Philadelphia Eagles game! They’ve got some dude faking poll numbers and emailing them to himself just to lift their spirits.
Post by @yasharali
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