This one is going to be short, but I wanted to talk House races before we get to election day. Back in late September, the last time we broke down the race for control of the House of Representatives, I said I thought the race was largely a toss up. That was largely because of the historically small number of competitive battleground seats available to Democrats to play offense in. I was (and continue to be) also concerned about the “undervote” issue that has plagued Democrats for the last several cycles. 

As we sit here today, 30 hours or so out from the first polls closing I feel slightly more confident that Democrats will, in fact, flip the House but I still believe the margin will likely be small. Data and polling on House races isn’t as prevalent as it is for the presidential race but based on the available numbers I think Democrats are headed for a similar majority as Republicans currently hold (4-5 seats). 

There are three main reasons why I’m more confident than I was a month ago that Democrats will take back the House. First, Democrats have performed surprisingly well in the midwest this cycle. In Iowa, for example, Democrats look to be in good shape to pick up two seats. Tony Vargas in Nebraska is giving Don Bacon a serious run for his money and Democrats will likely retain at least one of the two tough open Michigan seats. Coming out of the midwest picking up 3-4 seats would be a great result for Democrats. 

The second reason for my increased optimism is that the Democratic incumbents in tough races seem to be holding on. As I mentioned back in September, Democrats needed to protect a handful of incumbents in very red seats even before they attempted to expand the map and pick up the 5 seats needed to flip the chamber. Every Democratic incumbent lost would mean finding another Republican seat to flip, and as we mentioned above, there’s a historically small pool of offensive opportunities. A lot can still happen but it appears Democrats are successfully defending their vulnerable incumbents in Maine, Alaska, Washington, and Pennsylvania. 

Finally, voters have been telling us for months that the abortion issue is among the most important issues to them. But I fully admit that I underestimated just how galvanizing that issue was going to be in places outside of the blue states or the traditional battleground states. Democratic candidates in deep red states like Iowa (where a restrictive abortion ban went into place this summer) have leaned into the issue and it appears it’s working. (Ann Selzer credits the abortion issue, in part, for Harris’s stunning rise in her Iowa polling). If the abortion issue ends up being as powerful as the data suggests it is then it could help swing a few of these very close House races towards the Democrats. 

It’s been a solid month for House Democrats. House races are notoriously unpredictable and several of these key battleground races remain toss ups but Democrats will enter election day with a solid opportunity to take back the chamber (narrowly).

We’re just over 50 hours until the first polls close. After all the debates, interviews, ads, conventions and rallies this race has remained remarkably stable on the surface. When Kamala Harris entered the race in late July there were seven true battleground states and we’re going to enter election day with the same seven. Neither candidate has been able to wrestle away any of these states and neither side has been able to put new states in play. As we wait for the final hours of this wild campaign to tick away, let’s run through where the race stands on the final weekend and what factors might decide the winner on Tuesday. 

While a lot of the public data suggests the race is close, there are several indicators that suggest Harris has an edge going into election day. Early voting and vote-by-mail data has been positive for the Harris Camp and there are reasons to suggest that the race on the ground isn’t as close as recent polling has suggested.

What the Polls Say (or Don’t Say)

From a strictly polling standpoint, this race has remained very stable since August. Shortly after Harris entered the race in late July she closed the polling gap between herself and Trump but since then the polling numbers for each side more or less flat lined. In the last two weeks we started to see a tightening of the race in public polling which caused hand wringing among Democrats. But did the race actually tighten, as the big public polling shops suggested? 

Outside of polling, all the momentum has been on Harris’s side the last two weeks. The Trump campaign has had a series of potentially fatal errors, none bigger than the poorly timed and highly insulting remarks about Puerto Rico at Madison Square Garden last weekend. Trump hasn’t been able to stay on message and the candidate doesn’t seem like he’s interested in reaching out the undecided voters he needs to break his way to win. So, then, why have the polls showed a tightening races even as the wheels seem to be coming off the Trump campaign during the same time period?

There’s two main reasons. First, outside Republican polling firms and organizations have been “flooding the zone” for months with partisan polls that are highly favorable to Trump but aren’t accurate. Why would someone intentionally release polling that they know probably isn’t accurate? This coordinated effort by outside GOP organizations has been fairly effective at lifting the polling averages in Trump’s favor and showing the race to be closer then it probably is. Republican polling groups tried this in 2022 and we’re largely responsible for the media narrative that a “red wave” was coming. Their polls were wrong and Republicans (not surprisingly) vastly underperformed the polling averages that had been juiced in their favor. 

The second reason the polls have been tightening is that as pollsters think about weighting their polls they seem to be reacting to early voting data, rather than what the final electorate will be once every vote is counted. I will get into the early voting data in more detail below but we have seen an increase in Republican voters voting early this year then we have in years past. This doesn’t mean Republicans are out voting Democrats. It just means the Republican voters we always expected to come out (i.e. they voted in 2020) are voting early instead of on election day. There has been no indication a wave of new or sporadic Republican voters are coming out. Tweaking your polls to reflect increased Republican early turnout is not only inaccurate, it skews the polls in Trump’s favor. 

Let’s take a couple of recent polls from Quinnipiac, for example. In early October they released a Pennsylvania poll that showed Harris UP 3-points on Trump. In that survey, Republicans made up 34% of the sample while Democrats made up 36%. 

Late last week Quinnipiac released their final Pennsylvania poll that showed Harris DOWN 2-points. If you believe both of these polls from the same pollster surveying the same state 3 weeks apart then there was a 5-point swing in Trump’s favor in a three week stretch. In a race that has been remarkably consistent for months a 5-point swing is massive and surprising. So, what changed? Looking at the partisan composition of the late October poll we have following: 34% Democrats vs. 36% Republicans. The late October poll was more Republican and less Democratic than the poll 3 weeks earlier. Nothing has happened during the early period in Pennsylvania to suggest an increase in Republican turnout. 

The final point I’ll make on polling is to mention the ground shifting poll released last night by revered Iowa pollster Ann Selzer. For those not familiar with Ann, she is widely considered one of the best (if not the best) pollster around. Her track record is unmatched and she has a remarkable ability to identify important shifts and movements happening under the surface that the rest of us can’t pick up (ie. Obama’s primary win in Iowa in 2008 and Trump’s late charge in 2016). We’re talking the Lebron James of polling. The Warren Buffett of polling. 

Seltzer released her long anticipated Iowa poll last night which showed Harris leading Trump in Iowa by 3-points. Yes, you read that correctly. The vaunted Selzer poll has Harris leading Trump in red Iowa. Now, do I think Harris will win Iowa? I don’t know. I think she could, or at least she could put a real scare into him. While Iowa is a Republican state it has a proud independent streak and folks in Iowa know better than anyone what across the board tariffs would do to their state, so I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibilities. But whether or not Harris will win Iowa is not really the point. The fact that we’re even talking about whether Harris is competitive in a very white Republican midwestern state that Democrats haven’t won since 2008 is the point. It signals that Harris’s standing with white voters isn’t nearly as bad as the media has made it out to be and it’s a good omen for must win states like Wisconsin and Michigan. If Selzer’s poll is even somewhat true, it means the above discussion is probably true: the polls have been underestimating Harris’s support. 

What Early Voting Data is Telling Us

Early voting has largely ended in most of the battleground states at this point. While I think the overall early voting picture favors Harris, there’s plenty of data points each side can point to so I’m not going to spend a ton of time on the early vote data. Rather, I want to point out a couple of big topline trends that I think are important to keep in mind as we wait for results Tuesday. 

On the whole, turnout has been high. In Georgia, a record breaking 4 million votes were cast during the early voting period. At the end of the early voting period in Georgia 56% of votes cast were cast by women. The Harris campaign will be pleased to see that. Even major urban areas like Detroit are expecting turnout in 2024 to eclipse 2020 turnout. Another positive sign for Harris. 

Going a step deeper into the turnout number the one major flashing red light for Team Trump is that across the seven major battleground states women make up 55% of the electorate. As we’ve talked about many times here, Trump has continued to struggle with women and he needed a strong showing from men to make up for his low standing among women voters. So far, that’s not materializing. 

As I referenced above, we’ve seen an interesting shift in “mode switching” among Republican voters this cycle. In previous cycles Democratic voters would primarily vote by mail and in person early while Republican voters always came out on election day. This year, the Trump campaign has been encouraging their supporters to vote early so we have seen a sharp increase in GOP voters during the early voting process. That does not mean there’s been an increase in GOP turnout, however. It just means that the Republican voters who were already expected to come out are voting early instead of on election day. None of the early voting data suggests a surge in new or sporadic GOP voters, at this point. 

This “mode switching” has thrown off pollsters and the media and fed into the narrative that Republican voters are turning out in big numbers. That doesn’t seem to be the case right now. It’s the same group, just a few days earlier than in previous cycles. 

I’m a strong believer in not engaging in “ancidata” so I will leave the early voting analysis at that. Turnout is strong, and favors Harris at this point. But we’ll see who shows up on election day. 

The Field Game

At this point in the campaign, the hay is largely in the barn. The ads have been run, the rallies have been done and most voters have made up their mind. It’s all about getting your people out to their polling places to cast their vote. In a previous post I talked about the very unorthodox approach the Trump campaign was taking to the field game. They have essentially outsourced their field operation to Elon Musk’s Super PAC and we’re starting to get the first feedback on how that controversial choice is going. A story this week in WIRED painted a grim picture of that Musk led effort to support Trump: dark U-Haul’s full of out-of-state workers who were threatened into hitting quotas while unaware they were working on behalf of Trump. Not optimal, to say the least. 

On the Harris side, they reported the campaign knocked a staggering 2,000 doors per minute across Pennsylvania yesterday. That is wild. They knocked more doors in one day than the Musk led operation had hoped to knock during the entire campaign. This alone doesn’t predict victory. But in a close election it shouldn’t be overlooked. 

Who’s got the momentum heading into election day?

This one is pretty easy. Harris has all the momentum and velocity at this point. Her field program is firing on all cylinders, her rallies are big and energetic, the early vote data shows her in the catbird seat in the “blue wall” states going into Tuesday and the polling looks pretty darn good. 

On the flip side, Trump hasn’t been able to regain his footing after the disastrous event at Madison Square Garden. The MSG event may have jazzed up his base but he also did serious damage with undecideds and persuadable Republicans. Trump’s closing message has veered from calling the United States a “trash can” (not popular with big segments of the country) to threatening Liz Cheney (also not popular with big segments of Republicans). He hasn’t been able to find any sort of message consistency over the final stretch. 

It should also be noted that Trump is holding events in Virginia, New Mexico and New Hampshire over the final couple of days. This is notable because Trump will not win any of these states. It’s actually a move meant to jump start momentum. Much like Harris, Trump has been cycling through the seven battleground states for the last 3-4 months. But his crowd sizes have dwindled recently as his supporters in these states have heard his “shtick” several times already. Sending Trump to states he hasn’t been to recently will help draw bigger crowds and, therefore, help show strength and momentum down the stretch. 

So, what’s going to happen? 

I’ll try to get a “what to what for” piece out before election day but for now my feeling is that Harris is headed for a comfortable win. Momentum and velocity matters in campaigns and Harris appears to have that on her side at the moment. Late breaking voters are falling in her direction and if the Selzer poll mentioned above is even partly accurate then Trump is headed for a tough night. The Harris camp still has a few odds and ends to take care of before election days, primarily in Nevada, but all signs point to a structurally sound blue wall. And if that wall holds, Harris will have a great night. 

Stay tuned for more on the House and Senate races soon.

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We’re a month away from election day which means votes are being cast in most states at this point. Both campaigns are gearing up for the final push, closing messages are being refined and field operations are getting into high gear. A lot is still up in the air as we head into the final 30 days but one thing is for sure: this race remains very close. Since a lot has happened in the last two weeks, let’s pause and take a big picture look at where the race currently stands and what factors might help decide who ends up with 270 electoral votes. 

The Battleground State Landscape

One the day that Kamala Harris entered this race there were six widely agreed upon battleground states. Within a few weeks, she had put North Carolina in play and that’s where the battleground map stands today: heading into the final 31 days of this election we have seven states that will ultimately decide the next president. Given how tight the polls are across these seven states right now, each candidate still has multiple plausible paths to 270. 

According to all credible election modeling, Pennsylvania remains the tipping point state in the election. Since the debate, Harris has seen a nice boost in her poll numbers in Pennsylvania and has held onto a small but stable lead in Wisconsin for the last few weeks. Add in a consistent lead in Michigan and Harris has essentially wiped out the electoral college advantage that Trump held a couple months ago. 

Entering the final month, Harris has a small polling average lead in the “Blue Wall” states plus Nevada, while Trump has small leads in Georgia and Arizona. North Carolina remains deadlocked as neither candidate has been able to open up any kind of statistically meaningful lead. If the polling averages below from the seven swing states were to hold through election day, Harris would win by a whisker– 276-262: 

• Michigan: Harris +1.9

• Wisconsin: Harris +1.7

• Pennsylvania: Harris +1.2

• Nevada: Harris +1.1

• North Carolina: Trump +0.4

• Georgia: Trump +1.3

• Arizona: Trump +1.7

Both campaigns are predictably spending the vast majority of their time hopping between these seven swing states. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, focusing on where exactly these campaigns are spending time in these states will give you useful insight into how they see the race. The Harris campaign has been spending a lot of time in deep red Republican territory this week trying to cut into Trump’s margins in red leaning counties. On Thursday, Harris held an event with Liz Cheney in Fond du Loc County, Wisconsin which is an area that Trump won by over 25-points in 2020. Tim Walz rallied in York County, Pennsylvania on Wednesday which, again, is a very Republican heavy area of the state. Trump won York County by a little under 25-points in 2020. Harris won’t win either of these counties but managing her margin of loss will be critical to whether or not she wins these states. 

For his part, Trump is splitting his time between friendly Republican territory and counties that Biden won in 2020 (Saginaw, MI and Cumberland County, NC) during his next four campaign stops in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. 

What the Polls Say

I touched on the polling averages for the seven big battlegrounds above but I want to point out a few other trends that are starting to solidify in the data that helps explain why this race is close and how it might ultimately shake out. As is to be expected, when Harris entered the race in late July she faced a big deficit on who would better handle the economy and immigration. Two months later she’s still down on immigration, but making serious gains, and she’s nearly erased all of Trump’s advantage on inflation and has nearly caught up on the economy. 

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For much of this year Democrats have been frustrated that the economic data like jobs, inflation and the stock market was objectively improving but public sentiment towards the economy was not. Recent polling is showing some signs that sentiment about the economy might be changing. YouGov does a weekly tracking poll for the Economist that asks voters if they think the economy is getting better or worse. Since early August there’s been a seven point swing towards “getting better”-- including a seven point swing among independents.

A poll this week commissioned by the Cook Political Report found an even more dramatic improvement in voter sentiment since May (below) in the battleground states. And we’re still waiting for data from September but Gallup found a similar improvement in their monthly economic confidence surveys from July to August. Don’t get me wrong: American’s views on the economy is still not great overall. But if this upward trend continues through election day it could be a deciding factor.

There has also been an upward swing in Harris’s favor on questions like which candidate is considered “extreme” and which candidate “shares your values.” In most polls that ask similar questions, Trump is widely viewed as more extreme than Harris, while Harris is still widely seen as “more of the same.” While there are things in every poll that each campaign can grab onto, Harris’s messaging and attacks on Trump seem to be penetrating which has translated into Harris cutting into Trump’s lead in key areas like the economy and immigration. 

The Money Game

Since Harris entered the race she has been a fundraising machine. While the polls will likely be close through election day the money game won’t be. Trump has been outspent by the Harris campaign and if it weren’t for help from outside super PACs supporting his campaign he would be getting swamped. This money advantage has allowed Harris and allied groups to flood the battleground states with ads and build a field operation that by all accounts is far superior to anything the Republicans have on their side. 

Coming down the stretch, it appears Harris will have a slight advantage in paid media spending. Below shows future ad reservations in the seven battleground states. As of now, Harris and allied groups are planning to spend more in the final month on TV than Trump and his allied groups in all seven battleground states. This is by no means a determinative data point– Trump has been outspent before and won– but going into the final month with a substantial financial edge gives your campaign far more options down the stretch. 

The Undecideds are Narrowing 

The electorate is starting to firm up and the pool of undecided voters is getting pretty small. In recent national polling the number of undecided voters has hovered around 3-4% while the percent of undecideds in the battleground states has been anywhere from 1% to 3%. I’m not a huge fan of using polls to make overly generalized assumptions but let’s use some recent national polling to talk about who the average undecided voter likely is at this point. They are likely a middle aged (40-49) female voter from a rural community with some level of post-high school education (though they likely don’t have a degree). She likely voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all in 2020 but is reconsidering her past support of Trump even though she holds a slightly more favorable view of Trump than Harris right now. Her top issues are education, healthcare and abortion though she is generally not excited about this election. 

Closing Messages

As mentioned above, early voting and vote-by-mail is happening right now across the country which means both campaigns are putting together their closing messages– that final thing they want voters to remember when they step inside the voting booth. From a messaging and tone perspective these two campaigns have run completely opposite playbooks up to this point and I suspect that will continue. Each campaign is messaging to the same pool of voters who voted for Trump at least once but don’t really want to again but who also don’t know or don’t trust Harris yet. Trump and his allies have come at these voters with straight negative messaging intended to drive up Harris’s unfavorables by making her seem extreme to those who don’t have an opinion of her yet. Part of the calculation here is likely that Trump has hit a favorability and topline ( ie Trump vs. Harris) ceiling so positive pro-Trump messaging wouldn’t do much good for him. Most American’s opinions of Trump are hardened at this point, one way or the other. Have you ever met anyone who said they don’t have any opinion of Donald Trump?

On the other side, Harris’s messaging in both paid and earned media has been much more positive with the intent to woo some of the disaffected GOP voters and past Trump voters who still want to hear more about Harris. It’s usually not optimal to still be introducing your candidate to the electorate as voting is opening but that’s the challenge the Harris team faces this year. What they have going for them is that polls are showing that as voters hear more about her the more they like her. Some Harris supporters have criticized the Harris campaign for their disproportionately positive messaging (ie going soft on Trump). But the flip side of what we talked about above with Trump’s messaging is true: what attack can you level against Trump that hasn’t been already said? He’s been convicted of 37 felonies and faces several other federal charges. He’s been accused of sexual misconduct and trying to foment an insurrection. And yet he’s still in a neck-and-neck race for president. This can change, but at this point the data seems to suggest that Harris has more votes to gain by continuing to push her agenda that directly addresses voters top concerns and talk about her background. 

The Field Game 

A campaigns field operation is the team responsible for direct voter contact that drives your people to the polls. Someone once told me that a field operation is like a field goal kicker on a football team. If you’re in a tight race the team with the best field goal kicker has a huge advantage. Hard data on how field operations are performing is hard to come by because it’s mostly privately held by the campaigns. But what we’ve seen anecdotally through the media indicates that the Trump and Harris campaign are taking very different approaches to the field game. Whoever is right will likely win this election. 

The Trump campaign has come under heavy criticism from the Republican consultant-class who have been sounding the alarms about Trump’s lackluster field operation this time around. Instead of investing time and resources into building a field operation, the Trump campaign has largely outsourced their field program to super PACs and other aligned groups. According to an article this week from POLITICO, the lack of coordination between the Trump campaign and these outside groups has alarmed Republicans and GOP consultants across the battleground states are reporting that Trump is being outworked on the ground. Outsourcing your field program to outside groups is a risky move meant to free up resources that can be used on paid media (remember, Trump is being badly outspent on the air). If this outsourcing strategy fails, it could also have a big impact for down ballot races that are more sensitive to small swings in turnout. 

The Harris campaign is attempting to quickly rebuild the Democratic ground game that has been successful in previous elections but was hit hard by the lack of direct voter contact in 2020. Harris inherited a sub-par field operation from the Biden campaign and has been aggressively investing resources into building a field operation that’s more 2008-12 and less 2020. Harris will have more than enough money but building successful field operations usually take months and time is something she doesn’t have enough of. 

According to media reports, Harris has north of 1,700 paid field staff working out of nearly 250 field offices across the battleground states. The number of staffers you have or the amount of money you invest isn’t always a predictive factor in who’s going to win the race. But in battleground states where the outcome will likely come down to a few thousand votes knowing you have a better field goal kicker than your opponent helps. 

This race remains very close going into the final month. Harris has a small topline polling advantage at the moment but Trump has been a notoriously good closer in the last two elections and the general mood in the country still favors him. If voter sentiment on the economy continues to improve that’s great news for Harris but if Trump’s field program can, in fact, turn out the infrequent, disengaged voters they say they’re targeting then he could surprise us all again. Buckle up for a wild four weeks. 

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With the high profile campaign events like debates and conventions behind us, both campaigns will spend the final month before election day communicating with voters primarily through both paid and earned media. Paid media is exactly what it sounds like– voter communications that are paid for by the campaign or outside groups like television, radio and digital ads. Earned media is communications that are “earned” through events or strategies like press conferences, rallies, interviews or policy plan announcements. In the last few weeks the Harris campaign has used both Harris and Walz in fun, yet strategic, ways to maximize the candidates’ time while directly reaching the voters they need to be talking to the most in the final month. 

Since Harris entered the race in late July the national media has criticized her relentlessly for not sitting down for interviews or holding press conferences. They have accused her of dodging questions and hiding from reporters. The truth is she is doing interviews and she is answering questions. Just not from the traditional media outlets complaining. The Harris campaign has been executing a highly targeted, highly strategic earned media plan that seeks to talk directly with the groups of voters she needs to win over in the final month. If you haven’t seen some of the campaign’s recent earned media then you likely weren’t an intended target (or you don’t spend hours of your life on Twitter, which is a great life decision!). 

The traditional media– broadcast news, cable news, legacy newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post– have suffered decreased viewership and readership as Americans increasingly turn to social media, streaming platforms and podcasts for their news and entertainment. The Harris campaign has responded in-kind by spending less time communicating through the national media than campaigns have in previous years. This has allowed the Harris campaign the ability to target voters who may be largely apolitical or may not be tuned into the upcoming election. If Harris’s earned media strategy centered around laborious sit-downs with the same “mainstream media” complaining about her absence she'd be talking to voters that are largely familiar with her and are already likely to vote for her. The New York Times and Washington Post, for example, have readerships that are overwhelmingly young, educated, white and financially well off– a subset of electorate Harris is already performing well with. 

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The other trend that has caused campaigns to rely less on traditional news media is that most Americans do not follow the news closely— or as closely as they once did. According to a study by Pew Research only 38% of Americans reported following the news closely which is down sharply from 51% in 2016. That makes finding other non-news outlets imperative if you’re going to get your message out. It also means that the work that goes into press conferences and sit down interviews with the traditional media may not be worth the squeeze it used to be worth. I’m not suggesting that the traditional news media should be ignored and avoided all the time. I’m just saying that in today’s fractured media environment it’s best to diversify.

Harris’s recent interviews have all served to directly benefit her in areas of potential weakness. Earlier this week, Harris appeared on the popular sports podcast All The Smoke, which is not the place you’d normally expect to find a presidential candidate. But that’s exactly the point. The 45 minute interview was a disarming opportunity to speak with a subset of voters who may not otherwise hear from her on everything from her background to her policy agenda to her love of Oakland sports.  And it doesn’t hurt that All The Smoke is popular with men, specifically young men of color– both groups where Harris needs to make gains in the final five weeks.  

The Harris campaign has also been selective and savvy about not just the audience that Harris is talking to but also the format of the interview. Take, for example, a recent “interview” she did with Wired Magazine. As I’ve mentioned countlessly in previous posts, one of Harris’s biggest challenges in the short time she’s had in this race is to introduce herself to voters who still say they need to hear more from her. The polls continue to show that the more voters hear from her the more they like her. The Autocomplete Interview series from Wired was the perfect opportunity for Harris to showcase her personality, talk about her bio and speak to an audience that is disproportionately male (are we sensing a pattern here?). And not for nothing, Wired has over 11.5 million subscribers on Youtube and the interview Harris did has received just under 2 million views in the last 11 days. That is a much higher ROI than the Harris campaign would ever get from most traditional outlets. 

Harris has also done a handful of targeted interviews with local swing state reporters in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This isn’t necessarily novel– Obama did this to great effect in 2008 and 2012– but it’s another example how her campaign is taking a surgical and disciplined approach to earned media that maximizes the candidates time and ensures she’s talking to voters who may not be active news consumers or tuned into the upcoming election. 

The campaign has also featured Tim Walz in some smart, high targeted social media collaborations. This week Tim Walz and his dog Scout (also the name of my dog!) joined the popular X account We Rate Dogs, which has over 9.2 million followers and almost 97,000 Youtube subscribers, to talk about, well, dogs! Consider the contrast of Walz talking about the joys of owning a dog while Trump and Vance talk about Haitians “eating the dogs.” Walz also appeared on the popular TikTok channel Subway Takes back in July. While the brief appearance largely centered around gutter maintenance (you read that right) it was a fun way to showcase Walz’s “everyman” personality and reach younger and apolitical voters. 

This strategy has also extended to surrogates, as well. Following her economic speech in Pittsburgh last week Mark Cuban did a number of media interviews for the campaign including a stop on the popular podcast This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von. Theo Von has a large following of—you guessed it!— young men. Cuban was a great choice of messenger for that audience, as well.

Voters are getting harder to reach with both paid and earned media. The media environment is extremely fractured and voters have more options for consuming information than ever. The old earned media playbook of playing to the traditional big name media outlets doesn’t work the way it used to. Harris has been smart to ignore their criticisms and meet the voters she needs where they are. 

Yesterday, Senate Democrats announced plans to spend “millions” on paid media in Florida and Texas in an attempt to expand the Senate battleground map. That was welcome news to many Democrats who are nervous about prospects in other states like Montana and Ohio. After a poll earlier this week showed Tester down in Montana, social media was abuzz with people pleading with Senate Democratic leaders to shift funds from Montana to other battlegrounds like Florida and Texas. While I think there are several good reasons why Democrats should be playing offense in Florida and Texas, as we’ll discuss, it should be done in addition to, but not instead of, Montana. 

The Case for Sticking it Out in Montana

Nothing has fundamentally changed in the Montana Senate race over the last few months. This was always going to be a very close race, as has every single Senate race Tester has ever run: he has won his three senate races by less than 40,000 votes COMBINED. Regardless of who wins, history says this year's election will be very tight, so those who are disappointed that Tester isn’t polling up by a couple points don’t understand his electoral history. He’s no stranger to nailbiter races. 

Too much emphasis has been placed on the very small number of public polls out of Montana that have, by and large, shown Tester down. This is very shortsighted. First, Montana is a notoriously difficult state to poll. It’s a massive state geographically with a large rural population that is very difficult to contact. In Tester’s previous elections, public polling has been wrong more times than it’s been right. In 2012, reputable public polls never showed Tester with a lead until mid-October. It’s a good thing national Democrats didn’t abandon him back in September of 2012! In 2006, several late October polls showed him up by anywhere from 10-20 points. He would go on to win by less than one percent– about 3,500 votes. The point is, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into polling in Montana and I wouldn’t shift resources out of the state because of a couple of bad public polls by out-of-state pollsters. 

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Second, Montana is a relatively cheap state to invest in compared to other battleground states like Florida, Texas or Pennsylvania. A few million dollars will stretch much farther in Montana than places like Miami or Houston. The lack of presidential spending in Montana should keep rates reasonable and it’s a state where cheaper paid media mediums like cable (rather than broadcast) and radio are still king. Pulling the relatively modest amount the DSCC currently has allocated for Montana and moving it to Texas or Florida— exponentially more expensive states—wouldn’t get Democrats nearly as much as people think. 

Finally, but possibly the most important and most overlooked factor is the role third parties have played in Tester’s last three races. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Jon Tester wouldn’t currently be a member of the Senate if it were not for the Libertarian candidates on the ballots of his previous three races. In 2006 and 2012 the Libertarian candidate took more votes than the margin that Tester won by. In 2012, the Libertarian candidate received just under 32,000 votes or 6.5% of the total vote (Tester won by 18,000 votes). 

Luckily for Tester, he’s got a Libertarian on the ballot this cycle and it looks like Republicans are worried. According to an NPR story last month, Trump and national Republicans have tried to convince the Libertarian candidate to drop out of the race because they fear his presence on the ballot could siphon votes from the Republican candidate and help Tester. I’m not familiar with the candidate, Sid Daoud, but he doesn’t seem to be some random, tin hat activist. He’s a former local elected official and previously served as a member of the Montana state House. Keep an eye on how many votes Daoud receives on election day. He doesn’t need much to tilt the race in Tester’s direction. 

Playing Offense in a Tough Year

When Democrats looked at the 2024 Senate map two years ago they knew this would be a tough cycle. Democrats would need to defend incumbents in at least 4 states that were expected to be tough environments. More importantly, the Senate battleground map didn’t appear to give Democrats any clear offensive opportunities outside of Arizona. But in the last two months Texas and Florida have emerged as potential targets largely because the Republican incumbents are highly unpopular and Democrats successfully recruited young, energetic candidates to run against them. 

I have long felt that Democrats should have been playing offense in Florida and Texas. My only criticism of the current decision to spend money in the states would be that I wish they had come to that decision earlier. In both Texas and Florida the Republican candidates are highly unpopular, even among many Republicans, while the Democratic candidates are well liked but still unknown to many voters. A poll from mid-August showed Rick Scott with a favorable/unfavorable of -14. The same poll showed Governor Ron Desantis with a +9 favorability. There’s probably not a lot national Democrats can do to further drive up Scott’s unfavorables given how bad they already are. But using paid media resources to help introduce Mucarsel-Powell and Allred in Florida and Texas, respectively, could help swing votes in key counties. 

These late, but smart, investments in Florida and Texas don’t need to be made at the expense of a still very winnable race in Montana. Jon Tester has a long track record of winning very tight races which is great because this year’s election is setting up to be very close. Abandoning Tester at this point would certainly result in a loss. The dearth of quality of polling out of Montana is causing people to put too great an emphasis on what little data we do have. Don’t draw any hard conclusions about this race based on any one poll coming from a state that is notoriously hard to poll other than that this remains a very close race.

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Much like the presidential race, the fight to control the House of Representatives is extremely tight and is going to come down to the wire. As things currently stand, it’s likely that we may not know who will control the House for several days after the polls close. Democrats only need a net gain of 4 seats to take control of the chamber but they face stiffer headwinds than many predicted a year ago. Democrats had hoped to get a boost from new congressional maps drawn in New York, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana but much of those gains were whipped out by an aggressive Republican redistricting push in North Carolina. 

While control of the House is truly a toss up right now it’s almost certain that this will not be a wave year. Whoever holds control next year will do so by a very small margin. As we enter the final month of the election let's take a look at where the fight over the House stands and what each party is watching down the stretch. 

Lay of the Land

Control of the House is likely to come down to about 43 competitive seats. Of those 43 seats, about 24 are true toss up races. For Democrats to win back the House they will need to win 65% of these 43 battleground seats, which translates to about 28 seats. One of the reasons that the House is likely to remain incredibly tight is that the number of battleground seats this cycle is significantly lower than it has been in the previous 3 cycles. As of early October in previous years, there were 59 battleground races in 2022, 58 in 2020 and 71 in 2018. Some of this is because partisan redistricting and increased polarization means fewer “toss up” seats exist. But a bigger factor this cycle is that we never saw a wave of members in competitive seats retiring or running for other offices as we have in previous years. Only 4 of the 43 competitive seats this cycle are open seats while 19 of the 59 battleground seats in 2022 were open.

The lack of competitive seats this cycle means Democrats have fewer pick up opportunities than they had hoped for. Breaking it down even further, of the 43 competitive seats we’re talking about, 20 are currently Republican held seats, 19 are Democratic held and 4 are open. When you factor in the four open seats, which are all currently held by Democrats, then Democrats need to defend 23 seats vs. 20 races where Republicans are on defense. 

That means that Democrats not only need to defend their 19 incumbents in tough races but they need to find at least four offensive opportunities out of the 20 seats currently held by Republicans. If Democrats lose any of the seats currently held by a Democratic member or any of the 4 Democratically held open seats then the four seats needed to flip the House gets bigger. Netting 4 out of a possible 20 is doable but having more offensive targets would be preferable, especially when you consider how tough the races in Alaska, Maine, Washington and Pennsylvania could be. This is a key advantage for Republicans. 

A Good Defense is the Best Offense?

We’ve all heard the old football adage that says the best defense is a good offense. While that’s usually true, the opposite is likely true this cycle. Given that each side needs to defend roughly the same number of seats, this year's battle for the House is going to come down to incumbent protection in a way it hasn’t in years past. So who’s job will be harder? 

Each side is going to have to protect some number of incumbents who represent districts deep in enemy territory. Democrats, for their part, must protect deep red seats in Alaska and Maine, as well as two tough swing seats in Michigan that are open this cycle. Republicans have a slew of members in New York and California that represent districts that Biden won in 2020. Republicans have 14 members in districts that Biden won in 2020, while Democrats have 5 members in districts that Trump won. 

Outside of fundraising, which we’ll get to below, one of the few advantages that Democrats do have this cycle is that 32 of the 43 competitive races we’re looking into are in districts that Biden won in 2020– though he won some by razor thin margins. 

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Will the Undervote Rear its Head? 

In the last three presidential cycles Democrats have had a serious undervote problem. The undervote is the amount of drop off between the top of the ticket– in this case the presidential race– and the down ballot races, like House races. In 2020 and 2016 there were over 4 million less votes cast for Democratic House candidates than there were for the Democratic candidate for president. In 2012, the undervote on the Democratic side was 6.2 million votes. Undervoting is a significantly smaller problem on the Republican side. As an extreme example, there were 197,245 MORE votes cast for Republican House candidates in 2016 than there were for Donald Trump. 

This Democratic undervote issue could be because of ticket splitting or because a significant enough portion of Democratic voters are not voting down their ballot. While this phenomenon is worth watching, it hasn't prevented Democrats from netting seats– Democrats netted House seats in 3 of the last 4 presidential election cycles– but it could be costing Democrats precious votes in the closely contested races needed to win a majority. 

We all have a few of those Republican friends who say they agree with Donald Trump’s policies but can’t stand him which is why they’re voting against him. If these voters, who are by and large very conservative, vote for Kamala Harris but vote Republican on the rest of their ballot that could be enough to throw a couple of these toss up races into the GOP column. 

Who Has the Edge Going Into the Final Month? 

The short answer is it’s hard to say. If I absolutely had to choose I’d say Democrats have a very, very slight edge. But I think there are three big factors that could influence which way the House tilts. One benefits Democrats, One Republicans and the final one is up for grabs. 

We’ve talked a lot about the current political climate in our discussion of the presidential race. But I think it’s worth mentioning again in the context of these battleground House races. According to a report this week from Gallup, the current political environment in the U.S. favors Republicans.  According to the report, Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the economy, more U.S. adults identify with the Republican party than they have in the past and more Americans believe the Republican better will better address their issues. In close House races where both candidates have low name ID that could be a significant advantage for Republicans. 

For the Democrats’ part, they have significantly outraised Republicans on both the candidate side and the party committee side (DCCC vs RCCC). Democrats will head into the final 40 days with a significant cash on hand advantage which should allow them to outspend Republicans in paid media down the stretch. If Democrats are going to successfully swim against the political stream then they’ll need to maximize that money advantage. 

Finally, what happens at the top of the ticket will have a major impact on several of these races and could help swing the House one way or the other. If the Harris Campaign is successful in pulling out young voters, minority voters and women in big numbers in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona then Harris could pull a couple close House races over the line with her. But a strong close by Trump, which he’s done in the past two elections, could swing things back the other direction. Momentum is a powerful thing in close races so keep an eye on which of the presidential campaigns heads into the final few days with momentum. 

The bottomline is the House is currently a toss up. Each side has a few important advantages but the smaller than normal pool of competitive seats likely means that whichever party controls the chamber is looking at a razor thin 1-3 seat majority.

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A lot has happened since our first power rankings two weeks ago. The debate two weeks ago caused modest movement in the polls and in the last week we got a slew of high quality swing state surveys. That said, the overall dynamics of the race have stayed the same. 

The eventual winner will need to cobble together enough electoral votes out of the seven battleground states to get to 270. Pennsylvania is still the centerpiece of each campaign’s preferred roadmap to 270, though each side can technically win without Pennsylvania.

Based on campaign schedules and paid media spending each campaign has spent the last two works working to shore up their preferred route to 270. For Harris that’s the “blue wall”-- Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. For Trump, he’s betting on Pennsylvania, North Carolina plus the traditionally Republican sunbelt– Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona. 

There are some modest changes to today’s rankings that reflect recent polling and are a reflection of where the campaigns seem to be battling things out. North Carolina enters our rankings as a handful of polls have shown the state is very much in play. A win for Harris in North Carolina would be a major coup and all but shut down Trump’s path but a Trump win would make things very tight for Harris. 

Wisconsin also added a second county to the list this week. Swing state polling over the last two weeks have shown a very tight race in Wisconsin– maybe the closest of all the “blue wall” states. 

New Additions: New Hanover County, NC & Racine County, WI

Dropped: Lackawanna County, PA & Maricopa County, AZ

⚡ SWING COUNTIES POWER RANKING ⚡

1. ERIE COUNTY, PA

Erie retains the top spot this week because it’s a true bellwether county in the most important swing state. Erie voters have correctly predicted the last four presidential elections, voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012, Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. If history is any indication, the winner of Erie will likely win Pennsylvania, therefore likely winning the election. 

This week we were lucky enough to get polling from Erie County. A Suffolk poll showed Harris with a 4-point edge in this important county. Both vice presidential candidates made stops in Erie over the last two weeks. 

2. WASHOE COUNTY, NV 

With each candidate still having multiple credible paths to 270, Nevada continues to have an outsized role, despite only having 6 electoral votes. In the last three presidential elections Democrats have won the two most populous counties in Nevada while Republicans have won the remaining. Even though Washoe County has become more diverse over the last decade and a half, Trump nearly won the county in 2016 before Joe Biden won more comfortably in 2020. If Trump’s result is closer to 2016 then 2020, he could put a real scare into Democrats in Nevada. 

There has been very little high-quality polling out of Nevada since the debate. Harris has seen a modest bounce nationally and in other swing states, like Pennsylvania, since the debate but we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see if her bounce stretched to Nevada. Harris currently has a razor thin 0.7% lead in the FiveThirtyEight polling average. 

3. NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC

Democrats haven’t won North Carolina since Barack Obama flipped the state in 2008. The Harris campaign has been working hard to put North Carolina back in play and so far the polling is deadlocked. Though there hasn’t been much post-debate polling, a handful of polls before the debate were positive for Harris. 

Joe Biden lost North Carolina by a little over 74,000 votes in 2020. While Biden performed well in the eight populous Democratic counties, his margins in the “swingier” counties trailed the margins that Governor Roy Cooper hit in his successful 2020 re-election campaign. Biden won New Hanover County, for example, by 2-points while Cooper won by 8. In what will certainly be a very close race in North Carolina, Harris will need margins closer to Cooper’s then Biden’s in swing counties like New Hanover, which have only voted for a Democrat at the presidential level once since 1980. 

4. BUCKS COUNTY, PA

Bucks County retained its top five spot, underscoring how important, yet unsettled, Pennsylvania still is. While Democrats have won Bucks County in every presidential race since 1992, it’s exactly the type of place where voter dissatisfaction with the Biden Administration could cost them valuable votes. Voter registration in Bucks County is evenly split with both Democrats and Republicans making up 41% of registered voters. 

In 2012 and 2016 Democrats failed to hit 50%, which they had done in the previous three elections. Trump has never hit higher than 47.6%. If Harris can hit 50% in Bucks County, as Biden did in 2020, she could be looking at a good night.  

5. KENT COUNTY, MI

Michigan is the best performing of the “blue wall” states for Harris. She enjoys a 2.6% lead in the FiveThirtyEight polling averages (compared to +1.4% in Pennsylvania and +1.7 in Wisconsin). If Harris wins Michigan on election night it will likely be in part because of a strong performance in Kent County. 

Kent County has been a microcosm of Democrats' struggles in the midwest and upper midwest since 2008. Democrats won Kent County in 2008, lost it in 2012 and 2016 and Biden won it back in 2020. 

6. SAUK COUNTY, WI

As we talked about above, Wisconsin is very tight. While Sauk County doesn’t have the large populations of Milwaukee, Dane or Waukesha, Sauk has a well-earned reputation as a bellwether county in one of the most important bellwether states. Like Erie County above, Sauk has correctly voted for the last four presidents. Wisconsin is shaping up to be very close, as it was in 2020, and Sauk will be a good bellwether down the stretch. 

7. COBB COUNTY, GA

Donald Trump has a narrow 1-point lead in the FiveThirtyEight Georgia polling average, though there has been little quality polling out of Georgia since the debate. Both campaigns are investing heavily in the state, both in paid money resources and in time on the ground. Both Harris and Walz were in Georgia this week and JD Vance made a stop in Atlanta last week. 

Georgia has a whopping 159 counties, though most have small populations. That makes the small handful of counties with large populations very important. Cobb County is the third most populous county behind Fulton and Gwinnett (see below!) counties. Like many major urban areas in the south, Cobb County has seen rapid demographic shifts over the last 20 years that have shifted the county politically from solidly red to reliably blue. While it has a larger percentage of white voters than other battleground counties like Gwinnett, black and hispanic voters make up more than 40% of the population. Much like its cousin Gwinnett below, Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to win Cobb since Jimmy Carter in 1976. 

8. RACINE COUNTY, WI

The truth is, you could pick any number of counties in Wisconsin for this list. But Racine County fascinates me. It has voted for the winning presidential candidate in 28 of the last 33 presidential elections dating back to the late 1800s. Barack Obama won Racine County in 2008 and 2012 but Democrats haven’t won it since. Clinton held Trump under 50% in 2016 but Biden lost ground in 2020. Racine has gotten more diverse in the last two decades and winning Wisconsin could come down to how many votes each candidate can steal in bellwether counties like Racine. 

9. CLARK COUNTY, NV

As I’ve said several times, Nevada’s six electoral votes could prove pivotal late on election night depending on how the bigger prizes on the East Coast shake out. Clark County, home to Las Vegas, has nearly three quarters of Nevada’s population. Harris will likely win the county but the margin of that victory will determine who wins the state. Democrats have lost ground in the county since Obama won 58% in 2008. There’s been little in the way of high-quality polling in Nevada over the last few weeks but it’s safe to assume things remain very tight in the state.

10. GWINNETT COUNTY, GA 

When people wonder how Georgia went from being an easy Republican win to a true swing state I point them to Gwinnett County for the answer. Few places in America have seen as much demographic change over the last 30 years. In 1990, Gwinnett county was over 90% white. Today it’s a minority majority county and white residents make up only 32% of the population. It also has a significant Hispanic population which presents challenges and opportunities for both candidates. 

Politically, Gwinnett County had been a solidly red county. Jimmy Carter was the only Democrat to win Gwinnett until Hillary Clinton won it in 2016. Joe Biden widened Democrats’ gains in 2020 on his way to narrowly winning the state. As the second most populous county in the state, Harris must not only win Gwinnett but turn out voters in large numbers to win the state.

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This week we finally got the flood of high quality polling in Pennsylvania we had all been waiting for. Polls from six top polling outfits, all ranked in the top twenty of FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Rankings, showed Harris with leads ranging from 1 to 5 points. Prior to this week’s polling dump the narrative had been that Harris was struggling in Pennsylvania. This week's data by no means predicts a win for her but it does show that despite a tight race Harris has a very credible path to victory in Pennsylvania. 

One should never draw sweeping conclusions about any election based on one or two polls. And examining trends is always preferable. But Harris has only been in the race for exactly two months today which means we don’t have a lot of month-over-month data to look at. But, the NYT/Siena poll has now surveyed Pennsylvania twice since Harris entered the race which gives us a chance to examine a couple of important trends that are contributing to her 4-point lead in their research. 

While Harris has lost some ground among men, she made huge gains month-over-month with women according to the NYT/Siena poll released this week that showed her with a overall 4-point lead in the state. Her lead among women jumped to +17 in September from +7 in August. For a quick comparison, Biden won women in Pennsylvania in 2020 by 11 points (according to CNN exit polls) on his way to winning the state. It’s also worth noting that even though Harris lost a little ground with men between the two polls, she’s still leading women by more than she’s losing men. That’s important because in both 2016 and 2020 women made up about 53% of the final electorate. 

What’s driving this surge in support among women in Pennsylvania? While this month’s NYT/Siena poll did not ask voters about their top issues, the August poll did. In that survey, the economy and abortion tied for the top spot among women voters.

Over the last month Harris saw big gains on both of these top issues. In the August survey Harris held a 1-point lead among women voters on who would do a better job on the economy. In the poll released this week she held an 8-point lead among women on the economy, a nifty 7-point gain on this top issue, which helped drive a 2-point gain on the economy across both men and women. On abortion, Harris continued to gain, as well. She increased her lead among women voters on who would better handle the issue of abortion by 8-points (she leads Trump by 33-points on abortion). 

And it’s not just the NYT/Siena poll. A Quinipiac poll released Wednesday showed a 9-point gain among women for Harris (+13 in August to +22 in September). That’s consistent with the 7-point gain in the NYT/Siena poll. While we don’t have a month-over-month comparison, it’s also worth noting that a Suffolk poll found Harris with a 17-point lead among women, which matches what the NYT/Siena poll found.

While Harris still has a lot of work to do, the strong movement of women voters in her direction is a positive sign. We’ll need more data to see if this trend is holding and whether other swing states are seeing similar trends but it could be an early indication that her messaging is penetrating with it’s intended audiences. Over the past two months the Harris campaign has bombarded Pennsylvania with tens of millions of dollars in ads that have been largely focused on the broader economy (inflation, small businesses, housing and taxes) and abortion. 

Outside of women, Harris is holding her own at the moment with rural voters and men, both groups she won’t win but will need to keep her margin of loss down as much as she can. Her numbers with rural voters in this week's poll are about 6-points ahead of where Biden ended up in 2020 and she’s running about 2-points ahead of Biden among men. Trump and his allied groups are running a barrage of ads on immigration, crime, fracking and Bidenomics that could eat into those numbers over the next 40-plus days but she’s holding her own at the moment– she even gained two points among rural voters between the August and September surveys. 

Like I said, it’s early and the lack of consistent data has made tracking trends difficult. But the first pieces we saw this week were encouraging for Harris. She’s managing her margins so far with rural voters, white voters and men while expanding her lead among women who should make up a larger portion of the electorate. We’ll see if these trends continue but, for now, Pennsylvania is certainly in play. 

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It’s fair to say that poll season mania is now in full swing. We’re entering the part of the election cycle where a new poll seems to pop up on social media every couple of hours. Since the debate last week there have been a barrage of reputable polls that have by and large been very positive for Harris. As polling and communications guru Dan Pfeiffer wrote about earlier this week, the polling tea leaves seem to indicate Harris got a modest post debate bounce. 

While most of the focus in the traditional media and online has been on the topline horse race results, there was plenty of good data buried deep in these polls that might give us a few clues about where this race is heading and what each campaign might be thinking about in the final 48 days. Here are three things that jumped out at me: 

Debate Watchers Liked What They Heard from Harris

In the days after the debate, Trump’s spin machine was turned up to 11 trying to make the case that he “won” the debate. He cited polls from conservative media that claimed he won, he made unsubstantiated claims that ABC News gave Harris the questions in advance and he even suggested that Harris was wearing an earpiece during the debate. I think we can all chalk that up to bluster and hurt feelings. But one piece of Trump’s spin did catch my eye. In shutting down the idea of a second debate with Harris, Trump compared himself to a prize fighting boxer who shouldn’t have to do a rematch. 

His ridiculous analogy aside, Trump didn’t reject a second debate because he believes he won. He and his team rejected the debate because they’re seeing what we’re all seeing in the data: voters who see Harris like what they’re seeing. And giving her another 90 minutes in front of 50+ million voters just weeks before the election would not be helpful to him. 

Going into the debate, Harris had a tall task. She needed to introduce herself to the good chunk of voters who still didn’t know her, come across as presidential and hammer home her increasingly popular agenda. Most people would agree she had a good night and Trump missed a major opportunity. But let’s look under the hood of a post debate YouGov/Yahoo poll to see specifically what voters thought. 

The first question dealt with issues discussed during the debate. Of the seven issue areas asked about, voters thought Harris had better answers on all but one area (immigration). And even the immigration result was closer then it’s been in other polls where Trump has led Harris by 8-10 points on who would handle immigration better. Most notably for this election, Harris had a 23 point lead among voters who watched the debate on who had better answers on abortion and a six point lead on cost of living, which is a very important topic for voters right now. In this same poll, for example,  cost of living was rated as the the top issue.  

The second question was more about style. Voters viewed Harris as the truthful, strong, competent candidate who was focused on policy while Trump was viewed as dishonest, incompetent and unfocused (relative to Harris). Most importantly, over half of voters watching said she was “more presidential” than Trump (only 35% of voters felt Trump was more presidential). Accomplishing that piece was very important for Harris and a good sign for her campaign that voters who hear from her believe she seems presidential–or at least more presidential than Trump which is what matters in a two way race. 

The next question is where we start to get down to business. Going into the debate we said that many voters still had questions about Harris. Nearly 30% of voters in the last NYT/Siena poll said they still needed to hear more from her. So the debate was likely her last chance before a large national audience to get that done. The question above asked voters how much they learned about Harris by watching the debate. The good news for Harris is that 69% of voters who watched the debate said they learned at least something about her. Not bad, but the million dollar question is: what did they learn? 

When asked what voters learned about Harris the top three responses were “what she plans to do as president” (34%), “temperament” (32%) and “fitness to be president” (32%). While this question doesn’t tell us how voters felt about her plans as president, for example, it does show that Harris’s messaging on her policy plans and her goal of drawing a distinct contrast between her and Donald Trump on the question of who is more fit to be president may have penetrated. Now let’s see if people had a positive or negative view about what they heard from her. 

According to the question above, voters who watched the debate and learned something about Harris overwhelmingly thought it was “mostly positive.” Only 14% of voters reported what they learned about Harris was negative. So, to put a bow on this, a large number of voters who watched the debate learned at least something about Harris-likely about her plans as president- and what they learned was overwhelmingly positive. 

I’m not going to walk through the numbers for Trump as slowly as I did for Harris because this post is meant to be about her numbers. But, it’s fair to say his numbers were not great. To pick one example, when voters were asked if the debate made them think better or worse about Donald Trump, 38% said worse while only 20% said better. That’s not catastrophic stuff but it’s certainly not where you hope your candidate will be after a debate. 

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“Who will fight for me?”

On the third night of the Democratic National Convention former President Obama summed up the seminal questions that voters will ask themselves as they make their decision in this election: 

“Who will fight for me? Who’s thinking about my future; about my children’s future — about our future together?”

It sounds overly simplified but it’s truly at the heart of every campaign. People are going to vote for their own self interest and that of their family. The good news for Kamala Harris is that voters who watched the debate had pretty strong feelings about this issue. 

Voters in the YouGov/Yahoo poll we’ve been digging into were asked whether they believed Harris and Trump only cared about themselves. Nearly half (48%) of respondents disagreed with the statement “the only thing Kamala Harris cares about is herself” while 51% agreed with the same statement about Donald Trump. We’ll see how that translates into votes but it’s a positive sign for Harris. Not for nothing, 51% of voters didn’t believe Trump shared their values. 

I know this is just one poll but we’re seeing similar data in other polls. Polls often don’t ask the same questions which can make comparing results across polls difficult and less than scientific but a post debate poll from ABC News found that voters felt Harris better understood their problems by a 10 point margin. More importantly, she has been slowly trending up on this question, presumably as voters learn more about her. 

Harris’s favorables are trending up

A crazy thing happened yesterday. For the first time in nearly two years Kamala Harris’s favorable/unfavorable rating was back to even. Despite the barrage of Republican attack ads being dropped across the country, Harris has erased a -17 approval rating deficit because voters by and large like her and are responding positively to her message and her campaign. By comparison, polling averages currently have Trump’s favorable/unfavorable at -10, which has been steady for a couple of months. It’s easy to say her recent polling has been more about dislike for Trump then it is a like for her. But the rise in her favorables has largely coincided with the rise in her poll numbers which make me believe that voters are liking what they’re seeing. Yes, Trump unpopularity and voters yearning for anyone not named Biden or Trump helps. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. 

After walking through how voters viewed Harris’s debate performance it’s easy to see why Trump and his campaign would not want to give Harris another 90 minutes in front of the nation. On the flip side you can see why Harris might benefit from another shot. In the absence of another debate Harris will need to look for ways to get her message out to as large an audience of voters as possible– the voters that don’t watch cable news or attend rallies. Watch for her to take her message to non-traditional channels like podcasts, cooking shows, black media, etc. as a way of getting her popular message out to the voters that might not be tuned in to the election at the moment. 

And, as we talked about Monday, watch for Trump to try and slow Harris’s momentum but changing the subject and trying to draw the narrative back to friendlier territory for him. Lost in the “eating the pets” news cycles is Trump’s recent attempts to gain traction by promising tax cuts on everyone and everything: from SALT to social security benefits to overtime pay. But Trump hasn’t shown any ability to stay on message for more than 24 hours so we'll see if this latest attempt is fruitful or if he’ll be off onto something else before the weekends.

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Anyone who follows British politics might be familiar with the term “deadcatting” or the “dead cat strategy.” In a nutshell, “deadcatting” is a communications strategy of diverting public attention away from an area of failure by making outrageous and shocking comments on another topic. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once described the “dead cat strategy” this way: 

“There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

Which brings us to last week, an objectively bad week for the Trump campaign. Trump’s debate performance on Tuesday night was terrible and he spent the remainder of the week fighting off questions about his cozy relationship with far-right conspiracy theorist and 9/11 denier Laura Loomer. He finished off the weekend by pronouncing his hate for the most popular celebrity in the world who has hundreds of millions of devoted and adoring fans and followers. JD Vance, for his part, spent the week using valuable campaign time to double down on a debunked conspiracy theory about Haitian migrants and angrily lashing out at the media. The Trump campaign's bad week was compounded by poll after poll showing Harris did, in fact, get a bounce after the debate, which many people including myself didn’t expect. 

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Given how unhinged Trump and Vance were in the second half of last week it’s fair to wonder if these guys have lost it. But this is classic Trump. While the rhetoric is dangerous and extremely racist it should be viewed less as the random ramblings of a crazy man and more as the “dead cat on the dining room table.” 

Trump’s perpetuation of a false story about immigrants and his attack on Swift is likely more a coordinated effort to change the national conversation to…well, anything else. Continuing to push the Springfield conspiracy and attempting to pick a fight with Taylor Swift is Trump’s attempt to control the national conversation, put the focus back on immigration (and therefore himself) and hopefully slow Harris’s building momentum. Before I receive a torrent of hate mail I want to be clear that I do not think it’s a good strategy. But I do think that Democrats should be careful about being sucked into Trump’s cyclone of distraction and disinformation. 

Trump Wants to Control the Narrative

One thing that is consistent across every poll that’s come out over the last two months is that both immigration and abortion are among the top three most important issues for voters. Voters have consistently given Trump higher marks when it comes to who they believe will better handle the border while Harris has a huge lead on abortion. Donald Trump believes, as do his advisors, that talking about anything that keeps the focus on immigration and not abortion, even a debunked, racist story about Haitians, is good for him. According to reporting by The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo, who has excellent sourcing in the MAGA world, Trump advisors are willing to “take the hit” on the Springfield story to avoid tougher topics like abortion. “We talk about abortion, we lose. We talk about immigration, we win,” one Trump adviser told Caputo. They want to fight Harris on their terms, not hers. 

Another consistent fact is that Trump has never been punished by voters for lying. Poll after poll shows that voters do not think he’s honest. Yet he’s still in a statistical tie with Harris in most polls. Trump is once again betting that the upside of turning the national conversation to immigration 50 days before an election far outweighs any blow back he’ll receive from voters for pushing outright lies.

Will it work? 

There isn’t much in the polling to suggest that more than a week spent peddling this story about Haitians eating pets is having any effect on the race, though it’s possible this particular “dead cat” might backfire. When asked if they felt like the Haitians eating dogs claims were “weird or normal” 80% of voters polled in a Data for Progress poll said they were “weird.” 

So then why would the Trump campaign continue to push the issue? If I had to point to something that might explain the Trump campaign strategy I’d point to a question in a recent YouGov/Yahoo poll that asked voters how each candidate performed on the top issues during the debate. Voters said that Harris gave “better answers” on every topic asked about expect immigration (but even that was close). 

As for the out-of-the-blue broadside on Taylor Swift, I don’t believe that attacking a world famous celebrity with a particularly devoted following of young women is a campaign strategy I would endorse but, again, Trump felt the need to draw attention away from Harris’s debate performance and put it back on himself. And for a few hours on Sunday, at least, it worked. Until the news broke of an apparent second assassination attempt on Donald Trump social media was consumed by Trump’s comments about Taylor Swift. It’s not exactly how most strategists would draw it up, but if Trump was done hearing about the debate then his “deadcatting” seemed to work. 

How Should Harris and Democrats Respond? 

Harris has run one of the most disciplined campaigns I’ve ever seen. Unlike Democratic campaigns of the past, she has largely ignored Trump which has put Trump on his heels and denied him any real traction against Harris. But among the biggest disadvantages that Harris has faced since she entered the race is that by election day she will only have been in the race for about 100 days. Many voters didn’t know Harris and she’s running against someone who has near universal name ID. However, polls are showing that what voters are hearing from Harris they like– particularly voters who watched the debate, which is likely a big reason why he wants to change the conversation. Everyday that the focus is on her and not, say, Donald Trump’s hurt feelings about Taylor Swift is a great day for Harris.  

Harris and Democrats would be wise to ignore the Trump/Vance side shows. Despite what Donald Trump says on social media, his campaign’s aggressive attempts to change the narrative is not the sign of a campaign that believes it’s winning. Harris has him on the ropes and she should stay focused on her campaign plan– freedom, costs of everyday good and abortion. As totally offensive and nonsensical as Trump and Vance’s recent ramblings and comments are, Harris didn’t ascend the polls by chasing down every piece of bait Trump threw out. This campaign will be won or lost on the economy, inflation, abortion and immigration, not on Taylor Swift’s endorsement or Donald Trump’s repeated lies about immigrants stealing pets. 

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As I wrote yesterday, the race for president has entered the final 50 day stretch as a close race. For the next eight weeks both campaigns will be working to ensure they enter election day with the maximum number of credible pathways to 270 electoral votes. As of today, each campaign has multiple pathways made up of several combinations of different states. While the most direct route to 270 for both campaigns involves Pennsylvania, that may not be the most practical route for Kamala Harris. Let’s take a look. 

For Harris, the most straightforward path is the “blue wall”-- Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan– three states that Trump won in 2016 and Biden flipped back in 2020. If Harris were to win the three “blue wall” states and lose the other four battleground states– North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona– she would still squeak out a narrow victory with 271 electoral votes. However, were she to lose Pennsylvania, where her polling has been the softest of the “blue wall” states, she still has other pathways but they get trickier. Because all of the remaining four states (Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia or Arizona) have fewer electoral votes then Pennsylvania’s 19, Harris would need to win two of those remaining four. Her most likely path in this case would be to pick up one of the southern states– where her polling is competitive– along with Nevada. That would land her at 274 electoral votes. 

For Trump it’s a similar story. He can win without Pennsylvania but a victory in the Keystone State would open up pathways to 270 that avoid traditionally Democratic states and allow him to close the deal with a state like Georgia or Arizona– historically friendlier turf for Republicans. 

While winning Pennsylvania would be the fastest way to 270 for Harris this could be the election where the “blue wall” crumbles but the Democrat still wins. Based on where the race stands right now, a path to 270 that runs through the south- Georgia and/or North Carolina– may be more likely. Harris’s soft polling in Pennsylvania is highlighting what I have long felt: despite their histories as Republican states, Georgia and North Carolina are friendlier territory for her. 

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Both North Carolina and Georgia have seen major demographic shifts over the last couple of decades. Georgia, for example, had a population in 1990 that was 71% white. According to the 2020 census, the percentage of white residents now stands at 52%, while black, hispanic and asian communities make up about 46% of the population. Compare that to Pennsylvania where nearly 77% of the population is white and just 12% is black. In North Carolina it’s a similar story. The percentage of white residents has dropped from 77% in 1990 to 62% in 2020. Harris is currently lagging Trump with white voters but holds commanding leads with black, hispanic and asian voters, indicating that Georgia and North Carolina could be fertile ground for her. 

But it’s not just race. Generally speaking, Democrats do better with young voters and Republicans do better with older voters, who tend to skew more conservative. That has held true for Harris who is performing well with voters under 45 but is losing to Trump among older voters. To illustrate this point here’s a snapshot of the crosstabs from a recent poll of Pennsylvania. In this particular poll Harris has a sizable lead among voters 18-29 and 30-44. But that support flips once you get to voters over the age of 45. This tells me Harris would likely benefit from an electorate that skews younger. 

According to the 2020 census, just over 19% of Pennsylvania’s population is 65+, ranking 9th in terms of states with the highest population of seniors. Georgia, on the other hand, has one of the smallest populations of seniors, coming in at number 47 out of 50. North Carolina’s population is getting older but as of the last census they ranked in the bottom half of states (#28). Not to belabor the point but the median age in Pennsylvania is 41 versus 37 in Georgia and 39 in North Carolina. North Carolina also has a larger percentage of the population that holds a college degree, which is another group that Harris performs well with. 

Finally, I can’t think of another swing state that’s witnessed more of Trump’s legal drama in the last four years then Georgia. That’s largely because of Trump’s role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, which lead to the charges he is currently facing in Fulton County. I strongly believe that Trump’s legal troubles won’t play a role in the final outcome of the election but I do wonder how four years of bad press and strained relationships with high profile, popular Republicans in the state will affect Trump’s support. Voters nationwide are reporting that they want to turn the page on chaos and drama and few states have been subjected to more Trump drama than Georgia. 

So, where does that leave us? Who shows up to vote more than how many show up to vote is likely what’s going to decide this election. If the electorate in Pennsylvania is friendly to Democrats on election day she can absolutely win the state I wouldn’t count her out yet. But the younger, more diverse electorates in North Carolina and Georgia seem like friendlier turf for Harris at this point. But remember, North Carolina or Georgia alone are not one-for-one swaps with Pennsylvania in terms of electoral votes. She’ll still need one other state, like Nevada, to hit 270– though that’s moot if she wins both southern states. 

The conventional wisdom has been that a Democrat can’t win without winning the “blue wall.” But at this point in the election I think it’s more likely than not that if Harris wins the election her road to 270 will go right through the heart of the south. 

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Tuesday night ended the pomp and circumstance phase of this election season and started the final 53 day sprint to election day. Both campaigns will now get down to business executing their respective campaign plans. Instead of doing a play-by-play breakdown of Tuesday night’s debate I thought it would be far more useful for our purposes to take stock of where the race stands following Tuesday night’s debate and what the campaigns will set their sights on for the next few weeks. 

Tuesday night was not a good night for Donald Trump. I don’t say that because he did or said anything fatal that will cost him the election. Talking about migrants “eating the pets” and praising Viktor Orban as “smart” didn’t help his cause but he was generally the same guy we see every day saying the same things he’s said a million times. But the debate as a whole was a massive missed opportunity for his campaign. I, more than most Democrats, was worried that a strong debate performance from Trump could put the race out of reach for Harris. While I think she has run a near flawless campaign thus far, the unpopularity of the Biden Administration and her late entrance into the race has given Trump an upper hand strategically and a clearer path to 270 electoral votes. In front of one of the largest television audiences ever to watch a presidential debate Trump missed nearly every opportunity to do what he needed to do: tie Harris to Biden (Read about what each candidate needed to accomplish Tuesday night here and see decide for yourself how they did!). His failure to take control of the race has left the door wide open for Harris and energized her campaign as she heads back out on the trail.  

Trump has no one to blame but himself for his bad performance. I’ve heard people blaming the moderators or ABC News or any other number of people. But from a purely campaign strategy perspective (because that’s what we really care about here!) Trump himself, and himself alone, walked into every single trap that Harris set for him. And these were not sophisticated traps. They were obvious. A Republican candidate with more discipline and preparation would have easily ignored or swatted away most of Harris’s traps and diversion tactics. His lack of self control ended up being the highlight of the night and let Harris off the hook during her most difficult questions. 

So, where does the race stand following the debate? In a normal world during a normal campaign cycle I strongly believe debates don’t matter. Barack Obama had a disastrous first debate loss to Mitt Romney in 2012 and paid very little price for it– not to mention that Trump “lost” to Hillary Clinton all three times they debated and still won the election. Despite Trump’s terrible night the race hasn’t fundamentally changed. The race is still very close, the electorate is still very polarized and the outcome will likely come down to how the remaining undecided voters in the seven swing states break over the next 50 days. When voting begins and real voters start casting real votes we’ll get a better picture of who is showing up to vote which could give us clues about where the election is headed.

As of this writing there haven’t been any credible post-debate polls that I would feel comfortable highlighting here but I don’t foresee any statistically significant movement in the polls based on what happened Tuesday night. And remember: to be able to say Trump or Harris got a boost or lost ground from the debate we’d need to see a trend over multiple polls. A flash poll commissioned by CNN after the debate shows why I’m not betting on any major shifts in the race following Tuesday night: only 4% of voters polled said they changed their vote after watching the debate (though it doesn't say in which direction) and 82% of respondents said the debate didn’t affect their choice. 

To take it one step further, a CBS News/YouGov poll released last week asked voters in Michigan who had stated a preference between Trump and Harris (meaning they’re not undecided) if they would ever consider voting for the other candidate. Only 1% of voters who have decided to vote for Harris would consider voting for Trump and only 2% of voters who have decided to vote for Trump would consider voting for Harris. If similar views are held across the other swing states then it’s very unlikely the debate changed many minds and shifted this race. 

With the debates and conventions behind us and the first absentee ballots starting to drop this week, both candidates will shift focus back to what really matters: voter communication. In the coming days, watch each campaign closely for clues about how they view the race and insight into their strategies. Where will each candidate be? (and I don't mean what state– specifically what part of those states). Are they expanding the map and trying to put new states in play or are they consolidating support in a smaller number of critical states? Who are they targeting with their paid media? What communities are they knocking doors in and making phone calls to? Time is the most important resource for any campaign and where the campaign is sending the candidate and top surrogates can give helpful clues on their strategy. 

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Let’s dissect Harris’s schedule for the next four days because it’s very interesting. Harris will be in North Carolina on Thursday for events in Charlotte and Greensboro, then Pennsylvania on Friday with stops in Johnstown (!) and Wilkes-Berre (!!). Tim Walz, for his part, is set to visit Kent County, Michigan (!) on Thursday, which is number five on my Swing Counties Power Rankings list, before heading to Wisconsin on Friday and Saturday. The campaign said yesterday they will have rallies and events in every media market of every swing state in the next four days. That’s a lot of hustle. 

North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are obviously important swing states. But the locations Harris and Walz are visiting within those states tell the story of a campaign that is running a far more aggressive, offensively minded campaign then Democrats ran in 2016 and 2020. The Harris campaign is doubling down on their plan to get Harris and Walz out of the traditional Democratic comfort zones of big cities and out into the suburban and rural areas of these states (as they did in Georgia two weeks ago). Luzerne and Cambria Counties, where Harris will be Friday, are traditionally Republican counties that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 (though Josh Shapiro won Luzerne in 2022). But with the Democratic base energized and happy Harris wants to fight Trump on his own turf by contesting red counties and attempting to drive Trump’s margins down. If she runs up big margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, for example, while successfully limiting her margin of loss in places like Cambria County, she wins Pennsylvania and likely the election. I was pleasantly surprised to hear recently that the Harris campaign was actively knocking doors in Adams County, Pennsylvania which is a deep red county that a Democrat hasn’t won since 1964. Harris won’t stop that trend but that’s the point.  

Trump, for his part, will be in Arizona today and Las Vegas on Friday. Nevada is a far more important state this year than its six electoral votes suggest. Whichever candidate loses Pennsylvania on election night will almost certainly need to win Nevada to have any chance of still winning. Trump has campaigned almost exclusively in rural and suburban communities for the last four years. With Harris now focused on similar communities this campaign will likely come down to whether Trump can solidify his support in those areas with voters who don’t particularly like him but may have a negative view of Harris  or whether Harris can make enough inroads over the final 50 days to flip a few key swing states in her favor. 

With voting officially starting in a matter of days in some states the campaigns will also turn their focus to direct voter communications and the ground game battle. There was an article this week by Semafor about how Republicans are starting to panic that the Trump campaign's unrelenting focus on voter fraud has been at the expense of building a credible field operation to get their voters out. We’ll keep an eye on this moving forward but if Trump heads into election day without a credible ground game it would be a self-inflicted wound magnitudes larger than his debate performance Tuesday night. 

Party conventions and debates are great for social media and cable news networks. But they often pull the candidate off the campaign trail and away from undecided voters to talk to donors, activists and voters who have already made up their minds. Now we’re back to the parts of the campaign that truly matter: voter communication and the final sprint to election day. 

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Tonight, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet in Philadelphia for what will likely be the only debate between the two. Election day is only 55 days away and absentee ballots have started to drop for voters in some states, so this is a high stakes evening for both candidates. 

The last six weeks have largely been defined by Harris’s red hot entrance into the race and rapid rise in the polls, however new polling over the weekend suggested her polling boost may be leveling off. Donald Trump on the other hand has largely weathered the Kamala storm but has struggled to gain traction without Biden in the race. The last debate between Biden and Trump back in June had an average audience of 51.3 million viewers and there are no indications that a second debate between Harris and Trump will happen. With the conventions behind us, this could be the last chance for each candidate to make their case in front of a large audience of Americans. 

Before we dive into the top things I think each candidate needs to accomplish tonight, a brief word on how I view debates. I don’t believe that every debate has a winner and a loser and I actually hate using that frame to evaluate debates. If that was an effective way of analyzing a debate then Trump would never have become president because he “lost” all three debates to Hillary Clinton according to the media, pundits and a good number of voters who were polled following those debates. 

Debates are about having a set of things that you need to accomplish in your 90 minutes on stage. It could be trying to shore up a vital weakness or trying to expose a weakness in your opponent in front of millions of voters. But any good candidate goes in with a short list of things they need to get done. So, in my view, both candidates could conceivably win or lose the debate or the candidate I think “won” is not always the same one the media crowns the winner.

You’re likely going to see two very different strategies tonight. Trump is well known but not popular. He’s been banging up against a ceiling in his support for years now so, for strategic reasons, I expect Trump to go very negative trying to drive up Harris’s unfavorables (which is easier than bringing his up). As we’ll see below, Harris is still unknown to many voters so tonight is an opportunity to introduce herself and show that she can stand up to Trump. With that in mind, these are the things I think each candidate needs to accomplish or avoid on stage tonight:

What Does Donald Trump Need to Do:

1.) Continue to Tie Harris to Biden. Donald Trump has had a frustrating couple of months. It’s clear Trump has struggled to find an effective attack on Harris and that’s in part because of Harris’s impressive discipline thus far. Of the few effective attacks he’s landed, tying Harris to Biden and the biggest perceived failures of the Administration is probably his most effective. The Biden Administration remains deeply unpopular with voters and being a member of the administration is probably her biggest liability. It’s also the attack that Harris will have the hardest time defending against. 

A NYT/Siena poll released on Sunday highlights the danger for Harris on this issue. Voters overwhelmingly said the next president “should represent a major change from Joe Biden” (61%) yet 55% of voters said they believed Harris “represents more of the same” (vs. 34% for Trump). That’s a big vulnerability for Harris.

Harris clearly knows this which is why she’s tried to position herself as the underdog challenger who’s focused on the future, not the past (as Trump often is). A successful night for Trump would be repetitively tying her to the Biden Administration and its biggest perceived failures.

2.) Try Not to Make News on Abortion. According to the same NYT/Siena Poll mentioned above, voters reported that abortion was the second most important issue in deciding who to vote for in November, making it likely Trump’s biggest policy vulnerability. In the last few weeks Trump has made an absolute mess of the abortion issue. In the span of less than 24 hours Trump managed to take positions on both sides of the abortion debate, infuriating liberals and conservatives alike, leaving voters confused about what he would actually do as president. The same NYT/Siena poll showed that Harris held a 15-point lead on who voters trust more on abortion.

No matter what he says, Trump will not beat Harris on this issue. But the less news he makes on this the better for him (the flip side here is the more Harris can goad him on abortion the better for her). If he can find a way to come across as less radical than Democrats portray him on abortion without upsetting his base, that's a decent outcome for him.

3.) Don’t Let Harris Get Under His Skin. I will confess that I don’t believe that Donald Trump’s erratic and obnoxious behavior is a liability for him. A recording of the man bragging about sexually assaulting women played on loop for months and he still won the election in 2016. But this race is very close and the electorate is very polarized, meaning there aren’t many undecided voters left. Recent data suggests the profile of the average undecided voter is likely to be a non-white, college educated woman under the age of 45. Being overly aggressive, boorish or unhinged may not play well with that group. Tonight could be his last opportunity to communicate widely with undecided voters who may have outstanding negative views about him. 

That said, the bar for Trump’s behavior is very low. It wouldn’t take much for Trump to make himself seem more disciplined than usual, which could help soothe undecided voters who have reservations about his judgment and temperament.

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What Does Kamala Harris Need to Do?

1.) Make the case that she isn’t Biden. As I mentioned above, this election will likely come down to whether or not Harris can convince enough voters that she won’t just be a continuation of the Biden years. That’s a tall task for a candidate that is widely still unknown by many voters outside of being Joe Biden’s vice president. Harris has leaned heavily into a forward looking message that tells voters “we’re not going back.” She has used recent policy announcements on taxes, housing and grocery prices to put further daylight between her and Joe Biden. A successful night requires Harris to clearly communicate that she will chart her own course as president that will not be more of the same. More about tomorrow and less about yesterday.

If Donald Trump is on his game he’s going to attempt to tie Harris to Biden and try to make her answer for everything from border security to the tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan. The old adage in politics is that if you’re explaining you're losing. Harris needs to take her hits and pivot back to a forward looking message as quickly as she can. She did this effectively during her recent interview with CNN. There’s nothing to be gained by spending precious time explaining and defending.

2.) She should assume voters don’t know who she is. The NYT/Siena poll I’ve referenced several times had some good news and some worrying news for Harris. One of the positive tidbits was that she’s running neck and neck with Trump despite the fact that almost 30% of voters say they still need to learn more about her.

This tells me two things. First, voters might not know much about her but they’re keeping an open mind and giving her an opportunity. That’s great news for her and suggests she may not have hit her ceiling. And I think voters are keeping an open mind because of the second point, which is that Trump is really unpopular. That doesn’t mean he’ll lose (he was a historically unpopular president-elect in 2016) but his unpopularity has caused many voters to keep the door open to other options, like Harris.

The debate format is a difficult place to work in straight biographical material but she should find opportunities to introduce herself to voters who might be unfamiliar with her but are open to learning more (basically, push the messaging in this ad she’s running in battleground states).

3.) Freedom, Freedom and more Freedom. We all remember the now famous SNL skit from 2000 where Christpher Walken repeatedly demands “more cowbell!” Well, if I was Kamala Harris’s Bruce Dickenson I’d be demanding “more freedom!”

We might not be talking about a neck and neck race had Harris not grabbed the freedom narrative from Republicans so successfully. She has used “freedom” as a way of painting Donald Trump and his Republican allies as extreme. She has also released a tightly focused but highly popular policy agenda that’s centered around pocketbook issues like taxes, housing and consumer prices. The more voters hear about her top policy positions the more they like it. It’s imperative for Harris to find opportunities to clearly and forcefully communicate that she is the candidate of freedom in this race.

4.) It’s better to be ‘strong and wrong then weak and right.’ As I mentioned above, Donald Trump is not popular yet he continues to stay competitive in national elections. I believe part of the answer lies in what Bill Clinton once said: “When people are insecure, they’d rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who’s weak and right.” Basically, voters will begrudgingly vote for the bully, even if they’re wrong on the issues, if they don’t feel like the “right” candidate can effectively stand up to the bully and protect them.

One of the easier tasks Harris has tonight is picking a few strategic fight with Trump, perhaps over issues she has the upper hand like abortion, defending democracy or the national debt. Harris needs to show voters an ability to stand up to Trump without sinking to his level and letting the debate devolve into a bar brawl. A debate that spirals out of control to the point that voters turn it off hurts Harris more. But she needs to make the case to undecided voters that she’s more than capable of standing up to a bully.

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Today marks the start of the NFL season. It’s that joyous time of the year where for the next few hours we’re all completely convinced our team is going 17-0 (The Buccaneers are going undefeated and I won’t entertain opposing arguments until they lose this afternoon). So, to celebrate football's return I’m launching our first Swing Counties Power Rankings. These are 10 counties that I believe will help determine and predict the outcome of the election in November. I’ll update these every week or so until election day based on new polling, voter registration data, early vote numbers or other important dynamics in the race I think could help determine the election.

These rankings are a direct reflection of how I currently view the importance and competitiveness of each swing state. Both candidates currently have multiple paths to 270 but, at the moment, I believe Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada are the linchpins that will determine which road is taken to 270. More on this later. 

Finally, notice which states didn’t make the list. Four years ago it would have been inconceivable that a list of battleground counties wouldn’t include at least one from Florida. As I wrote earlier this week, Florida is unlikely to be in play this year, despite positive polling for Democrats this week. 

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⚡ SWING COUNTIES POWER RANKING ⚡

1. ERIE COUNTY, PA

Erie takes the top spot because it’s a true bellwether county in the most important swing state. Harris has seen a meteoric rise in the polls but her numbers in Pennsylvania have underperformed other battleground states. Both candidates have multiple pathways to 270 but Pennsylvania makes things significantly easier for each. 

Erie voters have correctly predicted the last four presidential elections, voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012, Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. If history is any indication, the winner of Erie will likely win Pennsylvania, therefore likely winning the election. 

2. WASHOE COUNTY, NV

Depending on what happens with Pennsylvania, Nevada could become a very important state in the race to 270, despite only having 6 electoral votes. In the last three presidential elections Democrats have won the two most populous counties in Nevada while Republicans have won the remaining. Washoe County has become more diverse over the last decade and a half. Polling in Nevada is tight and whoever wins Nevada could win the election. Trump nearly won Washoe County in 2016 before Joe Biden won more comfortably in 2020. If Trump’s result is closer to 2016 then 2020, he could put a real scare into Democrats in Nevada. 

3. COBB COUNTY, GA

While I believe Pennsylvania is the lynchpin to the election at this moment in time, I could make a very strong argument that Georgia is friendlier territory for Harris. And if she wins Georgia, Trump’s path becomes very difficult, regardless of what happens in Pennsylvania. Barring a major drop in polling, Georgia will remain high on this list for the foreseeable future. 

Georgia has a whopping 159 counties, though most have small populations. That makes the small handful of counties with large populations very important. Cobb County is the third most populous county behind Fulton and Gwinnett (see below!) counties. Like many major urban areas in the south, Cobb County has seen rapid demographic shifts over the last 20 years that have shifted the county politically from solidly red to reliably blue. While it has a larger percentage of white voters than other battleground counties like Gwinnett, black and hispanic voters make up more than 40% of the population. Much like its cousin Gwinnett below, Hillary Clinton was the first Democrat to win Cobb since Jimmy Carter in 1976. 

4. BUCKS COUNTY, PA

Two of the top four spots hail from the Keystone State, underscoring how important, yet unsettled, Pennsylvania is. The most direct route to the White House for Harris involves winning Pennsylvania, while a Trump win forces Harris to hunt for electoral votes in the Sunbelt. While Democrats have won Bucks County in every presidential race since 1992, it’s exactly the type of place where voter dissatisfaction with the Biden Administration could cost them valuable votes. Voter registration in Bucks County is evenly split with both Democrats and Republicans making up 41% of registered voters. 

Once a major industrial area, Buck County has seen increased population growth over the last decade in part due to a thriving biotechnology industry, which has become a major employer in the county. In 2012 and 2016 Democrats failed to hit 50%, which they had done in the previous three elections. Trump has never hit higher than 47.6%. Harris will need to break 50%, as Biden did in 2020, for her to have a chance on election night. 

5. KENT COUNTY, MI

Kent County might be home to a long list of Republican politicians and activist donors like Gerald Ford and the DeVos Family, but it’s voted for the Democratic candidate at the top of the ticket in the last three elections. Michigan voted for Trump in 2016 and flipped blue again in 2020 to vote for Biden. The Detroit area gets a lot of attention but outside of Detroit, Kent County has become a major bellwether area. Home to Grand Rapids, the county has grown more diverse in the last two decades with the white population shrinking from 83% in 2000 to 72% in 2020. 

Kent County is a microcosm of Democrats' struggles in the midwest and upper midwest since 2008. Democrats won Kent County in 2008, lost it in 2012 and 2016 and Biden won it back in 2020. 

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6. GWINNETT COUNTY, GA

When people wonder how Georgia went from being an easy Republican win to a true swing state I point them to Gwinnett County for the answer. Few places in America have seen as much demographic change over the last 30 years. In 1990, Gwinnett county was over 90% white. Today it’s a minority majority county and white residents make up only 32% of the population. It also has a significant Hispanic population which presents challenges and opportunities for both candidates. 

Politically, Gwinnett County had been a solidly red county. Jimmy Carter was the only Democrat to win Gwinnett until Hillary Clinton won it in 2016. Joe Biden widened Democrats’ gains in 2020 on his way to narrowly winning the state. As the second most populous county in the state, Harris must not only win Gwinnett but turn out voters in large numbers to win the state. 

7. SAUK COUNTY, WI

While Sauk County doesn’t have the large populations of Milwaukee, Dane or Waukesha, Sauk has a well-earned reputation as a bellwether county in one of the most important bellwether states. Like Erie County above, Sauk has correctly voted for the last four presidents. Watch tiny Sauk for clues about how this election might shake out 

8. CLARK COUNTY, NV

As mentioned in Washoe County above, Nevada’s six electoral votes could prove pivotal late on election night depending on how the bigger prizes on the east coast shake out. Clark County, home to Las Vegas, has nearly three quarters of Nevada’s population. Harris will likely win the county but the margin of that victory will determine who wins the state. Democrats have lost ground in the county since Obama won 58% in 2008. Both candidates have tried appealing to voters in Clark County with dueling plans to eliminate taxes on tipped income, a hot issue in a county with a lot of hospitality workers.

9. LACKAWANA COUNTY, PA

If history is any indication, Harris should win Lackawana County. It’s voted for the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 1984. But, Democrats' margins in the county have declined significantly since 2012. If Harris can win Lackawana County by anything close to Democrats 2008 & 2012 numbers then she has a real chance to carry the state. For Trump, he doesn’t need to win the county but he needs to keep his margins closer to 2016 then 2020. 

10. MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ

Arizona is one of two states to enter the swing state club after Biden won them in 2020, along with Georgia. Arizona is probably more a must win for Trump then it is for Harris but a win in Arizona would make Harris’s path to 270 much easier. Maricopa County is home to 62% of the state's population. The share of the white population has dropped from 95% in 1970 to just under 60% in 2020, while the hispanic population has grown from 14.5% to 30.5% in the same time period. 

Joe Biden was the first Democrat to win Maricopa County in a presidential since 1948. But he only won the state by 10,457 votes. Turnout and margins in this county of 4.4 million could help decide the outcome of the election.

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The unprecedented enthusiasm surrounding the first few weeks of the Harriz-Walz campaign has many Democrats wondering which other states might be in play in this upended race. A recent poll commissioned by the Political Communications and Public Opinion Research Labs at Florida Atlantic University shows Kamala Harris within the margin of error, leaving some Democrats salivating over the prospect of winning back the electoral college’s crown jewel. 

So, is Florida really in play? Can Harris-Walz do the unthinkable and go into Trump’s home state and steal Florida and its 30 electoral votes back for the first time since Barack Obama won the state by less than 1 percent in 2012? 

As with everything that involves the state of Florida, the answer is complicated. Despite several cycles of abysmal election results in the Sunshine States, Florida is still a swing state. Florida is no “redder” than Arizona or Georgia (both of which Biden won in 2020 and Harris has a great chance to win in November) but it is bigger, more expensive and far more complicated to navigate than any other state, even for the strongest of campaigns. 

In 2008, the Obama campaign showed Democrats the pathway to winning Florida. They repeated and won again in 2012. Since then the operation they built was allowed to wither by a state party asleep at the wheel and Democrats have suffered countless electoral shellackings. Building a winning campaign in Florida with more than a year to prepare is hard enough. But introducing yourself to the voters of the third most populous state and building a large scale field operation to corral a winning Democratic coalition in less then 100 days is unheard of. Let’s take a look at what it takes for a Democrat to win Florida and whether or not it’s realistic to expect Harris to execute such a strategy in the next 60-plus days. 

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HOW DOES A DEMOCRAT WIN FLORIDA?

Republicans have always had natural advantages in Florida that make winning statewide elections, including presidential elections, easier for them. Republican voters are higher propensity voters, meaning they are far more likely to turn out to vote then Democratic base voters. For a Democrat to win statewide in Florida they must put together a broad coalition of voters from across a geographically large state and then make sure those voters get out to vote on or before election day. The groups that traditionally make up a winning Democratic coalition are historically more sporadic and lower propensity voters: young voters, black voters, teachers and non-Cuban Hispanics. This means Democrats start out behind even before the election begins.

In 2008, Barack Obama wrote the script for Democrats about how to win Florida. In concept, the strategy is quite simple: run up massive numbers in the “tri-county” Democratic strongholds of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, win the “swingy-er” counties like Hillsborough, Pinellas, Orange and Duval, and then (and this is the most important part!) limit losses in the populous red counties like Sarasota, Polk, Pasco, Lee and Brevard (just to name a couple examples). Democrats won’t win those counties but, as we’ll see below, they cannot get blown out. 

Let’s take a closer look at Obama’s 2008 winning results and compare them to the next two Democratic nominees not named Barack Obama: 

As I said above, the first step to winning Florida is running up a massive margin in the Democratic strongholds in South Florida. The above chart paints two very different pictures. First let's look at what happened with Joe Biden in 2020. If you compare his results in 2020 to Obama’s margins in 2008 you can see how things went south for Biden very quickly, ultimately leading to a 3 point loss in the state. His margin in Miami-Dade was less than half of what Obama got in 2008 and he didn’t break +30% win margin in Broward, which likely spells doom for any Democrat. Falling behind in these three populous, liberal counties means you’ll need to find votes elsewhere in the state, which is much less friendly territory for Democrats. In 2020, Joe Biden failed the first part of our three part test. 

Hillary Clinton’s results in 2016 paint a very different picture. She actually outpaced Obama’s 2008 results in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. In Miami-Dade alone she received 124,000 more votes than Obama did and across the three counties she banked 178,000 more votes compared to 2008. Unlike Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton passed the first of the three part test. 

Now since this post is about whether Kamala Harris can actually win Florida in November, let’s see how she’s doing. There has been very little reliable polling out of Florida so far this cycle because few thought Florida would be competitive. But two recent polls, one showing Harris leading Trump by 14 points in Miami-Dade County and another that has Harris up 18 in Palm Beach County, caught my eye. If these polls are true, and I have every reason to believe it is because Christian Ulvert is an elite consultant who knows Florida better than anyone, then they’re certainly significant, but perhaps not sufficient. Put into the context of the other three races we’ve looked at and Harris appears to be competitive in the fist of our three tests: her Dade numbers are far outpacing Biden’s and running in line with Obama’s 2008 numbers and her current margin in Palm Beach is better the both Clinton and Biden. When you consider that the Harris campaign hasn’t held any events in Florida, isn’t up on the air in Florida and has no major infrastructure in Florida (compared to other battlegrounds like, say, Pennsylvania) these are impressive numbers. But again, alone it’s not sufficient. 

Moving on to the second part of our three part test, let’s look at a handful of toss up counties, like those in the famous “I-4 Corridor”. 

When you look at what happened in five of the largest swing counties in Central and North Florida things get tricker for Democrats. Remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton outpaced Obama’s 2008 results in South Florida by 178,000. But across these five important swing counties, Hillary won them by a combined 32,000 less votes than Obama did in 2008 (Obama won these counties by a margin of 166,956 vs. 135,270 for Hillary eight years later). Hillary was very popular within the Democratic base but not as much (relative to Obama) with more moderate voters in purple counties. 

Joe Biden did fairly well in these more moderate counties and slightly outpaced Obama’s 2008 margin of victory. Biden won by a combined 8,418 more votes across these five counties than Obama did in 2008. But his margins weren’t wide enough to make up for his smaller then needed margins in South Florida (especially Dade County). 

The final piece of our three part test is the hardest but arguably the most important. This is the test that Democrats keep failing in statewide races in Florida. Florida has 67 counties spread across two time zones. Democrats traditionally lose the vast majority (Obama only won 15 of 67 counties in 2008) though many of those counties have very few voters. There are, however, a handful of red counties that have significant enough populations that make them important for Democrats to invest in, even though they won’t win those counties on election day. The work put into these counties helps protect the gains made in the above two discussions. Simply put, a Democrat cannot win Florida if they don’t limit their losses in these Republican counties. 

So far, the results for Obama, Clinton and Biden were similar enough, with some significant differences here and there. But this is where things start to diverge and competitive campaigns become winning campaigns or losing campaigns. It’s also the main reason I don’t think that Harris has enough time left in this campaign to make Florida truly competitive on election night. Let’s look at the numbers: 

The chart above shows the margin of loss for 5 of the most populous Republican counties. It also shows why Clinton ultimately lost Florida in 2016 and how Obama pulled off a stunning 3 point win in 2008. In 2016 Clinton did outstanding in the Democratic counties, decent in the swing counties and then got her doors blown off in the Republican counties. As you’ll see above, Obama never won a single of these counties but he managed his margins and limited his losses effectively. If you take Polk County, the most populous of the above, Obama lost by 15,000 votes. By comparison, Clinton lost by 40,000 and Biden lost by 50,000. And that’s only one county. If you give Republicans those types of margins across the 50 or so counties they usually win and things can get out of hand quickly. 

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR HARRIS?

The Obama playbook of running up the score and limiting losses isn’t a new one. It’s used in many battleground states. But it’s much easier said than done in Florida and it’s a very expensive and time consuming strategy to implement even in the best of times. I think the Vice President could do quite well in South Florida, even in the condensed timeframe this campaign is being run. But as we saw, that hasn’t been enough for Democratic candidates in the past.  Building an operation to engage voters in the swing and Republican counties at this point would be very hard and, frankly, would likely be a terrible investment when you consider how Harris is performing in the ever important “Blue Wall” states needed to win the election.

In 2008, the Obama campaign had offices with staff and volunteers working in nearly every county. By this point in the campaign they had been out knocking doors, making phone calls, registering voters, organizing students and seniors, engaging elected officials, and building a formidable ground game for many months. Harris didn’t have an opportunity to do the same and hiring staff, recruiting volunteers and opening offices takes a lot of time and a lot of resources– and time is not something the Harris campaign has a lot of at the moment. These resources would likely be pulled from another battleground state, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan or Georgia– all places Democrats have won recently and are critical to Democrats’ chances of winning the overall election. 

While I believe Florida is still a swing state the infrastructure advantages that Republicans currently have in the state are staggering. Since Obama’s win in 2008, Democrats have lost elected officials at the local level in many of these ever important Republican counties, county party operations are a shell of their former selves and Republicans have gained a million plus voter registration advantage. 

So then, back to our original question: Will Florida be competitive? I guess the answer is that  it depends on your definition of competitive. As someone who grew up in Florida, cut my teeth in Florida politics and follows the state closely, no, I don't think Harris can win Florida this late in the race. But that has less to say about how voters in Florida view her and more about the chaotic nature of this campaign cycle and the complete failure of a state party that allowed the operation that Obama built to atrophy. If Harris is elected she’ll have an opportunity to invest in rebuilding the Obama operation and position herself to be competitive in 2028. But asking any candidate, even one who seems hotter than the sun right now, to build a winning campaign in the most complex and expensive battleground state in the country is a very tall task. 

The good news for Kamala Harris fans is that her campaign seems to be running a very similar playbook to the one I described above in the ever important and highly competitive state of Georgia (and according to recent polls it’s working). Just last week Harris and Governor Walz did a two day bus tour through Southern Georgia, culminating with a rally in Savannah that had 9,000-plus people. This is the first time Democrats have visited rural Southern Georgia since Bill Clinton’s “Bubba for Bill” bus tour in 1992. It’s also a major acknowledgement by the campaign that they cannot sit back and rely on Atlanta and its suburbs to deliver enough votes to win the state. They must meet voters where they are, compete for every vote and limit their losses in Republican areas in a state that was decided by less than 12,000 votes in 2020. 

While winning Florida would be fun it’s far from necessary. Harris’s ultimate goal is to win the election, not any one state, and her strongest play may actually be to cut Florida loose. Biden won comfortably in 2020 while losing Florida by 3 points. Strengthening the blue wall, retaining two red seats picked up in 2020 and flipping North Carolina would be a historic accomplishment for a candidate in the race for only 100 days. Florida isn’t going to be competitive but it shouldn't be and doesn’t need to be.

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