One Month to Go, Here’s Where the Race Stands
A month out from election day the race remains very close. Here are a few factors that could decide the winner over the next 30 days.
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.
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.