Labor Day
It’s Labor Day weekend. Traditionally, Labor Day is the beginning of the fall election campaigns. This year that’s more acute. Like the “bad old days” of politics, one party didn’t fill out “their ticket” until just a few weeks ago. Now we know: it’s Trump and Vance versus Harris and Walz.
There’s been a lot of pre-game activity. Since the Democratic Convention ended; Harris barnstormed south Georgia, and finally did an interview. Walz got “vetted” by the press: yes, he really was a Sergeant Major; no, he didn’t get deployed in 24 years of National Guard service, yes he had a DUI back in the 1990’s, and yes, he quit drinking after.
Trump also was busy. The Arlington Cemetery moment is one more example of the ex-President pushing through an event that might have ended a “lesser” candidacy. Oh, and Prosecutor Jack Smith is pushing forward, on criminal charges against Trump in two courts. And Vance, he’s getting vetted too. It’s all about “single cat ladies” and telling the opposition to “go to Hell” (must be the mark of that Yale education).
So here we go, an election match-up we didn’t expect just a month and a half ago. What we thought we going to be the sad sequel to 2020, now is a fresh, new, race. What was a battle of the old Boomers, is now a battle of Boomer versus Gen X (that “flipped the script” on Trump). And Harris brings the hidden values of race and gender fully into play. Obama won decisively in 2008 and 2012. Clinton won, but still lost the election in 2016. What lessons should Harris learn from both? And just to increase the anticipation – in some states, early voting opens in a week.
It Just Doesn’t Matter
As Hillary Clinton would be the first to remind us, the election of the American President is not by “popular vote”. If it was, our recent history would be very different: think Al Gore instead of George W Bush, and Hillary instead of Donald. It’s not that the popular vote doesn’t “count”, but it only counts by state. Our arcane and flawed Electoral College system will determine the Presidency again. And when it’s all told, forty-three states and Washington, DC, are likely already determined.
Sure, those of us in Ohio and California and Texas need to go through the motions: we need to vote. But the likelihood of Ohio going “blue”, or California going “red” is small. If either happens, we are in the “landslide” territory, unseen since 2008. And while Texas is on the verge of turning “purple”, don’t hold your breath. The good old boys counting votes down there will make sure “Red” prevails once more (Florida too).
When you split the “44” into Red and Blue, Trump has 219 Electoral votes, and Harris has 226. 93 votes remain in the seven “swing states” that will determine who gets to 270; becomes our next President, and decides the fate of the free world (whoops, fell in Biden-esque language there, but still true). From left to right they are: Nevada (6), Arizona (11), Wisconsin (10), Michigan (15), Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), and Pennsylvania (19).
Surprise
By the way, North Carolina is a surprise. It’s been a Presidential “Red” state for a while, and, like Red Florida; Democrats are hesitant to spend “good money after bad” there. But Harris’s candidacy changed the Biden strategy of completely depending on the Midwest “Blue Wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania; putting North Carolina and Georgia back into Democratic play. Keep in mind though: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania total 44 electoral votes. Add that to 226 and it equals 270, the magic number for election. That’s all the “swing” a Democrat needs.
Where is Trump’s path to victory? Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and, crack the Blue Wall say at Wisconsin; that’s 272 votes. It all makes North Carolina’s 16 votes win or die for Republicans, as much as Pennsylvania’s 19 is for Democrats. What happens in those seven states will make all the difference. As Pennsylvania and North Carolina go, so goes the Nation.
Polls
We won’t know who won until after election day. Likely, we won’t know until long after election day. Like 2020, the margins are so narrow, that it took four days to know for sure. We know those margins are so narrow, because we’ve fallen back into the trap of worrying about polling once again.
Polling: the political equivalent of Lucy holding Charlie Brown’s football. We think it’s giving us answers, we want to believe it gives us answers; but in the end, in our narrowly divided country, it doesn’t. But we still line up behind the ball, knowing that “this time”, she won’t let go. So what are the problems?
Polls are taken with small numbers of people (in the hundreds usually) used to project a result, and each poll has a mathematically determined “margin of error”. So to start with, if Harris is ahead of Trump by 2%, and the margin of error is 4%; then Harris could be up by 6%, or Trump could be up by 2%, or any result in between. And here’s the big point: there’s no greater likelihood of a positive Harris result than there is a positive Trump result, even though “on paper”, Harris is winning. The margin of error is literally a “gray zone” of indecision.
But we want a winner and a loser, and the poll “shows” a winner and a loser, so we get fired up.
Poll Watching
And polls aren’t just random samples of people. The polling data is pushed through a “model”, a formula that hopes to reflect what the actual 2024 voters look like. So different pollsters could take the same data and come out with different results. Some of that is politically driven; but most is just the “best guest” of what the 2024 electorate might look like. In both 2016 and 2020, most models under-counted Trump support. That’s where the Harris “hidden values” may change things. Trump versus Biden – pollsters had the solid evidence of 2020 to work from. But now it’s Harris as candidate. She’s Black, South Asian, and a woman. Pollsters literally have to take “educated guesses” to determine what the 2024 electorate will look like. Who’s right? Who knows.
So what’s the “trick” to reading polls? I look at the “Republican Polls”; Fox News, Rasmussen, Fabrizio among others. Their models are more likely to under-count Harris support. So if Harris is doing well on those polls, then she likely is doing even better in “real life”. And if Harris or Trump is outside the margin of error, then that’s solid data.
But polls are nothing more than snapshots of the present. How people respond on a poll today, is merely an indicator of how they’ll vote in a week, or a month, or on election day. Polls might reflect the “trends” of where we are going, they still do not determine the destination. They can make you “believe” in a candidate. But until those days after the election, nothing really matters. Believe what you will; only the actual votes count.
