The status of the race has changed from a small but consistent ‘Trump lean’ to a small and apparently growing ‘Harris lean.’
Donald Trump is on track to lose this election.
Is it impossible for him to turn things around? No, of course not. But the Trump campaign is behind, it’s losing ground, it’s running out of time, and it doesn’t appear to have the nimbleness to adjust course and get back in the game. Anyone who doubts this has his head in the sand.
I’m not alone in this analysis.
Nate Silver’s model — which adjusts for “whether polls are conducted among registered or likely voters” and “the presence or absence of RFK Jr.” and weights “more reliable polls more heavily” — puts Harris up 3.1 points. What’s more, according to Silver, Harris is still gaining on Trump.
The RealClearPolitics average might have Harris up just 1.1 points. But RCP also has Harris putting Trump in the rearview mirror and expanding her lead. And of course, one month ago today, it was Trump who was up by 2.9 points in the average when he was pitted against Joe Biden.
Okay, some might say, but that’s national polling. What about the critical swing states? Well, this week’s New York Times/Siena College poll put Harris at 50 percent and Trump at 46 percent in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Polls conducted earlier this summer — both before and after the Trump–Biden debate in June — had put Trump up slightly but consistently in all three Great Lakes battleground states.
What about more ephemeral gauges such as whether the public thinks Harris or Trump is better on the economy? A recent poll for the Financial Times puts Harris up by one point on that question, which is arguably the election’s biggest issue. That’s a huge change for the Democratic ticket on an issue that the GOP candidate has consistently led.
Sure, any one poll can be an outlier. Sure, one may choose to doubt that Harris is “really” up four points in the Midwestern Blue Wall states. One can discount the “vibe shift” or its effect on the brass tacks of the horse race. But this is a real trend. And it’s backed by a wide variety of data from a wide variety of sources. These aren’t mere vibes. The status of the race has changed from a small but consistent “Trump lean” to a small and apparently growing “Harris lean.” That’s a real and significant shift in this race’s dynamic.
The question is: Does Donald Trump know it? Does Donald Trump realize that he’s on track to lose?
He sure doesn’t seem to be acting like it.
Since about 20 minutes into his convention speech in Milwaukee on July 19, Trump has run one of the worst campaigns in recent memory. As Harris locked up the nomination and galloped ahead in the polls, as Democratic enthusiasm surged and fundraising dollars poured in, Trump and his campaign have: litigated whether Kamala Harris is actually black, insinuated that Biden’s decision to drop out of the race (which every Republican politician for six months has said was necessary because of his diminished capacities) was somehow a coup d’état, complained repeatedly and loudly about the press’s coverage of Harris, debated J. D. Vance’s “cat ladies” news cycle, attacked Georgia governor Brian Kemp (the popular Republican leader of a must-win state), complained that Harris is supposedly “cheating” by using artificial intelligence to fake her crowd sizes, boasted about his own crowd sizes and compared them to the crowd that witnessed Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and, in general, comported himself like a lunatic late at night on Truth Social.
Inflation, mass illegal immigration, and chaos and weakness abroad have been complete afterthoughts.
Yes, sure, in the last few weeks, J. D. Vance has steadied himself and has generally been a fairly effective surrogate (see, for example his interview with Dana Bash), and Trump held his Twitter Spaces live-stream event with Elon Musk, but Harris and her campaign have been substantially outworking Trump in the field as she has camped out in the swing states doing event after event. Next week, the Harris-Walz campaign is going to get a whole week’s worth of fawning media coverage during the Democratic National Convention. Her surge will continue. Her polling bump is going to tick up.
I’ve gone on record predicting a Kamala Harris victory, and an analysis of the evidence suggests that I’m on track to be right. Time is short. Election Day is 84 days away — but Pennsylvania starts early voting as soon as September 16, one month from now. Virginia, a state that seemed like it was going to be in play for Republicans earlier this summer, will start voting on September 20.
Does Donald Trump know what time it is?