“Ms. Harris is running to become the first female president and the second Black one. The so-called Bradley effect — named after the former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who underperformed his polls in the 1982 California governor’s race, for the supposed tendency of voters to say they’re undecided rather than admit they won’t vote for a Black candidate …— Still, the only other time a woman was her party’s nominee, undecided voters tilted heavily against her. So perhaps Ms. Harris should have some concerns about a Hillary Clinton effect.” — Nate Silver, New York Times
The Bradley effect is a myth. If true, Bradley also would have underperformed his polls during his five winning campaigns for mayor of Los Angeles. The reality: Bradley for Governor won on election day but lost decisively among an avalanche of postmarked absentee ballots counted afterward, and thus lost (barely) overall. California had changed the law to allow absentees for any reason; Democrats didn’t adapt, but Republicans funded a heavy absentee drive. The defective statewide Field Poll not only missed the impact of minor party candidates, but — more importantly — it did not poll absentee ballot voters, let alone allow for their profound mathematical effect. The same flawed survey showed “white” Pete Wilson losing to Jerry Brown in the U.S. Senate race, but Wilson won! Was this the “Brown effect”?
In the 2012 presidential race, far more Americans found Mitt Romney’s Mormon religion a deal breaker than Barack Obama’s multi-racial background (which he, like Kamala Harris, marketed as “black”). Given victimology, if Harris loses, her supporters will cite her gender (but her party’s Supreme Court nominee cannot define a woman, and Harris policies are “non-binary”). Or cite her race, though more Americans voted for, than against, Obama, based on his race.
Hillary Clinton did not lose to Donald Trump because she is a woman, but because she is Hillary. Her hubris led her campaign in closing weeks to stop polling/limit spending in battleground states that Trump’s campaign then funded in a final “Hail Mary” play that gave him narrow victories and their electoral votes.
If Harris loses, the complicit media will not blame her, but men — white, black, and Hispanic. Kamala might blame Doug’s nanny who he impregnated, or his former girlfriend who he is accused of slapping in public. A former drug addict (not Hunter) was asked how he knew when he hit bottom: “Because I ran out of people to blame.”
Harris was the first to drop out of the 2020 Democratic primary. Then, and now, no delegate was ever elected to vote for her. Unlike what Michelle Obama just exclaimed, Kamala Harris is not being held to a higher standard, but a lower standard. When Ted Kennedy could not answer Roger Mudd’s question on why he wanted to be president, his campaign ended. Harris says her presidency is about her work at McDonald’s. When Biden was forced out, she was coronated precisely because she is a “black woman.” Does anyone think that if Tim Walz were Biden’s vice president, he would be the party’s nominee?
We’re always told that “turnout” will decide the election, but now it’s true, with few undecideds. Even reluctant preference has hardened, hostage to cognitive dissonance. Thus, Trump “lost” the debate to Harris but “won”: Harris came across as scripted, slick, inauthentic, the debate a precursor to the Saturday Night Live parody of her trademark “I come from the middle class” nonresponse.
Neither Trump nor Biden seeks to persuade undecided voters as Trump could have been done earlier. Harris nukes Trump to turn out her voters.
In presidential politics, the winner ran a “brilliant” — and the loser an “awful” — campaign. But it’s the political environment, stupid!
The old ACLU would have criticized the egregious prosecutorial overreach against Trump. This lawfare onslaught against Trump, amidst his enduring high unfavorable, should have doomed him; instead, that first debate doomed Biden. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and their co-conspirators who prate about democracy seamlessly replaced this sitting president in a weekend coup. But the resulting media spin, masking a subterranean voter cynicism, enabled Harris to morph from SCREW-UP to JOY. But can voters celebrate, when the party in power cannot cite either — let alone both — of the classic “peace and prosperity” conducive to reelection?
Harris must overcome this unjoyful datum: two-thirds of voters say the country is on the wrong track. Trump has credibility problems, but Harris created her own. She extolled Bidenomics. Her numerous policy flip-flops gambit — executed through surrogates — worked, until it didn’t (wear well). And chronic giggler Harris now faults Trump as “unserious.”
Meanwhile, the continued, blatant media hype to gut Trump offends. CNN still litigates the impeachments plus Jan. 6, and honors Liz Cheney, she hoping for resurrection in a Harris cabinet. In my area, the Los Angeles Times, formerly a newspaper, now an anti-Trump newsletter, nonetheless makes no endorsement, because its owner deems Harris insufficiently solicitous of Hamas. And if Trump is so dangerous, why does the Washington Post not endorse?
Voters seemed to interpret the serial persecutions as a Stalinist crusade. The promiscuous indictments coated Trump with teflon. And then, given Trump’s gutsy reaction to an assassination attempt that drew blood, the previously unsympathetic Trump is seen as a heroic Rocky who — despite a deck stacked against him — can triumph. Americans go for the underdog.
Fascism remains undefined for the electorate. Few voters understand that Nazi abbreviates national socialism. How could they know, per Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, that the (Biden/Harris) regulatory state is closer to fascism? Harris proceeds from the “politics of joy” to exclaiming Trump a fascist because Trump supporters, like Hitler’s partisans, rally in Madison Square Garden?!? The hyperbole, red meat for her base, could backfire. Trump is attacked so much, so often, with the proverbial “everything but the kitchen sink” — that many voters tune out, especially to the hysteria. (The Enemy Within was a book written by President Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, about corruption in labor unions.)
Trump’s flaws are long baked into the (polling) electorate. Overall, Harris has outspent Trump by at least 2-to-1, yet the race is even! Biden voter motivation was low; on being anointed, Harris caught up to Trump’s motivation, but now?
Harris misjudged to play it both ways, thinking she had to stay loyal to Biden, but the Democrat Trump-hating base was secure. She needed to (gently) throw (has-been) Biden under the bus, but she likes busing. In this situation, you “kill with kindness”; yet, she could never answer the obvious question of how she differed with Biden, other than genitalia, and in her political party, even that is, as Trump might say, up for grabs.
And the lingering undercurrent is Biden’s dysfunction, if not dementia — what did she know, and when did she know it? Her team prepared her for esoteric — but not basic — questions. She could not articulate why she is running and what her first actions would be; given her Marxist ideology (“we should all end up at the same place”), she knows why/what.
She cannot thread the needle. Although she claims to support Israel, she supported funding and aid, directly and indirectly, to Iran, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas; privately and publicly, she has undercut Israel, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the IDF. Though she implicitly if not explicitly, accuses Israel of genocide, that’s not enough for Jew-haters in Michigan. Thus, Harris has lost voter support among Jews and Arabs. Nor does the sour grapes approach work. For example, Obama, who wanted Biden replaced but not with Harris and thus was last on board for her, now reprimands black males for Trump; such patronizing has the opposite effect. Kamala and her surrogates are ANGRY. The strident, seemingly desperate Harris talks and acts “unhinged”; that was supposed to be Trump. Expect her to reverse again, to end in (farfetched) positive/“vision” mode. Voters are dizzy.
Another positive indication for Trump — his voters are voting early, in contrast to 2020 when he imprudently urged his voters to wait. This 100 percent voter probability hardens the polling results; the closer to election day, the tougher the arithmetic to undo banked votes. Current polling does not separately poll those who voted absentee or otherwise early, and then extrapolate these numbers into an updated voter model. Such polling would also indicate the actual loyalty and defection rates among Democrats and among Republicans, as well as how the pivotal independent voters trend, and Trump’s gains (not projected but actual) among black, Hispanic, Jewish, union member, younger, and first-time voters.
What I look for in polls is consistency. (A) National and battleground polls confirm a close race with movement toward Trump. (B) Apples-and-apples comparisons confirm this trend because, regardless of methodology, each pollster’s modus operandi is constant. (C) National polls. roughly even, require a 2-to-4 point lead for Harris to win an electoral college victory, because national polling is weighted toward the large electorate (California+New York). (D) The Harris favorable/unfavorable perception no longer tops Trump’s net positive. (E) If a voter switches, it’s more likely Harris to Trump than Trump to Harris. (F) Third party candidates are more likely to cut into Harris than Trump. (G) Some U.S. Senate Democrat candidates in key states now stray from Harris, because their own polls likely show Trump gaining.
Don’t be seduced by the “margin of error.” Assuming a properly drawn and executed sample, the probability is higher that the results are correct than that they are off by the margin of error. That’s a statistical measure often less important than non-sampling error. Critical is the definition of the voter universe, which often relies partly on past voter behavior. But the Trump strategy targets an enlarged universe of low propensity voters and new voters.
Also: margin of error works both ways. Say Trump slightly leads within the ME, then instead, Harris might be slightly ahead; OR Trump might be ahead by more!
If you are, say a black male, pondering whether to vote for Trump, and polls show black males moving toward Trump, and even CNN explains why, it’s then OK for you to vote Trump. More generally, the published polls showing Trump gaining can become a self-fulfilling prophecy — giving permission for wavering or lean-Trump to turn out to vote for him. Trump — in national and battleground state polling — has consistently polled ahead of his numbers at the same point in 2016 and 2020. And Trump usually outperforms polling (in part due to the Trump effect — his voters not responding to polling or responding within a socially acceptable “undecided”).
A Trump victory is hardly certain, especially if Harris, with a big money advantage, diverts her redundant advertising spending to voter turnout. But if Trump merely approaches parity in the popular vote, he could run the table in the battlegrounds, creating an electoral landslide.
