mtutiger

This is exactly right... Obviously it was a campy conspiracy theory movie from the 1970s, but Capricorn One (with Hal Holbrook as the NASA Administrator who orders the moon landing to be faked and James Brolin, Sam Waterston and OJ Simpson as the astronauts) comes to mind. The one thing that isn't a conspiracy from that movie is that people who have made a career doing something who watch said industry face challenges or even possible oblivion will go to great lengths to protect their existence. This situation isn't that per se, but people will look out for their self interests. And not underestimating Trump a third time is a big thing in this case

My only theory (probably true to an extent) is that there's voters who will vote for Trump and then leave the rest of the ticket blank, resulting in undervotes for the other candidates. North Carolina could be a candidate for that this year too, with Mark Robinson being the Gov candidate. Not sure how that gets captured in polling though....

I'd have to put myself back in that place in time, but Romney's runway from an EC standpoint was a lot narrower than what Trump has in present day IIRC.

Underestimating Trump for the third election cycle in a row would be an existential crisis for the industry, particularly as pollsters (as Nate Cohn has documented in various pieces, for instance) have gone to great lengths to try to fix whatever errors they think may or may not have been present. And particularly as response rates and getting representative samples are getting worse and worse. This isn't even getting into the the fact that there is less high quality state polling this year than in previous cycles (once again, well documented)... which stands as evidence on it's own as well. I don't know what will happen, we will have to see how it works out in a couple of weeks, maybe they are bang on.... but I'm not going to ignore the human psychology at play here.

JHC

I'll say this. If he wins, it's unequivocally not on Harris or her campaign, they have honestly gone above and beyond even my expectations given how the campaign came to be in the first place... It's on the voters. Enough people in the right places wanted this. It doesn't mean that that the Harris campaign doesn't have the responsibility of making the case between now and election day obviously, but at some point we need to stop blaming the candidates and start looking in the mirror. This is about as clear a choice as it gets just on basic competence

Maybe not, honestly... If Trump or Harris end up winning NC, GA and MI, all of whom we should have a good idea night of, we will go to bed knowing. My bigger point is that the polls don't price in the idea that these states often just end going together one way or another together, not independently

Wow

Speaking more to EC when I say blowout, fwiw. A ~1-2 point miss in either direction across each of the seven states would result in a sweep of all seven states at this current moment

Polls are only as good as the modeling done to make them... Especially in an environment of decreasing response rates and public pollsters fearful of, yet again, underestimating Trump a third time I don't know what is going to happen in this election. I know that 538 and Silver say this thing is basically 50/50, but would not be surprised it ended up a blowout in either direction. Embrace uncertainty

Civil engineers are underrated in making sure society functions... Where's my tax break?

I know I was the one who posted the towel thing and not sure if this is directed toward me specifically.... but there is nothing funny about it at all to me.

The usual caveats about selective leaks apply, but you would think that if they are having issues in suburban districts around Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona wouldn't be the state that Trump best polls in

What are the odds he's actually President after four years if he wins? It's surprising considering his apparent condition at this point in time that people aren't asking this question....

Won't somebody think of the real victim... *Checks Notes* Harvey Weinstein?

I do think the 11th hour push to get Haley to campaign is sort of a tacit admission that Trump's campaign is really concerned about the suburbs / moderate Rs. Also perhaps validates what Plouffe said on the Pod Bros podcast last weekend, that there's some hidden strength/weaknesses with these sorts of voters for Harris/Trump respectively. As far as Haley's future is concerned, I don't think she has much of one frankly.

I've mostly been ignoring the early vote stuff from most of the states, but the Detroit numbers (and the fact that they are leading the entire state in returns for absentees at the moment) might be the exception given it's history of awful turnout. It remains to be seen if these are just votes that are just cannibalized from what would normally be EDay voting, but any increase in turnout percentage in Detroit would stand to have a pretty significant impact on the math in Michigan given how powerfully Democratic it is.

Not always the biggest Maggie Haberman fan, but this was an interesting reveal; on one hand, it matches the attention that Harris is giving to MI/WI this week, on the other hand, it seems sort of damning that for all the time and money that the Trump Campaign has invested in PA (prioritizing it, and it's 19 EC votes, over all other states) apparently feels less confident in PA than MI/WI. I know that anything can happen and theoretically PA can be won by the loser of the EC, but it's really hard to imagine a candidate winning PA and losing in reality. Particularly given how close the Blue Wall states tend to shake out.

Damage control?

The cadence of campaigning is another factor as well... sure, we had the conversation about Trump's strategy of having a few rallies and hiding in the basement as a means of self-preservation, but she can go out and create offense as well. Three stops in Wisconsin today for instance, at a time when Trump is increasingly receding. Likely will see more of that going forward across the seven states. One of the few criticisms that I have is that they probably should have picked up the cadence a week or two earlier, but also this is the time to do it insofar that voters (especially less engaged voters) are just now starting to think about voting (whether it be early, by mail or on EDay).

"Were" is doing a hell of a lot of work here.

I understand that people want to apply strategy to it or conspiracies and all, but the Occam's Razor explanation here is that Donald Trump is 78 years old and both in poor health and evasive as to his medical history. And unable to get in front of a crowd that isn't a perfectly curated safe-space for him (ie. compare Fox Women's Town Hall vs. Univision Town Hall). To the extent that any of this is strategic, it's because his campaign has literally no other choice than to pursue it because of the candidate's apparent weaknesses and declining mental abilities.

If this is true, then she's just about approaching 2020 Biden polling with black voters... Big big deal