The Other McCain

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Kamala Is Underperforming

Posted on | September 14, 2024 | No Comments

Keep that word in mind — “underperforming” — as you contemplate the fact that Kamala Harris is campaigning in Pennsylvania, a state that Joe Biden (allegedly) won by more than 80,000 votes in 2020.

Let’s compare Kamala’s polls to Biden’s polls four years ago. On this date in 2020, the Real Clear Politics average showed Biden with a 4.3-point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, and some polls (i.e., NBC News/Marist and Quinnipiac) had Biden leading by as many eight or nine points. In the end, Biden won by a margin of 1.2%, so we can say that the September RCP average in 2020 had D+3 bias. Now look at the current RCP average for Pennsylvania — Harris is up by one-10th of a percentage point, three of the four most recent polls show a tie, and the biggest lead she’s ever had (the most recent Bloomberg poll and an NYT/Siena poll in early August) was 4 points. Most importantly, no polls are showing Harris +8 or +9 in Pennsylvania, as there were for Biden four years ago.

Nate Silver has suggested that one reason Harris is underperforming in Pennsylvania is because she picked Tim Walz as her running mate, snubbing Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — and, let’s not kid ourselves, we know why she snubbed Shapiro. She was pandering to the Jew-hating pro-Hamas voters of Dearbornistan, and why? Because 100,000 Michigan voters in the Democratic primary voted “uncommitted” as a protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel. In 2020, Biden (allegedly) won Michigan by a margin of more than 150,000 votes. In other words, the pro-Hamas vote probably isn’t enough, by itself, to swing Michigan’s 15 Electoral College votes into Trump’s column. However, by snubbing Shapiro to pander to her party’s Jew-haters, Harris may lose Pennsylvania’s 19 Electoral College votes. Oops.

If Trump wins Pennsylvania — and with Arizona now leaning toward Trump — Harris’s path to 270 Electoral College votes is narrow. And it’s not just a couple of battleground states where Harris is underperforming. The RCP average of national polls has her at +1.7, but at this point in 2020, the RCP average had Biden +7.1 — meaning that Harris is underperforming Biden by more than five points and guess what? Biden’s final margin in 2020 was 4.5 points, meaning that if the Democrat-leaning bias of polls hasn’t changed, Harris is likely to lose the national popular vote. But, but, but . . . Yes, I know: We don’t have much polling data since Tuesday’s debate, and Harris is likely to get a poll “bounce” from that. So let’s look at one of the post-debate polls that is most favorable to Harris. Reuters has Harris +5 — 47% to Trump’s 42% — and guess what? At this point in 2020, Reuters had Biden +9.

Despite everything, in other words, Harris is still underperforming Biden by at least four points. We are still more than seven weeks away from Election Day, and a lot of things could change between now and then, but as matters stand today, Harris is on track to lose this election.

And gosh, I wonder why?

She’s serving an all-you-can-eat buffet of word salad.



 

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Category: Kamala Harris, Pennsylvania, Polls

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