The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Can We Stay Sane a Few More Days? (Also: Has Trump Always Been Winning?)

Posted on | October 31, 2024 | 1 Comment

Craziness is breaking out everywhere — ballots burned in Oregon, fake GOTV operations, voter suppression in Pennsylvania. For weeks I’ve been warning against getting too emotionally involved in all the election hype. Go vote, do whatever you can to help, but don’t let it drive you insane. Even as Democrats are struggling with existential dread of Orange Hitler, a lot of Republicans are paranoid about another stolen election.

“A few more days for to tote the weary load,” as the song says. Just do whatever it takes to maintain your grip on sanity, and maybe by this time next week, it will all be over, one way or the other. Either we endure another four years of Democrat blundering, or we’ll be laughing at the tears of MSNBC hosts and CNN panelists. Of course, we know which outcome we’d prefer, but I’m confident we can deal with whatever.

Maintaining my pose of sanguine optimism, then, what about this latest Quinnipiac Poll of Pennsylvania, with Trump 49% and Harris 47%?

A mere six weeks ago, Quinnipiac had Harris leading Trump in Pennsylvania by five points, 51% to 46%. Has there really been a net seven-point swing toward Trump since mid-September or — as I rather strongly suspect — has Trump actually been leading Harris in Pennsylvania the whole time? Political junkies are overdosing on poll numbers, clicking onto Real Clear Politics several times a day to see if there are any new polls to satisfy their sick craving for data.

While the data-addicted let the zig-zagging numbers send their moods swinging from manic hope to depressive gloom, it might all be an illusion. My gut hunch is that the vast majority of voters made up their minds which way they’d vote long ago. It seems evident that, after Democrats dumped Biden and subbed in Harris — remember when it was a “right-wing conspiracy theory” to suggest they were planning such a switch? — Democrats got a temporary boost, as some of their core voters were more enthusiastic about Kamala than they had been about Joe. But was this boost really enough to shift the entire dynamic of the election?

If you were watching the polls, you saw Kamala zoom ahead of Trump by mid-September, when the RCP national average had her leading by a solid two points, and there were two polls (Morning Consult and Reuters/Ipsos) that had her six points ahead, as well as others (NBC News and Susquehanna) with Harris +5. Really? C’mon, really?

Here we are now, at the end of October, and the current RCP national average has Trump ahead by a fraction and, of the 14 polls comprising this average, six have Trump leading, four have Harris ahead, and four show an exact tie. That’s the national vote, mind you, but we know that the election will actually be decided by a handful of battleground states. Right now, RCP shows Trump with more or less decisive leads in both Georgia and Arizona, two states Biden (allegedly) won four years ago. Harris leads slightly in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump leads by one point or less in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada.

We don’t know what the final outcome will be, but if Trump does win, we’ll have to look back at those September polls and ask, “Was that real? Was Kamala ever actually ahead? Or are pollsters just playing the old game of shifting their numbers in late October, to avoid looking like fools for their ridiculous pro-Democrat slant?”

Five more days. Stay sane, my friends.



 

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Category: Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Polls

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