As I told a friend today, when I consider how I feel about the almost-upon-us presidential election, it's difficult for me to separate out my strong desire to see Harris win from factual indicators of how her campaign is going.
Nonetheless, below are reasons for why I'm confident that the election is going to turn out surprisingly well for Harris.
I say "surprisingly," because the general attitude among political pundits is that this is a very tight 50-50 toss-up election. Indeed, that's how the three prediction models that I follow basically are rating the electoral college race: Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin favors Trump 53-47, FiveThirtyEight favors Trump 53-46, and the Economist favors Trump 51-49.
Each of the models gives Trump a slightly higher probability of winning. But these models try to be a reflection of some aspects of reality and obviously aren't reality itself. They are largely, but not entirely, based on polls.
So here's some other factors that lead me to believe that not only will Harris defeat Trump, she'll do so by winning more than the 270 electoral votes she'd get by holding on to the usually safe blue states, beating Trump in the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and gaining the single electoral vote in Nebraska's 2nd District.
(I'm expecting that Harris will win all of the above, plus North Carolina and Nevada. If I'm horribly wrong, gleeful Trump supporters can tell me how stupid I was in post-election comments on this post.)
(1) Turnout is key in every election, but especially this one, given the very tight polling results. Trump has farmed out the Republican turnout effort in swing states to Elon Musk and a super PAC he controls. Harris is doing it the usual way, through the Democratic organizations in those states which rely heavily on an army of volunteers. Musk is a smart guy, but he is in over his head in this effort. So better Democratic turnout will be a big reason why Harris wins.
(2) Women strongly favor Harris. Men strongly favor Trump. This doesn't balance out because women are more likely to vote than men are, a plus for Harris.
(3) The Iowa Selzer poll that was released today sent shockwaves through political observers, since it showed Harris leading Trump 47-44 in the red state. As noted above, Iowa women broke strongly for Harris, seemingly motivated in part by the six-week abortion ban that went into effect in Iowa after a previous Selzer poll that showed Trump with a fairly comfortable lead. Ann Selzer is a highly respected pollster, so there's a good chance what the new poll found points to Harris leading in other mid-west states also.
(4) Trump's closing message to voters is incoherent, unfocused, negative, and hateful. Harris' closing message is much more appealing to independent and undecided voters. This is why a poll found that people who have recently decided between Harris and Trump are breaking for Harris by a significant margin.
(5) Latinos in general, and Puerto Ricans specifically, appear to be returning to the Democratic fold. This was spurred by a speaker at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally referring to Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage. Black men also seem to be favoring Harris in greater numbers, helping to reduce Democratic anxiety about them defecting to Trump.
(6) Trump is making very little effort to appeal to voters outside of his MAGA base. He is putting more emphasis on challenging the results of the 2024 presidential election than on winning the election. This indicates that Trump isn't confident that he's going to get the most electoral votes, since he is hoping that a second try at overturning the results of an election he lost will be successful this time. It won't be, thankfully.
(7) Kamala Harris did great in her appearance on Saturday Night Live last night. She looked happy and relaxed. People are tired of Trump's habitual nastiness. I'm confident this will lead to Harris getting an unexpectedly large number of "I'm fed up with Trump's antics" voters.
Comments