I still think Harris wins this but at some point we should discuss how two months of outreach to Republicans produced no benefit whatsoever. All it did was stop her ascent and cap her support at 49%.
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Some More News did a great episode that covered how this Democrat political tactic—started under Reagan (mildshock.gif)—has done absolutely nothing for the Democratic party and has actually only accelerated the hard right slide of the US Overton window. https://youtu.be/E5eTGbxJxl0 8:30-36:11
One more thing, in the USA, reaching across the aisle has become anathema to both right and left (this thread, for instance). Sometimes it’s bad (Israel) but we celebrate France’s beating back LePen and the UK pushing the far right back. They did that through cooperation and coalition building.
I’ve seen polls that show her gaining 4% on repub crossovers. BIden had 5%, she’s at 9% and Rick Wilson thinks it could be as high as 17%. I know 1 repub crossing over- retired military, hispanic. With all that VoteVets has done, I think he’s lost a lot of support.
I think you can say that it’s probably had a marginal effect on voter support, but “stopping her ascent” seems overdetermined. Probably added a few right-side votes, shed a few left-side votes, but given our partisan-sortation world I don’t think any electoral strategy radically shifts the margin.
I live in OC California, in a neighborhood that had *so many* Romney signs back when he was running. There’s only three trump signs that I’ve seen, but, lots more for the down ballot GOP.
They identify as Republicans, so that’s what they do.
The whole “identity politics” accusation against Democrats? They are using identity politics themselves, but not labeling it that. It’s “loyalty” or “not giving up on your team” or defining themselves as the opposite of a Democrat, a binary choice.
With Democrats corrupting the youth, of course.
They may be a bit embarrassed by trump, but lots of them are going to vote for him anyway because they have been told that Democrats are worse, and, Republicans vote for Republicans.
I really hope the Dems have a landslide win, but, I won’t be surprised by a tight race to the last vote.
I remember a time before Fox news.
Fox was a turning point. It helped the GOP consolidate a world view.
To reject the GOP would be to reject everything they’ve been taught since the 90’s.
It’s actually really hard to leave all that behind; sunk cost fallacy is actually quite an anchor.
lol, all the replies to this are: sir, you are doing a very poor job of using data. here is my completely anecdotal counterpoint that proves why you are wrong
Did it? What shows causation vs correlation? Of the thousand things that have happened in the past 2 months why that? Is it even clear that there's room for support above that level in this ridiculous political situation where almost half the country supports a fascist?
Yes, tha k you for this. You could just as easily say her polling had plateaued and would have dropped off, but she saved it with outreach to conservatives. Saying "she's not doing better because she didn't do the things I wanted" is pure pundits fallacy
I think it's really important to note that almost nothing that happened had any effect at all. It's been a pretty dramatic race - the Biden/Harris swap, Trump getting shot, Kennedy dropped out - and yet those lines are basically flat.
And yet repeatedly talking about the rule of law and defending the Constitution does energize Harris' supporters to recruit additional voters and get voters to the polls. But indeed the jury remains out on whether the outreach to R's will pay off.
Noting that a Harris win with one or both sides of Congress under Republican control would be a disaster. Not as bad as the other guy, but still pretty bad.
More like the current Dems are conservatives in disguise and refuse to build coalition with the voters left of them while wasting time trying to pull voters already firmly in the Republican camp.
My theory is that DC Dems massively overestimate the size of the Haley/Never Trump GOP because they make up an oversized portion of the Republicans in their DC social sphere.
Consultants think they can hit untapped reasonable GOP voters but in truth are just hitting young GOP congressional staff
Meanwhile the actual "moderate republicans" from the Bush/Reagan eras have fully been radicalized alongside the base by two decades of Fox News and online sorting algorithms.
I can't imagine Harris is actually converting enough GOP voters to cover the losses on the left from touting Dick Cheney
No, they don't. Only the government of Israel and Hamas have that power, and neither seems particularly interested, despite how much the Biden administration and other countries have been pushing.
As we learned over the last several dozen failed attempts, there's no ceasefire without a mind control ray pointed at all relevant parties. And an arms embargo would drop support into the 20%-30% range the nanosecond that the U.S. got wind of Israelis dying in rocket attacks.
National and state pill ng averages are crap, thoroughly spammed by Rep with bogus polls to move the average closer. That does two things: dispirits Dems, and sets up another big lie when she walks all over him.
Compare any tossup state pres poll against that same state's Senate poll.
Sure, but it did produce tons of earned positive media cycles as nyt et al brought Harris’ coalition building to the fore and didn’t spend weeks sanewashing tru…hold on, getting word absolutely none of that happened
"Produced no benefit" is un-scientific. No way to measure. Hypothetical method would be: Compare two identical 'universes'...Aug>present WITH Outreach vs Aug>present W/O Outreach. Impossible.
p.s. Hypothetically, persuading even 15 former Trump voters to vote Harris could swing the overall result
You go far too left and lose 99% of most Republicans and Independents at the ballot box. You swing to far right and the same with losing a larger portion of progressives, liberals, and center left leaning Democrats. I'm not sure what the correct balance is in the hyper polarized political times now?
"All it did was stop her ascent" this needs a counterfactual. What evidence is there that she'd have a wider lead in the polls if she campaigned differently?
So we are clear, there is no evidence that is the reason things have tightened up. You are picking two data points and then filling in the reasoning. That isn't analysis but having a theory and looking for a graph.
Child tax credit, expansion of Medicaid for home care, pushing/signing a national restoration of abortion, make the rich actually pay a fair share, continuing funding the biggest climate change (as stated by outside experts) + jobs bill, etc. You not paying attention doesn't mean she didn't say it.
I also forgot the push for 3M new houses and all the secondary adjustments that occur depending on if they are truly focused on first time homeowners or secondary cost reductions of families scaling. At this point we are kind of moving into the Life of Brian part about what the Romans did.
Man if only there was a chunk of the electorate more willing to hear their arguments but they never engage with. Sorry someone keeps yelling the word “non voter” outside my house brb.
It means turning to the camera and and saying “I’m a Communist now.” And then clarifying they’re exactly the same kind of Communist as the person calling for it.
Bull. Shit. My 90 year old uncle, life long Republican, did NOT vote for Trump. Voted for RFK in Tennessee. If that’s not an eye opener then I don’t know what else is. He lost the non-MAGA a long time ago.
For this to be true the polls would have to be significantly more full of signal than they are. Why not wait until we have information before making pronouncements?
Trump's uptick also makes no sense except that R-Leaning poll dumping has been entering these models over the last few weeks
November will of course provide the answer, but between known bad actors and nonsense crosstabs, I don't know how anyone comes to the conclusion polls are reflecting reality
Because that is how Trump plays the game well, especially with Crypto Bros and Super PACs not limited to AIPAC given Netanyahu & BenGvir Endorsed Trump a few months back.
These poll averages mean nothing when Republicans have been flooding the pool of available polls recently with their own BS ones that nobody believes are genuine.
I think we need to see results in view of the lack of high quality polls and the fact that the remaining quality polls, according *to you*, would not pick up whether this worked.
Kamala has been 100% better on this than most Dems, but you can almost pinpoint the week the Dem consultants got ahold of her and Walz and told them to tone it down, and at that point all momentum just sorta stopped.
Dems will never learn that this is never going to work. If you actually want to get some GOP-leaning voters you can campaign harder on economic issues, but they refuse. Instead they tout endorsements from the absolute worst of the worst of the Bush years for some reason.
It’s because the issues do not matter. He validates their resentment and often inherent bigotry. Nothing else matters. They just pick some reason to justify to their self but that’s why. The resentment has been pounded in daily for decades and facts are meaningless.
I don't know if this is right or wrong, it seems like the Republican outreach didn't help. But if the voters who were left to grab all went to Trump, maybe she was already capped and those folks were never coming to her. One could say it didn't hurt to try since she stayed even.
The most common thing i see on here is she should have stopped "supporting genocide" and while I wish that she and Biden would do that, I think that is an oversimplification of the issue that ignores the pitfalls of such a move.
I tend to feel this way but am not sure where else she was going to get more votes from. I'd guess they moved that way because that was the only way to further raise her ceiling (and lower Trump's ceiling).
A wild assumption built upon a shaky foundation. What do you have to connect Harris' outreach to Republicans to the poll pattern? And why do you assume that aggregated poll averages are accurate reflections of intent to vote?
If that outreach helped the Republican-turned-Independent Mayor of Waukesha helps that county's shade of red get a little lighter, then that outreach has helped.
The polls are horse-pucky. And I think they have been for well over a decade. It's all a crap shoot now. The political pundits are just odds makers. MSM are all clearly biased especially the giants like The NYT, CNN etc. Who's money designs the polls? The same Billionaires that own all of it.
This is why it would have been preferable for her to ditch the Biden campaign team. Sure, she brought in some Obama folks but they're pulling from the same tired playbook. Democrats need to stop being embarrassed and start loudly proclaiming the facts- Dems are better for the economy and workers!
The bipartisan advisory council and GOP cabinet member are superficial pandering that don’t change the party platform, but…
I think the initial “We have a good, normal message—join us” was a more compelling, energizing pitch than “Actually stay where you are, just vote country over party.”
Maybe that’s just vibes, and the polls may be off, but at some point “they’re weird“ turned into “they do weird stuff to hide the fact they don’t have plans.” So then Trump announces IVF and tax cuts, and it became, to many, a boring battle of plans, not “we’re fighting monsters.”
I don't think we have the causal evidence to link those two things. It could just as easily be that we got two months of outreach to Republicans precisely *because* her support was otherwise topping out.
The obsession with centrism is so deep Dem strategists cannot even conceive of another strategy even when it’s a thing that emerged on its own and was plainly working.
Related, what hit me recently is the fact that the net favourability of Mr. Trump is now higher than it was four or eight years ago -- despite everyone knowing what has happened during those years. He has not changed much, so it must be people's attitudes towards everything. https://x.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1847287751164432733
What I remember most is how energized everyone felt when Harris announced Walz. FINALLY, an outspoken truly left-leaning liberal who could translate left-wing talking points into actual kitchen table meaning. IT CLICKED.
Since, Walz has been muzzled & they've spent months sucking up to Dick Cheney
95% of current Republicans are cult followers, and by logical inference, unreachable.
That was why I was so annoyed with Colin Allred for taking the Ted Cruz advert bait in TX. He will not gain any GOP votes by doing so, all he does is piss off Democrats who see another weak candidate pandering.
A lot of fiddling with poll averages can be assumed due to the presence of GOP-aligned pollsters (which aren‘t always downranked).
And what these charts don‘t show is turnout.
Turnout is key! Every blue vote needs to go in the ballot box.
You can help with that!
Vote, tell others, help others!
the trick was that they were never left-leaning, and what we consider radical politics in america would be milquetoast to the right wing of saner countries
Same. There’s no single answer. But I think the biggest factor is that electoral politics means compromises and fund raising. The way around that is building a party by organizing outside of electoral cycles, building a movement -or embrace celebrity (Jack Layton, Justin Trudeau). I pick the former.
Not one Trump supporter will sway to vote for Harris. There is no use in reasoning. What Democrats REALLY need to do is, to get People to vote!
I saw the polls in 2016 - do not believe them, go and VOTE
I'm not sure I understand how we can maintain skepticism that the polls tell us anything very reliable while also making strong conclusions about what did or didn't work, campaign-wise.
Can someone much smarter than me please do an in-depth look at how the UK Conservative collapse led to a barely noticeable Labour gain and how it is a waste of resources courting those votes?
Isn't this a classic correlation/causation error? You're saying outreach stopped her ascent and caused a plateau when for all we know the plateau would have happened regardless or she would have sunk and the outreach caused stabilization
No polling benefits. I live in a suburban Republican area, and I’m convinced a lot of my friends and neighbors are silent Harris voters. They don’t want to be hassled by being public about it.
When we can count the undervotes, we're going to know something about the benefits of this no-cost strategy to influence GOP voters.
Meanwhile: If you will be affected by the outcome, it's a good time to call or text some WI or AZ unlikely voters to help them make a plan to rescue the republic.
At some point we should discuss how two months of outreach to Swifties produced no benefit whatsoever. All it did was stop her ascent and cap her support at 49%.
Weird how the move is always "guys we have to Moderate (read: concede to conservative demands)" and never "huh, I wonder if there are any votes to the left of Joe Manchin"
Whatever will be said after the election, I don’t think we can blame Harris campaign in any way (people always will). She ran a better campaign as anyone could have hoped to.
I have a completely different interpretation of that. They are losing when they take up the narratives that the GOP has established. When they change the narrative (immigrants are good and necessary instead of Harris will be tough immigrants) they do better.
there are definitely things to criticize about her campaign, but on the whole I think she has run a good one and the headwinds of a deeply unpopular Biden admin and Trump's actual strength as a candidate have both been underrated as challenges
imo any evaluation of the mood of the american electorate cannot be tied to observable reality or what is considered a good or bad economy. culture war has totally won and it's genuinely about vibes. between that and gaza and his very obvious physical decline i don't think it should be a shock
"Genocide aside, I don't understand how cages, deportations, family separations, more border wall, record oil production and willow project approval in the face of a climate crisis, and record years of police brutality while funneling covid funds to state police departments would be so unpopular."
its true hes done better than any pres in my lifetime (barring palestine) but ive been saying for some time now he simply hasnt met the moment which was predictable given his devotion to the status quo and worse yet a foregone past
also its par for the course in times of mounting polarization there was unimaginable pressure on pierce buchanan and lincoln only the last of whom finally made the tough decisions that were long overdue and their respective legacies show as well as the respective prices they paid in the aftermath
Does it make more sense when you don't put israel aside? Not sure anybody has been polled on "what if israel didn't exist but everything else was exactly the same" as of yet.
first of all, 'the big genocide aside' is insane but to answer your point, he reneged on a lot of promises including stimulus checks. he also set back workers rights during the rail worker strike esp in light of the chemical spill in east palestine. you cant fuck people and ask to be loved.
Yeah I don't really think the usual sop to both-sideists(cause centrist isn't the right word) made any negative change to the campaign. It probably didn't help, but I always wonder if not doing it would hurt?
Micah, the opposing candidate is speaking in gibberish, hosting rallies where he dances around for 40min while attendees are unable to leave or even go to the bathroom.
At some point we just have to accept that maybe responsibility is on the electorate to pick him over her, no?
Agree. Number 1 error was squandering the amazing momentum of "weird" by starting to court republicans. Her strength is that she can be sassy and remain classy in a way that appeals to Gen X & younger & would have been a far better GOTV tool than "I'll do a thing with Liz Cheney".
But TBH I don't think we can blame her. That's just the go-to Democratic Party logic: swing left in the primary, swing right in the election. Maybe it worked for boomers & silent gen. Doesn't work for X & younger, and TBH it's just not consistent with her character & rings false.
My takeaway from this is that it's too early to know if it didn't work. If Trump convinces fewer of these reluctant voters to turn out compared to 2016 or 2020, maybe that's attributable to some older mainstream Republican talking about how dangerous he is.
I don’t think that’s why they did it at all honestly. If they never considered the downside (capping support) then they wanted to do it. And I very strongly believe this is why more than anything else as they do it all the fucking time
By that reasoning, since most dramatic tightening of race in 538 has come in the 10 days since VP Harris made her progressive proposal to expand Medicare to cover in-home care, that proposal didn't work.
If Harris wins, likely both initiatives will have helped.
i get the principled argument against doing it, but regarding its efficacy as a tactic, i think it's an empirical question for which the empirical evidence is not in yet.
Also: Our next president must be able to work with Republicans. That's not optional. We voters send too many of them to Congress for it to be otherwise.
So, as satisfying as it'd be to see our candidate saying, "You can all go to hell," it would also be stupid to begin a Harris-Walz term that way.
No, they don't. Very little was accomplished during the Trump administration. It seems like a lot because what they did do was horrifying, but most of the time absolutely nothing got done.
It was in 2005. W. went on tour promoting that grift, but he was not a good salesman. And, very soon, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and that gave him a black eye. But, Bush’s tax cuts and wars stayed with us.
They cut taxes on the wealthy, and stacked the federal bench with hardcore right wing ideologues. Those judges are continually striking down laws that are disliked by conservatives. Trump also fucked up the Iran nuke deal and crippled the USPS. And, there’s plenty more.
Further, the Republicans with whom Harris has formed alliances are out of power, and have no influence on the current Republican establishment. All hey can do is drag the Democrats further right.
That's also not true. The Overton window has moved significantly leftward over the past 30 years or so. We now have a Black and Asian woman candidate for president who is probably going to win. We can't be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. These are only two major examples.
I don't think it was a bad idea, assuming she continues to offer them zero concessions.
But I really think that a more forceful and principled defense of immigration and a nuanced discussion about reevaluating military support to Israel would've been more energizing.
I guess, but I'm skeptical of the idea that moderates flip to Trump or stay home just because Harris gives a speech about immigrants deserving dignity, or calling out Netanyahu, Smotrich, or Ben-Gvir narrowly and specifically.
And the entire right-wing media sphere, which means between those two forces, Harris’ defense of immigration would be “open the borders to all” and arms embargo of Israel would be “wants to do a second holocaust” is how the vast majority of the country would understand her policies
Polling is really anti-immigrant at the moment and has been for literally decades.
Polling may show a majority saying not to arm Israel or w/e but the number of voters who prioritize that over the economy or immigration would fit in a school bus
Issue polling is almost entirely worthless anyway. Depending on how you word the question you can get the same person supporting & opposing the same policy. Tells you nothing about how people will vote or how they assess candidates performance in office
Average, eh?
Are the polling distrubutions normal? I doubt it.
What's the median look like?
What's the highly variable "n"?
It's drawing a line through data. It doesn't make it real.
Means are low probability in bimodal distributions e.g.
Better to look at the data as spaghetti models for hurricane tracks. None may be right, and often the mean track isn't among the model distributions, but some models are consistently better than others.
And the farther away it is, the less we can tell where it's going to end up no matter the model
Not clear that it produced no benefit. You could tell a story where the numbers just show the vast majority of Republicans coming home to the party as the election nears.
Or they’re intentionally trying to move the party right to appease their donors. Pretty much all polling in PA shows support for fracking is split among party lines. Weird how they only picked the conservative pro-oil stance there under the guise of appealing to PA voters.
Alternate hypothesis: Dems operate in a political environment where their options are incredibly constrained. If they move one inch to the left, the media will roast them. If they don’t reach across the aisle, the media will roast them.
Realistic hypothesis: The Democrats are also a conservative party who are every bit as beholden to big corporations as the GOP, and have abandoned left-leaning voters as much as the GOP has abandoned moderate conservatives (who've now ended up as Democrats).
The media will roast them regardless of literally anything they do. They could maybe try not reaching across the aisle to a party that utterly loathes them and never reaches over, itself. The right goes more and more into Nazi territory, and Dems still can't possibly lick their boots enough.
Sure. But: if you are a politician and are unable or unwilling to promote or defend actions because the media, as in, the specific people who own and produce content for news organizations, will dislike it, those people run the country.
we once had a candidate who did shit that pissed off half of the media constantly. he then went on tv and told them to go fuck themselves, basically. it worked splendidly. now they're all afraid of him and they try not to disagree with him in any way.
All that happened was Biden dropping out and endorsing Kamala. Everything since then is just standard general election appeals to the center, and even that's in the form of promises not of centrist policy, but of the preservation of democracy.
We voted for Biden in 2020, and for Warnock and Ossoff *twice*. But the most progressive statewide candidate, Daniel Blackman, lost his Public Service Commission race. I'm a progressive, but I'm realistic about the advantages of winning the center.
And if they thread the needle perfectly, the media will roast them. Maybe they should just aim to pick up the disaffected left instead of right wing shills.
Alternate alternate hypothesis: Dems are not particularly constrained, and candidates who have run to the left have generally been more successful than those who have run to the center, but believing that they are is convenient to their actual agenda of not changing anything
Terminally Online Leftists™️ demand adherence to their own particular personal form of leftism and pronounce any deviation from it an reason not to vote for Dems. It could be that after 4 years of saying they wouldn't vote for Biden/Harris, Kamala believes them.
The US has been Israel’s primary benefactor for more than a half century of ongoing systematic violation of international law. But sure, let’s leverage this against Harris in an election against the guy who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and whose advisors are all off-the-rails Christian zionists.
I'd phrase it more that we are a loose coalition of groups, none of which are large enough to win an election but many of which could destroy it and they sometimes have competing goals.
Moving from a blank slate to a real person makes it much harder.
Less media and more the people that own the media. They can't go left without losing donors and they can't go right without losing swaths of their base.
Which means the next move is to delegitimize the mainstream rigged media. This helped Republicans out a bunch in the 90s. The window is open, I'm seeing a lot of liberal types really angry at big media right now- they're worldview about the media has been cracked.
The pre-concieved notion that "far-left" policies like universal healthcare, ending the genocide, etc are inherently unpopular and make elections unwinnable is something we should PERHAPS question a bit, here. When Trump was calling Harris a communist for her price-gouging policies, what happened?
Her polls were fucken skyrocketing. Of course, the democrats for right to work on moving away from that. You don't need to just look at this, either. Jeremy Corbyn was called unelectable by Labour, no matter how many times people kept electing him.
Not only was it a good strategy to win, it's a good strategy knowing that she will be governing w a red senate, if elected. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think she's making the right moves here.
I think we should wait until after the election to see how things pan out. We might be surprised to learn that this ended up having enough impact to deliver her a win, perhaps even a decisive win.
Dems need to be on their game calling out all of Trump's BS on the campaign trail and be ruthless.
My outlook is like 66% doomer but to the degree I'm hopeful it's because of plausible possibilities like "there's a significant fraction of Republican women who will ditch Trump but won't tell that to a pollster"
Yeah at a minimum we need the kind of voter file analyses that don't come out until 3 to 6 months after the election to start getting into this level of the weeds
I know this goes against prevailing Bluesky opinion but we have no idea if that's what "stopped her ascent;" her numbers continued to go up after Aug 29th and didn't start dropping until Sept 26th. The bigger issue has been Trump's numbers going up more than hers have fallen.
Okay, but... She's got a sweeping plan aimed at lowering consumer costs. She wants to cancel medical debt, bans on price gouging. She's got subsidies for first-time homebuyers. She's got a $6,000 tax credit for newborns. She wants to build three million new houses. What do you want?
"that's kind of how social media works" is the wavelength I'm talking about.
I'm literally talking about having already voted for Harris in a other thread. I do not need to be scolded with a big list. The point of this whole thing is Dems waste their time on conservatives instead of progressives
I genuinely wouldn't have voted for Biden, so people yelled at me, but I did vote for Harris, so other people yell at me. But I do understand why many progressives don't want to, and that is the fault of Harris and the Dems, not the progressive potential voters
Problem with saying "This is just like Hillary" is that the media (Fox) spent decades making Hillary into a villain, the epitome of everything wrong with DC, the worst of the worst.
Kamala, until Biden dropped out, has been mostly free of that. Worst they did was "look at her stupid laugh."
As someone in Michigan, who has had to keep track of literally a dozen in-person Harris and/or Walz appearances in the past month to see if I want to attend any of them, she absolutely is not.
I reject the idea that the model is linear and that there is a ‘middle’, but even if there were the goal is to turn out your own base, not to denature your campaign to what the media and Republicans claim is some mythical middle, sacrificing enthusiasm to kowtow to a bunch that will never vote D.
She just out-raised Trump 3:1 in small donors, which implies that enthusiasm hasn't really waned. And Emerson shows she's winning voters who have decided in the past month. People who are still undecided also lean Harris when pushed.
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But I read someone somewhere who said she was also rallying support for the after election battle, which I thought was an interesting take.
I live in OC California, in a neighborhood that had *so many* Romney signs back when he was running. There’s only three trump signs that I’ve seen, but, lots more for the down ballot GOP.
They identify as Republicans, so that’s what they do.
With Democrats corrupting the youth, of course.
I really hope the Dems have a landslide win, but, I won’t be surprised by a tight race to the last vote.
Just hard to get a message in edgewise when they believe evethting else is lies.
Fox was a turning point. It helped the GOP consolidate a world view.
To reject the GOP would be to reject everything they’ve been taught since the 90’s.
It’s actually really hard to leave all that behind; sunk cost fallacy is actually quite an anchor.
Now...it's just chaos of issues. Many with little thought or bearing on most Americans.
Could there be a poll of $400k/yr income people?
Really, genocide is ignored.
Consultants think they can hit untapped reasonable GOP voters but in truth are just hitting young GOP congressional staff
I can't imagine Harris is actually converting enough GOP voters to cover the losses on the left from touting Dick Cheney
Even if they manage to convert a substantial portion of the GOP on the presidential ticket, those voters still will likely ticket split down ballot.
Compare any tossup state pres poll against that same state's Senate poll.
Big diff.
p.s. Hypothetically, persuading even 15 former Trump voters to vote Harris could swing the overall result
And the idea that all this time had been nothing but “outreach to republicans” just bc that’s what pants-poppers laser focus on doesn’t make it true.
The messaging seems to have reached some of the correct targets, though. At least, based on this example from a deep-red county in Georgia.
https://bsky.app/profile/tom4okstate.bsky.social/post/3l6zx36nimm27
I think we need to stop and realize that polls are not guaranteed. It's an assumption of how Americans will vote based on small sample sizes.
Did we not learn anything from 2016?
November will of course provide the answer, but between known bad actors and nonsense crosstabs, I don't know how anyone comes to the conclusion polls are reflecting reality
I was genuinely shocked when I read this.
https://www.fox6now.com/news/waukesha-mayor-endorses-kamala-harris
I think the initial “We have a good, normal message—join us” was a more compelling, energizing pitch than “Actually stay where you are, just vote country over party.”
Since, Walz has been muzzled & they've spent months sucking up to Dick Cheney
That was why I was so annoyed with Colin Allred for taking the Ted Cruz advert bait in TX. He will not gain any GOP votes by doing so, all he does is piss off Democrats who see another weak candidate pandering.
And what these charts don‘t show is turnout.
Turnout is key! Every blue vote needs to go in the ballot box.
You can help with that!
Vote, tell others, help others!
Local, state, national. It‘s all hugely important!
I saw the polls in 2016 - do not believe them, go and VOTE
I figured it tapered off naturally after the initial burst of enthusiasm.
Meanwhile: If you will be affected by the outcome, it's a good time to call or text some WI or AZ unlikely voters to help them make a plan to rescue the republic.
I'm not sure a different tack would have changed his closing rise, though - these folks came home to Trump in the end, they always do
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-21-wisconsin-democrats-feel-the-heat/
there are definitely things to criticize about her campaign, but on the whole I think she has run a good one and the headwinds of a deeply unpopular Biden admin and Trump's actual strength as a candidate have both been underrated as challenges
At some point we just have to accept that maybe responsibility is on the electorate to pick him over her, no?
https://bsky.app/profile/insavga.bsky.social/post/3l6ygpjbq2x2j
Really?
By that reasoning, since most dramatic tightening of race in 538 has come in the 10 days since VP Harris made her progressive proposal to expand Medicare to cover in-home care, that proposal didn't work.
If Harris wins, likely both initiatives will have helped.
If.
So, as satisfying as it'd be to see our candidate saying, "You can all go to hell," it would also be stupid to begin a Harris-Walz term that way.
It was like what 4-5 years ago or so. How have we forgott... *19 years!?!?!*
But I really think that a more forceful and principled defense of immigration and a nuanced discussion about reevaluating military support to Israel would've been more energizing.
Polling may show a majority saying not to arm Israel or w/e but the number of voters who prioritize that over the economy or immigration would fit in a school bus
Look at the last week. Hardly any data.
do you have contrary data or nah
Are the polling distrubutions normal? I doubt it.
What's the median look like?
What's the highly variable "n"?
It's drawing a line through data. It doesn't make it real.
Means are low probability in bimodal distributions e.g.
And the farther away it is, the less we can tell where it's going to end up no matter the model
Basically, in the absence of counterfactuals, I don't think we can make claims like this.
Pleasantly surprised at Biden move left
you lose any fight you refuse to pick
Corporate media influences the masses enough to control things.
This is news to you?
Moving from a blank slate to a real person makes it much harder.
It's a very small needle to thread.
You get off to this.
1. Nazi
2. Fascist
Worst thing to be accused of being in the US:
1. Communist
2. Socialist
3. Left of the political world center
Dems need to be on their game calling out all of Trump's BS on the campaign trail and be ruthless.
You don't need to engage if you don't want to, though. I wish you well either way.
I'm literally talking about having already voted for Harris in a other thread. I do not need to be scolded with a big list. The point of this whole thing is Dems waste their time on conservatives instead of progressives
She’s rerunning Clinton 2016
Kamala, until Biden dropped out, has been mostly free of that. Worst they did was "look at her stupid laugh."
If you believe any analysis published in jacobin you are too stupid to interact with so I’m gonna say goodbye now.
Who could have seen THAT coming?! :D
(She got like a *billion* dollars in small donations!)