There are lagging indicators and leading indicators in politics, and it’s important to pay attention to both. Democrats don’t like the way either of them are pointing with Election Day less than two weeks away.
Polls, particularly averages, are indicators of the lagging variety. The latest provide mostly happy reading for former President Donald Trump and grim news for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Wall Street Journal and CNBC polls show Trump up nationally by 3 points and 2 points, respectively, while the TIPP poll has Harris up 3 points. Franklin & Marshall and Emerson polls in the pivotal state of Pennsylvania have Trump up each by 1 point.
The race thus appears to be tighter than a sailor on shore leave. But look a little closer. In the RealClearPolitics average, Harris’s lead over Trump has shrunk to 0.2 points compared to the 8-point lead President Joe Biden enjoyed over him at this point in the 2020 election and the 5-point lead Hillary Clinton had in 2016.
Trump outperformed those deficits both times, once to win and once to lose narrowly. Polls are snapshots, not guarantees, and Harris is still marginally ahead nationally, as noted. But if Trump outperforms as he has before, he might win the White House somewhat comfortably.
Voter opinion surveys can’t keep up with sentiment as it simmers among high-information insiders such as campaign operatives who have details not disclosed to the public. It’s their job to know which way the wind is blowing, so it’s no wonder that Harris officials fret that “people were feeling better three weeks ago.”
High anxiety breeds desperation, of which there is a strong whiff in the sudden blizzard of Democratic warnings that Trump is a fascist. These are most often based on tendentious analyses and the flimsiest of evidence, such as a “fear” expressed by former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley that America might be in a “Reichstag moment.” Comparisons of Trump to Hitler and other assorted tyrants can now be bought at two a penny. Goebbels even made a showing recently in a social media snipe at billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk. This guff comes from people who unironically accuse Trump and his adherents of being demagogues.
But another leading indicator could herald a problem not for Harris but for Trump. It is the suggestion by some of the Republican nominee’s supporters that “it’s over,” that his triumph is already assured and now it is only necessary to gloat over leftist tears and apportion the spoils.
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This is a message not well calculated to get his low-propensity voters to the polls in sufficient numbers to turn poll indications into the reality of victory and the realization of power. Indeed, this idea is sufficiently dangerous to the GOP as to raise suspicion that it comes from those fretting Democrats as a ploy to depress the MAGA turnout.
The two presidential candidates are drawing poll numbers that put them mostly within the margin of error. It would be a grotesque error by Republicans to behave as though they’d already run away with the contest. Harris has a real chance of winning. The people most likely to secure it for her now are not her hyperventilating supporters but her overconfident opponents.