After the polling debacle that was former President Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 over ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, many observers on both sides of the aisle have largely disregarded polling results. “Ignore the polls” has become a rallying cry for the fanbase of whichever candidate happens to end up on the business end of whatever poll was published that day.
As swing-state polls trend increasingly in the former president’s favor, and after Trump has taken his largest lead in the election betting odds since the Democrats replaced President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket in July, the behavior of the Harris-Walz campaign paints the picture of an operation that believes recent polling and doubts its candidates’ chances on Nov. 5.
The only bright spot, if you can call it that, in recent polling for the Harris campaign is an NBC News poll released on Sunday that has Harris and Trump tied nationally at 48%. However, that same poll showed Harris with a 4-point lead, outside the margin of error, last month after the presidential debate. Right now, RealClearPolitics has Trump up, albeit well within the margin of error, in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. Harris’s only swing-state lead, according to the RCP polling average, is a razor-thin advantage in Wisconsin.
If there is no truth to the recent polling data, the Harris-Walz campaign has a funny way of showing it. The duo’s campaign strategy did an abrupt about-face last week, abandoning the tactics of hiding from the press and refusing to clarify any serious positions. The Democratic candidates uncharacteristically made themselves available for a series of interviews that they believed would allow them to make their case to voters without the risk of being exposed to any acts of journalism — it did not go well.
Speaking to the extremely Democrat-friendly hosts of 60 Minutes, The View, the Howard Stern Show, and the Call Her Daddy podcast, Harris and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) failed to rise to the occasion, consistently fumbling softball questions. The Trump campaign is already capitalizing on Harris’s appearance on The View, where she said there is “not a thing” she would do differently than Biden. Even CBS News’s decision to edit Harris selectively in an attempt to make her sound more coherent failed to stop the bleeding in the polls.
In an attempt to win back men, the Harris campaign sent former President Barack Obama to berate black men into voting Democrat and staged an embarrassing “hunting” photo op for Walz. Walz showed up with a $2,000-plus Beretta shotgun that he was physically incapable of loading, a truly pathetic showing for the 24-year military man.
The mood among the press suggests it sees the writing on the wall as well. Corporate journalists and entertainers typically serve as the Praetorian Guard for Democratic candidates, but Bill Whitaker of CBS News asked Harris a series of tough questions during her appearance on 60 Minutes.
“There was a historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration,” Whitaker said. “As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?”
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Even Saturday Night Live, which has a long history of pulling punches when satirizing Democrats while savaging Republicans, has dialed up its mockery of Harris as of late.
Perhaps this cycle’s polls are as flawed as they were in 2016, but it is clear that both the Harris campaign and the media personalities who support it believe their candidate is in serious trouble, and I am inclined to believe them.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.