Harris Jumps Ahead Again – Watch The Crowds
Harris Jumps Ahead Again – Watch The Crowds
The crowds confirm the polls
Our colleague Shankar Narayan has drawn attention to a powerful election forecaster, RacetotheWH, which is placing its bet on Harris to win, by significant odds: 55% to 44.8%. This has gone up for Harris by a point since last week…there is a trend and it is not looking good for Donald. Another colleague provides the reason why the polls seem skewed (more below).
RacetotheWH has one of the strongest track records of any forecasting poll. It has predictions for House and Senate seats as well.
The latest Times/Siena poll – which is particularly well-regarded by statisticians – puts Harris in the election lead by four points. This is beyond the margin-of-error wiggle norm for polls, and puts her into the category of being able to pull Senate and House seats as well.
Just last month, according to the same poll, Harris and Trump had been tied.
The poll also found that Harris scored ahead of Trump on the question of who “represents change,” which is what a majority of voters are looking for. This edge for representing “change” has vaulted Vice President Kamala Harris into a five-point lead in a new NBC poll.
The latest TIPP tracking poll has Harris leading Trump by 3% - just above its 2.9% margin of error. The TIPP poll was one of only two to predict Trump’s election in 2016.
So why are we flooded with polls saying the race is a tie?
Substack expert Jay Kuo says the confusion is manipulation, plain and simple. “Trump needs us to believe the race is close, not only because it will help him claim election fraud later, but because a close race gives a permission structure for people who are still undecided to excuse the worst of Trump’s attributes.”
Jay says that there are 60 GOP-leaning polls, all paid for by Republicans, that have been released recently, in order to normalize the idea that Trump is still viable. He notes that Harris has held at least a two-point lead – probably more – over Trump for the past month.
He adds that if the media reported that Trump was losing, then it would have to explain why – “because he’s a terrible candidate: a felon, a sexual assaulter, a fascist, a racist, a misogynist, a blithering fool.”
Surprising as it might be to believe, one of the Republican strongholds had been White women, who have voted for the GOP in all but two presidential elections in the past 70 years (Johnson in ’64 and Bill Clinton in ’96). A new 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll finds that White women now prefer Harris by six points.
Harris’ overall favourability has jumped 16 points since she took over from Biden, the largest increase for any politician then-President George W. Bush handled the 9/11 terrorist attacks. No other candidate in the history of NBC polling, in fact, had seen the degree of popularity jump that Kamala has had since she took the reins.
And she is gaining on Trump on the question of who could best handle the economy; the economy is now doing much better and the employment rate is strong.
But a growing share of voters in swing states now say abortion is central to their decision, and by a wide 20-point margin, they say they trust Harris over Trump to handle abortion. For younger women especially, abortion has overtaken the economy as the single most important issue.
The victories of abortion-rights advocates in state contests points the way to the wave of election-day enthusiasm for Harris.
Trump’s world, by contrast, keeps bogging down. News has broken that he secretly shipped COVID tests to his buddy Putin for his own personal use… you know, one autocrat to another. The cost was close to $1-million – but they could have saved thousands of American lives as well. Trump is also fogging up the federal response to the hurricane crises by ignoring Republican rejection of FEMA funding, and fighting a read-guard action against new Harris pledges on issues like healthcare.
Incidentally, she has promised that Medicare will help cover the costs of long-term home health care aides for seniors – a serious promise in America’s aging population.
But breaking away from the numbers for a moment, let’s contrast the difference between the supposed support for Trump with the enthusiasm for Harris, using the evidence of our own eyes.
And our eyes, in seeing larger crowds for Harris, are not deceiving us.
The Crowd Counting Consortium (yes, you knew there would be one!) has tallied the rallies held by the candidates. The average crowd size for Trump in 2024 has been about 5,600. For Harris, it has been about 13,400.
Harris is drawing twice the numbers of people as Trump.
(Not to mention, of course, that some in Trump’s crowds are there to shoot him…three so far. All solid Republicans.)
She packed an 8,000-seat arena in Atlanta with people who had the same joyful mood as they once greeted Obama.
Her VP running mate Walz was stunned to see 14,000 people welcome him onto the presidential ticket.
Rally-goers walk miles through the heat to get to Kamala’s events.
At Trump events they sometimes have to wait for seven hours to leave, because the transport to the buses does not arrive (Coachella, CA). Rumour has it that Trump has not been paying his bills for his rallies.
And people were anxious to leave, because his events have been described as ‘tired monotony’.
You would know by now that people drift out of a Trump event early – the speeches are long and repetitious – and by the time he finishes, half of his already-diminished audience has vanished.
As an aside, the Crowd guys note that “Mr. Trump regularly and often grossly exaggerates the size of the crowds at events he headlines, so we restict our view in those cases to estimates from the news media, law enforcement, and other reporters and observers. By contrast, estimates of rally crowd size provided by the Harris campaign so far have lined up with observations made by news outlets and other eyewitnesses, so we do include those in our records when they are reported.”
Trump blamed the Democrats for his flagging crowd numbers. He said that since the assassination attempts (by Republicans) he has had to hold his rallies indoors, at smaller venues. He said the Administration was too busy guarding the UN and Iran.
Or maybe rounding up pets for dinner.
Anyway, instead of having 50,000 people outside, as Trump claims, he has been settling for 1,000 people inside.
Even then, they often are not there.
I recall seeing one video where Trump walks out of a hotel and waves to the fans. As the camera turns, it is evident that he is waving to a people-less street.
The brutal reality for Trump is that everything he does or says is about him – and he is boring!
He has been nowhere, read nothing and bullied a smooth path for himself wherever he wanted to go. His ego is so fragile that he cannot bear to be wrong about anything! Remember - speaking of hurricane season – when he said incorrectly that a hurricane was going to hit Alabama?
Instead of admitting he had made a simple mistake, he crudely doctored a map showing a storm extension.
This is why Trump does not do actual media interviews, but holds love-fests with ideologically safe parrots.
The media’s role is diminishing in these contests, in fact.
Neither Trump nor Harris feel a compelling need to sit down with traditional media and expand on their policy choices says a lot more about the pundits trapped in their media bubbles than it does about either candidate. If trad media was relevant to obtaining more votes, the politicians would be right there answering questions. But the media who jump all over Harris for not giving more interviews, has only itself to blame for its irrelevance.
As Mary Trump notes: “In addition to 60 Minutes and her appearance on Call Her Daddy, Kamala Harris will sit down with Stephen Colbert, the hosts of The View, and Howard Stern. She’ll also participate in a town hall being held by Univision. Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, went on Fox News Sunday. It’s hard to imagine a more well-rounded and diverse media strategy than the one Harris and her team are employing.”
Yes, the New York Times has come out and taken a stand and endorsed Harris. It called her “the only patriotic choice for president.” But that only goes a small way to making up for the media’s inability to report on Trump’s mental state. CNBC’s Joe Kernen took Trump’s side over the E. Jean Carroll verdict, saying that the jury only found Trump liable for sexual abuse - but not rape. Sure, that’s a big plus for Donald’s moral authority.
When the media does occasionally cover Trump’s mental lapses, it does not do so as part of a larger story: meaningful coverage of an entire mental melt-down. “Trump’s mental fitness for the presidency deserves sustained journalistic scrutiny as a stand-alone topic with its own intrinsic importance and newsworthiness,” argues the New Republic. If the media gets riveting on Biden’s age, then it should also cover Trump’s “obvious cognitive impairment, his frequent inability to speak and think coherently, his resolute refusal to acquire minimal baseline knowledge on many consequential issues, his tendency to invent things on the fly that are wildly disconnected from reality, his intense narcissism, his deliberate lying and bigotry and misogyny.”
Trump is just an extraordinarily talented conman.
Trump conned his way through business failures and bankruptcies. He stiffed hundreds of contractors and thousands of customers. That is his only talent. In a way, he is perfect for America today.
That is why it is so consequential that Trump has been given a free pass by the media. They call it “sanewashing”.
But it does not appear to be helping him anymore.
He is down in the polls, he is not drawing the crowds, and he is approaching the prospect of years of bed rest in an appropriate asylum.
THAT is the story I want to read.
Someday soon…
Good morning, Barry. A good friend sent this to me. Neither of us knows who put it all together. Whover it is/was deserves a special Nobel Prize for Literature this year!
To be fair,
President Trump’s four years in office weren’t so bad, except when he incited an insurrection against the government, mismanaged a pandemic that killed nearly half a million Americans, separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy, tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church, when he tried to block all Muslims from entering the country, he got impeached, got impeached again, had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history, pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden, fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia, bragged about firing the FBI director on TV, took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community, diverted military funding to build his wall, caused the longest government shutdown in US his-tory, called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,” lied nearly 30,000 times, banned transgender people from serving in the military, ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough ques-tions, vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers, refused to release his tax returns, increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion, had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history, called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers, coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based jour-nalist, refused to concede the 2020 election, hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House, walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl, called neo-Nazis “very fine people,” suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID, abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey, pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans, incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic, withdrew the US from the Paris cli-mate accords, withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal, withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances, insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter, pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op, failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies, called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries, called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,” claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere, forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader, believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney Gen-eral when he recused himself from the Russia probe, suggested the US should buy Greenland, colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges, repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,” claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases, violated the emoluments clause, thought that Nambia was a country, told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public, called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Con-stitution, nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet, nominated a corrupt head of the EPA, nominated a corrupt head of HHS, nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department, nomi-nated a corrupt head of the USDA, praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies, refused to allow the presidential transition to begin, insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death, spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president, falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote, called the Muslim mayor of Lon-don a “stone cold loser,” falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year, considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions, mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID, locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones, used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,” hired and associated with numer-ous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser, pardoned several of his shady associates, gave the Presidential Medal of Free-dom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories, got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!), had a Secretary of State who called him a moron, forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history, botched the COVID vaccine rollout, tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him, charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties, constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear, called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,” used his Twitter ac-count to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise, opened up millions of pristine fed-eral lands to development and drilling, got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers, claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US, ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings, blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining, rede-signed Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle, got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,” threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution, botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them, pres-sured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes, thought that the Virgin islands had a President, drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing, rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos, pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID, rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers, held blatant campaign rallies at the White House, tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man, refused to attend his successors’ inauguration, nominated the worst Education Secretary in history, threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted, attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t), allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on ma-jor reports on climate change and other issues, struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble, called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,” threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders, went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic, claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,” seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution, demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director, praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles, com-pletely gutted the Voice of America, placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service, claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower, suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country, suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recov-ered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public, overturned ener-gy conservation standards that even industry supported, reduced the number of refugees the US accepts, insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames, gave Rush Limbaugh a Pres-idential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address, named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties, elim-inated the White House office of pandemic response, used soldiers as campaign props, fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him, demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade, hired a shit ton of white nationalists, politicized the civil service, did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government, falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts, claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won, insulted reporters of color, insulted women reporters, insulted women reporters of color, suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember at the moment.
But other than that. . .