US presidential election minus seven weeks

Still anyone’s guess as to who will occupy the White House come February, but it does seem that last week’s debate has moved the dial towards Kamala Harris.

Evidence is starting to emerge of a strengthening in Kamala Harris’s position in the wake of last week’s debate, and while this hardly amounts to a paradigm shift in terms of the popular vote – after rounding to whole numbers, The Economist’s poll aggregate records no change from Harris’s 50-46 lead when the debate was held on September 10 – it’s been enough to move forecast models substantially in her favour. Nate Silver’s model is the most striking case in point, with Trump’s win probability falling from 59.7% to 52.0% just over the past few days, having peaked at 64.4% the day before the debate. After bouncing around 52-48 for a couple of weeks, The Economist’s probability reading now has Harris leading 57-43. FiveThirtyEight’s model remains the most bullish for the Democrats, putting Harris’s win probability at 63%. More from Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

605 thoughts on “US presidential election minus seven weeks”

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  4. Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.

    The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.

    Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/18/trump-election-georgia

  5. Big move by the Fed, and the word is there will be another cut or two by the end of the year. With unemployment low, inflation down to the historical norm, wages up, and now interest rates going down, the cost-of-living crisis might be on the way out, presumably to the benefit of Kamala Harris.. With similar dynamics playing out here, Albo might yet see a similar political dividend

  6. Reposting highly rated blue wall polling from today..

    PENNSYLVANIA: Harris 51%, Trump 45%, Stein 1%, Oliver 1%

    MICHIGAN: Harris 50%, Trump 45%, Stein 2%

    WISCONSIN: Harris 48%, Trump 47%, Stein 1%

    One week after the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the 2024 presidential race in three critical battleground states shows Harris leading Trump in Pennsylvania, holding a slight lead in Michigan, and the two candidates essentially tied in Wisconsin, according to Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University polls of likely voters in each of the states released today.

    https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3905

  8. What a losing campaign looks like.

    Trump golfs a lot, and campaigns surprisingly infrequently. When he does campaign events, he makes odd choices of venue: Today, he will appear in New York’s Nassau County. New York State has not voted Republican for president since 1984. In 2020, Trump won 38 percent of the New York vote. Yet Trump has convinced himself, or somebody has convinced him, that this year he might be competitive in New York.

    Yesterday, Trump posted a pledge on his Truth Social platform to restore the deductibility of state and local taxes. That’s an important issue for upper-income taxpayers in tax-heavy New York. Trump did not mention that he himself, as president, signed the legislation that capped state and local deductibility at the first $10,000, to help fund the Republican tax cut of 2017.

    Vice President Kamala Harris has been driving a message of abortion rights and middle-income-oriented economic policy in must-win states. She sat for back-to-back solo interviews, both in Pennsylvania, the first with a local ABC affiliate, the second with the National Association of Black Journalists on the Philadelphia public station WHYY.

    Trump’s main message of the week, meanwhile, has been that he was not wrong to accuse Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of stealing and eating pets—a message that has put him at odds with the state’s Republican governor and local mayors and police chiefs. The only thing Trump said that made more impact were the four words he posted Sunday morning: I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!

    Adding to the self-harm, Vance indicated that the Trump health-care plan would allow insurers to resume denying coverage for preexisting conditions. Trump himself proclaimed that he would address high food prices by barring food imports—a policy guaranteed to raise costs instead. All but two Senate Republicans got baited into voting yesterday against a law to protect in vitro fertilization from state-level abortion restrictions. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House seem to be stumbling toward forcing a government shutdown because Trump vetoed their own plan to fund government operations through the November election. That’s all just in a single week.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/09/trump-vance-x-campaign-losing/679924/

  10. AR, thanks for that break down on why the race is still 50/50 on the last post. This thread is a bit bubble like and confirmation bias always needs to be accounted for.

    That being said, yes the models are edging towards 60/40 for Harris, but I still remember the 70/30 split on the 538 model in 2016 so I am certainly nowhere near being complacent on this outcome.

  11. A word of gratitude to the finer statistical minds who have been adding value to the Presidential threads. Numerous posts have been most instructive. Not that I particularly appreciate the degree of uncertainty they are contributing to my suffering on account of the pending end of the Age of Enlightenment.

  13. It’s the economy, and Trump’s stupid campaign 🙂

    I have been thinking about how many mis-steps there have been in Trump’s 2024 campaign.

    The first debate went well for Trump because Biden was not coherent. Then there was an assassination attempt that was a random act that favoured Trump. Lucky Trump!

    Since then it has been one error after another, including choice of VP candidate and attacks on female, immigrant and black voters. Then a badly lost debate. Trump may be a popular on TV, but he is not showing himself a political genius.

    Thinking back to 2016, lots of events favoured Trump via a combination of biased courts, external interference (Russian support) and internal interference (the FBI). So was Trump just lucky then?

    Its looking like his luck is running out, and the emptiness of his candidacy is being exposed. And yes, lower interest rates are great news for Harris.

  14. CNN Airs Montage of Trump Calling Opponents ‘Fascists’ After JD Vance Scolds Democrats for Saying Trump Is a ‘Fascist’

    https://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-airs-montage-of-trump-calling-opponents-fascists-after-jd-vance-scolds-democrats-for-saying-trump-is-a-fascist/

    “But first, she aired a clip of Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) chiding Democrats.

    “Look, we can disagree with one another,” he said on Monday. “We can debate one another. But we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected, it is gonna be the end of American democracy.”

    Phillip noted one issue with Vance’s remarks.

    “Except here is Vance’s actual running mate saying exactly that,” she said before playing snippets of Trump at various rallies:

    “It’s a choice between communism and freedom.

    …

    This is communist, this is Marxist, this is fascist.

    …

    There’s a radical left, Marxist, communist, fascist.

    …

    She’s a Marxist. She’s a fascist.

    …

    Comrade Kamala Harris.

    …

    If comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living

    in

    a full-blown banana republic ruled by an anarchy and a tyranny… They’re scum. They’re scum and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage.”

  15. WEIRD!!!

    Melania Trump defends her nude photos in bizarre book promo

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271277/-Melania-Trump-defends-her-nude-photos-in-bizarre-book-promo?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_1&pm_medium=web

    “Melania Trump’s book promotions keep getting stranger. First, she opined on the July 13 assassination attempt on her husband to sell books. Then she waxed poetic about the Fourth Amendment. Now she’s comparing her nude photo shoots to classical art.

    After remaining largely out of sight during the 2024 campaign, she’s reemerged with the publication of a memoir that her team deems an “intimate portrait” of the former first lady. And it is quite that, with Trump now addressing her past nude photo shoots, which resurfaced during the 2016 campaign.

    “Why do I stand proudly behind my nude modeling work?” she said in a video posted Wednesday on X. “The more pressing question is, why has the media chosen to scrutinize my celebration of the human form in a fashion photo shoot?”

    In the video, she goes on to compare herself to famous pieces of art, with an image of Michelangelo’s “David” appearing on screen.”

    “If women want to reclaim their agency and turn the male gaze on its head by posing nude, go for it. But it’s hypocritical to do that and help lead the political party that is policing women’s bodies, shaming women for not having children, and overturning Roe v. Wade.

    Let’s also not ignore that her husband’s MAGA-fied Republican Party has been adamantly against sexual liberation, opposing LGBTQ+ rights, positioning itself as the party of “family values,” and implementing book bans across the country. The Trump campaign’s slogan of “Make America Great Again” is an ode to what white Americans deem a rosy past of the nuclear family, white picket fence, and a smiling—and silent—housewife. The irony is rich.

  16. Are the Republicans and their supporters finally waking up to the fact that Trump isn’t playing 4 dimensional chess? Are they finally seeing him for what he is? He is just a very lucky moron.

  17. This is astonishing.

    ”
    In 538’s presidential forecast, Harris getting 359 electoral votes is about as likely as her getting 272, as of Monday at 2:30 PM ET.”

    My the question to fellow bloggers, who were discussing election results modelling yesterday, WTF?

  18. Trump quips he wishes Biden hadn’t called him: ‘He was so nice to me’

    https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4885432-donald-trump-joe-biden-call/amp/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17266923342420&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fthehill.com%2Fhomenews%2Fcampaign%2F4885432-donald-trump-joe-biden-call%2F

    “Former President Trump said Tuesday that both President Biden and Vice President Harris were “so nice” in their calls following an apparent assassination attempt on Trump over the weekend, hinting that it made it more difficult to attack them.

    “He was so nice to me yesterday. In one way I sort of wish the call wasn’t made, because I do feel a little — he’s so nice. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened,’ and all that,” Trump said at a campaign town hall in Michigan, recounting his call with Biden on Monday.

    “Same with Kamala today. She could not have been nicer,” Trump added. “But the fact is, we have to have people that are respected by the opponent.”
    ”

    Well that’s called humanity and empathy for other human being, which is probably very difficult for Trump to understand.

  19. More Proof that Everything il Douche Touches Dies — the Sarah Huckabee Sanders Saga

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271276/-More-Proof-that-Everything-il-Douche-Touches-Dies-the-Sarah-Huckabee-Sanders-Saga?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

    ” Raw Story has an expose on Sarah’s devolution over time from one of erstwhile friends and colleagues in the Trump White House:

    “Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House communications director for Donald Trump, told her colleagues at “The View” that when she worked with Sarah Huckabee Sanders she was a kind person. That, she confessed, has changed.

    Sanders spoke at a Trump rally Tuesday night, where she attacked Vice President Kamala Harris for not having any biological children. Harris is a step-parent of two who refer to her as Momala. Similar attacks on Harris and on “childless cat ladies” have energized women across the country in opposition to Trump.

    “I watched this clip and my jaw dropped. I worked with Sarah. The table will gasp when I say this,” Griffin began. “She was privately one of the kindest, sweetest people like a Sara Haines doesn’t have a bad thing to say about anyone.”

    What Trumpism does, she explained, is bring out the worst in people.

    “It speaks to the toxic environment of Trump, to fit in,” she said. You have to say wild things and knock people down and be a bully. That’s not who she privately is, and it makes me think of J.D. Vance. You read his writings from 2012, he was like me,

    saying

    we need to bring more minorities into the party and reach out. But now he’s something so different. He’s saying the exact opposite of what he privately personally believes.”
    “

  21. Bill Wyman makes a frustrated case for why there are so many “Red” states in the USA, and gives examples of how and why Democrats need to be tougher. (One example, Walz didn’t cut through.)
    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/north-america/as-a-red-state-american-i-m-asked-one-question-in-australia-more-than-any-other-20240915-p5kaq3.html

    Outside of Democratic enclaves in the city centres of Phoenix and Tucson, you could just feel something in the water. It wasn’t that everyone there was a right-wing lunatic, though many certainly fit that bill. It was that people were Republican, culturally. Everyone knew that Democrats were free-spending, weak on defence, anti-religion, and overly concerned with black people (particularly black people on welfare, which in this world was almost a redundant phrase). I could go on, but you get the picture. There was an inbred suspicion of the Democratic Party.

    None of this is really true …

    … to my ears, too many of the Democrats’ attacks miss obvious targets, and even when they don’t, they feel effete, based on jargon, and miss the human element …

    …

    Walz

    could then make a concluding hyperbolic statement: “Every dollar we spend on feeding a hungry kid pays off tenfold down the line! …”

  22. State/Pollster Harris Trump 2020 Results
    NH/ Granite State 54% (+11%) 43% Biden 7.4%
    VA/ ActiVote 55.2% (+10,4%) 44.8% Biden +10.1%
    MA/ BayState 62% (+31%) 31% Biden +33.5%
    RI/ OceanState 58% (+20%) 38% Biden +20.8%
    ME/ PanAtlantic 50% (+9%) 41% Biden +9%
    ME-CD1 58% (+26%) 32% Biden +23.3%
    ME-CD2 42% 49% (+7%) Trump +7.9%
    GA/ AJC 44% 47% (+3%) Biden +0.23%
    WI/ AARP 48% (+3) 45% Biden +0.63

  23. Thanks Sprocket, I find those Quinnipiac results very interesting. The last few months I’d have thought Wisconsin consistently looked the safest of those three rust belt states. Michigan was also looking ok and lots of worries the whole time about Pennsylvania – really looked 50/50 and still might be. Interesting to see some further quality polls out of these states. Obviously, if you were going to drop one of them, you’d like it to be Wisconsin.

  25. So they’re hoping for a repeat of 2016? Victory through dumb luck and Democratic complacency?

    It is a worrisome strategy. Certainly a more workable path to victory than “THEY’RE EATING THE PETS!!!”.

  27. Delusional Donald..

    NYTimes
    By Maegan Vazquez
    Politics breaking news reporter

    Donald Trump said at a rally on Long Island that he was campaigning in the state because “we are going to win New York.”

    The former president similarly claimed Republicans would clinch his home state in 2016 and 2020. In both elections, he lost New York by more than 20 points.

  28. Centre posted a lot about prediction markets (aka betting markets) and how they are more accurate than polls.
    Yesterday there was lot of discussion about forecasting modelling
    Well here is a modelling based on prediction markets and it is EYE-POPING!

    Northwestern University Model shows Harris Landslide 438-100

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271346/-Northwestern-University-Model-shows-Harris-Landslide?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

    “A forecasting model developed by Northwestern Professor Thomas Miller shows seismic shift since the debate. The model Harris with a small lead of 288 to 250 prior to the debate. His model is not based on polling, but rather data from the Investor Prediction Markets, specifically PredictIt. You can get daily updates at virtualtout.com

    From the university website:

    Called “The Virtual Tout,” Miller’s system uses data from PredictIt, a prediction market where users bet real money on political races. Miller then uses that data to simulate one million hypothetical elections per hour to find the average outcome. By looking at each state as its own “market,” Miller can predict not just the popular vote but how the Electoral College will vote.

    From The Virtual Tout (link above) where the website updated daily, he states the following:

    Political polls are snapshots of the recent past. Polls have limited predictive power when conducted many days before an election.

    and

    Prediction markets, on the other hand, are forward-looking. Investors anticipate with will happen on election day and place their bets accordingly. Just as the stock market is a leading indicator of what will happen with the economy, a political prediction market is a leading indicator of what will happen with an election.”

    So, does it work? In the last election his model got all states other that Georgia correctly and we all know how close that one was.

  29. New Hampshire Libertarian Party Says Anyone Who Assassinates VP Kamala Harris ‘Would Be an American Hero’ in Deleted Tweet

    On Monday morning, the Libertarian Party released a statement to clarify that it was not “advocating” for Harris’s assassination. Despite this, the party seemingly doubled down on the sentiment of the deleted tweet and claimed it would be “morally correct to use violence to stop aggression.”

    “We would never advocate for the assassination of a tyrannical President,” the statement said. “That’s illegal. We were merely acknowledging how some members would react to one. These feelings are no different than how many leftists reacted and continue to react to assassination attempts on Donald Trump.

    “Libertarians are not pacifists. We are not ‘non-violent.’ Libertarians are against the initiation of force, but threats to property rights and self-determination exist everywhere. It is morally correct to use violence to stop aggression.”

    https://www.mediaite.com/news/new-hampshire-libertarian-party-says-anyone-who-assassinates-vp-kamala-harris-would-be-an-american-hero-in-deleted-tweet/

    Their brains are broken.

  30. ”
    sprocket_says:
    Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 10:03 am
    Delusional Donald..

    NYTimes
    By Maegan Vazquez
    Politics breaking news reporter

    Donald Trump said at a rally on Long Island that he was campaigning in the state because “we are going to win New York.”

    The former president similarly claimed Republicans would clinch his home state in 2016 and 2020. In both elections, he lost New York by more than 20 points.
    ”

    TRUMP IS SUFFERING From a Severe Case of Self-Deception on a Level Never Seen Before

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/18/2271325/-TRUMP-IS-SUFFERING-From-a-Severe-Case-of-Self-Deception-on-a-Level-Never-Seen-Before?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

  33. Being here this week I’m surprised just how hard various Republicans are pushing the communist/Marxist angle – as one example, I saw an extended interview today with House Speaker Mike Johnson in which he mentioned it repeatedly. I wouldn’t have thought communism would be that big a bogeyman to anyone under 70 but maybe America’s different.

  34. Who can forget the reds under the beds.

    Now the republicans are bought wholly by Russia.

    Just wait till the Jan 6 hearings expose Russia’s money trail to the republicans

    Fun times.

  35. Also Trump is leaning very heavily on loony Laura these days.

    He needs support wherever he can get it. Despite being an evil narcissist, he knows he has been sold out, and betrayed by once loyal confidants,

    Double fun times

  36. Despite all the skullduggery the GOP are employing to win the next election, the Republican Party are going to fracture bigly after the election. It will require a full rebuild..

    Good luck with that I say.

  37. BT @ #NaN Thursday, September 19th, 2024 – 11:21 am

    Being here this week I’m surprised just how hard various Republicans are pushing the communist/Marxist angle – as one example, I saw an extended interview today with House Speaker Mike Johnson in which he mentioned it repeatedly. I wouldn’t have thought communism would be that big a bogeyman to anyone under 70 but maybe America’s different.

    I think Capitalist Authoritarian Oligarchies like Russia are a bigger threat to democracy these days.

  39. Ven:

    ”
    In 538’s presidential forecast, Harris getting 359 electoral votes is about as likely as her getting 272, as of Monday at 2:30 PM ET.”

    My the question to fellow bloggers, who were discussing election results modelling yesterday, WTF?

    It’s because, like every presidential election in recent years, the results will decided by a bunch of perilously close contests in the swing states, so a few tens of thousands of votes falling one way or another in the right places could make a huge difference as to the outcome in the electoral college .

  40. Ven:

    WEIRD!!!

    Melania Trump defends her nude photos in bizarre book promo

    Nah, I’m actually on Melania’s side here. In this day and age, we should be well past the point of shaming someone for having posed for a few nude photos when they were younger. She shouldn’t even need to defend them.

    Weird is caring about this sort of thing on the first place.

  41. Phew, been busy today selling some shares. Might be wise to take some off the table at record highs…

    I will check betting soon.

    outside left @ 6.49 am.

    I’m certain South Sydney beat St. George in the 1971 grand final.

    If I’m wrong I’ll go and get checked with a quack for dementia 🙂

  43. mikehilliard:

    Oh, no doubt, the dinosaurs who support Project 25 are absolute hypocrites when it comes to Trump completely flouting all of the pathetic “traditional values” they hold so dear, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us should be joining them in the weird-ass hangups they have about sex.

  44. Centre

    Without wanting to give any investment advice, I’d be looking at loading up on beaten down green mineral stocks – lithium, rare earths, copper. Another 8 years of US Democratic government is bullish.

  47. Ok, we have further activity in the betting markets.

    The interest rate cut by the FED has been positive for Harris, the bookmakers have tightened her odds and that has been followed with support:

    Harris 54%
    Trump 46%

    Harris now is at the same record high as before the Democratic convention.

    The next move must be in Trump’s favour or he could be in real trouble!

  48. outside left

    the tries that were scored in that grand final were as good as they score today. Champion players Coote, McCarthy, and Langlands were at their best.

    Sprocket, yes, rare earth and lithium are on my radar 😉

  49. Ven, good post @ 10.08 am.

    The most valid reason why betting markets must be more accurate than polls is because the former are always afforded the luxury of taking polls into account – not vice versa.

  50. Trump claims he will visit Springfield, Ohio “in the next two weeks”.
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-will-visit-springfield-ohio-two-weeks-rcna171758

    Meanwhile the Springfield mayor and Ohio governor, both Republicans, are trying, using careful language, to tell Trump to forget about coming.
    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/18/politics/ohio-republicans-haitian-migrants-trump-what-matters/index.html

    I wonder how many more Republican governors and mayors really don’t want to be associated with Trump now that he no longer looking like a certain winner.

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