Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
The US presidential election is on November 5. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Kamala Harris has a 49.0-46.3 lead over Donald Trump (49.2-46.2 in my previous US election article for The Conversation on Monday). In presidential elections, the Electoral College is decisive, not the national popular vote. Harris has at least a one-point lead in enough states to win the Electoral College by a 276-262 margin.
In Silver’s model, Harris has a 55% chance to win the Electoral College, up from 54% on Monday. She has been the favourite since last Friday after falling to a 35% win probability on September 9. Previously there had been a large gap between Silver’s and FiveThirtyEight’s models, with Harris favoured more at FiveThirtyEight. But this gap has nearly vanished, with Harris now a 56% win probability at FiveThirtyEight.
Monday’s Conversation article also covered elections for the US House of Representatives and Senate that will be held concurrently with the presidential election. If Harris wins, Democrats have a good chance to regain control of the House, but Republicans are likely to gain Senate control. Democrats are defending seats in three states Trump won easily in 2016 and 2020 and the Senate system favours Republicans owing to two senators per state.
Canada looking bleak for Liberals
Two Canadian federal by-elections occurred on September 16. In LaSalle-Émard-Verdun in Quebec, 91 candidates stood as a protest against first-past-the-post, with most receiving very few votes. The left-wing separatist Quebec Bloc gained from the centre-left Liberals, winning by 28.0-27.2 with 26.1% for the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) and 11.6% for the Conservatives. At the 2021 federal election, results in this seat were 42.9% Liberal, 22.1% Quebec Bloc, 19.4% NDP and 7.5% Conservatives.
At the by-election in Elmwood-Transcona in Manitoba, the NDP retained against the Conservatives, but by a much reduced margin. The NDP defeated the Conservatives by 48.1-44.1 with 4.8% for the Liberals. In 2021, the NDP won this seat by 49.7-28.1 with 14.7% for the Liberals.
The next Canadian federal election is due by October 2025. FPTP will be used to elect all 343 seats, with 172 needed for a majority. The CBC poll tracker gives the Conservatives 42.9%, the Liberals 24.1%, the NDP 17.6% and the Quebec Bloc 7.8% (33.5% in Quebec). This would be a Conservative landslide with the seat projection giving them 218 seats, the Liberals 63, the Quebec Bloc 39 and the NDP 21. The Liberals have governed since they won the October 2015 election, though they were reduced to a minority government after the 2019 election.
UK, France, Germany and Sri Lanka
In my previous article in early September, I covered the lack of a honeymoon for UK Labour and PM Keir Starmer after winning the July 4 general election. In an Opinium poll taken last week, Starmer’s net approval had plunged 45 points since the first post-election Opinium poll in mid-July. His net approval is now -26, one point lower than for former Conservative PM Rishi Sunak.
At snap French parliamentary elections in early July, the left-wing NFP alliance won 180 of the 577 seats, President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble 159, the far-right National Rally and allies 142 and the conservative Republicans 39. On September 5, Macron appointed the conservative Michel Barnier as his new PM. Last Saturday, Barnier and Macron announced a new cabinet composed of mostly conservative ministers. The NFP is hostile to the new government, so its survival depends on National Rally abstaining on confidence motions.
I previously covered September 1 German state elections in Thuringia and Saxony where the far-right AfD made gains. At last Sunday’s state election in Brandenburg, the centre-left SPD won 32 of the 88 seats (up seven since 2019), the AfD 30 (up seven), the economically left but socially conservative BSW 14 (new) and the conservative CDU 12 (down three). The Greens and Left had won ten seats each in 2019, but were wiped out as neither cleared the 5% threshold.
At last Saturday’s Sri Lankan presidential election, the socialist candidate of the National People’s Power party defeated the establishment candidate by 55.9-44.1 after preferences. The NPP had won just 3.2% in 2019.
How long is the debate?
There’s a hurricane and a war on, don’t think many are paying attention to the debate.
Ven – 90 minutes. Should be all done around 12.30 AET.
I’d agree that Vance is a credible debater but on some matters – eg, abortion rights – he’s forced to defend the indefensible. He also presents as a Yale Law School graduate – oh, that’s right he is. I think it’s a tie.
Vance till now had a smug look with smirk. But during the abortion debate that smug look and smirk have vanished. There is seriousness and concern in his face and starts lying about how he and Trump will make IVF affordable and abortion family friendly.
”
Hugoaugogosays:
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 11:47 am
Ven – 90 minutes. Should be all done around 12.30 AET.
”
Thanks Hugo.
I feel that Pete Buttigieg has prepared Tim Walz well for the debate. He’s been able to undercut JD Vance’s talking points several times.
B.S.Fairman
“Does anyone else think you put glasses on Walz, he would look like John Howard?”
Walz just needs to work on his haughty and cruel looks to seem like Howard.
”
C@tmommasays:
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 11:57 am
I feel that Pete Buttigieg has prepared Tim Walz well for the debate. He’s been able to undercut JD Vance’s talking points several times.
”
C@tmomma
Vance is good with debate but sucks in front of ordinary people whereas Walz is a natural in front of ordinary people but he cannot convince black is white and white is black like Vance does. Walz is straight shooter and tries to convince with facts whereas Vance appeals to people’s emotions during a debate.
JD Vance made a big mistake when he agreed that women shouldn’t have to travel 100s of kilometres to get abortion medical care. What that effectively means is that he has agreed that women should be able to access abortion medical care in states where it is presently outlawed and they can’t. This, of course, goes against the grain and the position of the Pro Life movement who support highly restrictive bans on these things.
Don’t think that this sounds like I agree with JD Vance. Lol. I’m happy he agreed with the solution to the problem.
This is a much better debate than the Presidential one, with both candidates engaging with each other in a respectful manner, and both have done their job of getting the campaign talking points out there, and not doing any harm. Vance may well have saved his 2028 candidacy.
Vance may well have saved his 2028 candidacy.
————————————-
Oh I think he is imagining an earlier ascendancy than that.
No doubt he is, but he’ll just go back to being a Senator for the next four years after Trump loses next month.
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Hugoaugogosays:
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 12:08 pm
This is a much better debate than the Presidential one, with both candidates engaging with each other in a respectful manner, and both have done their job of getting the campaign talking points out there, and not doing any harm. Vance may well have saved his 2028 candidacy.
”
Hugo
I totally agree with you on this. Even my college going daughter agrees that this is much better debate than the Presidential one although she intensely dislikes Trump and Vance.
Here’s part of the problem. This is a good debate, conducted according to the rules and common decency. Unfortunately we are now in to retail politics, as a result this debate is dead set boring and will not switch the dial at all.
That said we are about to hear Walz on the threat to democracy….
Hugoaugogo @ #411 Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024 – 12:08 pm
I think a lot of the kudos needs to go to the Moderators as well. They have handled the debaters in an expertly nuanced way and provided very subtle but definitive fact checking when necessary.
Team Katich @ #412 Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024 – 12:15 pm
He imagines being only one cheeseburger away from the Presidency.
Gutless JD Vance not willing to admit Trump lost the 2020 election.
Walz did very well then but oh I wished he had of finished it with “you know this guy (Vance) won’t be the firewall because he’d fold to save his neck”.
parkySP @ #419 Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024 – 12:42 pm
Or, he’d fold like a pup tent in a stiff breeze. 😀
I don’t think Tim Walz ‘won’ the debate
As Rick Wilson eloquently put it, Vance shit the bed in the closing act. What a tool.
Rachel Maddow: JD Vance was slick and polished.
I’d score that debate as a score draw. Both candidates handled themselves pretty well, both got their talking points out there, and neither committed any gaffes. And everyone will have forgotten about it by the weekend.
Don’t know what others see, but for me as a female, JD Vance gives off creepy serial killer vibes. Lol
Vance: Donald Trump saved ACA (Obamacare)
The VP is generally insignificant. The fact that only ‘highlight’ from them was in 1988 and had no consequence on the outcome of the race generally shows that.
Perhaps a case could be made for Palin vs Biden in 2008, but all it did then was reinforce the idea that she was not ready for the big league.
Given there is a war in the Middle East that is getting hotter* and a chunk of Appalachia still suffering from a hurricane, nobody is going to be caring about this in a day or two.
* Plus Monday is one year since all began and that will use a lot of oxygen next week as well.
He imagines being only one cheeseburger away from the Presidency.
—————————————————–
Or a S4ofthe25th-burger away from the Presidency.
I missed the debate.
So who won, the truth?
Or do I need to catch a replay myself? 🙂
JD Vance is so comfortable and actually seemed polished spouting lies and falsehoods.
can see why the billionaires selected him as their mouthpiece and heir to the maga throne
In that regard he’s as dangerous as Trump, if not more. you can’t write off what he says as theatre or buffoonery, it’s calculated
I have just scanned the comments here since 11.00 am.
Don’t bother filling me in on who won lol, allowing for Bludger bias – Vance absolutely bolted in 😀
Centre – I think you’ll have completely the wrong idea if that’s your take. As I noted up-thread, I’d say it was a score draw. Both men played to their strengths, and both did well without making any major gaffes. It was actually a good, informative and respectful debate, as these things go – and no one will remember any of it by tomorrow. Given that actual assassination attempts haven’t moved the needle, I can’t see how the reserve grade clash will.
I wouldn’t think a vice presidential debate could move the betting markets. I’ll have a good look soon…
They’ve converged back towards 50/50. However that happened before the VP debate. No change since.
Helene, port strike, and Israel trying to single-handedly kick off WW3 all probably influence the markets more than the debate.
Vance was super-smooth in rewriting history.
Walz was blustery but more down to earth.
It’s doubtful either changed opinions
Centre, going by the POTUS debate, I think your definition of “win” is planetary distances away from mine.
I only saw snippets. Vance’s debate performance was the better of the two. Vance came across as less a tool than he has in previous public addresses and Walz came across as less, hmmmm, folksy than many would have been concerned about.
This was always going to be the weakest element of the Harris campaign.
Walz’s job is to ensure Minnesota doesn’t slip into a tossup, shore up Wisconsin and Michigan and parts of PA, and counterbalance Harris’ image as a West Coast powerdressing elite lawyer. The middle of those will be what decides this election and determines (rightly or wrongly) if he is deemed a successful choice. It is a big ask.
JD Vance re-writing history, and tells lies at a quicker clip than his deranged leader.
Tim Walz pretty much proved what a Governor of a big state can do on a debate stage.
Ok, we good to go…
There has been a slight change in betting markets since I reported last.
Extraordinarily, some agencies have different favourites. I’m going with weighting on the moves with one large global agency in particular and report the following:
Trump 50.5%
Harris 49.5%
Well I don’t think Vance would have lost the debate that’s for sure.
Game still on a knives edge!
”
Hugoaugogosays:
Wednesday, October 2, 2024 at 12:51 pm
I’d score that debate as a score draw. Both candidates handled themselves pretty well, both got their talking points out there, and neither committed any gaffes. And everyone will have forgotten about it by the weekend.
”
CBS poll
Vance:42%
Walz:41%
Tie:17%
‘Selling JD Vance futures, not Donald Trump today’
JVL on the Bulwark. Says Trump won’t be happy – not mentioned MAGA once…
Some are describing Vance as a more eloquent smarter version of Trump. Weren’t they saying the same about that Florida guy, don’t remember his name.
Ron DeSantis
As totally expected, Trump has been claiming foul play by the CBS moderators for the VP debate.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-accuses-cbs-moderators-of-being-extremely-biased-just-two-minutes-into-vp-debate/ and various other media outlets.
*taps sign*
Wat Tyler @ #373 Monday, September 23rd, 2024 – 3:24 pm
Any movement of the polls or copium numbers… sorry, betting odds is probably from other events (e.g. that mass port workers strike that has the potential to cause economic chaos.) It’s possible the betting markets might be slightly over-reactive to the VP debate but it won’t last when they’re reminded it means Sweet FA.
The most memorable moment from a VP debate was when Bentsen dunked Quayle but that didn’t stop the ticket Bentsen was on from going down in a landslide.
FWIW, I will watch it tonight out of curiosity and give my two cents but I am not going to exert too much mental energy considering the possible political consequences of it.
34 days
One thing I noticed was that JD Vance’s eyelashes are really long, I’m surprised he didn’t cast gusts of wind from all the blinking he was doing.
Emerson poll in PA is probably not big news because it pretty much confirms other polls – that Harris is a smidge in front.
However, as a good pollster and one that fairly regular samples in PA, it does show a steady improvement in the Dem outlook there over the last 4 months.
Hard to pinpoint any house effects with Emerson. They were good nationally in 2020, a little GOP friendly in national generic ballot in 2022 and all over the shop in PA in those two elections (over-estimating Biden in 2020 and underestimating Fetterman in 2022).
The best and most lasting line from the VP debate was when Tim Walz said to JD Vance, “That was a damning non-answer”. It should be the epitaph of the whole MAGA movement.
‘Half an hour into Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, JD Vance lodged a whiny protest.
“Margaret,” he said to moderator Margaret Brennan of CBS News, “the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check!”
It was a lie on top of another lie, supplemented by a pair of other lies, in support of an even bigger lie.
There was no “rule” against fact-checking. And Vance had just told a whopper. He had alleged that, in Springfield, Ohio, “you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants.”
There is no “open border,” Kamala Harris isn’t the president, and the thousands of Haitian migrants to which Vance was referring have legal status, which Brennan had accurately pointed out. But Vance claimed that “what’s actually going on” was that the Haitian migrants are there as part of “the facilitation of illegal immigration” — and he kept going until the moderators shut off the candidates’ microphones.
The up-is-down moment was all the worse because it was in response to Vance’s original libels about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield: that they were bringing crime, disease and, yes, eating the cats and dogs of the town’s residents. Vance declined to walk back that calumny during the debate, instead saying: “The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border.”
It feels entirely appropriate that CBS chose to hold the vice-presidential debate in a studio once home to “Captain Kangaroo.”
For three decades beginning in the mid-1950s, the Captain, along with Mr. Green Jeans, Mr. Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose and other friends, regaled children with fantastic stories, a Magic Drawing Board, and cartoons featuring the likes of Tom Terrific, a shape-shifting boy who lived in a tree house and could transform himself into anything he wanted by using the funnel-shaped hat that sat on his head.
But Captain Kangaroo never conjured a figure quite so outlandish as JD Vance.
This shape-shifting boy has gone from being a never-Trump author who in 2016 compared the “reprehensible” Trump to Adolf Hitler, to a venture capitalist who in 2020 said Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver,” to the junior senator from Ohio who, as Trump’s running mate in 2024, worships the ground the former president walks on.
Vance has used his own Magic Drawing Board to create a whimsical portrait of reality in this election season. He has embraced the fiction that Trump won the 2020 election. He has falsely claimed that Democrats were responsible for two assassination attempts against Trump. He has seconded Trump’s routine lies about crime, jobs, tariffs and the border. He has slandered his vice-presidential opponent, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, accusing him of “stolen valor” after Walz’s 24 years of honorable military service. And he has led the vile demonization of the Haitians in Springfield.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he admitted last month on CNN.
And that’s just what he did during the debate. Walz wasn’t a particularly skilled debater; he tripped over words and at one point said, “I’ve become friends with school shooters” when he was referring to the families of school-shooting victims. But even if Walz had been quicker on his feet, there wouldn’t have been a way to keep up with the fictions Vance submitted.
The senator said Harris “became the appointed border czar.” She received no such appointment.
He said “over $100 billion” of Iranian assets were unfrozen “thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.” Not so.
On abortion, he said he “never supported a national ban.” When running for the Senate two years ago, he said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”
On health care, he served up the howler of the night when he said that Trump “saved” the “collapsing” Affordable Care Act. Instead of destroying Obamacare, Vance said, “Donald Trump worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans have access to affordable care.”
In reality, of course, Trump tried his best to kill Obamacare. (John McCain famously thwarted the effort in the Senate.)
Vance capped the night by saying that Trump “peacefully” surrendered power four years ago. When Walz asked him point-blank whether Trump had lost that election, Vance would not answer.
Throughout the debate, Vance pretended that Harris was the president, referring to “Kamala Harris’s open border” and “Kamala Harris’s atrocious economic record.” He claimed that “Kamala Harris let in fentanyl” and “enabled the Mexican drug cartels to operate freely in this country.”
And on Truth Social, Trump added still zanier claims. “Tim Walz wants to abolish ICE. … I SAVED our Country from the China Virus. … CBS is LYING AGAIN about the 2020 Election.” And best of all: “JD Vance just CRUSHED Tampon Tim with the FACTS.”
Fact check: Half true. JD Vance just crushed the facts.’
(Dana Milbank The Washington Post)