From “To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about Trump” by Dustin Guastella at The Guardian:

The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) recently tested a variety of political messages on voters in Pennsylvania, a key battleground for both campaigns, to determine what kind of rhetoric is working to nudge blue-collar voters toward Harris. In collaboration with the polling firm YouGov, we polled a representative sample of 1,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania between 24 September and 2 October 2024. We asked respondents to evaluate different political messages that they might hear from Harris and Trump, and to score them on a scale of favorability.

In line with our past research, we found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested.

Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the “democratic threat” message.

Much like Harris’s recent rhetoric, this message called on voters to “defend our freedom and our democracy” against a would-be dictator in the form of Trump. It named Trump as “a criminal” and “a convicted felon” and warned of his plans to punish his political enemies. Of the seven messages we tested, each relating to a major theme of the Harris campaign, the “democratic threat” message polled dead last.

It was the least popular message relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And it was the least popular message among the working-class constituencies Harris and the Democrats need most.

Among blue-collar voters, a group that leans Republican, the democratic threat message was a whopping 14.4 points underwater relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And among more liberal-leaning service and clerical workers, it was also the least popular message, finishing only 1.6 percentage points ahead of the Trump average. Even among professionals, the most liberal of the bunch and the group that liked the message the best, the message barely outperformed Trump’s messages.

The exact opposite is true for the “strong populist” message we tested. This message, which combined progressive economic policy suggestions with a strong condemnation of “billionaires”, “big corporations” and the “politicians in Washington who serve them”, tested best with blue-collar workers, service and clerical workers and professionals.

If we break down the results by party we find much the same story. Republicans – who didn’t prefer any of Harris’s messages over Trump’s messages – preferred the strong populist message the most. And they overwhelmingly rejected the democratic threat message, on average preferring Trump’s messages over this by over 75 points. Among independents – an imperfect proxy for nonpartisan voters – the strong populist message was best received, while the democratic threat message was least favored. Only Democrats strongly preferred the democratic threat message, and even then it was among their least favorite.

….Moreover, the distaste for the democratic threat message among working people, and the total obliviousness to that distaste among campaign officials, is evidence itself of the huge disconnect between Harris and the working-class voters she desperately needs to win. Worse, every ad or speech spent hectoring about the Trumpian threat is one less opportunity for Harris to focus on her popular economic policies; one less opportunity to lean into a populist “people v plutocrats” narrative that actually does resonate with the working class.

The electoral college has become a gun held to the head of US democracy

Lawrence Douglas

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If Harris loses, it’ll be because the campaign and the candidate represent a party that is now fundamentally alien to many working people – a party that has given up on mobilizing working people around shared class frustrations and aspirations. A party incapable of communicating a simple, direct, progressive economic policy agenda. A party so beholden to a contradictory mix of interests that, in the effort to appease everyone and offend no one, top strategists have rolled out a vague, unpopular and uninspiring pitch seemingly designed to help them replay the results of the 2016 election.

Ironically, if Democrats are keen to defend democracy they would do well to stop talking about it. Instead, they should try to persuade voters on an economic vision that seeks to end offshoring and mass layoffs, revitalize manufacturing, cap prescription drug prices and put working families first.

“In other words,” Guastella concludes, “they should sound less like Democrats and more like populists.”

If you had any doubt about where UAW members stand on the presidential election, read “UAW members support Harris over Trump by 22 points in swing states – poll” by William Sainato at The Guardian. An excerpt: “United Auto Workers (UAW) members in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada support the presidential candidate Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by 22 points, according to a poll conducted by the union….UAW members in Michigan – the center of the US auto industry – support Harris over Trump by 20 percentage points, with 54% supporting Harris over 34% supporting Trump, the poll found. The union claimed in 2020 that UAW members accounted for 84% of Joe Biden’s margin of victory in Michigan….The poll also found that support among non-college-educated men – a key demographic where Harris has been lagging – gave Harris a 14-point margin over Trump” In addition other the polling, “The union is also running door-knocking operations in battleground states to turn out the vote for Harris. According to the union, the poll has engaged with 293,000 active and retired union members and their families in election battleground states….The union also noted union members who reported being contacted by the UAW about the election had increased their support for Harris over Trump by 29 points.”

Louis Jacobson shares an update on “The State Legislatures: Several Key Battleground Chambers Remain Toss-ups” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. Jacobson provides a state by state breakdown for the key swing states and observes: “In our second and most likely final pre-election handicapping of state legislature control of the 2024 cycle, we find 13 chambers that are competitive—either Leans Republican, Toss-up, or Leans Democratic. That’s slightly fewer than the 15 on election eve two years ago, and only a handful of chambers are shifting ratings today compared to June….— Right now, the Republicans are playing defense in more chambers than the Democrats are, but only modestly. The GOP currently holds 7 of the competitive chambers, while the Democrats hold 5 of the competitive chambers. One other chamber, the Alaska Senate, is controlled by a cross-partisan alliance…..— Among the competitive chambers, 7 are rated Toss-up. This category includes 4 Republican-held chambers (the Alaska House, the Arizona Senate, the Arizona House, and the New Hampshire House) and 3 Democratic-held chambers (the Michigan House, the Minnesota House, and the Pennsylvania House)….— Four presidential battleground states this year have at least one competitive chamber—Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and how the presidential race shakes out in each of those states could have a significant impact on who takes control of those states’ legislative chambers.”

In “Learning to trust Trump’s generals: There’s a reason why his military men now call him a fascist,’ Heather Digby Parton explains at Salon: “The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg chronicled Trump’s odd antipathy toward the military during his first term, the details of which were further confirmed by Susan Glasser of the New Yorker and Peter Baker of the New York Times in their book “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” as well as the New York Times’ Michael Schmidt’s book “Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.” They all relied on former US Army general and Trump chief of staff John Kelly as a primary source for such anecdotes as Trump’s contemptuous references to service members as “suckers and losers” and his frequent demands to use the military unconstitutionally….Kelly isn’t the only former general saying this. Just a week or so ago, Bob Woodward reported in his new book “War“ that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, described Donald Trump as “fascist to the core” calling him “the most dangerous person to this country.” Woodward told The Bulwark podcast that former Defense Secretary and Retired Gen. James Mattis agreed with this assessment….It’s good that these former high-ranking military leaders are saying all this. But they really need to go on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” or cut an ad so that people who aren’t reading the Atlantic and the New York Times (or Salon, for that matter) will know about it. There’s no reason for them not to do it at this point. If they fear retribution from Trump, I’m afraid that ship sailed. You can bet they are already on his list. If they simply don’t want to be in the line of fire, it’s a sad comment on the military ethos for which they claim to be speaking.”

It’s time for election junkies to plan their strategy for watching the returns on TV. “When you hear the term bellwether, you might think about states in the presidential election that always vote with the White House winner,” AP’s Maya Sweedler writes in “Where are the voters who could decide the presidential election?,” “The true meaning of a bellwether is an indicator of a trend. And for that, you need to be thinking about counties….In a closely contested presidential election, as many expect 2024 to be, the results in a few bellwether counties in the key battleground states are likely to decide the outcome, just as they did in the past two general elections….Across the seven main battleground states in 2024, there are 10 counties — out of more than 500 — that voted for Trump in 2016 then flipped to Biden in 2020. Most are small and home to relatively few voters, with Arizona’s Maricopa a notable exception. So it’s not likely they’ll swing an entire state all by themselves….What these counties probably will do is provide an early indication of which candidate is performing best among the swing voters likely to decide a closely contested race. It doesn’t take much for a flip. For example, the difference in Wisconsin, in both 2016 and 2020. was only about 20,000 votes….North Carolina’s two Trump-Biden counties – New Hanover on the Atlantic Coast and Nash, northeast of Raleigh – are likely to be the first among the 10 to finish counting their vote on election night. Polls close next in Michigan’s Kent, Saginaw and Leelanau counties and Pennsylvania’s Erie and Northampton counties, followed by Wisconsin’s Sauk and Door. Maricopa is the closer.”

“When your enemy is sinking,” the saying goes, “throw him an anchor.” That’s what Kamala Harris is doing to Trump. But in this case the anchor is Trump’s own words, and the required Democratic response is thunderingly obvious.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. riffs on the short-term strategy, in his latest Washington Post column:

Vice President Kamala Harris has an indispensable ally as she closes her presidential campaign. She carries messages from him nearly everywhere she goes. His name is Donald Trump.

At a United Auto Workers union hall in Lansing, Mich., on Friday, she showed video of Trump demeaning the labor of autoworkers by describing them as simply taking parts “out of a box” and putting them together — “we could have our child do it,” he claimed — and declaring his hatred of overtime pay.

….For Republican-leaning voters who can’t stomach Trump but are reluctant to vote Democratic, she has highlighted the threat he poses to freedom and constitutional democracy. Clips of Trump describing his political opponents as “the enemy within” and threatening to use the military against them make the point more dramatically than anything a critic could say.

Those are only two of dozens of examples one could cite, and that’s just recently.  Summing it up nicely, Dionne quotes “Geoff Garin, a Harris campaign pollster,” who “draws the obvious conclusion. “They don’t want him to be seen and we do,” he told me. “Our job is to put him in front of the public in a way they don’t want him there.””

For Democrats, it’s less a planned strategy than an almost pavlovian response. When you are running against Trump, media makes it impossible to not use his own monumentally asinine comments against him. Unfortunately, Democrats can’t ignore his rants to craft and implement a pro-active strategy, because there isn’t enough time in the campaign work day.

The media demands a timely response to Trump’s daily outpouring of bilge and venom. To ignore it would be political malpractice at best and campaign suicide at worst. In a way, it limits Democratic strategy, which is too often determined by the need to react to Trump’s mouth. It almost traps Democrats in “I’m not Trump” as a central message. There is both an opportunity and a price, as Dionne, notes:

For Harris, Trump’s indiscipline offers her the chance to seize back the momentum she enjoyed from three surges: her buoyant emergence after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, the success of the Democratic convention and her pummeling of Trump in their single debate. Since then, Trump has managed to shift attention to his own attacks on Harris, his dire and deceptive tirades about immigration, and voter concerns about the cost of living. The result is polling suggesting virtual ties in all seven swing states.

Trump isn’t doing this with thoughtful deliberation. His undisciplined temperament requires that he wings it and ends up submitting to the meanness that rules his spirit. It is disturbing that so many voters like it.

Yet, the “I’d rather be us than them” meme is rooted in polling, early voting trends and endorsements at this political moment. One problem, however, is that Republicans often rally in the final days of presidential elections. And Musk is reportedly dumping big money into GOP GOTV, so they can put more warm bodies on porches. But their GOTV door-knockers are going to spend a lot of time playing defense, thanks to Trump’s recent outbursts.

So take heart, Democrats. Harris is playing a good hand, with no major blunders or gaffes dominating the daily news. Her prosecutorial experience really does serve her well in interviews, debates and speaking engagements, and she is very good at honing in on the main issue and striking ‘the cool head in the room’ tone. She could probably use a little rest to complete the marathon in top form. But Two weeks out, her campaign has to pour it on and work like hell.

At The New Republic, Timothy Noah reports that “Harris May Finally Be Breaking Through to the Most Critical Voters: A Times/Siena poll shows working-class voters are finally moving in the Democrat’s direction. She may need them to win in November.” As Noah writes, “The New York Times reported Tuesday the good news that Kamala Harris leads in its polling for the first time since she entered the race. The Times/Siena poll is judged by FiveThirtyEight to be the most reliable, based on both its track record and its transparency. It is also one of the more helpful polls when you want to take a deep dive into the electorate, because it makes available to the public detailed responses from key subgroups among likely voters. The crosstabs in this latest Times/Siena poll offer something more surprising than the top line: mild encouragement that working-class voters, about whom I’ve been worrying a great deal, are finally warming to the Democratic candidate….I say “mild” because there’s no evidence yet that working-class voters are warming to Harris in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which CNN has identified as “the most consistent tipping point in American politics.” During the past 32 years these states went Republican only once, when Trump won all three in 2016. If Harris wins these three, she wins the election. This isn’t her only path to the 270 electoral votes she needs to win (MSNBC has some alternative scenarios here), but it’s the easiest path. And among all seven swing states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina have the highest proportion of blue-collar workers.”

Noah adds, “The Times reported that Harris is leading nationally, and that she’s gained ground among some key constituencies, including older voters, who are hugely important because (if you define “older” as 50 years or more) they cast more than 60 percent of all ballots in 2024. Before he dropped out, Biden was leading with voters aged 65 and over, even though they usually lean conservative. (In 2020 they went for Trump.) But in mid-September the Times/Siena poll showed Harris losing this group to Trump by seven percentage points, 44–51. The latest poll shows Harris winning over-65s by two percentage points, 49–47. Hallelujah….The Times did not report that Harris is gaining nationally among working-class voters, but she is. (Working-class voters are defined here conventionally as voters lacking a college degree.) Harris still lags Trump with this group in the Times/Siena poll, but since July she’s narrowed that gap from a dispiriting 15 percentage points to 11 percentage points. There’s still a lot of work to do, but as recently as mid-September, in a Times/Siena poll taken immediately after the presidential debate, Harris was losing this group to Trump by an alarming 18 percentage points.”

Noah notes further, “Where Harris is gaining some traction is with white working-class voters, a group that, with the sole exception of Bill Clinton in 1992, hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson. It’s doubtful that Harris will win white working-class voters outright in 2024, but since July she’s narrowed her deficit from 38 percentage points to 30 percentage points. As with Harris’s gain with working-class voters overall, the improvement is mostly recent; in mid-September, Harris’s deficit with white working class voters was 36 percentage points, and one week earlier (i.e., before her debate with Trump), Harris’s deficit was the same 36 percentage points. I would guess these white working-class voters are women….Because the new Times-Siena poll does not break out results by state, we don’t know whether in recent weeks working-class voters drifted toward Harris in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin to the same mildly encouraging extent they did nationally. An October 8 Wall Street Journal article by Ken Thomas and Catherine Lucey (“Kamala Harris Struggling to Break Through With Working Class, Democrats Fear”) reports that a private poll last week by Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, who’s running for reelection in Wisconsin, showed Baldwin up two points and Harris down three, with the difference attributed to working-class men.* The same story portrays Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer urging the Harris campaign to spend more time there; Harris’s last Michigan appearance was September 19. A September 30 New Yorker piece by Eyal Press about working-class voters in Pennsylvania has no new polling information and is mildly discouraging….Multiple polls now show Harris gaining on Trump, and sometimes beating him, on the question of economic stewardship. Perhaps that’s why she’s gaining a bit among white working-class voters. There’s growing reason to believe Harris can win enough working-class support to win the presidency. But her pitch to these voters still needs to improve. Perhaps the small encouragement the new Times/Siena poll offers about the working-class vote will inspire her to do so.”

As regards Trump bragging at the Al Smith Dinner about his ‘leading big’ with Catholic voters, the reality is a bit more complicated, as Tom Norton points out at Newsweek: “While Trump leads in some polls among Catholic voters, he is not leading in “all polls” and his claim that he has a “big” advantage is debatable….A poll released this week by New Catholic Reporter showed Trump was ahead by five percentage points in the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin….While Trump led by 16 percentage points among white Catholic voters, the data also showed that seven out of 10 Hispanic Catholics and more than three-quarters of Black Catholics preferred Harris….Data from last month by Pew Research showed similar results. In a survey conducted from August to September, Pew found Catholic respondents overall were likelier to vote for Trump “if the 2024 presidential election were held today,” leading by five percentage points. However, the results split significantly between subgroups, with 61 percent of white Catholics picking Trump and 65 percent of Hispanic Catholics choosing Harris….Conversely, the same month, EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research showed a Harris lead among Catholic voters polled, with 50 percent supporting the Democratic presidential nominee, 43 percent for Trump and 6 percent undecided….Other data suggests Trump’s lead among Catholics may have declined since President Joe Biden stood down as the Democratic presidential candidate. Pew Research from April found Trump had voter support among 55 percent of Catholic respondents. This fell to 52 percent in Pew’s September 2024 survey….So, while Trump may be able to claim an advantage, its significance seems debatable.” We’ll leave it to others to sort out the significance of such stats in light of Catholic subgroup voter turnout rates in swing counties and states.

Roberta Kwock writes in “How Much Do Campaign Ads Matter?” at KellogInsight that research indicates that “TV ads do influence voter turnout and choices—and that the tone of the ad makes a difference. Based on data from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the team found that positive ads encouraged more people to show up on Election Day, while negative ads slightly suppressed turnout. And while both types of commercials affected whom people supported, the negative ones were more effective at swaying voters’ decisions.”

OK, that data is 24 and 20 years old. But it did come from 75 markets areas and 1,607 counties.. And don’t forget that campaign videos have found even more exposure on notebook screens since then, and human psychology hasn’t changed all that much.

However, Kwock adds that “research on voter turnout has produced mixed results. Somestudies that evaluated the overall influence of ads, without distinguishing between positive or negative ones, found that the commercials didn’t affect turnout. Among researchers who analyzed specific ad types, some reported that both positive and negative commercials had little effect; others found that negative ads boosted turnout; and still others that negative ads decreased turnout.

Further, “if ads don’t affect voters much, that would mean that campaigns are wasting billions of dollars on every election cycle. But political teams clearly believe that these commercials are worthwhile.”

The effects can be pretty small. “If a candidate increased their positive advertising by 1 percent, voter turnout rose by 0.03 percent. If they increased negative ads by the same amount, voter turnout dropped, but only by 0.007 percent.” Of course elections can be decided by tiny margins. But campaigns often have limited budgets, and cost-effectiveness still rules ad decisions. Nearly all campaigns will have a mix of positive and negative ads.

In February, Jessica Piper wrote at Politico that “Some political ads work a lot better than others. But nobody really knows what will reliably make an ad click with voters….That’s one of the major findings of a new study from researchers who analyzed data from Swayable, a platform used by Democrats to test the effectiveness of different messages and advertisements.” Further,

However,

What makes it particularly challenging is that trends that appeared in one cycle did not always persist to the next. For example, ads that highlighted issues — broadly, any issue-focused messaging — were more effective than other ads in 2018. But in 2020, issue-focused ads in congressional and Senate races were less effective than other ads, which included spots focused on character or biography. Ads with a positive tone seemed slightly more effective in 2018 and less effective in 2020, although not by statistically significant margins in either case.

But Piper cautions:

Still, the biggest lesson for all campaigns may be to not rely too much on what worked in the past….In 2020, some of the most effective ads tested for the Biden campaign were direct-to-camera video testimonials — featuring everyday voters shot as if they could be on Zoom, rather than slick campaign ads. But the style and substance of ads will likely be dramatically different this year, said Nate Lubin, an ad consultant on Biden’s 2020 campaign, even if the presidential race is poised to be a Biden-Trump rematch.

If you want to get wonky abut it, check out “Political Advertising and Election Results” by Jorg L. Spenkuch and David Toniatti, who write in a footnote and graph-rich article at economics.harvard.edu:

In “The October Surprise May Be Arriving Shortly: History suggests the decisive moment is still to come,” Jeff Greenfield provides a mini-history of recent October surprises at Politico. These include a Democratic president’s failure to win release of hostages held in Iran in 1980, or put differently, Reagan’s backdoor diplomacy success in negotiating a hostage release deal that would benefit him on election day. For the 1992  elections, there was the Iran-Contra affair, which hurt then President George H.W. Bush, followed by the 2000 revelation of his son’s drunk driving arrest 24 years after it happened – not much of a surprise or game-changer, as was the 2004 revelation by Osama bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. –  Democrat John Kerry blamed it for his ’04 loss. That was followed by a huge October surprise, the tanking of the U.S. financial system in 2008, which benefited Obama. Arguably, the nastiest most deliberate, October Surprise was in 2016 when James Comey made a big deal about the F. B. I. reopening the weaponized investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Greenfield sees no clear October Surprise for 2020. But you could argue that energetic activism brewed one behind the scenes, resulting in Georgia giving its electoral votes to Biden and picking up two Democratic U.S. senate seats in 2020-21. We can hope at least that Georgia’s enormous early voting opening may herald a similar October Surprise for 2024. October surprise or no, campaigns don’t win without being otherwise prepared.

Trump’s “Let’s listen to my cool playlist” town hall rally in Oaks, PA is probably not going to be an ‘October surprise.’ But for a display of raw Trump weirdness, Democrats couldn’t ask for much more. James Bickerton reports it this way at Newsweek: “Some attendees at a Donald Trump town hall event on Monday reportedly began leaving early after the Republican presidential nominee decided to stop taking questions from the audience and instead played music for 39 minutes….The former president attended the town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, moderated by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.” What, you might understandably wonder, was Kristi Noem doing there – other than  firming up the dog-lover vote for Harris? “Proceedings were paused while two attendees received medical attention, at which point Trump jokingly asked whether “anybody else would like to faint?” He then said: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”….The incident took place after Kamala Harris questioned Trump’s mental cognizance at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, branding her White House rival “unstable” and “unhinged.” In July, President Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the 2024 presidential contest amid concern about his age and mental capabilities….According to The Washington Post, “some in the crowd began to leave” after Trump said he wouldn’t be taking any more questions at the town hall, and instead told his team to play a succession of nine songs as he at times danced on stage….”Ron Filipkowski, who edits self-styled “pro-democracy” media outlet MeidasTouch, added: “This is absolutely insane. Trump just froze up answering questions, said he wouldn’t take anymore questions, then stood on stage for the next 30 minutes while music played. Will media cover this as something other than a seriously bizarre cognitive episode???”

When a former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calls the president he served under a “fascist,” that is news that merits further discussion, and it is getting plenty of buzz. As Steve Benen reports at MSNBC, “When Gen. Mark Milley retired last year, following more than four decades of military service to the United States, he delivered a retirement speech that included some language that did not go unnoticed. “We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, to a tyrant or dictator — or wannabe dictator,” the retiring general said. Many assumed, of course, that he was referring to Donald Trump, but the phrasing was at least somewhat subtle, and the four-star Army general did not elaborate. At least, he didn’t elaborate publicly at the time….As The Washington Post reported, Milley apparently put subtlety aside when speaking to Bob Woodward for the longtime journalist’s new book.

Amid reports of huge early voting turnouts in metro and suburban Georgia, Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball strikes a cautionary note, which should stem excessive  exuberance about Democratic prospects:

We still think Michigan is likeliest to be Harris’s best state out of this group, as it was for Biden in 2020, and it generally has been the most Democratic of these seven states over the past couple of decades. We have made these points about Michigan in the past (see the links for more thoughts on the particulars in Michigan).

Meanwhile, North Carolina is the one state among the seven that Biden did not carry in 2020, and we remain somewhat skeptical of Harris’s ability to actually win it.

One thing that is preventing us from being confident enough to move it to Leans Republican is the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, which could have impacts on turnout in what is on balance a Republican-leaning area. In 2020, the 25 counties that FEMA currently considers to be the disaster zone favored Trump by 25 percentage points while Biden carried the rest of the state by 3.5 points. The state has taken efforts to keep early voting on track in western North Carolina; giving voters additional opportunity to make their voices heard in the midst of an unforeseen disaster is probably the best argument there is for offering robust absentee and early voting options.

Trump has generally, although not always, led polling in Arizona and Georgia, the two typically Republican-leaning states that fell out of his grasp in 2020. Forced to choose, one might also be inclined to tilt those states to Trump. It seems possible that a critical mass of “softer” Republican voters in those states who dislike Trump personally are expressing some buyer’s remorse after they took a chance on Biden in 2020. It wouldn’t take all that many of them to flip Arizona and Georgia back to Republicans after Biden won each by less than half a percentage point.

That said, there may be other things afoot—David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Harris’s campaign and an Obama campaign alum, recently argued that Harris could show strength with Republicans and/or Republican-leaning independents, a group that Harris is clearly trying to reach. This is important particularly in Arizona, a party registration state where the GOP edge in registration is a bit better now than it was in 2020 (although there are lots of people not registered with a party, and we are generally leery of using party registration trends as a predictive tool). This possible dynamic is illustrated by comparing a couple of recent polls: the New York Times/Siena College recently showed Trump up 5 points in Arizona, while a Wall Street Journal poll from a bipartisan polling duo showed Harris up 2. Why the disparity? Part of it was that the New York Times found Trump and Harris with similar levels of party unity in the state, while the Wall Street Journal found Harris achieving markedly better party unity and more crossover support from Republicans. If Plouffe is right, the Wall Street Journal poll may be closer to the mark. However, the New York Times poll shows Trump with a bit more loyalty among his 2020 voters than Harris has with Biden voters, perhaps an indication that the state is shifting enough back to its GOP roots to allow Trump to win it.

While Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain total Toss-ups in our view, we do think there has been a little overhyping of the former over the latter. It’s become common to see the argument that Pennsylvania is clearly the most important state and that the winner of Pennsylvania will win the election. It is of course true that Pennsylvania is tremendously important and that, with 19 electoral votes, it has more electoral votes than any of the other true battlegrounds. But we actually think the state is slightly more important to Harris, because we could see Trump winning the election without Pennsylvania—perhaps losing the state by a hair while winning Wisconsin and the Arizona-Georgia-North Carolina trio by a hair, which would give him victory assuming no other changes from 2020 —whereas we don’t think Harris has a real path without the Keystone State. Mathematically, Harris could do it by holding Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin as well as winning one of Georgia or North Carolina, but that would involve Pennsylvania voting to the right of the other “Blue Wall” states as well as at least two of the Sun Belt states. That does not really pass the smell test for us, although of course the individual states are so close in polling that we cannot totally rule it out.

Moving toward his conclusion, Kondik notes “We’d be cautious when making direct advance voting comparisons between 2020 and 2024, because of course there was a pandemic going on in the former year that changed people’s voting habits.” Read the whole article for a more nuanced analysis.

“A new Jacobin / Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) / YouGov poll conducted between September 24 and October 2 finds 46.8% of registered voters in Pennsylvania support Vice President Kamala Harris while 44.7% support former president Donald Trump for president in 2024,” Jacobin editors write. “Another 5.5% remain undecided, and 3.0% support another candidate. In a head-to-head matchup, 51.3% of voters prefer Harris, while 48.7% prefer Trump….“We have found results consistent with other polls showing a very tight race,” Jared Abbott, executive director of CWCP, said. “Kamala Harris is showing a razor-thin lead over Donald Trump, but there are enough undecided voters to tip the election, and in Pennsylvania that could prove pivotal to the entire race.” The survey also included a range of questions to determine the state of the race among working-class voters in Pennsylvania….Among the lowest-income voters, those making less than $30k a year, Harris holds a commanding lead with 53.3% to Trump’s 38.3% support. Among lower-middle-income ($30k–$60k) and middle-income voters ($60k–$100k), Trump leads by a margin of 0.6% and 4.6%, respectively. Among upper-middle-income voters ($100k–$200k), Harris leads with 47.6% to Trump’s 45.6%. And among the highest-income voters (>$200k), Trump has a lead with 51.7% compared to only 48.3% for Harris. Overall, voters with a household income below the median favor Harris (47%) over Trump (44%), while voters earning above the median are split between the candidates at 47% support for each….

Jacobin editors continue, “Among manual workers, 55.9% prefer Trump and only 36.2% prefer Harris. Among service and clerical workers, Harris has the edge with 47.7% support to Trump’s 42%. Among professionals, Harris leads with 47.3% support to Trump’s 44.9% support. The candidates are in a dead heat among managers and business owners: Harris has 46.4%, Trump has 46.4%….Among voters with a four-year college degree or more, Harris commands a sizable lead (51.1%) over Trump (40.4%). Voters with some college education, an associate degree, or vocational education also prefer Harris (49.6%) over Trump (42.3%). However, voters with a high school diploma or less prefer Trump (49.6%) over Harris (41.8%)….Among current and former union members, Trump leads with 47.1% support compared to Harris’s 43.2%, while Harris has the advantage among nonunionized Pennsylvanians, with 48.2% of the vote compared to Trump’s 43.2%….Interestingly, among workers who report having recently “experienced a job loss due to unfair firing,” 52.6% support Trump and only 37.4% support Harris, while 47.1% of workers who have not reported such a job loss prefer Harris and 45.3% prefer Trump. Among workers who report working a “very or somewhat insecure job,” 58.3% prefer Trump while only 32.6% prefer Harris. Those who work a “very or somewhat secure job,” however, prefer Harris (47.5%) to Trump (44.5%)….Among urban and suburban voters, 52.8% prefer Harris and 39.9% prefer Trump. Among rural and small-town voters, 52.4% prefer Trump and 37.4% prefer Harris. Among white, non-Hispanic voters, 51.5% prefer Trump and 42% prefer Harris. And among non-white voters, 68.2% prefer Harris and 14.5% prefer Trump….The results demonstrate that, while Harris has a strong lead among lower-income voters, she is struggling to win middle-income blue-collar voters without a college degree, and especially those voters who have recently experienced a job loss or who report job insecurity. “The bottom line is Harris needs to win more working-class voters. That’s the key to this election,” said Dustin Guastella, a researcher with the CWCP. “Blue-collar voters could decide the race in Pennsylvania.”

In “Harris’ mission critical in final push: Wipe out Trump’s advantage on the economy,” Sahil Kapur writes at nbcnews.com: “Kamala Harris is zeroing in on a monumental task that could make or break her prospects in the final month before Election Day: wiping out Donald Trump’s persisting advantage among voters on whom they trust to handle the economy….While Harris has gained ground on stewardship of the economy, Trump still leads in most surveys about the issue, which frequently ranks as the top concern for voters. The Harris campaign and Democratic allies believe she must erode that advantage and at least fight it to a draw….“With four weeks to go, we’re going to be laser-focused on this and be talking about this,” a Harris aide said….The aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, said Harris and her team will spend the final stretch of the campaign presenting her as the candidate fighting for the middle class, citing her upbringing and agenda, while portraying Trump as caring more about cutting taxes for wealthy Americans like himself and hitting his plan for aggressive tariffs as a de facto middle-class tax hike….Her strategy is playing out through TV and digital campaign ads, a gradual stream of policy rollouts and speeches, and a new media blitz by Harris designed to connect her biography to her economic vision….Top Democrats are acutely focused on the economy after they were burned by the issue in recent elections….And exit polls showed Joe Biden underperforming the polls in 2020 amid a deficit against Trump on handling the economy. Now party strategists believe that among the narrow but crucial slice of swing voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, the economy will carry the day.”

Kapur continues, “Still, Harris is performing better than Biden did on the economy against Trump. She has put proposals to lower costs front and center in a departure from Biden, who focused more on touting macroeconomic gains; that fell on deaf ears with many middle-class and lower-income voters, who still feel the pinch of higher prices more than low unemployment or record-high stocks….A recent NBC News poll found that Trump led Harris by 9 points on handling the economy — down from the 22-point lead he held over Biden earlier this year. A Cook Political Report swing state survey in late September found Harris pulling even with Trump on “getting inflation under control,” although Trump still led by 5 points on whom voters would rather see “deal with the economy.” A New York Times/Siena College national poll released Tuesday found that the economy is the No. 1 issue influencing likely voters, with abortion a distant second and immigration just behind that….As Harris ramps up her media appearances, a Democratic strategist said she would do well to deliver “tight and strong” answers about the economy at every opportunity. The aide, who spoke candidly about Harris on condition of anonymity, added: “She has this instinct to go to a word salad, and there’s no need for that.” Alyssa Cass, the chief strategist for Blueprint 2024 added, “A closing message very laser-focused on reducing prices by going after corporations and a middle-class tax cut, paired with a focus on protecting Social Security, Medicare and the [Affordable Care Act], allows her to close the gap on prices that currently exists….”

At 538, Monica Potts reports: “The American public has long been generally supportive of Israel, and was largely in favor of sending U.S. military aid to Israel at the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict, but polling since then suggests that support has fallen as the war drags on — instead, many Americans are worried about the harshness of the Israeli government’s response to the attacks, and want the U.S. government to help broker a diplomatic end to the conflict….Last year, a 538 analysis found that sympathy for Israelis spiked soon after the attacks despite a longer-term trend of increasing sympathy for Palestinians, especially among Democrats and independents. In an average of polls at the time, a solid plurality of around half of Americans said they sympathized more with Israelis than they did with Palestinians (or with both/neither party)….Today, Americans are more split on who they sympathize with. In a AP-NORC/Pearson Institute poll from Sept. 12-16, 25 percent leaned more toward Israelis, while 15 percent said they sympathized more with Palestinians, 31 percent answered both equally, and 26 percent said neither…..A YouGov/The Economist poll fielded in late September found that 32 percent now think the Israeli government’s response has been too harsh, while 22 percent think it has been about right and 17 percent think it has been not harsh enough. Other polling suggests even more Americans disapprove of Israel’s actions, though the number may not have shifted drastically since last year: For example, 42 percent of Americans thought the Israeli military’s response had gone too far in the September AP-NORC/Pearson Institute poll, which was two points higher than the share in a similar AP-NORC poll from November of 2023….That’s all despite the fact that most Americans have consistently viewed Hamas, rather than Israel, as primarily responsible for the conflict.”

Potts adds, ” Nearly 60 percent said Hamas is the “main culprit” in the current conflict in an Atlas poll from Sept. 11-12, while 14 percent blamed Israel (and the rest said they didn’t know). But when given the option, Americans held other actors responsible as well: The September AP-NORC/Pearson Institute poll found that around three-quarters of Americans thought the Israeli government, Hamas and the Iranian government each bore at least some of the responsibility for the continuation of the Israel-Hamas conflict — though a larger share said Hamas bore “a lot” of the responsibility (52 percent, compared to 44 percent who said the same of the Israeli government)….The Israel-Hamas conflict has had more than a few effects on politics here at home, as different groups clashed over U.S. support for Israel — the United States has sent more than $12 billion in military aid to Israel since the attacks — in the face of a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Whether and how the U.S. should continue sending aid to Israel is a question that has proved a political minefield for American leaders….The public’s views on U.S. military aid to Israel have shifted over the course of the conflict. In YouGov/The Economist polling over the past year, the share of Americans who think the U.S. should increase its military aid to Israel has decreased over time, from 24 percent in November 2023 to 18 percent in September 2024. Over the same time period, the share who felt the U.S. should send more humanitarian aid to Palestinians has increased from 26 percent to 32 percent….In the September AP-NORC/Pearson Institute poll, 41 percent thought the U.S. was spending too much aiding Israel. Moreover, 38 percent think that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, according to the most recent YouGov/The Economist poll….However, Americans remain invested in the U.S. helping resolve the conflict in some manner, according to the September AP-NORC/Pearson Institute poll: While only 27 percent said it was extremely or very important that the U.S. aid Israel’s military against Hamas and 42 percent said the same of providing humanitarian aid in Gaza, 57 percent wanted the U.S. to play a role in recovering getting the remaining hostages held in Gaza by Hamas released, and 52 percent wanted the U.S. to help negotiate a permanent ceasefire. A Pew Research Center survey last month also found that 61 percent of Americans want the U.S. to play a “major” role in diplomatically resolving the conflict, up from 55 percent in February.”

Potts concludes, “When it comes to the upcoming U.S. presidential election, Trump had an advantage on the issue of handling the Israel-Hamas war, with 52 percent in a late September Fox News poll saying they trusted him more, compared to 45 percent who picked Harris. In the September YouGov/The Economist poll, 31 percent said Trump’s stance in the conflict was “about right,” compared to only 22 percent who said the same of Harris….That said, both Trump and Harris may actually have some room for persuasion here: Many Americans were unclear about both candidates’ approaches to the current conflict — 37 percent in the same poll said they were “not sure” whether Harris had been too supportive of Israel, not supportive enough or about right, and 38 percent said the same of Trump….Overall, Trump’s advantage over Harris could be a reflection on the fact that Trump is out of office and not currently making decisions regarding the conflict, or the fact that he has repeatedly claimed to be the most pro-Israel president in history, appealing to the pro-Israel stance shared by most of his base. In contrast, Harris faces pressure from both wings of her own party, and her role in the current administration could pose a challenge to her campaign if the conflict continues to escalate and the U.S. struggles to respond.” Despite other polls showing voters in general are more concerned about issues like inflation and immigration, in a close election, the U.S. role in the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors could be a significant issue in Michigan and other states.

J. Miles Coleman shares some observations about the battle for Georgia’s electoral votes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Since 2004, Democrats have flipped a half-dozen counties in the Atlanta metro area. While Biden didn’t add any new counties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 coalition in 2020—he simply expanded on her margins—the county that seems next in line to flip is Fayette, which is immediately south of Atlanta’s Fulton County. In 2020, Trump carried it 53%-46%, down from his 57%-38% win from 2016….Republicans can still sweep the precincts in southern and western Fayette County, where the population center is Peachtree City. But the northern part of the county, which is anchored by Fayetteville, has grown at a faster rate over the past few decades and is voting more in line with nearby Henry County—which is to say, quickly in the blue direction….In 2022, Secretary of State (and new Center for Politics scholar) Brad Raffensperger led the Republican ticket statewide. Raffensperger’s 56%-41% vote in Fayette County was impressive by Trump-era standards, but it was not the 30-point spread that Obama-era Republicans could routinely get. Map 2 compares Raffensperger’s showing to Romney’s from a decade earlier. Map 2 also includes Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-GA) result in Fayette County from his 2022 runoff. Warnock took 49.5% there, which was still a loss, but it was an improvement from the 46.4% he took in the 2021 runoff election. On the 2012 map, about one-third (13 of 37) of the precincts are colored the deepest shade of red—in the Senate runoff map, only two are….Outside of the Atlanta metro, we are also watching a county that is about two hours south of Fayetteville—one of this county’s residents made news last week for a historic milestone. Jimmy Carter’s home of Plains is located in Sumter County, GA. Though it has less than half the population, it has voted roughly in line with Wilson County, NC: both counties have strong Democratic heritage but, with their rural character, have become more marginal over the longer term….A few decades ago, Republicans could usually only carry Sumter County in landslides: in both his runs, George W. Bush carried it by a single point as he easily won the state. While Biden’s 5-point margin there was an improvement over Clinton’s showing, Warnock was the only statewide Democrat who carried it in 2022 (he did so in both the general election and runoff)…Assuming Georgia remains highly competitive, we’d expect Fayette County to move towards Harris and Sumter County towards Trump, while a “maximum realignment” scenario could involve both counties changing sides….We would also note generally that, while none of our selected counties came from the impacted regions in either state, Hurricane Helene’s aftermath may add an extra layer of uncertainty in parts of both Georgia and North Carolina.”

Chilling excerpts from “Why the ‘Brooks Brothers riot’ of 2000 inspired Trump’s campaign operative in 2020” by Zachary B. Wolf at CNN Politics: “For the Trump campaign four years ago in 2020, according to [Jack] Smith’s filing, disruption was the aim. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said the legal cases against him are all part of a “witch hunt.” He won’t get a chance to present a defense against Smith’s allegations before Election Day, but that’s because his strategy of delaying the case has been very effective….It’s worth focusing in on the Brooks Brothers riot of 2000 and comparing it with the request for a Detroit riot in 2020. Smith’s allegation could be as much a warning as a history lesson if, as many expect, counting and recounting ballots in the election next month stretches well past Election Day. Republicans have made no secret of their plans to deploy 100,000 supporters to keep a close eye on the counting of ballots in swing states….The Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer wrote for CNN just before the 2020 election that the Brooks Brothers riot was a key early example of the GOP “weaponizing outrage,” and he predicted Trump and his allies would go to great lengths to dispute the election outcome. That wasn’t exactly an outlier prediction since Trump had been alleging, falsely, that the 2020 election was being rigged against him….“This moment builds on two to three decades of an increasingly radicalized party,” Zelizer told me by email. “We saw with the Brooks Brothers riot how media-attention grabbing theatrical chaos was an essential part of the strategy, shift attention away from damaging issues while also creating the impression that things are out of control – with the underlying argument that the GOP is needed to bring those things back together.”….As CNN’s Supreme Court expert Joan Biskupic has noted, the current Supreme Court includes three justices – John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who, while they weren’t among the shouting lawyers in Miami, worked on behalf of the Bush campaign in Florida during the recounts that year.”

From “135.9 Million Reasons Why the Working Class Is So Angry: Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work or a stock buyback is announced, they are likely about to get kicked in the face” by Les Leopold at Common Dreams: “Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go….In total, that’s 135.9 million workers who know all too well the pain and suffering of a major disruption to their employment….Working people understand that the periodic ups and downs of the economy can legitimately lead to job loss. But they also know that in many cases the reason they lost their job was not mismatches in supply and demand. Rather, their jobs were sacrificed to satisfy out and out corporate greed….A stock buyback, which was essentially illegal until 1982, is a form of stock manipulation. A company uses its funds, or borrows money, to go into the market place and buy up its own shares of stock. By doing so, the number of shares in circulation goes down, while the earnings per share goes up. The stock price rises even though no new value was added to the company. The rise in the share price rewards company executives, who are mostly paid with stock incentives, and moves corporate wealth into the pockets of Wall Street investors….In 2025, Goldman Sachs estimates that corporations will conduct more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks. Tens of millions of jobs will be sacrificed to shift all that money to the richest of the rich….Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people. Alas, we all know deep down that politicians are not about to bite the Wall Street hands that feed them. In the meantime, millions of workers will continue to be sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.” Read the article for Leopold’s proposed solutions to the problem.

At The American Prospect, Paul Starr mulls over a question on the minds of many a Democratic strategist, “What Should Democrats Say to Young Men? Young men appear to be drifting right. Ignoring them means trouble,”and comes up with a few provocative insights, including: “Signs have been mounting that, for the first time in recent decades, Democrats may lose majority support from young men in 2024. The risk to Democrats is that this is not just a one-time fluke but an indication of growing trouble with men in coming elections. Democrats can celebrate the support they are getting from young women, but they also need to take the disaffection of young men seriously, engage them directly, and respond to the visions of manhood and masculinity that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are offering….Although men overall have moved toward the Republicans over the past half-century, the youth vote has given Democrats grounds for hope that the losses among men have been transitional, a reflection of an older generation’s difficulties in adjusting to more equal gender relations and a changed economy. Young men’s support for Democrats reached a high point in Barack Obama’s victories. According to exit polls in 2008, Obama won 62 percent of 18-to-29-year-old men as well as 69 percent of women that age. By 2020, the gender gap among young voters had widened, but Joe Biden still received the votes of 52 percent of young men along with 67 percent of young women. As recently as the 2022 midterms, Democrats won 54 percent of young men as well as 72 percent of young women….Democrats need to find ways both to uphold their commitments to gender equality and to bring young men around from Trump and Vance….ALTHOUGH DEMOCRATS DID NOT ADDRESS YOUNG MEN or issues of masculinity directly at their convention, they do have a potential messenger in vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. As a football coach, teacher, and officer in the National Guard, he has had long experience in working with young men. He could take up the challenge of engaging Republicans directly on what a worthy life is for men today. By going on the podcasts and YouTube shows with male audiences, he could reach out to the young men who have heard from Trump and Vance but not from the Democrats.”

Starr continues, “In late July, two weeks before Harris asked him to run on the ticket, Walz changed the national conversation about Trump and Vance with five words, “These guys are just weird.” What Walz said immediately afterward connected that weirdness to Trump and Vance’s hypermasculinity: “They’re running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something, that’s what they go at. That’s not what people are interested in.” Together, those attention-catching lines have the kernel of what Democrats ought to be saying to young men—one part a counterattack against Trump and Vance; one part positive statement about the Democratic alternative and the genuine interests of young men….In making their case, Democrats do not have to be highly original, any more than Trump and Vance have been. They can rightly claim to be the ones who are talking sense about how men and women normally relate today, not as boss and underling but as members of a team, as “Coach Walz” might say….A major part of the message that Walz could carry to the online audiences of young men concerns the Democrats’ economic program, including their commitments to expand housing construction and aid for first-time homebuyers, forgiveness of student debt, child tax credits, and policies aimed at bringing back manufacturing jobs that pay well and don’t require a college degree. Democrats shouldn’t expect to win the competition for young men with policy proposals, but the odds are that young men haven’t heard about their proposals, which convey a message that Democrats want to make a practical difference in their lives. Democrats don’t have to pull back on abortion rights to win their support; there’s no evidence that young men have turned right on abortion—they just don’t vote on it….we need more men in K-12 teaching as well as more investment in vocational education and technical high schools to give young men who may not go to college the chance to make a decent living….Guys, we see you. We’re on your side as well.” And because Republicans “performatively” side with young men but don’t follow that up with policies, Democrats can gain an advantage by backing up rhetoric with substantive ideas that work for young men. It wouldn’t kill them to point out to young men that the infrastructure bill Biden passed is creating lots of good-paying jobs for them.”