Trump is in a better position now than he was in the 2016 and 2020 campaigns: Kamala Harris is down in the polls.
Kamala Harris grants very few interviews. And the rare times she appears in front of the cameras, she almost never manages to be credible and incisive. The last, disastrous, interview granted to the program “60 Minutes” of CBS is no exception, where she appeared weak and with few ideas.
CBS correspondent Bill Whitaker has in fact repeatedly pressed the Democratic candidate on how she intends to finance her economic proposals, whether Biden’s immigration policies were a mistake, and how her foreign policy would differ from that of Biden or former President Trump. On several occasions, Whitaker had to rephrase the questions because Harris gave answers that were, to say the least, evasive.
Kamala Harris Loses Momentum
The perception of a weakness of the Democratic candidate, inflated to excess by the media after Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race, is also being reflected in the polls. In which the initial enthusiasm for Kamala Harris seems to have completely faded. The polls conducted in the so-called swing states confirm this trend, particularly in Pennsylvania, considered the "key state" that could determine the outcome of the next presidential election. The recent TIPP Insights poll for American Greatness shows Trump ahead in the state with 49% against 48% for Harris. Why is this significant? Because in just two weeks the former president has risen by two percentage points in a poll aimed at a Democratic-leaning electorate.
NBC News poll
Anything is possible and the race is wide open. But the signs for Harris are not as good as they were a few weeks ago. The latest national poll by NBC News shows a neck-and-neck (48%-48%) between the two candidates, with Trump having recovered ground thanks to growing support from Republicans after a difficult debate and a subsequent drop in the polls. In addition, voters’ favorable opinion of his presidential mandate is giving him an additional advantage.
The poll, explains NBC News, conducted three weeks before the election, also reveals a drop in popularity for Harris compared to the previous month, when she had benefited from a significant increase in approval. “As we enter the fall, any signs of momentum for Kamala Harris appear to have stalled,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted this research with Republican Bill McInturff. “The race is wide open.”
Trump better than 2016 and 2020
As Steve Cortes explains in a X thread, if the NBC poll is accurate, with both candidates at 48 percent nationwide, Trump will likely have a chance to win most — if not all — of the swing states. Why? Because a handful of large, historically Democratic states, such as California, New York, and Illinois, disproportionately influence national polls, but have little weight in the Electoral College system that decides the presidency. In the states that really matter in the presidential election, support for Kamala Harris is falling significantly, as Americans increasingly doubt the Democratic candidate’s ability to represent a break from the Biden administration.
Another aspect not to underestimate: according to current polls, Trump is in a better position than in his previous election campaigns, 2016 and 2020. Although Democratic candidate Kamala Harris remains ahead in some polls, the margin of difference is narrower than in the last election, where Trump managed to do better than in the polls, where he is usually underestimated. At this point in the campaign four years ago, Democratic candidate Joe Biden had a 10.3 percentage point lead over then-President Trump, according to the national average of RCP (RealClearPolitics).
However, Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College by much narrower margins than the polls indicated. In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton clearly led the polls with a 6% lead, but the election was much closer than expected. In 2016, Clinton won the popular vote with 48.2% to Trump’s 46.1%, but Trump won the Electoral College by a significant margin, 304 to 227 votes: even though Trump lost the popular vote, he was able to prevail thanks to the distribution of votes in individual states. A plausible scenario even in 2024.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2024-10-14 11:36:03. Original title: L’effetto Kamala si è già sgonfiato: nei sondaggi risale Trump
