Opinion Today: This is still anybody’s race

Harris supporters are feeling good, but polls suggest it's too early to join the "it's over" chorus.

View in browser|nytimes.com September 17, 2024 Illustration by The New York Times. Photograph by Damon Winter/The New York Times By Kristen Soltis Anderson Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion's series of focus groups. If you're a Kamala Harris supporter, you probably felt pretty good about last week. With Donald Trump's constant bait-taking during the debate and the endorsement by Taylor Swift, with less than two months until Election Day, on the surface, things have started to look like they're falling into place for a Harris win. On Friday, I was a guest on "Real Time With Bill Maher," and Mr. Maher, who has never been one to underestimate Mr. Trump's appeal, declared that he thinks it's finally over politically for the former president. On the show, I disagreed. I still don't think any of us should feel confident that we know how this will go. Does Ms. Harris have fund-raising momentum? Yes. Did she win last week's debate? According to post-debate polls, yes. Did Ms. Swift direct a lot of potential voters to research how to register, presumably to vote for Ms. Harris? Yes. Did J. Ann Selzer, the oracle of Iowa, just release a poll showing Mr. Trump ahead by only four points in the Hawkeye State? Yes. So why am I holding off on joining the "it's over" chorus? First, there's not a lot of evidence that the debate helped Ms. Harris's numbers in a meaningful way — at least not yet. ABC News/Ipsos polling showed her with a six-point lead among likely voters before the debate and showed the same result after. Her margin in several averages of national polls hovers around two points, a margin that makes the possibility of an Electoral College-popular vote split reasonably likely. (The analyst Nate Silver says the odds of such an outcome are around one in four.) And if you look at the polling averages from a variety of different sources, in the seven battleground states that receive the greatest attention, the race is extremely close. Mr. Trump tends to hold a negligible lead in some of the Sun Belt tossup states, as Ms. Harris does in Wisconsin and Michigan. Neither candidate leads by more than two points in any of those states. Pennsylvania, the biggest prize of them all, consistently shows a difference in the tenths of a percentage point. The reality is that the debate may have done more to fire up or reassure Ms. Harris's existing supporters than to add new voters to her ranks in large numbers. While the ABC/Ipsos poll found that Ms. Harris's supporters back her more strongly than Mr. Trump's supporters back him, it also still found that nearly half (47 percent) of respondents think Ms. Harris is too liberal. It's of course better to have your side more energized than your opponent's, but an enthusiastic vote doesn't count more than a begrudging one so long as they both turn out. Maybe the vibes are a leading indicator and the polls will catch up in the coming days. Or maybe the polls are simply missing something happening on the ground that is not being captured in the data. Either way, while Ms. Harris may be slightly favored at this point, the emphasis remains heavy on the "slightly." Popular vote-wise, the race favors Ms. Harris. But in the states that are going to be decisive in the Electoral College, it remains either's race to win. Odds and Ends Swift results. While there is data suggesting an uptick in voter registrations immediately following Ms. Swift's endorsement, there is mixed evidence among voters as to whether it actually changed many minds. In the ABC/Ipsos poll only 6 percent said Ms. Swift's endorsement made them more likely to vote for Ms. Harris. (Then again, in a state where the difference is in the tenths-of-a-point range, even small things can be big things.) Go left, young woman. The gender gap among 18- to 29-year-olds is real and growing. While men of all ages have not had a big shift in their overall ideological makeup over the last several years, young women are much more likely to embrace the "liberal" label, according to Gallup. Here's what we're focusing on today: Editors' Picks Guest Essay Gen Z Has Regrets One way to quantify the value of a product is to find out how many of the people who use it wish it had never been invented. By Jonathan Haidt and Will Johnson More From Opinion 'I Think We Are Owed More From Harris': 14 Undecided, Young Voters on the Race The focus group's participants weigh Trump and Harris in the wake of the Sept. 10 debate. By Patrick Healy, Frank Luntz and Adrian J. 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Why not that lethal heat wave? 7 MIN LISTEN Why Kamala Harris Brought Up Polish American Voters They're an important political bloc in Pennsylvania, but Harris was also making a larger point. By Jonathan Alter Saul Martinez for The New York Times letters Guns and the Trump Assassination Attempt Readers criticize the country's lax gun laws. Also: "The Power Broker" at 50; air-conditioning; phones in school; polluting cruise ships; still summer. We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Games Here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle and Spelling Bee. If you're in the mood to play more, find all our games here. Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. 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