The reporting behind Ed Kilgore’s new column, Harris vs Trump Polls: Kamala’s Gains Are Now A Trend, Not Just A Bounce has Trump picturing himself in a prison cell— and he’s beginning to react very badly. Harris is already ahead nationally by over a point— 45.0% to 43.6%, with RFK Jr at 5.6%, a figure sure to go way down. The trend lines are also positive for Kamala— and negative for Trump:
July 16- Trump led by 5
July 23- Trump led by 3
July 30- Harris led by 2
“Battleground-state data,” he wrote, “has been slower to arrive, but what we have shows Harris improving on Biden’s performance quite consistently. A battery of Emerson–The Hill polls taken from July 22 to July 23 of five battleground states showed Wisconsin tied at 47 percent and Trump leading Harris by five points (49 percent to 44 percent) in Arizona; two points (48 percent to 46 percent) in Georgia; one point (46 percent to 45 percent) in Michigan; and two points (48 percent to 46 percent) in Pennsylvania. What’s more significant are the trend lines since the last polls from Emerson in mid-July, testing Biden against Trump:
“Most recently, and perhaps impressively, Bloomberg/Morning Consult has released a new batch of seven battleground state polls taken from July 24-28. Overall, they showed Harris leading Trump by one percent (48 to 47 percent), as compared to a two-point Trump lead over Biden in early July. The individual state gains by Harris were also striking: she led by two percent (49 to 47 percent) in Arizona, a real problem state for Biden; by two percent (47 to 45 percent) in Nevada; by two percent (49 to 47 percent) in Wisconsin; and by an astonishing 11 percent (53 to 42 percent) in Michigan. Harris was tied with Trump in Georgia at 47 percent, and trailed him by two percent (46 to 48 percent) in North Carolina and by four percent (46 to 50 percent) in Pennsylvania.”
There is also significant evidence that Harris is doing better than Biden among the young, Black, and Latino voting categories on which Biden’s 2020 win depended. In the most recent Times-Siena poll, she leads Trump among under-30 likely voters by 59 percent to 38 percent, among Black likely voters by 72 percent to 19 percent, and among Latino likely voters by 60 percent to 36 percent. A new Axios–Generation Lab poll of 18 to 34-year-old voters showed Harris expanding a six-point Biden lead (53 percent to 47 percent) to 20 points (60 percent to 40 percent).
More generally, Harris is becoming more popular than Biden. FiveThirtyEight’s favorability averages for Harris currently show her at 42.4 percent favorable/49.1 percent unfavorable, up from a 36/54 ratio a month ago, and distinctly better than Biden’s 38/54 margin when he dropped out of the race.
The odds are good that with Harris having the opportunity to dominate political news with the reveal of her VP pick and soon afterwards a united Democratic convention, she can keep this positive trend in her standing up and running for most of this month. That’s if she makes no big mistakes, and if the Trump-Vance ticket continues to show signs of disorientation at the new contest it faces.
Meanwhile all Trump has been able to do is bark, growl and howl on the sidelines, making things worse for himself with his mean-spirited, racist, misogynistic ranting, demonstrating daily why more and more people are agreeing that he— and his party— are weird. His nasty social media posts yesterday aren’t winning over any swing voters in the Midwest or the Sunbelt. His childish attacks on her intelligence is obviously sour grapes after she out-fundraised him and beat him in poll after poll. It may please his MAGA moron base but normal voters are not impressed with him calling her “low IQ,” “dumb,” and insisting she lacked the “mental capacity” to debate him, as he backed out of the debate with his tail between his legs.
Señor T’s “remarks,” wrote Adam Wren, Myah Ward and Jared Mitovich, “indicated a sustained ratcheting up of the rhetoric against Harris that many in his own party have cautioned against, fearful of detracting from what they view as more favorable lines of attack on immigration and inflation. Even as he accused Harris of enabling ‘corrupt and open borders’ and a ‘terrible economy,’ Trump overshadowed those critiques with personal insults, reminiscent of the rhetoric he used against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
“Anytime Trump isn’t talking about inflation, immigration and the economy, he’s not winning voters,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “Going after Harris’ intellect isn’t going to move middle-of-the-road voters. They’re not going to care about whether a former prosecuting attorney is dumb or smart. They want to hear about a plan to rein in inflation and bring down interest rates and make the economy work for the middle class.”
…Trump’s campaign is showing no signs of pulling back. In a statement, Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesperson, echoed the former president’s insults, saying, “It’s be a disaster to have a dumb and low IQ individual like Kamala Harris as President of the United States. She has shown her ineptness by allowing crime to run rampant, failing as Border Czar, and being the most liberal candidate ever to run for President. The stakes are too great to let a dummy play pretend President.”
For their part, Democrats argued that identity-based attacks would ultimately hurt Republicans. Strategist Michael Trujillo, who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign, said Trump is amplifying the kind of rhetoric used by the “underbelly of the Republican base” against Obama— which was ultimately unsuccessful in 2008 and 2012.
“If I’m a Republican, I’d rather win on my better policy ideas, not because of racist memes,” Trujillo said.
Trump’s attacks on Harris’ race have also drawn the ire of some of her prospective running mates, even as the candidate herself has not explicitly mentioned Trump’s race- and gender-based insults. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly slammed Trump’s comments that Harris “turned Black” during an interview on Wednesday and said his “divisiveness” was evidence of the weakness of his campaign.
“That’s why he doesn’t want to get on a debate stage with her— he’s scared,” Kelly said. “And I understand why he’s scared.”
Huh? Seems like it’s still a toss-up, not sure why Howie thinks Trump is done.