Nate Cohn suggests that the polls might still be missing Trump voters and Silver suggests that the momentum might be waning for Harris.
First, has anyone actually ever seen Nate Cohn (top) and Nate Silver (bottom) in the same room together? Just saying.
But either way, Cohn was reacting to the Times/Siena poll released a few days ago that was very favorable to Harris:
This cycle, Times/Siena polls yet again show “too many” respondents saying they supported the winner of the last election: Mr. Biden. On average, Times/Siena respondents have recalled voting for Mr. Biden by about three points more than the actual results of the last election. Is it possible that Times/Siena polls have been underestimating Mr. Trump all along? Absolutely. They certainly did in 2020, after all.
Meanwhile Silver seems almost a bit frustrated with the most recent rounds of polling:
Today's update. 2nd straight mediocre polling day for Harris. In the range where it could be noise, but her lead in our national polling average has been trimmed to 2.4 points from 3.1.
Cohn goes through an entire article where he basically makes the valid point that the Times/Sienna polling has underestimated Trump support by several points in the past two elections and then argues that the Times might "still" be correct in how they are weighing their sample. This goes to the extreme bias that many of these pundits have toward the Democrats and how they talk themselves into circles, rather than just accept the obvious.
I personally have no clue how you can measure as many polls as Silver uses and have a lead cut by 25% in just two days. I have seen nothing drastic recently other than three or four polls that moved in Trump's direction by a couple of points, after having been moving in Harris's direction for the past few weeks. Perhaps that it enough in the Silver calculations to see a drastic change. But that tells me that once again, Silver is using some formula that way overestimates polling "momentum" and fails to just take things at face value. I suppose some of this is about making waves and keeping things exciting for his followers. I suppose my spreadsheet moving by hundreds or tenths of a percent does not encourage people to stop by and look for big changes. But my design is not about click bait, but about trying to set a consistent bar for accurate results.
But either way, if the media is going to ignore policy and politics and continue to push the idea that this is a "vibe" election then they will live and die by the "vibe". Like it or not, picking Walz as her VP nominee did not help the "vibe" for most people. Her strange call for price gouging legislation might poll well, but no serious pundit is supporting the policy and that does not help the "vibe". Oddly, the only complements she is getting about that policy is that it "might" poll well to people and that attacking it might be perilous. But I don't agree that attacking it is perilous. Even CNN has people attacking it as bad economic policy. You tie it to where it has been tried and failed and point out that all of those places are far left socialist or communist countries. I am quite certain Harris might not mind a progressive "vibe", but she doesn't want a "vibe" that introduces the idea that she supports communist policies. She needs to keep her current good will "vibe" going as long as she can, and I am not sure her past two decisions (VP pick and first major economic policy) were helpful.
Of course, Trump had that "vibe" after his assassination attempt and convention, when even the most hardcore Democrats were convinced that he was unbeatable at that moment. But here we are in a different race, and all it took was a change in opponent to completely upend the race. If anyone believes that nothing will change the "vibe" moving forward, then they are not really paying much attention.
I feel like we have about two weeks at worst before the "vibe" is off the table and people start to get a bit more serious about who they want to vote for and why. While there may be a small percentage of voters who don't care anything about policy, I suspect that these are Party votes who would never change their vote either way. Those voters who may have considered voting for Harris, after not wanting to vote for Biden, are the ones most likely to be swayed to forgo Harris if she is shown to be nothing more than just a "vibe" candidate.
Of course, that is the definition of a bump. You see a bump in support (based on the movement of the most volatile voters) and then it settles back when the volatility of those voters shows through by them changing their minds again after the excitement (or vibe) wears off. Harris may still try to milk the vibe and do very few tangible things moving forward in attempts to keep it going. It sort of worked for Biden in 2020. But Biden was ahead in the polls by nearly double digits and well ahead in nearly every battleground state. Kamala is losing nationally in several polls and the battleground states are even at best for her. Short of a convention bounce that brings her in line with where Biden was at, she cannot afford to lose even a point or two from a vibe wearing off, or her chances of winning start to crumble.
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