The state of the race two weeks out

In two weeks, we will be hearing all about long lines and other signs that "our side" is winning the election hands down.

So according to RCP, Trump is leading in all of the so called battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). The Hill/DDHQ also shows Trump leading the polling in each of these states as well. These are two aggregate pollster who use pure averages.

538, shows Trump leading in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, and shows polling even in the other four states. Nate Silver shows Trump leading in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. He has it even in Pennsylvania, while he shows Harris winning in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. These are the two prognosticators who use a modeling system of assigning their own priority or ratings to the pollsters, so they are not just a pure average.

The four major prognosticators I am watching show Harris winning the popular vote by anywhere from 0.8 (RCP) to 1.9 (538). None of these numbers appear to show Harris winning the popular vote by enough to make up for the Electoral College advantages held by the GOP.

Lastly, the betting odds are showing that smart money is now on Trump to win. This has been slowly moving in Trump's direction and for the first time he has opened up a 20 point betting lead in the aggregate of all of the various betting outlets.

Possibly the most important variable is already baked in. That is an increase in both the registration and self identification of Republicans in 2024. The GOP has not seen registration wins like this in any of the previous election going back as far as I can remember. It was almost conceded that Democrats would always register more people than the Republicans, but 2024 has been an anomaly at least in the important battleground states. Meanwhile for the first time in recent memory Gallup is showing the GOP with an self identification advantage. If these advantages hold true, then we may be looking at more polling issues of overestimation of Democratic support base on historical trends that might not be accurate anymore.

The other issues at play are more opinions and you will hear spin from both sides. The one is ground game, where both sides are suggesting that the other side is failing or questioning the strategy. It would appear that neither then Trump or Harris campaign are relying on completely traditional GOTV measures, and there are insiders on both sides that appears concerned with the approach. Harris, in terms of who she is reaching out to and Trump based on his decision to outsource this from the normal GOP channels to Musk and other private parties.

The last thing is the early voting patterns. So far the key has been more what we are not hearing, rather than what we are hearing. So far, neither side has been touting the early voting as much as you might expect. Generally if one side is doing better or worse than expected, you will hear about it. But other than generic ideas that early voting has been brisk and some people citing incorrect concepts around what it means, there has not been much bravado about early voting. At least not so far. I suspect that there isn't enough data at this point to say anything for sure, and with how the electorate has been changing recently, there may not be a good way of knowing for sure how early voting is really going until election day.

And that, folks is about where we stand. Take at it all with a grain of salt. If you put a gun to my head, I would say I would rather be in Trump's wingtips than Harris' sneakers. But who knows anymore.