Welcome to the online version of From the Political Bureauan evening newsletter featuring the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News Politics team on the campaign, the White House, and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur analyzes three key dynamics that will define the final stretch of the 2024 race. Plus, national political reporter Steve Kornacki examines whether the polls are once again underestimating support for Donald Trump.
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3 Big Things to Watch in the Final Stage of the 2024 Elections
By Sahil Kapur
Labor Day traditionally marks the unofficial start of the home stretch of a presidential campaign. With just nine weeks to go until Election Day, here are three key dynamics emerging in an already unprecedented 2024 race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
1. Can Harris keep the momentum going?
In just six weeks, Harris has turned a race that was rapidly slipping away from President Joe Biden into a close one, largely by reclaiming support from key Democratic-leaning cohorts who had broken away from Biden, particularly young voters and Black voters. Her polling surge has reinvigorated a party in crisis after a June debate exposed Biden’s greatest vulnerability, his age, as an insurmountable obstacle. Harris, 59, has turned the age issue into an asset against the 78-year-old Trump.
Still, Harris’ campaign is telling anyone who will listen that she’s still the underdog. Bill Burton, a political consultant who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, called the race a “dogfight” and praised Harris for running a “perfect” campaign so far.
Republicans say it’s a coin toss. “It’s a toss-up race,” said GOP strategist Brad Todd, who acknowledged that the GOP’s fortunes are not as bright as they were when the Democratic nominee was the 81-year-old Biden.
2. Will the next debate be a turning point?
The first Biden-Trump debate turned the race on its head. The first Harris-Trump debate is next week, on September 10. Will it be another turning point? Trump’s team hopes so, while Harris will want to consolidate her gains when they meet in person.
GOP allies, frustrated by Trump’s retreat into self-destructive tendencies, are pleading with him to use the debate as an opportunity to refocus on portraying Harris as a “far-left candidate” based on positions she took as a 2019 presidential candidate. Harris has since attempted to pivot to the center, saying her “values haven’t changed” in the past five years.
The former president campaigned confidently when Biden was his opponent. But he has at times appeared unnerved by Harris, launching personal and racial attacks on a rival who would be the first woman and the first Indian-American to become president. Harris has refused to address the attacks or give them more air.
3. Unique dynamics in the race for Congress
The change in the presidential race has had an impact on lower-tier voters, too. And this year’s congressional battle has a unique dynamic: The Senate majority runs through red states like Ohio and Montana, while the House race runs through blue states like California and New York.
In the deeply divided House of Representatives, Democrats have improved their votes somewhat on the general ballot, which asks voters which party should control Congress. But the score is still tight.
The Senate map has given Republicans a golden opportunity to seize power, even if Democrats have a strong year. Democrats currently hold 51 seats and have conceded that they will lose West Virginia with the retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin. That means Republicans can win the majority by defeating Democrats in either of the two red states where Trump has won twice and is favored again: Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Most public polls show Tester trailing — unlike in 2018, when he pulled ahead of his GOP opponent and won — while Brown is narrowly ahead.
Are the polls underestimating Trump’s support again?
By Steve Kornacki
For the third election in a row, Donald Trump is trailing in the polls as the presidential campaign enters the post-Labor Day phase. And for the third election in a row, the question is whether those polls are underestimating his support.
Nationally, an average of recent major polls gives Kamala Harris a 3-point lead over Trump, 49% to 46%. That’s an improvement for Democrats from the race when Joe Biden was their nominee.
But it’s a narrow advantage, made more precarious by the fact that national polls overestimated the Democrats’ strength in 2016 and (especially) in 2020. Here’s how the final pre-election national averages for two of the major poll aggregators — FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics — compare to the actual results:
If national polls underestimate Trump’s support even slightly, he would be well-positioned to win in the Electoral College, where he has the advantage of more efficient geographic distribution of support. Even without poll failures, Harris’ current 3-point national lead may not give her enough of a cushion for the Electoral College.
Then there are the state-level polls. The quantity and quality vary by state, and the same two aggregators differ slightly in how they process the available data. Here are their current averages for the contested states:
The overall picture is one of a tight battleground. But in every set of averages, Harris does best in the three Great Lakes swing states: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. From an Electoral College standpoint, these could be Harris’ keys to the kingdom. If she wins them (and holds on to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in Omaha, where Biden won an electoral vote four years ago), she will have exactly 270 electoral votes.
The problem is that these states were also the source of the most dramatic polling failures in 2020, with Trump doing better in the election than the polls suggested:
It’s clear that similar mistakes this time around — based on current polling — would tip the Great Lakes battlegrounds Trump’s way. And even smaller blunders could give him a decisive boost in the rest of the swing states.
Exactly why Trump’s support was not accurately measured in the last two elections remains an open debate. As noted, there appears to be a geographic component, with the largest errors occurring in demographically similar northern states with large populations of white, working-class voters. One common explanation points to nonresponse bias—the idea that a disproportionate number of Trump supporters from this demographic group choose not to participate when contacted by pollsters.
Whether pollsters have solved this puzzle is one of the biggest variables in the next two months, adding a layer of uncertainty to each new survey that comes out. There’s also the possibility that this election will produce a very different kind of polling miss — one that favors Harris, not Trump. Or there won’t be a miss, and the polls will turn out to be eerily accurate. The answer won’t be known until election night.
🗞️ Today’s top stories
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👀 Meanwhile in New York: A former top adviser to Gov. Kathy Hochul was arrested Tuesday on federal charges of acting as a secret agent of the Chinese government. Read more →
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🧑⚖️ Legal Eagles: Democrats worry that GOP legal battles in key battleground states could help plant seeds for casting doubt on the results of this fall’s election. Read more →
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🦅 Deceptive Eagles: Fake ads have surfaced in Philadelphia falsely claiming Harris is the “official prospect of the Philadelphia Eagles.” Read more →
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🗣️ Changing abortion policy: The Washington Post reports that men in red states are increasingly speaking out about reproductive rights after their partners experience pregnancy problems. Read more →
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📖 Bitter battle: A new book excerpt from NBC News national security editor David Rohde details a behind-the-scenes feud between top officials at the FBI and the Justice Department over the investigation into whether Trump mishandled classified documents. Read more →
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That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have any feedback — likes or dislikes — please email us at politicsnieuwsbrief@nbcuni.com
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
