The latest New York Times / Siena College poll is a doozie. It has Trump in the lead. Let’s discuss why.
Trump Slightly Ahead
The New York Times reports Trump and Harris Neck and Neck After Summer Upheaval, Times/Siena Poll Finds.
The survey finds that Donald J. Trump is retaining his support and that, on the eve of the debate, voters are unsure they know enough about where Kamala Harris stands.
Support for Harris Stalls
Nate Cohen comments on the poll in his take New Poll Suggests Harris’s Support Has Stalled After a Euphoric August. That’s a free link.
Is Kamala Harris’s surge beginning to ebb?
That’s the question raised by this morning’s New York Times/Siena College poll, which finds Donald J. Trump narrowly ahead of her among likely voters nationwide, 48 percent to 47 percent.
To me, the result is a bit surprising. It’s the first lead for Mr. Trump in a major nonpartisan national survey in about a month. As a result, it’s worth being at least a little cautious about these findings, as there isn’t much confirmation from other polls.
There’s no way to know whether the Times/Siena poll is too favorable for Mr. Trump. We never know whether the polls are “right” until the votes are counted.
But the poll nonetheless finds that he has significant advantages in this election — and they might just be enough to put him over the top.
He’s more popular than before. Overall, 46 percent of likely voters say they have a favorable view of the former president. That’s down a tick from our last national poll, when 47 percent had a favorable view, but it still makes him more popular than he was in 2016 or 2020.
He has an advantage on the issues. We asked voters a two-part question. First, what’s the most important issue to your vote? Second, do you think Ms. Harris or Mr. Trump is better on that issue? By that measure, Mr. Trump has a five-point lead on the issue that matters most to voters, whatever that may be for them.
He occupies the center. A near majority of voters say Mr. Trump is “not too far” to the left or right on the issues, while only around one-third say he’s “too far to the right.” Nearly half of voters, in contrast, say Ms. Harris is too far to the left; only 41 percent say she’s “not too far either way.”
He’s seen as the change candidate in a nation that wants change. While President Biden’s departure from the race lifted the spirits of many Democrats, the national mood still isn’t great. An overwhelming majority of voters still say that the economy is poor and that the nation is heading in the wrong direction. And a clear majority — 61 percent — of voters say they want the next president to bring a “major change” from Mr. Biden, compared with 34 percent who want “minor change” and 3 percent who don’t want change.
Only 40 percent of likely voters said Ms. Harris represented “change,” while 55 percent said she represented “more of the same.” Mr. Trump, in contrast, was seen as representing “change” by 61 percent of voters, while only 34 percent said he was “more of the same.”
The Mistakes of 2019 Could Cost Harris the Election
Nate Silver comments The Mistakes of 2019 Could Cost Harris the Election
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think it’s worth it to write a story based on a single poll. But this one merits an exception.
The exceptions were:
- NYT/Siena is our second-highest-rated pollster.
- The poll has a large sample size: 1,695 likely voters.
- The poll is very recent, fully post-Labor Day and having completed its field work on Friday.
- The poll provides trendlines for comparison: the numbers are just a bit worse for Harris than the previous NYT/Siena national survey in July and considerably worse for her than a series of battleground state polls the Times conducted in early August.
- The NYT/Siena poll tends to singularly drive the media conversation about the race, given the poll’s well-deserved reputation for accuracy and the Times’s outsized influence in the media.
This morning’s NYT/Siena poll contained a pair of questions on whether voters think Harris is too liberal/progressive and whether Trump is too conservative. The numbers were lopsided in Trump’s favor. Only 32 percent of voters said Trump was too conservative, while 47 said Harris was too liberal. The demographics on this question are about what you might expect. Harris is faring poorly among white voters without college degrees, rural voters, and older voters: the types of voters who are plentiful in Blue Wall states like Pennsylvania.
Democratic messaging often suffers from the sheer abundance of potential attack lines on Trump, causing voters to tune out. The aforementioned whiny progressive media critics don’t seem to understand that elevating every minor controversy surrounding Trump only reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and makes them look like the boy who constantly cried wolf.
The last paragraph is interesting. Trump makes the same mistake.
Trump needs to stick to the inflation, housing, immigration, and education indoctrination. He just can’t do it.
Harris Will Be More Like California
Harris is attempting to run a generic campaign, pretending to be middle, yet promising everything to everyone.
She want to restrict immigration while supporting it. She promises to allow more fracking while attempting to placate the Greens.
California is a disaster, but everything she espouses translates to “more California” solutions.
Trump’s idea to bring in revenue via tariffs, is economic madness. But Harris can’t easily attack that because she wants more tariffs and a crackdown on China as well.
Anybody but Biden
The big surge for Harris was nothing more than a grateful mirage of “Anybody but Biden”.
The huge initial lead of Trump was the same thing.
So we had unsustainable surges first in one direction, then the other.
Trump vs Harris
Biden is out to pasture. Had Democrats had an open convention It would have neither been Biden nor Harris.
From here on out, Harris more than Trump needs to prove she has moved toward the center. It will be difficult at best for her to pull that off.
August 24: Vote for Harris if You Want Radical Racial Indoctrination of Your Kids
August 16: Kamala Harris and Her Free Money, More Inflation Now Proposals (MIN)
More Inflation and More Indoctrination
That’s the winning message for Trump, if he can just stick with it.