I’ve tried to write this post a few times. But the information I’m trying to convey is so impressionistic, tentative and tid-bitty that it’s better suited to a stream of nuggets than a structured piece of writing. So I’m going to take the bullet point approach.
- All the standard caveats about no secret information, either candidate could win and it wouldn’t be a big surprise.
- Democrats in high-level campaign positions seem increasingly optimistic about their chances pretty much in spite of themselves. That’s been my sense from the beginning of early voting and that mood has built over the course of this last week. I’d say it’s best described as optimism they’re trying not to express and almost wish they didn’t feel.
- Is that optimism “real,” is it based on anything meaningful? Campaigns don’t focus on who they think is ahead. No good campaign spends time on that. They focus on trying to hit certain marks; a good campaign has a plan and you’re not thinking about anything for the last week or so but executing that plan. They’re more or less optimistic based on whether they’re hitting those vote marks, the ones they’ve set for themselves. Obviously your opponent can hit (or exceed) their marks too. You try to control what you can control. My impression is that at least in the Blue Wall states the Democratic campaigns have been hitting those marks pretty consistently and that’s the basis of whatever optimism there is. Again, the other side can hit its marks too. They can exceed them. A good campaign is only focused on executing at this stage.
- All the caveats about early voting. But the picture can become a bit clearer when early voting comes to an end, which is just about where we are, though mail votes will continue to come in and be processed. Once early voting is done you can look at it as a whole, rather than as an event in process. From what I can tell, strong turnout by women, particularly young women and new women voters, seems real. And it seems real in Pennsylvania.
- Just talking about what’s in my head, right or wrong, I feel confident about Democrats’ chances in Michigan and Wisconsin. So it’s all down to Pennsylvania. Again, not shocking, sort of where we always thought we’d be.
- I’ve been a bit surprised how bullish Democrats have seemed in the last couple days about their campaigns. One briefing that was described to me had the Democrats in a solid position across the Blue Wall states while the southern tier states are all in real contention, with North Carolina the best shot followed by Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, in that order. They seemed to be encouraged about all of them, just with that order of probability. I was pleasantly surprised and really just surprised they sounded so bullish. But that is what was conveyed to me. I was very interested to hear that Nevada was the last on the list rather than the first, where Democrats’ assumptions normally put it. My sense is that is in part because of uncertainty created by the mixed up patterns of early voting, but only partly. There are reasons totally apart from the early voting numbers to think Nevada may be shifting right. Equally interesting is that North Carolina is at the top of the list. Could all this be froth and speculation? Absolutely. You simply can’t forget that the campaigns have a lot more data but that doesn’t always mean more knowledge.
- Remember I’ve been saying for literally years now that I think there’s a very real chance that pollsters over-corrected after 2020 and are now systematically, though only to a small degree, underestimating Democratic strength. A few articles from the polling world late this week remind us of the searing experience of 2016 and 2020 and how the polling community basically threw everything plus the kitchen sink at making certain they absolutely do not miss any Trump votes. There’s a real whiff in that world that it’s only a problem if Trump is underestimated, just can’t have it happen a third time, etc. It’s far from crazy to think they may have overshot the mark a bit. Pollsters and polling analysts genuinely do seem to get spooked when their results come back too blue. It’s understandable in a way but you can also see how this could produce some built-in bias underestimating Democratic strength.
It seems quite possible to me that such an underestimation could be operating as much inside Democratic campaigns as in public media polls. No one wants to get caught off guard again and you’d rather have Dem campaigns operating on conservative/pessimistic assumptions than the reverse. Again, maybe, maybe not. I’ve thought this since back in early 2022. I don’t mention it a lot because it’s in that misty area where analysis bleeds into aspiration. But just keep it in mind. There’s been a long stream of hints suggesting that this is happening. They’re the kinds of hints that, if this turns out to be true, will make up the scaffolding of stories about how we should have seen it coming. If it’s not, none of them were more than hints, ambiguous shards of information that are interesting but could mean nothing. Publicly, I only feel on solid ground saying this is a real possibility. Not just some crazy wishful thinking.
- There’s simply no doubt at this point that Democrats have a decisively better ground operation than Republicans in really all the swing states. I don’t think this is up for debate anymore. If it’s a razor-thin race, that matters a lot and I suspect that fact is increasingly figuring into people’s relative optimism or pessimism. That scenario is why you build a strong ground operation. Again, it only matters if it’s really, really close.
- House race predictions have been shifting toward the Democrats for a while now. You see the race-rating publications come out with changes and they’re consistently shifting things in the Democratic direction. It seems pretty improbable to me that that is happening in a strong pro-Trump environment. Just doesn’t add up. At the same time, the generic ballot averages have been trending away from a small Democratic margin toward dead even. In other words they’re moving in opposite directions. I don’t know what’s going on there. There’s less and less polling these days of specific House races, probably because of cost. Everyone relies on the generic ballot. The signal from the House battle in general seems encouraging to me. The generic ballot numbers are in stark contradiction to what I’m describing though.
- The Allred-Cruz race looks real to me. I’m definitely not saying Allred’s going to win. I’d bet against it. But Allred winning isn’t a pipe dream or wishful thinking. Just putting all the information points together I think it’s really possible. If you’re down there doing GOTV, keep at it. This is a real race.
- This whole post is a bit more bullish than I’d like. Let me qualify it by saying that there’s concrete information. Then there’s aspirations. Then there’s hunches, which are maybe a bit in between. If I’m looking purely at hard data this is a toss-up. I can’t see any strong argument that one candidate is favored over the other purely on that basis. What I’ve added here are arguments I find compelling or probable, the impressions of people whose insights I trust. Needless to say those can be completely wrong.
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