Two things are true. It is true that the Democrats\u2019 position in national and state-level presidential polling has improved since Vice President Kamala Harris became the party\u2019s nominee. It is also true that Harris is underperforming where Hillary Clinton was at this point in 2016 and that she is even underperforming the 2020 ticket on which she appeared with Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
Oh, and there\u2019s a third thing: It is true that this probably doesn\u2019t tell us much yet.<\/p>\n
We can compare this year with past election cycles using the polling averages compiled by 538 (formerly FiveThirtyEight). It has a database of polling averages stretching back more than a half-century; we\u2019ll focus just on the presidential elections since 2012.<\/p>\n
You can see the national polling averages (and, for previous elections, final levels of support) for the Democratic and Republican candidates in each of those elections below. The last 150 days of the election are shown; we\u2019re a bit more than halfway through that period in 2024. (The gray boxes on the charts in this article show the period that has elapsed in 2024.)<\/p>\n
There are three things that probably jump out at you from the chart below. First, that support for both candidates generally increased as the election got closer. Second, that the Democratic candidates had much wider margins in 2016 and 2020 than in 2012. (In each election, the Democratic candidate earned more votes nationally, twice passing 50 percent. The Republican candidates never reached 48 percent.)<\/p>\n
Third, the 2024 race shift dramatically after Biden stepped aside. Before then, he was static and Trump was climbing in the national average. After, Harris has soared while Trump flatlined.<\/p>\n
A critically important (and unanswerable) question is whether the trend for Harris will continue. Will she see her support expand further? Or have we simply reached a point similar to that seen in 2016 and 2020, with the Democrat holding a national lead that doesn\u2019t avoid close \u2014 and ultimately determinative \u2014 races at the state level?<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve typically been looking at this year\u2019s anticipated swing states in two buckets: the states that adjoin the Great Lakes (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and those in the Sun Belt (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada). So we\u2019ll do that again, starting with the Sun Belt.<\/p>\n
What you will notice here first is that, in Arizona and Georgia, the margin between the dashed lines, showing the final results, narrowed from 2012 to 2016 and then flipped in 2020. In Arizona and Georgia, the Republican candidates had big leads in 2012 and 2016 and won those states. In 2020, though, the race was close in Georgia at this point while Biden had a big lead in Arizona. Biden won both states narrowly.<\/p>\n
What also stands out is that Nevada doesn\u2019t look the same as those other states. Polling at this point has ranged over the past three cycles, from a one-point Democratic lead in 2016 to a seven-point one in 2020. In those two elections, though, the Democrats each won by about the same margin.<\/p>\n
In the Great Lakes (a.k.a. the \u201cblue wall\u201d), the narrowing occurred between 2012 and 2016, then shifting back to the Democrats in 2020. In all three states, though, the Democrats had leads at this point in 2012, 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Clinton lost all three.<\/p>\n
What is harder to pick out on those charts is how Harris is faring relative to the three previous Democratic nominees. Nationally, Harris\u2019s lead is larger than Obama\u2019s in 2012 but smaller than Clinton\u2019s or Biden\u2019s. She\u2019s mostly faring better than Clinton and Obama in the Sun Belt, but only doing better than Biden was at this point in Georgia. In the Great Lakes states, she\u2019s faring worse than Clinton and Biden were at this point in all three.<\/p>\n
Of course, as you undoubtedly know, the state polling averages in those states were notoriously off them mark in previous contests. Nationally and in these six states, Obama\u2019s results beat the final polling averages by 2.4 points on average. Clinton, though, underperformed by an average of 2.5 points and Biden underperformed by 3.7 points.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an important caveat, too: If polls are off the mark to the extent that they were in the prior two presidential contests, Harris underperforming Clinton and Biden becomes that much more problematic. If the polls for some reason miss the way they did in 2012? Very different story.<\/p>\n
The analysis above also centers on the six states that flipped in 2016 or 2020. There\u2019s another state that seems as if it might be worth considering here: North Carolina, which the Cook Political Report just moved from \u201clean Republican\u201d to \u201ctoss-up.\u201d There, too, the Democrats had modest leads at this point in 2016 and 2020 but ended up losing. Harris is faring far better than Biden but still tied with Trump.<\/p>\n
Even in North Carolina, though, the switch from Biden to Harris meant a surge for the Democrat and Trump treading water. It\u2019s not clear that the surge is over or lasting. It\u2019s hard to know how the race will shift further as voters increasingly make up their minds about who they plan to support.<\/p>\n
We can say with certainty, though, that the two truths with which this article began remain true. The Democratic position is much better than it was a month ago, but it\u2019s not better than it was four years ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Two things are true. It is true that the Democrats\u2019 position in national and state-level…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tradetrovex.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}