Rooke: Harris Campaign Braces For Fatal Election Collision

By Mary Rooke via The Daily Caller News Foundation | October 18, 2024

With less than 20 days until the November election, Vice President Kamala Harris is watching her campaign hit a wall.

Current polling shows former President Donald Trump leading in almost every swing state, leaving Harris nowhere to turn to earn enough Electoral College votes to become president. While Harris is still favored to win the popular vote, RealClearPolitics’ (RCP) polling tracker shows Trump winning every swing state. Trump looks the favorite to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania by less than a percentage point.

The RCP average has Trump leading Harris by 1.1 points in Georgia. East Carolina University Center for Survey Research shows Trump up by 3 points in Georgia, and Quinnipiac polling has him winning the state by about seven points.

Arizona looks even better for Trump. His RCP average for Arizona gives him a 1.4-point advantage in November. The recent New York Times/Sienna poll shows him leading by 5 points. CBS News has him up by 3 points. Trafalgar and The Hill/Emerson polls show Trump winning Arizona by about 2 points.

ABC’s election forecast, FiveThirtyEight, also shows that Trump now wins in previously considered swing states, like Georgia and Arizona. Still, the ABC Electoral College interactive map shows five swing states as toss-ups: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. However, Nate Silver, an American statistician and creator of the FiveThirtyEight election forecast, reported Friday on his Substack that Trump had a better chance of earning the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College.

“Does Donald Trump have momentum in the race? Well, that’s a somewhat complicated question depending on what technically you mean by ‘momentum,'” Silver wrote. “But he’s been gaining in our forecast, and had another good day today after cutting Harris’s lead to 2.3 points in national polls, down from a peak of 3.5 points on October 2.”

His model shows Trump ahead in North Carolina and less than 1 point difference between Trump and Harris in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Silver gives Trump a 51.6% chance of becoming president over Harris’ 48.1%. Earlier in October, he showed Harris leading Trump with the exact percentages.

Trump’s campaign is surging ahead after weeks of seemingly treading water in mainstream polling. Meanwhile, Harris’s numbers are only getting worse. Despite her campaign’s recent media blitz, she is struggling to connect with voters who still see Trump as the candidate better suited to deal with issues most important to them, like the economy and illegal immigration. It’s almost as if the more voters see and hear her, the less they like her.

Mary Rooke is a Catholic mom of four and author of the Daily Caller's column featuring based takes on modern-day insanities. She also writes analysis for Patriot subscribers.

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