This from the NYT seems to confirm what you are saying in number 2 and 3. And, we have enough on Trump to know that he cannot stop being Trump. The big question is will Harris step up and give economic "here is what I am going to do" or keep running on "but I'm not Trump!" I'm guessing the second one.
1. Trump’s lead
Donald Trump has led the 2024 race all year, and he leads Kamala Harris today.
In
The Times’s national polling average, Trump is ahead of Harris by one point, 47 percent to 46 percent. That’s narrower than Trump’s recent lead over Biden, but similar to Trump’s lead over Biden before last month’s debate,
as my colleague Nate Cohn points out. The race has in some ways reset to where it was.
There are also a couple of important differences. Harris is a far stronger campaigner than Biden. She’s a fiery, skilled speaker who can describe her own agenda and make the case against Trump in ways that Biden could not. She has more potential to make gains than Biden did.
That said, polls point to a potential weakness, too: Harris appears to be a worse fit with the Electoral College than Biden. She is stronger among younger voters and voters of color but weaker with older voters and white working-class voters. Because swing states are disproportionately old, white and working class, Harris is likelier to win the popular vote and lose the election than Biden was.
Think of it this way: It’s a bad trade for a Democrat to win more votes in California and fewer in Pennsylvania. As a result, Trump’s narrow national lead is probably a bit stronger than it looks.
2. Trump’s focus
Trump doesn’t seem to be focused on swing voters.
His speech at the Republican convention started effectively, political analysts thought. He told the story of having almost been murdered five days earlier. He thanked Secret Service agents and honored Corey Comperatore, the former fire chief killed that day. It was a version of Trump that he rarely projects.
Then he returned to the more familiar version — the one that Trump’s fans adore and that most Americans don’t. He focused on himself. He lashed out. He lied. He rambled through the longest convention acceptance speech on record.
“You read a lot of stuff about what this guy says, but to actually sit down and hear it and sit through it, it was just insane to me,” Arnel Ramos, 21, a food service worker in Milwaukee who is an undecided voter,
told The Times. “It made me uncomfortable,” she said. In the days since the convention, Trump has kept it up.
Republicans are nervous he is squandering a chance to win over Americans who are open to supporting him. These voters liked the pre-Covid Trump economy, and they don’t like that inflation and immigration surged under Biden. “The 2024 election is Donald Trump’s to lose, and he may yet manage it,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board
wrote.
3. Harris’s focus
So far, Harris doesn’t seem focused on swing voters, either.
Like Biden before her, Harris has organized her initial campaign message around Trump. She emphasizes that she was a prosecutor, and that he is a convict. At a Wisconsin rally this week, she offered a contrast between “freedom, compassion and rule of law” and “chaos, fear and hate.” In an ad released yesterday, called “We Choose Freedom,” she shows Trump’s mug shot and headlines about his conviction. She is echoing Biden’s argument that the future of democracy is at stake.
But polls have repeatedly shown that this message resonates more with committed Democrats than swing voters. Swing voters care more about pocketbook issues.
Blueprint, a Democratic polling group,
tested 15 potential Harris messages. The one that voters liked best began, “Vice President Harris understands the struggles of working families.” It went on to say that she would be tough on corporate price gouging and that she supported an “all of the above” energy policy to lower gas prices. The worst-performing message began, “Vice President Harris is a champion of American democracy.”
A Times/Siena College poll found a similar pattern. Look at the differences between the issues that matter most to Democrats and to undecided voters:
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Note: Chart shows all answers that at least 5 percent of registered voters gave. Poll was conducted before President Biden dropped out. | Source: Times/Siena Poll, July 2024 | By The New York Times |
Abortion’s low rank in the poll is also notable. Harris has signaled that she will try to increase the issue’s salience, and that approach could win over some swing voters. But it may not be as easy as Democrats hope. In the 2022 midterms, after Roe fell, not a single incumbent Republican governor or senator lost re-election.
Other evidence also points to the primacy of economic issues. There are seven battleground Senate races this year — in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere — where the Democratic candidates have been running ahead of Biden. All seven are offering populist messages focused on pocketbook issues. None talk much about democracy. To see the difference yourself,
you can watch their ads here.
Harris talks about economic issues, to be sure. (Speaking to a teachers’ union yesterday, she accused Trump of favoring trickle-down economics and union busting.) But these issues remain secondary. I’ll be curious to see whether she can make the freedom-versus-chaos argument more effectively than Biden did — or whether she starts sounding more like those Senate candidates.
She will have an opportunity that Trump does not. Her convention, and the attention that comes with it, is still ahead. It starts Aug. 19.
A programming note: I won’t be writing this newsletter frequently between now and the convention. You’ll be in good hands with my colleagues.