Is a blue wave gathering for Kamala?

Everybody agrees the race is tied, so why are the fundamentals shifting so fast?

Sep 08, 2024

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Everybody says the presidential race is tight. Citing numbers showing all swing states polling within the margins of error, Republican lobbyist Bruce Mehlman says we’re “racing towards a photo finish.” “A nail-biter like no other,
agrees Axios’ Erica Pandey. “People are really dug in,” texts Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post. “This is the closest presidential campaign in 60+ years. The race has been consistently close in a way I've never seen. If the polling is off by a single point in the key swing states, the winner would flip,” posts Harry Enten, host of CNN's Margins of Error. “The bottom line is this election is up for grabs with 2 months to go.”

I trust the judgment and expertise of each of these people. I believe that each of them are assessing the state of the race in good faith. And by no means are their statements unrepresentative of the generally agreed-upon conclusion that the 2024 presidential election will be closer than 2020 which in turn was closer than 2016. The closeness of the presidential election is treated as the bedrock of fact upon which all other analysis, strategy, and reporting relies. It is the thing that we all agree on.

So why doesn’t it feel true? And why do many of the underlying fundamentals of the 2024 presidential campaign suddenly point to a wave election for Kamala Harris?

I don’t remember ever seeing a swing in the congressional ballot that sudden or that large.

It’s often said that polling is just a snapshot, not a prediction, which is true, if unsatisfying. What people outside of politics don’t get about polling is that the data is deeper than the toplines. Below the numbers showing who is leading in which states are other data, such as candidate favorability, party preference, and issue priorities. And it’s down there in the weeds that I’m seeing early indicators of what could be very good news for Democrats.

A great weathervane is the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters whether they would prefer Democrats or Republicans in Congress. The latest Suffolk University/USA Today poll has Democrats with a 5-point lead, which in my experience is 2% shy of a wave election. In the previous Suffolk poll from late June, Republicans held a 3-point lead. I don’t remember ever seeing a swing that sudden or that large.

Second, Kamala Harris’ favorables—the shorthand for whether people perceive her favorably or unfavorably—have undergone an equally puzzling and frankly quite shocking reversal. Starting in 2022 and until very recently, most Americans had a negative view of the Vice President, and it wasn’t particularly close. In fact, until Joe Biden passed the torch to her, only a little more than a third of Americans had a favorable opinion about her.

Since then, however, her favorables have shot up as fast as her unfavorables have dropped with a velocity that is not explained entirely by her newfound comfort in the national spotlight or her personal charms as a intelligent, charismatic, and attractive person. It could be that there is a moment she is increasingly being judged as ready to meet.

But for whatever reason, I am shocked that any candidate could be viewed this positively this late in the race and that opinions changed so much. This number does not fluctuate this much in a race that is thought to be so intrinsically and rigidly close.

The general ballot and a candidate’s fav/unfav are basic indicators. And them moving so much so fast are lights going off on the control panel, something to tap to see if it’s just a wire loose somewhere. It could be nothing. After all, everything else seems normal.

But if the movement measured in the data is real, you’d start to see other numbers move before the toplines. You’d see things like Harris tying Donald Trump among Cuban Americans, a traditionally Republican-voting demographic. You’d see other this-can’t-be-right lights go off on the dashboard, like 270 to Win moving Texas and Florida from leaning Republican to toss ups. That would be like California becoming a battleground state. I do not believe Texas is in play, but that’s just because of past experience. Trump hasn’t been polling over 50% in Texas for a long time, and Harris is inching up to within—this can’t be right—5%.

If this is true about the rapidly changing underlying fundamentals of the race, then you’d probably see actual IRL human activity that matches the data, including but not limited to large and enthusiastic crowds—which we’re seeing. You’d see massive fundraising totals—which we’re seeing.

And you’d see sharp increases in voter registrations among demographics that correspond to the historic nature of Harris’ nomination. Since Biden withdrew and tapped Harris, voter registration among young Black women increased more than 175% in a dozen states, according to Tom Bonier of TargetSmart.

“175%, could that possibly be right?” asked Major Garrett of CBS News. “You must have triple-checked this, or many more times than that?”

“175%, could that possibly be right?”

“You’re right to repeat the number because I’ve more than triple-checked it,” said Bonier. “It’s incredibly unusual to see changes in voter registration that are anywhere close to this. ... You just don’t see that sort of thing happen in elections normally.”

Bonier has since found a similar pattern in the 38 states for which data is available. Since Biden withdrew, non-white women under 30 are registering to vote at double and sometimes triple their usual rates.

One reason the toplines haven’t broken hard for Harris is that college-educated white men who don’t like Trump but haven’t made up their minds to vote for Kamala (or at all) are disproportionately parked in the undecided camp. They like her optimism and centrist positions, and they’ve been turned off by Jan. 6 and the transformation of the Party of Ronald Reagan into a homeless camp for incel Nazis. But still, they’re not sold on Kamala.

Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bullwark, said at this weekend’s Texas Tribune Festival in Austin that these men remain unconvinced that Kamala can stand up to autocrats, something Trump himself has tried to sow doubts about.

“She’ll be so easy for them. She’ll be like a play toy,” he said in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her.” And then, eschewing subtly while looking directly into the camera, Trump said, “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.”

“Command the material. And command him.”

The debate, says Longwell, will provide an opportunity to show she can do it with Trump as a stand-in for autocrats.

“She has to show that she has command of the substance and command of the stage,” she said. “Trump will rattle himself being on stage with a Black woman who can handle herself. Command the material. And command him. That will be essential to how this goes.”

If she breaks him in the debate, her performance would give a lot of voters permission to pick Kamala, and a shift in a couple of points, especially among white men in swing states, could move her into a clear lead.

But that depends on a lot of ifs: if the polling is accurate, if the debate plays in her favor on social media, if she doesn’t hand Trump a moment he can use to portray her as weak, if the FBI doesn’t drop another clown shoe on the election, if the newly registered voters actually vote, if, if, if…

And I’ll cede here that my analysis is informed by my desire for me to be correct. I want to believe between a prosecutor and a felon, Americans will choose the former. I want to believe that the clear and enduring majority of Americans who have never wanted Trump to be president will get over whatever hangups they have about women, Black people, and Democrats to vote for Kamala. I know this feels true because I so desperately want it to be true: This country is mostly better than Trump and seems close to achieving exit velocity out of the Trump era and into whatever is next.

But even putting aside what I want to be true, I keep looking at the data, tilting my head, and asking myself, This can’t be real, right? But it doesn’t really matter what the polling says, because we’re moving into the Fog of War in which opinions and analysis will be about as useful as used tissue. After the debate, all that matters is the door you knock on, the voter you call, or the donation you make.

Because if the blue wave materializes, you’re going to want to have a surf board.

Jason Stanford is a co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. Follow him on Threads at @jasonstanford, or email him at jason31170@gmail.com.