It's Almost Over

Nobody’s leading: Both Democratic contender Kamala Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump are tied in most of the national polls, with one day to go until the presidential election. “In the history of modern polling, there’s never been a race where the final polls showed such a close contest,” reports The New York Times‘ Nate Cohn. “While the race was fundamentally close all of October, it is pretty clear that the polls shifted toward Mr. Trump over the last few weeks. The national polls have become extremely close, raising the possibility of a Trump victory in the popular vote. And Ms. Harris’s once clear-but-modest lead in the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan has all but evaporated.”

Trump pulled ahead a tiny bit in Pennsylvania, but the state looks like a real toss-up, with a handful of polls showing both candidates tied there, and several showing each candidate ahead. Iowa, a solidly Republican state that went for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, has been upgraded to a Harris win—plus three—by the famous pollster Ann Selzer, who tends to be regarded highly by others in the industry.

“Pollsters are [possibly] herding very heavily in high-profile Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania but then showing their true colors in the more obscure Midwestern states,” argues pollster Nate Silver in Silver Bulletin. “Our model isn’t quite sophisticated enough to go into this level of detail, but the most important update you should probably make from the Selzer poll is that Harris might overperform her polls in the Blue Wall—especially in Wisconsin, the most correlated with Iowa of the three.”

Silver also observed that Harris consistently underperforms in states that were hit by high inflation, even states where she you would otherwise expect her to be popular. This may be a sign that voters blame the Biden administration for high prices and that they associate Harris with a continuation of Biden’s policies.

What will happen in Nevada? Early voting results in Nevada show Republicans are doing quite well, and Donald Trump has maintained a better-than-expected performance there. It’s unclear whether these factors bode well for Sam Brown, an Army veteran who lost the 2022 Republican primary for the state’s Senate seat but is now running again. He’s up against Democrat Jacky Rosen, who served in the House from 2017 to 2019 and has been serving as senator since 2019, making abortion a key focus of her bid for reelection.

“Nevada and neighboring Arizona have long been viewed as the weaker pickup opportunities on the Senate map and Republicans are not seriously contesting any of the House districts in the Silver State,” reports Politico. “If Republicans oust Rosen, they are likely looking at a big Senate majority. They need to flip only two seats to guarantee control of the chamber; West Virginia, Montana and Ohio remain the strongest targets. The next tier of states with pickup opportunities for Republicans are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. If Brown can pull off a win in Nevada, it will be icing on the cake for the GOP—and a bad night for Democrats.”

What about New York’s 17th district? Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is running against Democratic former Rep. Mondaire Jones in New York’s 17th, which includes all of Rockland County and Putnam County, as well as most of Northern Westchester County and portions of southern Dutchess County. It’s a politically weird place, given that it went for Joe Biden despite being represented by a Republican, and given the large Hasidic population (which tends to vote Republican).

Lawler is also a bit of an odd figure: He made headlines in 2022 when he defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat, by an ultra-thin margin (a little less than 2,000 votes). Jones—who is regarded as a progressive rising star, though has tried to walk back a bunch of ultra-lefty political positions he staked out in 2020—was a victim of redistricting, and also has a not-so-great recent track record, given that he tried to win a seat in Manhattan but couldn’t get past the Democratic primary.

“The much-hyped red wave that materialized almost nowhere else in the country did come ashore in New York” back in 2022, reported The Washington Post this year, noting Lawler’s win. “In all, Democrats lost four congressional seats in districts that Biden won by double digits in 2020.” Lawler has “a razor-thin, one-point advantage of 45 percent to 44 percent over Jones” per Politico, though polling is sparse.

“Democrats see their path back to the House majority running squarely through a handful of districts like this one, where Republicans hold seats carried by President Joe Biden in 2020,” notes Politico. The New York results should come in early on election night, so if Lawler wins, this race will be a bit of a warning sign to Democrats that their strategy isn’t as potent as they hope.

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Scenes from New York (a beach town): I live in a surfer enclave in the southernmost part of New York City, where the city runs into the Atlantic, and my neighborhood is politically all over the place. Surfers, as you might guess, appear to be RFK Jr. partisans, to the extent that they think about it at all.

politics of rockaway beach, queens, nyc pic.twitter.com/EvnCtblgAA

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) November 4, 2024

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QUICK HITS

• “Israel’s effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favour of cruise missiles and glide bombs,” reports Reuters.
• “The revelation that North Korean troops have been gathering in Russia, ostensibly to assist President Vladimir Putin in his brutal invasion of Ukraine, has stoked Western fears of autocratic states banding together to undermine the interests of democracies,” writes Michael Schuman for The Atlantic. “There is an authoritarian coalition, but it’s rickety—and it depends on China’s tolerance for chaos.”
• We need more humor at Tim Kaine’s expense!
• “The US is beating China in the race to win space allies,” reports Bloomberg.
• Pretty much:

Only required a decade wasted on destroying careers, families, workplaces, and electoral fortunes, nbd pic.twitter.com/1AQoIakLRM

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) November 2, 2024

• The kids are gonna be all right, assuming they destroy the apps and find ways to solicit potential partners in person:

real innovation on the nyc marathon sign front pic.twitter.com/lfwpeeI7pm

— nicole ruiz (@nwilliams030) November 4, 2024

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Source: https://reason.com/2024/11/04/its-almost-over/