Why I'm Confident

Kamala Harris has run an historically outstanding campaign, while Trump is banging rocks together.

I've been asked by a lot of people how I can be so confident about the outcome of the upcoming election, when the race is as close as it is. I wrote most of what follows in a private message to a friend, but I thought perhaps other people might appreocate it too, so I stripped the personal stuff out, and present it to you with some slight copy editing.

First, let's get the phrasing right. It's not the race that's close. It's the polling. Polling and the polling averages from 538, realclearpolitics, and other aggregates managed by various news organizations all say that Harris and Trump are very close in polls. That's a very important distinction to make, and I find it exceedingly careless and dangerous that it’s on this basis and this basis alone that news organizations report that the race is close.

Every other measurable metric shows a disciplined, successful Harris campaign that has continuously gained in support since she became the candidate, and a desperately flailing Trump campaign that's losing support by the day. Every day is worse than the last, for the Trump campaign.

Just a couple indicators:

1) Fundraising. I just posted about this the other day. The Trump campaign has raised not only a fraction of what the Harris campaign raised in individual donations-- they've raised a fraction of what they themselves raised in 2020. Also, Harris has raised double what Biden raised in his entire 2020 campaign, in the last three months.

2) Trump's rallies are exercises in offense, trolling, nativism, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia. They're also exercises in low attendance even in small venues, early departures, and a general lack of enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Harris is packing huge venues all over the country. Just last night, over 75,000 people gathered to see her speak at the Ellipse, on the National Mall near the White House.

3) Ground operations. Harris picked up Biden's existing operations, and her staffers couldn't keep up with the numbers of people who signed up to volunteer. In Georgia for example, literally 4% of the entire state signed up to volunteer. The effect of ground operations is staggering, but the pursuit itself is expensive-- often prohibitively so. Harris has copious ground operations in all fifty states, while Trump has effectively zero. Again, Harris is adding support every day, and Trump is hemorrhaging supporters.

Throughout the entire duration of the primaries, Nikki Halley continued to get 20% of the vote among Republican voters, even months after she suspended her campaign. What we are seeing is a Democratic surge of enthusiasm that's at least as strong, and probably stronger than what we saw in 2008 for Barack Obama. We're also seeing a disinterested, unenthusiastic, resigned Republican population, many of whom are so unexcited by their choice for President, they are reporting in exit polls in early voting that they cast a ballot for Harris instead.

Since 2022, pollsters have consistently oversampled Republicans in their polls, and the result has been that every time there is an election that involves both Democratic and Republican voters, Democrats outperform and Republicans underperform the polls, usually by about ten points. And now, on top of this inherent sampling problem, Republican pollsters, operatives, and campaigns are spamming the news space with junk polls to give the impression of a Republican groundswell, when there is no other evidence that there is one.

I feel very good about the chances of a Harris victory, because every reliable metric I've seen points overwhelmingly at it, and the only metric I've seen that doesn't has proven to be broken and compromised. There are many other reasons, but I will leave it at that.

So there is a huge disconnect between polling and all other indicators. A reasonable person would look at that disconnect and want to know what's causing it. Journalists are bound by their profession to find answers, but mind-bogglingly, they just accept polls as gospel, and keep reporting a tighter race than we really have. Why? I have my suspicions, but I will not raise them here, other than to say that other than some specific aspects of various polls, I just don't put any stock in them, except perhaps to adjust them to the left to see how a given election is likely to turn out here in the real world.

I am not certain Harris will win, but I see her standing in a better position to win than any Democrat since Bill Clinton, aided by the GOP-splitting H. Ross Perot.