Why Harris May Crush Trump in November

The polls are badly underestimating Kamala Harris.

by Ben Cohen

As it stands, Kamala Harris is the slight favorite in what looks to be an incredibly close race that will come down to a few hundred thousand votes in swing states across the country. While Harris looks like she will come out on top, experts believe that the polls could be off and the race could go either way.

The extreme anxiety felt by Democrats over the race is palpable — and justified. Polls have consistently shown Trump with a real chance of winning, and the closer we get to election day, the more anxious Democrats are getting. Trump pulled off a near miracle in 2016, defying the polls and winning an incredibly close race via the Electoral College. Democrats worry he could do this again, despite his 2020 loss in a race that was far closer than expected.

Having studied the polls and pollsters carefully over the past few election cycles however, I can’t help but feel this election won’t actually be that close. Because lost in the data, and in the campaign reporting, are some convincing indicators that show Harris not just beating Trump, but trouncing him.

Polling woes

US presidential elections are won via the Electoral College, so the only prediction models that matter have a laser-like focus on how the Electoral College map will play out.

The best prediction models plug in polling data averages from all of the states, then add economic indicators like jobs, growth, inflation etc with more weight given to the historically best predictors of outcome. The numbers are crunched and the number of votes in the Electoral College are tallied to give a final predictor of the outcome.

The worry from Democrats is that in both 2016 and 2020, the prediction models underestimated Trump votes. This is something pollsters have taken into account and their methodologies have changed quite significantly over the past four years — most notably in how they survey non-college educated white Americans in rural areas. In 2022, the polls very accurately predicted the midterm elections, and in preparation for 2024, pollsters have adjusted their weighting to account for the “Trump effect” (the theory that Trump voters either don’t admit to pollsters they are voting for him, or just don’t engage in polling surveys).

What does this mean? Most likely that the polls are potentially underestimating Democrats this time around. This would track with Democrats over performing in state and special elections across the country since 2020, particularly against MAGA backed candidates.

The New York Times has some interesting stats on the Electoral College vote that takes into account polling errors over the past few years:

So if the polls are right, Harris wins, and if the polls miss like they did in 2022, Harris wins big. The only way Trump wins is if the polls get it wrong like they did in 2020, a scenario that seems very unlikely given the changes in methodology.

Beyond polling

The polls give us a snap shot on any given day/week about where the race stands. But of course polls don’t vote, voters do, and that means each side’s ground game is crucial to winning on the day.

Putting aside Kamala Harris’s huge fundraising advantage, the Democrats have assembled a formidable grassroots infrastructure to get out the vote on election day. This could be particularly significant in the sunbelt, where Democrat’s superior ground game could upend the polls. Central to this effort are unions, most of which are backing Harris. Reports The Nation:

Trump’s campaign is haphazard and lags far behind Harris’s in organizational coherence. In early August, with Harris’s campaign taking shape, she had 13 field offices in Nevada, while Trump had just one. That’s an awful lot of ground to make up in a couple months.

Meanwhile, all of Nevada’s large unions, including the Nevada local of the Teamsters, have endorsed Harris. And the SEIU has just kicked off a large-scale door-knocking campaign in the state. Meanwhile, UNITE HERE, which played a critical role in swinging both Arizona and Georgia to Joe Biden in 2020, has announced a target of knocking on 3.5 million doors in 10 swing states, including Nevada and Arizona, between now and the election. If they reach this target, it will be the largest canvassing campaign by one union in US history.

Republicans on the other hand, have become increasingly worried about the Trump campaign’s ground game, or lack thereof. A recent report in Politico outlined just how dire it is:

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running…

A Michigan-based GOP strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, described the party’s challenge bluntly: “They are out-matching us in money, in enthusiasm and in the ground game.”

A PBS report found the exact same phenomena playing out across the country:

With fewer than 50 days until the Nov. 5 election, dozens of Republican officials, activists and operatives in Michigan, North Carolina and other battleground states say they have rarely or never witnessed the group’s canvassers. In Arizona and Nevada, the Musk-backed political action committee replaced its door-knocking company just this past week.

“I haven’t seen anybody,” said Nate Wilkowski, field director for the Republican Party in vote-rich Oakland County, Michigan, which includes crucial Detroit suburbs. He was speaking specifically of America PAC. “Nobody’s given me a heads-up that they’re around in Oakland County areas.”

Get-out-the-vote campaigns don’t necessarily make a huge difference to vote totals, but they can make enough of a difference in close elections to be very worthwhile. Even a shift of one or two points could make the difference on election day. The Harris campaign is leaving no stone unturned for this election, and there is a very good chance it will pay off in at least one or two of the close states Trump needs to win to take the Electoral College.

The big picture

When you zoom out, it is difficult to see how Trump wins in November. He is a uniquely unpopular candidate running against an excellent Democratic ticket. Harris has more money, a vastly superior ground game, and a small but significant lead in the polls. Coupled with enormous Democratic enthusiasm, she is going to be very difficult to beat on election day. Trump could pull of another miracle, but the Harris campaign isn’t making the same mistakes Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Harris isn’t neglecting the rustbelt, and Democrats are completely unified behind her.

Furthermore, inflation has calmed down, the economy is booming, and Trump has struggled to find an effective line of attack against Harris since she took over the campaign from Biden.

The increasingly dark rhetoric from Trump’s campaign is a signal that Republicans are beginning to worry. The polls aren’t moving in their direction, and with a smaller war chest and fewer paths to victory, the odds of a Trump victory are getting smaller.

The election is far from over, but my bet is that Kamala Harris will win in November, and it won’t be close.