As we inch closer to Election Day, it's time to brace for the inevitable narrative the mainstream media will likely push. After weeks, if not months, of the media suggesting that this will be a close election, we should expect the media to claim in the final weeks that Kamala Harris is gaining momentum and will overtake Donald Trump in key battleground states—preparing us for her “inevitable” victory.
But according to InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery, this storyline isn't rooted in reality.
During a recent interview with Fox News's Laura Ingraham, Towery warned voters about the media's upcoming spin. “They’re going to say that she’s going to win and Trump will lose. It makes no sense,” he said. Towery stressed that Trump is running "way ahead" of where he was during the last two election cycles.
He went on to note, “Trump is running way ahead of where he has in the last two cycles that he ran in the national average... And in these various states, now, you know, everybody has their different way of sampling things. I think all of these states are very tight.”
This is a critical point. While media outlets, citing select polls, might suggest Harris is surging, Towery pointed out that the race is tight across battleground states, with no clear frontrunner having a substantial lead. “I don’t think there’s any state where anyone has a four or a five-point lead right now that’s a battleground state. I just don’t see it, and I don’t believe it,” he added.
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Perhaps the best example is Pennsylvania. A look at recent polling out of the state shows Trump up a little, Trump down a lot, and the race even tied, depending on the pollster.
Towery highlighted that one issue reigns supreme in the Keystone State: fracking, and Kamala Harris’s record on this issue is extremely problematic. She has flip-flopped on fracking, initially supporting a ban before reversing her stance and claiming she supports it. However, under the Biden-Harris administration, there’s been a pause on new fracking projects, which complicates Harris's messaging to Pennsylvania voters.
"So, either she's not involved at all in the administration, wants to condemn Joe Biden for freezing fracking, or she should say to you I am lying about fracking,” Towery said. There’s no way she had a substantial lead in this state with mixed messaging like that.
Towery is not alone in thinking that neither Trump nor Kamala has significant edges in the battleground states.
“How much this election is shifting is measured in inches rather than yards right now. We are basically at the point where turning out 10,000 extra voters in a key swing state could determine the outcome,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, noted last week. “Polling tells us the broad contours of the race but it cannot measure these types of micro-shifts.”
So, if you’re worried about polls showing Kamala ahead, don’t be discouraged, and don’t be fooled by the media’s narrative. The race is far closer than they will make it seem, and Trump is in a much stronger position than he was in 2020. As the election nears, expect the media to hype up Harris’s chances, but the reality on the ground in battleground states tells a very different story.
