Kamala Harris has been facing a challenging news cycle, recently missing out on a crucial endorsement from the Teamsters. In stark contrast, Donald Trump has secured the support of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich. — the first U.S. city with an all-Muslim city council. Adding to the momentum, recent polls are revealing promising trends for Trump that align with what I’ve long suspected about the direction of this race.
Recent polls reveal that Trump is gaining an advantage in the crucial battleground states that will likely determine the election's outcome. A New York Times/Siena College poll highlights encouraging news for Trump across the Sun Belt, showing him leading by five points in Arizona and four points in Georgia — both key states he lost in 2020. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, a state that Harris is eager to flip, she finds herself trailing Trump by two points.
SHOCK POLL: Trump leads BIG, per the New York Times (A+)
— Election Time (@ElectionTime_) September 23, 2024
Arizona
🟥Trump 50% (+5)
🟦Harris 45%
Georgia
🟥Trump 49% (+4)
🟦Harris 45%
North Carolina
🟥Trump 49% (+2)
🟦Harris 47%
The New York Times/Siena College | September 17-21 | ~700 LV (each) pic.twitter.com/ahpeRedrMO
“Voters across the Sun Belt say that Donald J. Trump improved their lives when he was president — and worry that a Kamala Harris White House would not,” the New York Times says.
The left-leaning paper didn’t try to sugarcoat the reasons for Trump’s momentum: “The polls found that voters in this part of the country were worried about their own future and the future of the nation, suggesting that Mr. Trump’s dark campaign rhetoric — ‘Our country is being lost, we’re a failing nation,’ he said in the debate — could be resonating with some voters.”
Related: Trump May Have Just Received the Most Significant Endorsement of the 2024 Presidential Election
“A plurality said the nation’s problems were so bad that it was in danger of failing,” the report continued.
Winning Arizona would increase Kamala's path to 270 for sure, but that seems increasingly unlikely since she's crashing with Latinos.
🚨Kamala drops ELEVEN points with Arizona Latino voters since August! pic.twitter.com/oGa1HXs0F4
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 23, 2024
Kamala was hoping to also flip Georgia, though recent polling shows Trump pulling ahead there.
Georgia is starting to break hard for Trump.
— David D. Chapman (@davidchapman141) September 23, 2024
He now has a 2 pt lead in the RCP aggregate.
And, that blue line is taking a nose dive. pic.twitter.com/TTuBnfqTwZ
Recent polling has been bad enough for Harris that even FiveThirtyEight’s election model, which has said that Kamala is significantly favored to win for some time now, has put the race back in toss-up territory.
538's model has moved back to "tossup" in the electoral college. pic.twitter.com/dYFXhPnDtc
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 23, 2024
The president election is now six weeks away. Trump needs to build on this momentum. As I've noted previously, while the candidates may have changed, the fundamental dynamics of this race remain unchanged. Even before Biden’s disastrous debate performance, those fundamentals were heavily tilted in Trump’s favor.
Voters still remember that life was better under Trump compared to the current state under the Harris-Biden administration, and that sentiment hasn’t shifted merely because of a change in candidates. The noise in the polls that Biden's ousting created has begun to fade, and it appears that the race is resetting to the landscape we saw before the Trump-Biden debate.
