When a presidential candidate goes from a slight edge to a nearly 20-point deficit in the betting odds over the course of a week, there's clearly something in the air — even if it's only in people's perceptions. So what accounts for the sudden perception of Kamala Harris as a loser on election day?
In this week's edition of Wargaming the Electoral College, I gave you a look at Harris's latest (and most desperate-looking) pander-fest for a voting bloc that two out of her last three predecessors (Barack Obama and Joe Biden) were able to take almost completely for granted: black men. But the WHY has been nagging at me ever since I published the column.
So let's take a look at some competing theories.
Over at Mish Talk, Mike Shedlock wonders if "the Harris media blitz is backfiring" or whether there's something else going on. He opens with a splash of cold water for people who — like me this morning — got all caught up in today's betting odds.
I would not call a dead heat a polling disaster.
Let’s be honest. The disaster was Trump’s election odds 22.7 percentage point drop in the span of three weeks due to a miserable debate in which he did not practice.
In the last three weeks, Trump has gained back 8 points of the 22.7 points he lost.
Shedlock is referring to Nate Silver's numbers — and I'll return you to Silver's site momentarily — but he provides a needed reminder that the betting odds aren't the end-all/be-all, or even necessarily the best indicator. The headline point remains, however: "The media blitz certainly did not help. Harris looked silly on 60 Minutes and like a fool on The View when she said she would not have done anything differently than Biden."
"I will take Polymarket over Silver," Shedlock concluded, largely because he believes renters will decide the election. Renters are "Young voters and black. They are the ones least likely to have assets and the most impacted by inflation. In unprecedented numbers, young voters and blacks have switched to Trump."
Rent is also a lagging inflation indicator. Inflation takes longer to hit rent because renters are usually locked into six- or 12-month leases. But then it hits hard and comes back down just as slowly, if at all.
With a competing theory is Eli McKown-Dawson, Silver's "Bulletin Assistant Elections Analyst and MSc student at The London School of Economics studying social statistics."
"There’s another explanation popular among certain segments of Democrats," he writes today for Silver Bulletin. "Republican pollsters are 'flooding the zone' by releasing a bunch of polls that are overly favorable to Trump in an effort to move polling averages rightward and make the race look closer than it actually is."
Harris is ahead by 3.0 points nationally in this simple average. But when you look at only Republican-aligned firms, she’s up by only 2.0 points. Removing those polls from the average brings Harris up to a 3.4 point national lead. These aren’t huge differences, but they’re not nothing. Combined with a similar pattern in state-level averages, polls from Republican-leaning firms could push polling averages — and by extension forecasts — rightward.
What McKown-Dawson concluded, after going through some very nerdy statistical analysis to remove any bias those Trump-friendly polls might cause, is that it's still a 50/50 race.
But it wasn't a 50/50 race in September or early October. Harris was generally seen as convincingly up — convincingly enough to make me write a cranky column headlined "Harris Keeps Embarrassing Herself and... IMPROVING IN THE DAMN POLLS?" Yet now she's generally seen as down — down enough to give Trump a 20-point edge with bettors.
Allow me then to provide you with a third theory.
After years in Joe Biden's shadow and then weeks spent running for president shielded by the press in a hazy glow of warm coverage, Americans are finally getting to know the real Kamala Harris — and we just don't like her very much.
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