Jim Geraghty of National Review Online ponders former President Donald Trump’s electoral prospects.
The relatively minute shifts in national and swing-state polling after the dramatic events of the past month suggest that Donald Trump has a hard ceiling. The good news for the Republican nominee is that he appears to still be in the lead — but that lead is shrinking, and the Democratic Party is dramatically rejuvenated. Also, J. D. Vance is demonstrating a bizarre gift for making a long-standing part of the tax code that enjoys broad bipartisan support sound scary and unfair.
The most recent New York Times/Siena poll found that 87 percent of registered voters approved of President Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race, and only 9 percent disapproved.
You’ll notice that the right-of-center “poll truthers” didn’t come out to question that one. Nobody’s arguing that the poll had too many landline and not enough cellphone users, or that the sample had too many old people or too many young people or wasn’t correctly balanced in terms of race, sex, or ideology.
No one’s questioning that poll result because it makes sense based on what we know. …
… When it comes to polling, a lot of “unskewing” commentary amounts to “I don’t like that poll result; therefore, I will insist that it is illegitimate.”
That same Times/Siena poll found Donald Trump just barely ahead of Kamala Harris nationally, 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters and 48 percent to 46 percent among registered voters.
A whole bunch of recent polling is finding results in the same ballpark — mostly Trump ahead by one to three percentage points, and every once in a while, Harris ahead by one or two percentage points. It’s a close race. Harris is performing considerably better than Biden was, but you wouldn’t want to bet your mortgage payment on her winning. Nor would you want to bet your mortgage payment on Trump’s winning, given his narrow and shrinking lead.
