The Witness Chronicles, August 28, 2024
Building a base to win an election
I’m Not Watching Polling, I’m Watching New Voter Registrations
To win, Harris must expand the base, and it’s happening
If you read my stuff, you may know that I am very skeptical about election polling, for a variety of reasons. First, it is wildly out of control with over fifty national polling groups releasing polling in a constant stream of mostly meaningless comparisons.
And it gets coverage because it gives media outlets, across the political spectrum, fodder for speculation. They know a lot of us are desperately looking for verification that our candidate is moving ahead, when the reality so far is that most show a dead heat.
A lead of one or two percent is meaningless because those differences are within the margin of error for most polls. That margin of error, typically two to four percent, tells us this is an inexact science at best, or voodoo at worst.
Pollsters have had to change their methods drastically as landlines disappeared and those being called are far more likely to either not answer unknown numbers or will give false or inconclusive answers. This is compounded by the reality that many of those being polled are not following much of the news
A lot of polling and punditry about those polls reminds me of an old book, How to Lie With Statistics, that outlined how messages with seemingly solid underlying data can be manipulated. That’s an art, not a science.
But there are hard numbers we can look at that tell a more convincing story. I’m talking about new voter registrations and they are up, especially across previously unengaged voter groups, including younger voters, black women, and Latinos. And within these groups Democrats are bringing far more new voters in since Kamala Harris became their new candidate.
For a more detailed breakdown of these numbers, I strongly suggest Heather Cox Richardson’s most recent Letters From an American post. It is very encouraging.
This potential base expansion comes at a time when the Trump/Vance campaign seems determined to offend more and more groups, with Vance railing against women and women’s rights, Trump openly insulting the military, Jewish voters, women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color, while embracing the fringe elements of hate groups and whomever was dumb enough to vote for RFK Jr, who is looking more and more like a liability for Trump.
Harris’s choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is looking more and more like a great balancing of the ticket with his midwestern farmer/teacher/coach/ex-military background, not to mention a long stint in the House and two terms as governor. His white man dad cred may swing some voters who simply haven’t previously imagined voting for a woman or person of color as President.
Meanwhile Trump is trying to have it both ways. For example, insulting those injured, captured, or killed in military service, then going in front of veteran’s groups and trying to portray himself as pro-military. He is dealing with the consequences of saying one thing and doing another across virtually every issue, which means constantly changing his story.
The Trump campaign supposedly has a three hundred page vetting book on JD Vance, which should have quickly eliminated him as a valuable addition to the ticket. Every day more damaging facts come out about him. The most recent is that a close aide is tied to several extremist groups, in addition to Vance’s very close connection to the ‘brains’ behind the Project 2025 plan, a plan which is so unpopular that Trump has been scrambling to disassociate himself from it.
Yet another ‘say or support one thing, then deny it’ situation. These shifts instill the sense that Trump is struggling with himself and his campaign and may actually be causing more and more Republicans to reconsider their support. At least 200 prominent former supporters and members of his administration have signed a petition this week endorsing Harris, an almost unheard of development in American politics.
Registrations are important because of what they tell us is changing among voter demographics, and what they say is that Harris has energized a new base who were unlikely to vote for either Trump or Biden.
The recent and startling consolidation and unification of the Democratic Party behind Harris and Walz is also bringing in Democrats who were uncomfortable with Biden, especially those single issue voters who make their minds up based on one perceived political position, like the Israel/Palestinian conflict and the Hamas terror attack, or abortion rights.
So far it looks like Harris is threading the needle on Palestine, but her long awaited press interviews will require her to clarify those more challenging and polarizing issues and where she stands. They will start in the coming weeks.
I personally do not understand the Trump campaign’s lack of awareness that insulting and alienating voter groups is not a good strategy. In fact, it is a destructive one that chases away voters they may desperately need in November. Right now it is starting to look like that damage is done and their efforts to undo it are not working.
But they seem incapable of running a consistent campaign with a consistent and compelling message, instead falling back on the negative playbook that somehow got Trump elected years ago. But that was years ago and we can see the effects of those years in Trump, just as we could in Biden.
What worked back then is not working now, though this is far from over.
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