In long election campaigns it is tempting to declare single events the definitive moment. In September, Kamala Harris performed so well in the debate that she surely had secured the presidency. Two weeks ago Joe Rogan had won it for Donald Trump. The assassination attempt on the Republican candidate was going to write the election result, four months out. This rally would be the one to turn off Republican voters – honest! The McDonald’s stunt was the tactic supreme. And the hi-vis vest was the fatal blunder.
In reality, public awareness of these events is lower than most political observers think. Voter attention to the news is relatively low. Even Rishi Sunak’s D-Day commemoration blunder during the summer’s general election in the UK was only noticed by a quarter of voters.
So I am going to focus on the numbers, not the so-called key moments. Analysts have spent much of the past month explaining that this is a coin-flip election. It has been. But new data has thrown doubt on to the result at the last minute.
Ann Selzer of the pollster Selzer & Company has an impressive track record for publishing accurate polls in her home state of Iowa. Iowa went for Trump by an outsized margin in 2016 and 2020. It tends to vote to the right of other Midwestern and Rust Belt states. This makes her pre-election poll eye-catching – it gives Harris 47 per cent to Trump’s 44 per cent.
If these numbers are right, Kamala Harris might not just squeak victory, but cruise it in key areas. Meanwhile, pollsters in the apparently marginal swing states of the Midwest would face humiliation. Because if Iowa is swinging Harris, so is Michigan and Wisconsin. And outside of the Midwest, Pennsylvania too. Iowa was a safe state for Trump in 2020; it is not going to vote to the left of the rest of the Rust Belt in 2024.
The demographic profile of Iowa isn’t a world away from Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. It isn’t as defined by old-fashioned industry. But it has a similar enough level of white voters without a college education to make the analysis worthwhile. And small shifts among white voters in these states could make all the difference.
There is a bigger story thrumming behind this. On one side, Democrats appear to be shedding minority voters: Latin American voters once went Democrat by margins of around 20 or 30 points; now that figure is looking closer to 10 to 20. This should make the party pause in states like Georgia and Arizona. And though my early-vote modelling kept the Democrats in contention in Arizona and Nevada, the party can’t rely on its traditional base showing up in the way it used to. This is a problem.
On the other side, Democrats might be gaining unexpected white voters, in defiance of conventional wisdom.
To deliver Iowa to the Democrats, Trump’s national lead among white voters would need to fall to as low as 3 points (indicated by this interactive demographic model from FiveThirtyEight). That would represent a fall for Trump from a national lead of 17 points, according to CNN’s own exit polling. It’s not likely.
Not one piece of polling data I can find says Trump’s lead among white voters is as low as 3 points. But the odd poll here and there does put it within the margin for error. Ipsos has Trump ahead among white voters by 8 points. YouGov has it at 10 points (4-16 points). This is down, by the way, from 17 points.
The polls are telling us that Trump is either going to do as well among white voters as he did in 2020, or he’s going to do 6 points worse. That’s his range. Harris, meanwhile, is either going to do as well as Biden among white voters, or 5 points better than him, and 9 points better than Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Small, sustained advances among white voters would secure the Rust Belt for Kamala Harris. But there are two unknowns. How many minority voters are switching to Trump? And how high will their turnout at the ballot box actually be?
Trump is banking on peeling off those who traditionally don’t voters. Whereas Harris is eating into a demographic that makes up the majority of the Rust Belt states. Which is the safer bet?
On the campaign’s last day, the data just about favours Kamala Harris. But the uncertainty still keeps Donald Trump in contention.
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