Does Trump Have Momentum?
Does Trump Have Momentum?
And what does “momentum” mean in the context of an election forecast?
Nate Silver's polling tracker now has Trump slightly favored to win (50.2%) the election. While this shift appears small, it has drawn attention because it pushes Trump just past the halfway mark in forecasts for winning the Electoral College.
Silver explains that while Trump’s rise over recent weeks is significant, and his polling model, is designed to minimize overreactions to new data to provide more accurate long-term predictions (i.e., it's likely a "real" effect), this doesn't in any way mean Trump "will" win, and the race remains highly competitive, especially in key states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which are critical to determining the outcome.
Yes, Trump appears to have momentum, but it also appears to be a phantom momentum driven by right leaning polling organizations.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/the-hungry-harris-campaign-early?utm_source=publication-search
"I now count 27 Republican or right-aligned entities in the polling averages:
American Greatness, Daily Mail, co/efficent, Cygnal, Echelon, Emerson, Fabrizio, Fox News, Insider Advantage, McLaughlin, Mitchell Communications, Napolitan Institute, Noble Predictive, On Message, Orbital Digital, Public Opinion Strategies, Quantus, Rasmussen, Redfield & Wilton, Remington, RMG, SoCal Data, The Telegraph, Trafalgar, TIPP, Victory Insights, Wall Street Journal.
In September 12 of the 24 polls of North Carolina were conducted by red wave pollsters. Check out the last 4 polls released in PA on 538. All are red wavers."
This is part of the plan, to induce doubt. "We couldn't possibly have lost a fair election! We were ahead!"
Hopefully.
He makes a pretty convincing case for both the idea that "momentum" is kind of meaningless, but also that Trump slowly gaining for the last 30 days is not. Part of what pushed it over the line (Silver is quick to point out that 49.8 and 50.2 is basically meaningless like the difference between a 49th and 50th birthday; we like round numbers) is the Fox News poll.
As he demonstrates, there is no detectable right-wing bias in Fox News polling despite the obvious bias of their news reporting. I can't speak to the others, but I'm not ready to dismiss all polls based on the political identification of the organization, if the polling is of high quality.
My gut tells me Trump is going to pull this out somehow. But, then again, my gut literally has shit for brains.
My personal opinion is that it's going to be far closer than anyone is really comfortable with.
I mean, look at 2020... BOTH candidates got more votes than any other candidate in history. 74 million people out of 330 million voted for Trump. 22.4% of the entire population went "Yeah, he looks good!"
Amazing. Thank you for your hard work!
a few things.
Nate Silver is not fivethiryeight. Silver Bullets is a totally different thing. Nate departed fivethiryeight over contract issues years ago. Since then their models have gone off the rails.
Second, you are fooling yourself if you ignore the reality that Harris has lost all momentum and is backsliding. It's in all the polling data, and when Nate references high quality polls, none of them vary significantly from the aggregate. Even Quinipiac shows her on her heals.
Third, almost none of those polls (that you mentioned) are used in Nates analysis. I think Fox and Trafalgar and TIPP, but that's it.
So like, conflating 538 with Nate Silver is an issue. I mean 538 had Biden at 60% to win when he was polling at 38%. Don't get rely on 538 for anything. Also, there is no significant differences between the so called RW pollsters and everyone else among high quality polls. I can drop that analysis for for you.
Reality is that Harris bungled the campaign thinking she could claim the center and this would motivate voters. America is divided as ever and no one is changing sides. Harris isn't in a race against Trump and she never has been. She's always been racing against apathy and the couch, and her rightward shift during and after the convention are what people will see in hindsight as obvious mistakes.
There are still two weeks left. But she blew off Muslim and ME voters early on. And now she's struggling with black and brown voters who are the apartheid that Palestinians live under as commiserate with their lives experience. I just don't see how she wins with effectively a prozionist foreign policy in today's political atmosphere. And it may only be 3-5% of typically democratic voters who are moved in that issue, but that's more than enough to lose this election, and it's been a clear signal in the data since the first or second week of September.
If Harris doesn't distance her self from the foreign policy disaster which has been the administrations support for Israel, I don't see her pulling this one out.
Hey @jordanlund@lemmy.world, you seem like someone that might have a good perspective on a question I have. While I've always noticed a habit of people to down vote news they don't like on Lemmy, I feel as though there has been a lot more of this occurring in the last, say, two weeks around election news.
Anything that seems to indicate bad news for Harris or is critical of democrats tends to get rapidly buried, often with little engagement. I worry this is symptomatic of a broader denialism on the left/Harris wing, and that it might lead to another election where people are caught by surprise by something that was a very plausible possibility the whole time.
Since you see a lot more posts than I do week in and week out, does that phenomenon seem to be intensifying over the last week or two, or have I just been noticing it more and it's always been happening?
I am a millennial democrat—I have been polled once and I didn’t respond to the text because 1) I didn’t like the tone of how it was written and 2) assume any unbidden text is a phishing attempt.
Is this graph even realistic? The only way it makes sense is if they poll the same voters over and over again that keep switching sides for whatever reason. I don’t think a realistic polling graph would have such a defined pattern.
Polls don’t just keep asking the same people — they sample different groups to reflect the broader electorate, which is constantly evolving. People change their minds based on new information, campaign events, and media coverage. Suggesting that the graph isn’t "realistic" because it shows fluctuations is naive. Voters aren’t locked into their decisions months in advance, and it’s ridiculous to expect a smooth, static line. Polling is supposed to capture the fluid nature of public opinion. The fact that you think a realistic graph shouldn’t show this ebb and flow shows a complete misunderstanding of both polling methods and voter behavior. The defined patterns you’re questioning are exactly what you should expect in a competitive, dynamic election.
You misunderstood my comment. My exact problem with the graph is that its 2 mirrored lines. You’re right people change their minds all the time. The data from the graph suggests that as 1 person shifted to from trump, they went to Kamala and vice versa. That wouldn’t be the case unless they polled the same group of people over the year.
A trend of the same sample of people is meaningless over the course of a year. All this graph shows is this group of people are undecided voters and will continue to be undecided going into November.
Edit: didn’t realize this graph is a model and doesn’t reflect any polling. It’s a meaningless graph.
That 'momentum' is voter apathy starting since Harris moved her campaign to the right to court the ever elusive centrist voters. Imagine the lead if she doubled down on Walz' popular policies instead of Biden's unpopular policies.
You get downvoted for it, but it's absolutely true. She had a real opportunity to distinguish herself from Biden, and for a brief moment I thought she would. Then she shifted to the right to draw in centrists.
Users here can stick their heads in the sand all they want, but like with the Clinton campaign, it won't change the election outcome.
She's handing Trump the race by imitating Biden. I say this as someone who will likely vote for her anyway: this is becoming a disaster for her. She cannot afford to lose Muslim voters in Michigan, and the continued bleeding of Hispanic voters spells even longer-term problems for the party.
Definitely. If Harris loses, it's entirely on her campaigning strategy. I won't blame the voters. She has had every opportunity to advocate for popular policies that would significantly boost her support and galvanize more voters. Especially on Israel Palestine.
Trump is historically unpopular. His approval rating has stayed steady for years. Even multiple assassination attempts didn't move the needle, unlike every other instance in American history. People don't like Trump. But there are only so many voters that will go out of their way to vote for not-Trump.
Walz is a great example of how people respond to popular progressive policies that can meaningfully improve their lived experience. So is Bernie, he's still popular for even Republican voters, because even they can recognize how those policies like Medicare for All, Raising Minimum Wage, and investments in public services will improve their lives.
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