TL:DR The lower number of undecideds also means that less of them need to break for Trump to give a win, even with the gap between Popular Vote and Electoral College predicted to shrink significantly. Polls have been very accurate at predicting the baseline support, it’s the undecideds they suck at guessing.

Trump’s baseline just hit 46.1%, 2016 final levels(not 2016 baseline that was barely 40%, big difference) and at the rate it’s slowly creeping up could be at or close to 2020 final levels, 46.8%. Harris has been stuck at 48 and a half points for a bit. Assuming this trend holds another 4 weeks we’re looking at something like 48.8 to 46.8 baseline nationally or in that general area. Some of those undecideds are going for third parties, likely more left leaning ones.

All that accounting for if Trump wins just half the undecideds the final result gap would be around 2 points, similar to 2016 if not slightly smaller, which is probably a Trump win. He’s converted enough to diehards he’s gone from needing 2/3+ to just half. And Trump won with the undecideds both prior elections. Harris is improving, absolutely, but the changing third party situation is a braking factor absorbing and neutralizing it to a degree(in 2020 and especially 2016 Trump was bleeding more votes to guys like Gary Johnson, Jo Jorgenson, Rocky De Le Fuente, and Evan McMullin. This year the third party composition has shifted left thanks to the rise of the PSL, strengthing of the Greens, RFK Jr killing the small right wing bloc, and Libertarian infighting.). So this change was a net negative and Harris’s growth has been somewhat absorbed in neutralizing this. That’s also probably why Trump’s raw base total is up, among other things a lot of hardliner Hoppean or Rothbardian LIbertarians jumped ship to him when Chase Oliver and the moderates won the party.

Take a swing state for example. Less accurate overall, but just a hypothetical, and it’s a clean “get the most votes and it’s yours” so no need to guess ratios. According to 538, There’s 4 and a half points not locked in, Harris is leading by 0.4-0.7 and it’s fluctuating day to day. Pennsylvania isn’t a super 3rd party happy state compared to some of the sunbelt, and PSL and Cornel didn’t get on, so that’s a bit more favorable. Let’s say 1 point goes to third party, a bit more Harris thanks to the internal shifts, but not by much. Of of the remaining 3.5, if 63% were to go to Trump, that’s it, even with the best case 0.8 point base lead Harris loses. If it’s more like 0.4 Trump just needs around 55% of the undecideds. That’s it. And this state is better in the third party spread than some others. Trump won more than those numbers from them the last two elections.

538 has Trump’s support at his 2016 final levels. This is relevant to note because, in both prior elections, the polls were extremely good at predicting the baseline margins from diehards and registered, and the error came from badly guessing the undecideds wrong.

Unless this is the first election in a long long time to actually get the baseline wrong or literally 100% of the undecideds go to Harris, Trump’s got above 2016 in raw percentage totals basically locked in(in 2016 a ton of people went third party so neither he or Hillary actually crossed 50 percent, Hillary was 48.2 and Trump 46.1). In 2020 it was 46.8 for Trump and 51.3% for Biden. If things continue to trend that way Trump will be close to his 2020 total percentage locked in and thus will almost certainly be higher in the final count. The people genuinely leaving Trump will mostly be former undecideds, not the people locked in, so this number isn’t being shifted as much. That does suggest that, even with his general ceiling region not shifting a ton, he’s probably set to break 47% in the final number if not more (Trump was polling sub-45 in both 2016 and 2020 so 48 is also plausible).

This matters mostly because not every undecided is going to break for Harris or Trump, there will be people sticking third party who most polls lump in with them or at least contribute to the ‘Not Harris or Trump’ number, and this is one of the few areas where the general trend is not in Harris’s favor. Just broadly speaking this is the most left-wing Third Party batch we’ve had since 2000.

As much as people love to say voting third party helps Republicans, that hasn’t been the case in a while, the Libertarians have been the strongest for a long while and they usually siphon off more Republicans, especially Anti-Trump Ron Paul types. They probably cost Trump Georgia in 2020. But the Libertarian party has been in a state of collapse since 2022, there was an attempted takeover by a hard right clique, which lead to a nasty party schism that left the party not cooperating, then a ton of Hardliners defected to Trump when the Moderates got control of the primaries, and then to make matters worse RFK joined in around that time taking most of the right wing moderates and leaving the Left Libertarians to put Chase Oliver on the ticket. So a ton of Libertarian voters either left with the hardliners for Trump a year ago or left for RFK who in turn endorsed Trump likely redirecting some more of them to him, and what’s left is the most Left-Wing Libertarian the party has run since the 1970s.

Then there’s the fact the Constitution Party has been steadily weakening for years, they lost their status as the Number 3 Third Party in 2020 to the PSL, and this year they had a schism between the Mormon and Protestant factions. They also mostly take Republican Votes. Or the fact the usual coalition of small right wing parties all working together to back one candidate(Rocky De Le Fuente last time) are all gone. Why? They all hitched to RFK Jr, and he dropped out too late for any of them to pick new guys. (That I honestly suspect was the real goal of his candiacy. Wipe out the small right wing third parties and weaken the Libertarians).

On the other foot, the Greens are proportionally stronger as Jill Stein has better name recognition than Howie, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is surging with youth support and is set to break their all time record again, and Cornel West…exists.

It could be far worse, lawsuits kept most of them off of most Swing States, Nevada kept the Green Party off and has the Constitution Party, and Pennsylvania and Arizona only have the Greens and Libertarians. Wisconsin and Michigan also still have RFK Jr on them despite Cornel West and Claudia being there. But it’s still way more left leaning than normal just from the Libertarian crisis and lack of small right parties even without those new guys.

Let’s say around 1.5% of the undecideds go Third Party. Lower than 2020, way way lower than 2016, about on parr with previous years. It’s going to be mostly people who would otherwise vote democrat. The Popular Vote to Electoral College margin is supposed to be quite a bit less this year, but sub-Hillary margins nationally are probably a loss. So Harris wants a 2 point lead and there’s around 98.5% available. It’s gonna be tight.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on how quickly the cyan and pink states on the East Coast get called(New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio) get called, as well as which swing state gets called first(propotionally, adjusting an hour or so to account for when they start counting). If Georgia or (proportionally) Arizona gets called first, that’s a strong sign for Trump. Michigan or Wisconsin(Michigan proportionally) strong sign for Harris.

Pollsters have been solid on the actual locked in voters the previous years, so this is coming down to the undecideds. Harris has a ground game edge, but the third party sphere has shifted against her compared to prior years and her shorter campaign is a bottleneck.

There isn’t even really a hard rule for it. Iowa was excluded in 2012 because it was going so strongly for Obama despite being a classical swing state, then it was back in 2016, then it was excluded for being too far right. Meanwhile Virginia had to go blue 3 times in a row to stop being considered a swing state.

Nothings set in stone. Most of the current swing states haven’t even been swing states that long. California was considered a swing state in the 90s. Texas was a swing state in the 70s. Oregon was a swing state in 2000. Iowa and Ohio and Florida were THE swing states until they all went safe red. New Hampshire was on that list until it became safe blue.

Virginia was a safe red state from the late 60s until 2004 when it was a swing state that went red, then it was considered a swing state through the Obama years(despite going blue it was redder than the nation in 2008 and about the same as the nation in 2012, had a Republican won either year it would have gone red) and after Hillary carried it safely in 2016 it’s since been considered a safe blue state. Heck, there’s some evidence it’s re-tightening again and a non-Trump Republican could take a serious shot at it in 2028.

There have also been periods of American history with basically no swing states and the bulk of the country up for grabs with only a couple of ‘safe states’ each if that, the 70s and 80s didn’t really have swing states, neither did the Depression Era, but I don’t think it’s trending that way

Minor Vance win overall since he had lower expectations going in and Walz got that one unfortunate extremely clippable misspeak. Vance refusing to admit Trump lost in 2020 and his Springfield…thing though cost him any chance of a rout, which is basically required for a VP debate to have significant upballot effects. Still the Republicans probably appreciate getting Vance above Sarah Parin and Aaron Burr and getting the media distracted for another day or two.

Fuck that “I’ve become friends with school shooters” misspeak is gonna be clipped to hell isn’t it

I mean, it’s a factor in how much of which party they siphon from

I will say this debate is inherently riskier than the last one simply because JD Vance is already at his floor. He’s the most unpopular VP or VP candidate in history. Worse than Sarah Palin, worse than Spiro Agnew, worse than Aaron Burr.
He loses, nothing changes, he cannot go lower barring Mark Robinson tier revelations and even then I have doubts. He wins, Walz slips a point or two, Harris by extension maybe 1/4th of a point.

Really anything that can stop the bleed for the Republicans is a win for them, October is critical. Harris rode a 6 week high after getting in at the end of July, spent the first two weeks undoing the pit Biden had dug, then got boosts from the VP pick and convention that lasted until early September. Trump finally had trends on his side and the debate utterly wrecked that. That’s finally fading again so they really are seeking a win, a screw up here could be too late to wait out and Vance getting some good press could bury stuff like the Uncle Robinson(no relation) disaster.

The other problem is that he’s young, really young, Teddy young. JD Vance is young enough he can fake it for a little bit in a way Trump is just too old to do these days. He’s baitable, but not to the level of Trump or even Biden in this environment. Young Narcissists can put on a face for a while in a controlled space like this, 80s Trump did it all the time and I’d argue Vance might be sharper than him.

I don’t think it’s a bad matchup, Walz is very wholesome and more experienced(and the reverse would be very unideal for the Democrats. Vance would be better at avoiding the massive tangents Harris baited Trump into, meanwhile Walz isn’t as high energy or effective on the pursuit against Trump as Harris is) , but he definitely ‘looks’ and ‘sounds’ older than he is, especially compared to Harris. So Walz is walking in with that already there.

Despite how close it is the most likely individual scenarios are still sweeps, as a small error one way or the other effectively cleans out. The 4 most likely scenarios are still ‘Harris sweeps swing states’, ‘Trump sweeps swing states’, ‘Harris sweeps all, but Arizona or Georgia’, Trump sweeps all, but Michigan’

This wasn’t meant to be a prediction and moreso a hypothetical because of how much discussion of polling error I hear from both sides. Like, what if the Polls are actually really good and accurate this time? This is what we’d get

This wasn’t meant to be a prediction and moreso a hypothetical because of how much discussion of polling error I hear from both sides. Like, what if the Polls are actually really good and accurate this time? This is what we’d get

Hence this is meant to be a hypothetical. As I said, if it’s a 2022 repeat Harris sweeps the swing states and if it’s a 2020 repeat Trump sweeps them.

2018

(Although given Swift is from PA the art potential is…interesting, to say the least. Which Dragon Ball girl fits her best I gotta do some Biden Blast art)

Harris basically spent the first 15 minutes trying to break Trump’s concentration and get him to start lashing out emotionally. Trump had a brief edge there. Once she got him that was it though, by the time other areas he was strong at or points Harris was sidestepping came up it was too late, Trump was thinking with his mashed potatoes instead of his notes.

That’s basically the game here. Get Trump to act stupid and let him hang his own noose, side step the controversial positions or stuff Harris changed her mind on. Trump needed to keep his cool and play to his strengths, sidestep his faults(he did this ok for Abortion, but after that it crumbled) and tear into economy issues and Harris’s flipflops, which he did initially (I will say he never sounded ‘Old’ in the way Biden did), but once that was gone he went full Weird and lost it, just could not get back on track.

It’s inherently a bit of a gamble especially since Trump’s handlers know the game and he’ll know it today once he’s sobered up and calmed down. If Trump held on long enough Harris could have been in trouble with a couple issues, Harris is inherently on the backfoot due to such a short campaign season and stuff like having to change her policies to appeal nationally can’t be done gradually the way Hillary did it. There’s an inherent vulnerability there that someone like Niki Haley or another democrat would utterly maul her on. Trump can too, if, if he keeps his cool. He didn’t.

Walz doesn’t have the same weaknesses either. Neither does JD, but that’s just mostly going to come down to competency and normalness so Walz is walking in with an edge. (If it was Vance vs Harris and Trump vs Walz there might be a problem for the democrats, that configuration doesn’t play to their strengths)

(Oh and Harris didn’t score a buzzword on the level of “I’m Speaking” or “Will you Shut up Man?”. Best we’ve got for a Dean Scream type Anti-Line is Trump’s “I have a concept of a plan”, which while dumb isn’t ‘We beat Medicare’ tier. Sad media world, but that’s an important thing to note)

General consensus seems to be(among what’s left of the Swing Voters and Moderates, not a large group) is that Harris won the debate, showed she was professional and a capable speaker, and Trump made a fool of himself in the back half and lied chronically in the middle. Harris won, that was what people hoped for.

However, Harris staggered a bit the first 15 minutes before Trump got knocked off balance, and she didn’t really do a great job of explaining policy on her more controversial issues or directly addressing the flip flopping allegations(which could have been a problem, but by that point Trump was ticked off and lashed out emotionally instead of going in for the kill). Trump lost, but both the moderates and the betting markets suggest it’s not a Biden June level loss. The market loss was 4 points instead of 5 and it’s recovering quicker, there isn’t the same mass panic you saw after that on the Republican side, it’s more subdued panic.

Trump lost, but not campaign endingly so. Harris won, but she didn’t do the best job of explaining her policies which is the number 1 concern of swing voters. But also Trump didn’t capitalize on this, Harris knocked him off his game early and got him panicking so he couldn’t counter attack on those points when they came up.

I have my doubts Trump is going to go again, Harris knows how to push his buttons and get him off course before any of her more constroversial opinions come up. Trump can’t afford another debate loss. Harris probably wants to avoid dealing with Vance directly though, I think he could bite his tongue long enough to go at it more directly. Leave him to Walz, Walz doesn’t have that baggage.

Also it’ll shore up polling a bit, added to by the Swift thing. Probably a good idea for them as the Honeymoon period(which a lot of people were starting to write off as non-existent or a conservative lie or something to that extent) did seemingly end in the week leading up to the debate. Harris slumped and her lead shrunk.

It’s sort of a game of chicken at this point. Harris doesn’t have time to fully pace a slow burn campaign or bury policy flips deep enough back in the past to commit to a classical strategy. Trump’s been in the campaign longer and COULD sit out and try to let Harris slump. but her higher baseline and long honeymoon made that too risky. Harris won last night, she knocked Trump off his game before he had to chance to sink his teeth into the flipflopping. Does Trump risk a second run and hope he can hold his cool until she exposes herself or dodges a question or does he sit it out again and wait for this polling spike to fade by October? A loss in an October debate could be disasterous as it’s right before the election and there’s no time for a bump to cool down. A minor Trump win could shore up numbers at the last second. Sitting it out depends on what Harris does, which has been a mixed bag, but it puts the ball fully in her court to go on the offensive.

Harris would absolutely win in a full length campaign season, but there’s too little time for that and that creates weak spots. Weak spots Trump can exploit, but due to his own weak spots going for it is risky and last night Harris won that gamble.

I think Trump’s gains with young men are the main area patching him back up and are what’s mostly being missed when people ask how it’s this close.

While it’s true that Younger Generations are getting more Liberal, that trend is only extremely strong among women. It’s a weak trend among men(and it really only works if you compare them directly to like, Boomers). Gen X males have been gradually shifting right compared to the Obama years, and Gen Z is just broadly more right wing than Millennials. Gender may legitimately be the biggest divider right now, only rivaled by Urban Rural.

Rural Male Gen Z isn’t as left as many people would think.

These gains(plus slow steady gains among Latino blocs, mostly Cubans and old blood Tejano types) are making up for the losses in women voters he suffered in 2022 and 2016 and the loss in black voters thanks to Harris.

That and the right wing is slowly clawing back control of portions of the media. In the Aftermath of Gamergate most of the mainstream internet platforms swung hard to the left and several became fully controlled like Twitter and Tumblr. Thanks in part to several tech bro defections and bot operations places like Facebook slipped in 2020 and now Twitter and CNN follow. That was keeping most of the bitter young men who weren’t involved in GG or Republicans prior in line with the democrats. With that control erroding they’re starting to slip. We’ve seen this playout in South Korea before, who’s gender political divide is among the nastiest worldwide among democracies.

My final prediction is that between the Arlington Cemetery thing, Cornel West not getting on the ballot there, and no smaller third parties getting in, Virginia’ll stay Blue. Though it’ll be closer than many expect.

Had a perfect hat trick happened 3rd party wise (Which came close: no Randall Terry, RFK got off the ballot, weakened late Libertarian presense. They just needed Cornel West. Plus ideally some random smaller third party, like how NJ got the two small Socialist parties on), plus no Arlington debacle costing suburban votes in the North near Richmond, I might have been willing to consider the possibility of it going red, maybe(about as likely as Michigan, still strong lean blue, but in swing state territory), but not now.

In the timeline where Cornel gets on the ballot, some smaller socialist parties do, and the Arlington Cemetary thing goes perfectly(low key visit, no physical altercation, maybe Trump takes one picture with families and posts it instead of a spectacle) I’d be saying Virginia is a swing state this time.