I say both parties have problems with POTUS primaries, while congress primaries are bread and butter occurrences and a core element of American democracy, one of the best functioning ones

Jeez an honest tweet by 72o, stunned

Thats still in rsult of trump being the nom. We simply dony know whats going to happen to the gop when trump is gone.

Technically legal isn't a synonym of legitimate. And democratic primaries were a utter joke, infinitely worse than republican ones (for POTUS)

Many incumbents in Congress effectively run for reelection unopposed within their own party. Not all, of course, but many. For better or worse, we have reached a point where incumbency is a far bigger advantage in Congressional elections than it is in presidential elections.

yeah i know. i was speaking to the idea that everyone just rolled over for trump and lined up behind him, when in reality he was challenged by many of the most prominent conservatives. i added the other part to show what rolling over actually looks like.

"270 to win" finally updated their electoral college map for the first time in over a year.

Here is the old map that hadn't changed in over a year. The theme of this old map was they took the true map of 2020 and took away 6 states from Biden and made them tossups instead.


----------------

Here is the new map giving Harris MN instead of it being a tossup because her VP pick Walz is from MN. Also this updated map took GA away from Trump and made it a toss up.


-------------

I have a feeling that future maps are going to put Wi, MI and/or PA in the Harris column and have her virtually tied or ahead in the race.

Here are the current totals as of 8/10/24 for polls taken from 7/21 onward. 538.com has still only addressed 5 "toss up" states (in bold). I have averaged the Heads Up (HU) and Multi-Candidate (MC) polls in other states but I have only used the MC polls as the basis for the electoral results. What 538.com does that I don't do is: weigh Likely Voter (LV) polls more heavily than Registered Voters (RV) and All Adults (A) polls. 538.com also adjusts for historical bias for each pollster. And 538.com considers recent polls at a bigger % than older polls.

Note that I am not including non-swing states unless there have been polling updates since I last posted (a week ago)

Format is [<St>(HU#|MC#): Results] where 3rd= 3rd party candidates, Un=Undecided, Bolded States are Toss Up States per Real Clear Polling (RCP)

AZ(7|3): Kamala now leads by 0.1% !!! per 538.com with 4.4% 3rd and 5.9% Un. Biden was trailing by 5.5% prior standing in AZ (multiple polls). Since Walz is VP she has gained 1.4%
FL(1|1): Kamala trails by 7% HU and 6% MC with 6% 3rd and 6% Un, Biden trailed by 8.8% (multiple polls)
GA(6|4): Kamala trails by 0.4% per 538.com with 3.3% 3rd and 5.5% Un. Biden trailed by 5.9% (multiple polls). Since Walz is VP she has gained 0.6%
MI(7|6): Kamala leads by 2.9% per 538.com with 4.9% 3rd and 6% Un. Biden had been trailing by 2.4% (multiple polls). Since Walz is VP she has gained 1.3%
MT(1|1): Kamala trails by 15% HU and 15% MC with 5% 3rd and 2% Un. Biden had been trailing by 20% in the latest poll.
NC(1|2): Kamala trails by 3% HU and 2.3% MC with 6.3% 3rd and 5.3% Un, Biden had been trailing by 6.9% (multiple polls).
NM(0|1): Kamala leads by 7% MC with 8% 3rd and 11% Un. Biden had been leading by 6.7% in RCP Polling.
NY(1|1): Kamala leads by 14% HU and 12% MC with 11% 3rd and 3% Un. Biden had been leading by 9% (multiple polls)
NV(2|2): Kamala now trails by 0.6% HU and is now tied MC with 8.5% 3rd and 8.5% Un. Biden had been trailing by 5.7% (multiple polls).
OH(1|1): Kamala trails by 10% HU and 9% MC with 11% 3rd and 2% Un. Biden had trailed by 9.3% (multiple polls)
PA(7|6): Kamala leads by 1.2% per 538.com with 3.8% 3rd and 6.2% Un. Biden had been trailing by 4.4% (multiple polls). Since Walz is VP she gained 0.4%
WI(4|4): Kamala leads by 2.3% per 5.38.com with 4.3% 3rd and 4.6% Un. Biden had been trailing by 2.3% (multiple polls). Since Walz is VP she has gained 1%

Assuming Kamala will win NJ, VA and NE 2nd district and will lose ME 2nd District where no polls have come out since 7/21/24, and NV a dead heat, the current electoral score is: 281 to 251 with Kamala ahead. Though because Trump is ahead HU I think we should currently count NV as going for Trump so it would be 281 to 257 (Kamala ahead).

In swing states Kamala is continuing to gain ground over where Biden had been. She is now at 5.3% ahead of Biden in the five 538.com swing states and is at roughly 5% in both HU and MC polling in all swing states.

I looked at the results in 2016 and 2020 and there was a lot of difference in the changes from the polling just before the election and the final results. Trump gained incredible amounts in the polls in 2020. He did gain in a number of states in 2016 and turned FL, MI, PA, and WI but they were close to begin with. I think this year will resemble 2016 much more than 2020 because Obama was President when Hillary was running and now Biden is President when Kamala is running. Trump was the sitting President in 2020 and the undecideds went his way in a huge way (in Wisconsin he gained like 8% over the polls and barely lost). I think that for whatever reason Kamala has shed her disapproval rating at least with Democrats and some Independents and might actually do better with the undecideds than Hillary. Also Kamala doesn't have a Bengazi or email thing weighting her down.

I also agree with ladybruin. Right now Kamala leads in MI more than she trails in NC. So "270 to win" may soon be making MI light blue or, if not that, NC could become a Toss Up.

0-3% margins are not sufficient for harris imo. trump has massively outperformed polling expectations. biden had 5-10% Nov polling` leads in MI, PA, WI and barely won those states. hillary had midwest swing states "in the bag" such that she didn't even feel the need to campaign there and lost. feels like dems are counting their chickens before they've hatched and need to focus on new, real policies that get voters excited

Would be nice to hear dem platform / policies some day.

More than ever people are not going to be truthful to pollsters what their true voting intentions are. It is much easier for the people who really are the undecideds or the swing voters to say Harris to go on the wave of her new candidacy than it is to say Trump even though at least for those swing states they would prefer Trump for the economy and immigration issues.

I'm factoring in a 4 to 5% margin of error in Trump's performance at the election vs the polls and I also think the pollsters with everything that has happened with the assassination attempt, Biden stepping aside and Kamala becoming the nominee that any argument that the pollsters have learnt from 2016 and 2020 is moot because the US election in terms of what we have seen since the debate is unprecedented and I can't see they would reliably have built in any bias to their opinion gathering.

In FL Hilary was up by 0.6% and lost by 1.3%
In MI Hilary was up by 9.5% and lost by 0.3%
In PA Hillary was up by 5.4% and lost by 1.2%
In WI Hillary was up by 6.9% and lost by 1%

Your points are all true (I had thought the undecideds were less bad for Hillary but apparently I was wrong)...

However, Kamala is not Hillary. Hillary was basically hated by everyone and she motivated Trump voters by calling them Deplorable (in a private fundraiser much like Trump is now calling Kamala a b*tch at private fundraisers)

Kamala was incredibly unpopular in polls prior to 7/21/24. She trailed Biden's unpopularity by more than 10 points (I believe). But since 7/21 she is at like -5% which is unbelievable. The people who want people to hate her are not getting there. Trying to put her down for cooking videos. Trump calling her not black until recently except that she went to Howard University (an all black school) and was in a black sorority. Trump trying to mock the fact that she laughs (this has failed so spectacularly that people started talking about how Trump never laughs).

I think the Kamala campaign has learned from Hillary's mistakes. They are campaigning in rust belt states. She chose Walz who may serve as an asset in rust belt states.

The other thing is that Kamala's poll numbers have done nothing but go up since 7/21 when Biden dropped out. If they keep going up through the DNC then she will likely be in the kind of shape Hillary was in at that point in the campaign. We will see what policies get chosen and how it plays out at the DNC. My guess is that Kamala will support the bipartisan immigration bill as an effort to process asylum immigrants faster and improve border security. Even reduce time for processing all immigrants. If she makes a stand here against Trump in this way I think the undecideds will not go for Trump the way they have in the past.

Also, the crazy thing is that in AZ Republican mayors are now rallying as Republicans for Kamala. And that is a border state.

It could be that undecideds will go for Trump like they did with Clinton and Biden. But it also may be that they won't. Enough is enough. Trump's lies are coming back to haunt him. The whole Election being stolen thing is not working. In fact it is likely that it will cause a lot of people to just not vote at all.

i'm at a loss why they don't point to something tangible. it's the same premise as a middle school class president elections -- just say you'll do popular things like create 5 new federal holidays, even if you have no chance of actually pushing them through congress.

You don’t care and you know it. It’s not like you’re going to flip sides.

But Not being Trump is the only platform necessary. He’s such utter dogshit, that’s all they need. And Trump knows it. And so do his droolers.

i hope all the reasons that follow (as to why harris could perform better than clinton) are true, but as it stands i just go off the polling data and she's way behind where' '16 clinton and '20 biden were.

in hindsight it makes sense she caught a tailwind as new nominee given she's not trump and not 182 years old. i hope her numbers keep going up but have no particular reason to believe they will, given she's coming off zero mishaps, the media portraying her as a goddess, and GOP offering nothing but weak self-owns recently.

3 months is a long time for things to go wrong. the pivot to the "weird" campaign and actually appearing in midwestern states is a good start, but need to build on that with something substantive. if they rest on a "not trump" campaign they will lose.

Here is an article on a Harris rally in AZ:

'Harris promoted a border security bill that a bipartisan group of senators negotiated earlier this year, which Republican lawmakers ultimately opposed en masse at Republican nominee Donald Trump’s behest.

“Donald Trump does not want to fix this problem,” Harris said. “Be clear about that: He has no interest or desire to actually fix the problem. He talks a big game about border security, but he does not walk the walk.”

Her effort to address immigration — a political liability that has dogged Harris for most of her vice presidency — head-on in the critical battleground state is part of a broader push from her campaign to make gains in Sun Belt states that had become increasingly out of reach with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket.'

I had no idea 10 minutes ago that this had happened. But I was hoping it would in my previous post...

Just like every other time, that gets released at the convention.

is there any way to preschedule a post in this thread for aug 23rd? just needs to contain the ORLY owl

It never ceases to amaze me how many times people from other countries know more about american politics than americans.

Thanks George

No problem, Horace.

Project 2025’s plan to shift the country’s tax burden to the working class

Kamala now the betting favorite

I don't think that's the case today more than in the past, but the selection bias of who decides to actually answer is the most extreme ever.

I don't know in which direction that skews polls tbh, i read a lot on the topic and nothing is truly convincing, but anecdotically i don't know a single person who would actually take the time to answer polls at all.

A lot of people i know have call-filters (google assistant or others) for example. A lot never answer any call from a phone number they don't have saved. Who is actually answering those calls is a mystery to me