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Kamabla's poll numbers were surging. But the pollers have been MIA for a few days, even though tons of polls dropped every day up to last week. Meanwhile Rasmussen claims that other pollsters have changed their methodology in order to juice Kamabla's numbers. On one hand Rasmussen Reports is a partisan hack, but on the other hand they do a respectable job actually polling.
Is there any evidence of this happening? I remember seeing a post claiming that recent polls have polled proportionally more democrats rather than Republicans and Independents. And since party identification likely changes slower than voting preference, we could be seeing a big Simpson's paradox happening. But it would also be hard for pollsters to secretly juice these numbers without noticeably changing their methodology.
edit: Of course there's no doubt that Kamabla is performing much much better than Joe, but is it overstated as part of the campaign's big money blitz, or is it accurate?
I believe the polling is accurate. President Trump is uniquely polarizing and is considered the catalyst that got us into the culture war dynamics of the past 8+ years. The central organization points of the 2016 Trump campaign have been banned and ostracized from the internet beyond Truth social, who supposedly has 2 million users and 600k active users (I never tried it, and it seems a pale comparison to twitter or other platforms. Even Gab supposedly has more registered and active users and I haven't tried their site since 2017 at the latest). The assassination was great PR for Trump but also obviously psychologically damaged Trump, who seems a lot more cautious of making public appearances which has been historically his greatest strength. Vice President Kamala's coordination with establishment and new corporate medias has allowed them to block out Republican messaging and boost her "Vibes based" messaging.
This is most represented by her website. Her website is devoid of everything a normal presidential run consists of. Whay are her policy positions? Interviews? Pressers? Tours? Kamala's history as a political radical has been washed from the internet. When is her last TV interview? Presser? Zoom rally? The silence has to be deliberate; anyone position she holds, or historically held, has been scoured from search engines.
President Trump needs more eyes on him for him to sway voters. Vice President Kamala needs the opposite.
I'm not buying it. The culture war dynamics were already in play before Trump was even running for president, and I'm not sure I believe anyone was even reacting to him in particular, rather than people not being enthusiastic enough about the rule of the enlightened elite.
I agree that the dynamics were there before Trump, but Trump truly embodied them and brought them to the forefront of American culture war battlegrounds that wasn't as present during the Obama era.
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Obama actually said that he knew there would be a backlash against the educated elite, but he posited a John Wayne esque tough talker would emerge to stand up against woke excesses, instead of a billionaire new yorker in a bad toupee.
The animating energies against woke elites is definitely real and much more powerful than the woke elite can acknowledge, or perhaps even handle, but Trump is proving to be a remarkable spoiler in prognosticating the culture wars direction.
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I think Kamala/Walz are just generally seeing a bounce on the basis of not Trump or Biden. It’s plausible to me that democrats are more excited to answer polls now that Biden is out of the race, but, you know, that’s still good news for Kamala.
It really is this simple. The age issue exists for Trump almost as much as it did for Biden and poll respondents were serious that they care about it.
Something that had been consistently found in polls was the general perception that both Trump and Biden were weak candidates, and only by virtue of being pitted against each other via inertia were their flaws masked in the predicted election outcomes.
The Democrats were smart (or more accurately, lucky that Biden had such a disastrous performance at the debate) to force their unpopular candidate out first.
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NYT/Siena is a very good pollster and their numbers are horrible for Trump. I think trying to pretend the polls are wrong is just cope.
But hey, if Trump loses again the GOP can just run him a fourth time in 2028. It's bound to work eventually.
The modern Eugene V. Debs!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs
Rookie numbers—Trump needs to go for five attempts.
Seriously, I’m wondering whether those results are Lizardman Constants or accurate representations. They did better than the Libertarian party. But I suppose there were more credible third parties in general during that era.
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I see it as the media working hard to present a vibes based campaign narrative. By all accounts, Kamala is a political lightweight and a horrible boss / manager. There just isn't anything substantive for her to run on that isn't "I'm going to continue the Biden platform" which is still a little touchy because it makes people think of Biden, which makes people think of spooky skeletons.
If they end up having more than one debate, it's going to get wild. But the October Surprise could be the White Whale / Black Beast of political campaigns - an actual recession. The term "soft landing" is being bandied about but that's the thing, the more you say "soft landing", the less likely it is to happen. If it was truly going to be a smooth glide down to the runway, it wouldn't need to be guaranteed and re-guaranteed again and again.
Trump is going to Play This Hits all the way until - and after - the election. What's old is new again. 2024 outrage over well trod 2016 Trump territory is just goofy at this point. Eventually, Kamala is going to have to convince White Men and The Women Who Love Them in PA, MI, WI, and MN to vote for her.
There is plenty of optimism driven momentum surrounding Harris coming from the anti-Trump forces, enough for her to coast along with minimal foot in mouth incidences. Trump by contrast seems intent on being the driver of the conversation, and while I agree with others on this board that much of the media fact-checking establishment is grasping at straws to inflate the severity of the stupid shit he says, it is also true that he says very little that is cogent or meaningful. He hasn't got a good insult on the level of Sleepy Joe or Crooked Hilary for Harris, and JD Vance comment on childless cat ladies is the only thing percolating in my media environment Harris is surprisingly teflon at the moment, and the Don hasn't found a soundbite to stick.
Sorry, this is what I meant by "Play The Hits." I agree with you.
An under reported fact about Trump is that he is, now, and incredibly known quantity. He's close to stale. All of his brash energy that sustained him in 2016 is now close to tedious. He's like a shock jock radio host who keeps making the same "that's what she said" zinger as he fades into obscurity.
In the Biden debate, we saw Biden fall apart on his own. There was a single opportunistic move by Trump; when Biden said "We finally beat Medicare" Trump responded along the lines "I don't know what he's talking about and I don't think he does either" (paraphrasing). If Trump had seized on Joe not being cogent in that Debate, he could've ended the Biden campaign the next day. Similarly, if, after the assassination, he had come out and stayed on a message of "I still want to drain the swamp - but now is a time for unity and peace" I think he puts himself up 10+ points and the Kamala switch really turns into a "lost with grace" campaign while the Democrats try to maybe win back the House or something.
The larger point is that Trump's often lauded political "instincts" haven't grown or improved in 8 years. He knows how to bully, he knows how to be funny, he knows how to work an in person crowd. Beyond that, he's acquire no new skills.
I have a post elsewhere that the race is already 93-95% decided. The campaigns are fighting over about 300,000 votes in six swing states (with the midwest being highly autocorrelated). As much as Trump has been fucking the dog recently, I still don't see Kamala winning one or several of MI/PA/WI if she doesn't go there and make her case. In fact, this is exactly what doomed Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump is a showman who won against a bureaucrat in 2016 and lost against a way-past-his-prime politician. Harris has inherited a political machine and hasn't said anything as stupid as 'deplorable' or 'pokemon go to the polls' which actively made Hilary look stupid. Trump only has Laughin Harris, which is so far inferior to Cacklin Kamala that his failure to deploy that just shows his current impotence. Harris definitely needs to give SOMETHING to the blue wall, but even there the enthusiasm for Trump has waned in general compared to 2016 and even 2020. Trump just doesn't have the sauce right now, and without Biden as a punching bag Trump just seems gassed out.
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You don't need a real conspiracy reason for this, biden was a corpse and kamala is energetic.
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I don't know what Rasmussen is talking about. The 538 polling aggregator shows like a dozen polls coming out post-8/4. This includes ones from major pollers like NYT/Sienna, Ipsos, and Emerson. It's true that a bunch of these polls only included swing state numbers rather than national numbers but state numbers seem more useful to me anyway. That's where the election is actually won.
On the changing methodology, a bunch of pollers like NYT/Sienna and Ipsos publish their full crosstabs. If suddenly their sample was way more Democrats or Democrat leaning groups it would be pretty easy to check.
I agree, I really think a lot of it is just cope, trump thought he had it in the bag after the combination of getting shot at, the debate and the high coming out of the rnc. I don’t think that Kamala is particularly great but a lot of people don’t like trump and the fact that he is really starting to show his age isn’t helping either.
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Truly stumped on this one. I've seen a steady drumbeat of fresh polling numbers everywhere in the news and social media. The pacing doesn't seem to be off at a glance. Is there any data to back up this claim?
On the flipside, this might be a brilliant choice from Rasmussen: simply by claiming it with no evidence offered they've convinced a significant percentage of readers that it must be true. We'll then fight and motte and bailey around crosstabs and swing states until we all go home certain Rasmussen was more or less right or wrong depending on our preconceived notions.
Yeah, but who's reading this? If you have to go looking for it then you're probably the kind of person who reads poll critically anyway, and the only people publishing this are hacks who are already in the bag for Trump trying to soothe the woes of his supporters. It's only going to get worse next week as the Dems get the usual boost from their convention. After that, the Republicans would need to make a bold move to regain their lead in the race, something so unthinkable that it would send shockwaves throughout the world — dumping Trump from the ticket. This obviously can't happen, and there's approximately zero chance that he realizes his goose is cooked a la Biden, but I hope that it does happen, not because I don't like Trump, but because it would make for the most anticlimactic election in US history. An almost impossibly bad debate performance, followed by an assassination attempt, followed by a major candidate dropping out mid-race, followed by the script completely flipping, followed by the other major candidate doing the unthinkable and dropping out as well, all before Labor Day. After that, it quickly becomes Harris vs. Haley: The election no one gives a shit about. No matter how many stories NPR runs about how historic it is that not only are two women running against each other but two South Asian women, no one will be able to escape the fact that the election is incredibly boring, unless pro-Trump conspiracy theorists try to bum rush a Haley event or something or start another insurrection.
Even if Trump dropped out (he won’t) Haley wouldn’t take the mantle. Haley wasn’t the second choice of most republicans. She was liked by a small group that dislikes Trump.
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I gotta disagree. Trump has numerous buttons to press here. He's not out of moves.
But more importantly, things will keep happening. Zelensky and his boys in Kursk could commit a cheeky war crime or two. Netanyahu could finally bomb the wrong hospital. We could see the hard recession we're well overdue for. We might not know everything about Walz or Harris yet! Harris has more downside risk than upside risk in outside events.
Approximately no one cares.
A small portion of Democrats care, but they are already 100% anti-Israel.
Here's the import one.
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I'm seeing posts critical of the cross tabs, but they could just be huffing copium. Is there anything here or are they fully normal?
I do not make a habit of reading poll cross tabs but spot checking a few (Marist from 7/22, Trump +1 and Marist from last week, Harris +3) they don't seem incredibly different. On the other hand a four point swing is not that large so maybe you don't have to change the sample much to accomplish it.
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Seeing the NPR story below, I don't trust media to give us the raw truth without putting their thumbs heavily on the scale first. So, yeah, I assume the polls are somewhat faked as well, although low confidence.
But why are you spelling it Kamabla? Whatever that is, please don't.
covfefe
I might have let "Kamabla" go (once), but now you're just being obnoxious. Knock it off.
Sorry I was out of line
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That’s not an explanation.
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Here's an article I found with a number of theories on why Trump is calling Kamala Kamabla.
The funniest but highly improbable explanation would be that Trump is speaking Lojban.
"ka mabla" literally means "shittiness" (or more accurately "[generic derogative]-ness", but that's harder to translate).
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Wow, missed that. Definitely not Trump's best effort. "Pocahontas" was his greatest hit, although "Sleepy Joe" wasn't bad either.
Nevertheless, we can do better on a top-level post right? On the Motte we should aim to be more intelligent and civil then mere Presidential candidates.
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I'd be inclined to believe Kamala's numbers simply because it seems so plausible that substantially more people prefer her than they did Biden.
My gut feel on this is that "generic democrat" polls really well generally, but no single answer polls better on hard issues like immigration, or Israel/Palestine, and such for which I haven't seen any concrete policy proposals from her camp.
There strikes me as an element of wish-casting generic candidates as "closer to my, obviously reasonable, position" than any real candidate can be. I guess we should expect real proposals from the convention at this point? Or maybe they plan to phone in the "pass the bill to know what's in it" strategy. I will admit I'm mostly avoiding watching politics closely so far.
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I wonder if, lost in all this, there are lots of people who actually prefer Biden to Kamala but just aren't being amplified.
Elderly voters could easily fall into this bucket.
For all the Kamala content appearing suddenly on TikTok and Reddit, the elderly voting block is much more impactful than the youth vote.
Anecdata, but the elderly people in my life were the ones who most wanted Biden thrown under the nearest bus, and are most excited for Harris/Walz.
I would expect there to be some subset of the population who don't want to vote for a black candidate. Although Trump is busy convincing everyone she isn't black, and there's probably some subset of the black population that won't vote for her if she isn't black.
It all comes out in the wash.
My elderly relatives are the same way.
They are Waspy ex-protestants who vote blue no matter who. Their political allegiance never changes even though the values of the 2024 Democratic party bear little resemblance to the 1996 version that they also supported. They are true believers, and this is a quasi-religious belief system.
But not all old people are true believers that immediately install the latest software updates.
Mine are lifelong Republicans. My dad just loves Walz' schtick as given to him by the WSJ and cable news.
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After Obama, the ‘won’t vote for a black candidate’ crowd are a nonfactor in partisan elections to the extent they exist at all, because they polarized into the Republican Party.
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When we're talking about the elderly, it's not who the voters prefer that matters, it's who fills out the voter's ballots that matters.
Fortunately, that’s usually the voter!
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