In the wake of their national convention a rejuvenated and re-engaged Democratic Party is approaching the November elections with an optimism the Biden-led ticket failed to produce. If the Harris–Walz ticket can remain as sure-footed as it’s been since it was announced, it seems up to the task of earning the needed support to win on 5 November. But, of course, much can happen over the next seventy-odd days.
The Democrats’ energy and unity (and ridicule) has left the Trump–Vance campaign floundering. Trump has abandoned speeches designed to promote policies in favour of his usual rants and personal attacks. Robert Kennedy Jr’s endorsement has served only to highlight the Republican Party’s focus on its current voter base rather than efforts to expand it.
Meanwhile, the post–Democratic convention polls are starting to come in. They show that Harris has been able to turn around the dire polling she inherited and build on her gains. Her standing has rapidly increased and her fundraising has broken records by appealing not just to traditional Democratic voters but also to independents, young voters, non-white voters and women voters.
Yesterday’s aggregate of national polls from FiveThirtyEight shows that Harris, on 47.1 per cent, led Trump by 3.4 percentage points. That’s still very close — and, more to the point, the electoral college system renders national polls almost meaningless: it’s the candidate who gets 270 or more electoral college votes who wins, not the one who wins the popular vote.
More usefully, an analysis published yesterday by National Public Radio, based not just on polling but also on historical trends and conversations with political strategists, shows all seven of the most closely watched swing states are now toss-ups. Harris has taken a consistent though narrow lead in the so-called Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In the Sun Belt, Trump holds an almost two-point lead in Georgia, and Harris and Trump are within one point of each other in North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona. All of which points to a very close race.
The upcoming debates between Trump and Harris and Vance and Walz may serve to further differentiate the candidates, assuming of course they take place. Trump has recently suggested he might skip the 10 September debate, a possible sign that Harris has unnerved and discomforted him.
Most of the media focus is on the presidential race — not surprisingly, given that both presidential candidates have declared (for different reasons and in different ways) that the future of the United States is at stake. But when Americans go to the polls in November they will confronted with a range of other voting decisions.
These will certainly include the question of who should represent their congressional district in the House of Representatives (all 435 seats are up for election) and may also include choosing among candidates for the Senate (thirty-four of the one hundred Senate seats are up for election), for state governor, the state legislature and other state-level offices, and for county, city and regional offices including school boards, the sheriff and judges. There’s more: some electors will be asked to vote on abortion rights, how taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana should be spent, and other special ballot initiatives.
With the Republicans currently holding 218 seats in the House of Representatives, the minimum needed for a majority, the battles over the few seats that could deliver control will be fierce and expensive. For reasons including the advantage of incumbency and the degree of gerrymandering in each state, only about twenty-two seats are seen as genuinely competitive by pollsters like the Cook Political Report and 270ToWin.
Even in these most-competitive seats the polling is sparse. Predicting voting outcomes is further complicated by the fact that some voters will split the ticket, voting differently for president and members of Congress. When Joe Biden was still on the ticket, that trend was forecast to be quite pronounced this year. It remains to be seen if that will change under Harris.
In the absence of sufficient polls, media reports (for example, here) suggest that the Democrats are seeing new energy, better internal polling numbers and new donations under Harris and Walz. It’s said that battleground Democrats who once shied away from Biden are suddenly jumping at the chance to campaign with the top of the ticket. In the coming days, new polling should begin to show if the presidential candidates have coattails that their congressional colleagues can ride on. Candidates in more conservative areas, on the other hand, might have fared better with Biden rather than Harris as the presidential candidate.
The Senate’s fifty-one Democrats hold a small majority (including three independents who align with them). With this kind of margin, every vote counts, and the absence or defection of any members often means a bill will fail to pass.
Thirty-four Senate seats are up for election in 2024 (including a special election in Nebraska to complete the term of Ben Sasse, who resigned last year). But the Democrats have much more at risk: they hold twenty-three of those seats, with only eleven held by Republicans. Many of the seats up for re-election are either in states where Trump has done well or the contest is close.
Two senate races are currently considered toss-ups. Both are held by Democratic incumbents — Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio — and both appear to have been boosted by Harris’s ticket. A recent poll had Tester in Montana (a state Trump won by sixteen points in 2020) finally pulling ahead of his Republican opponent by five points after having lagged for some months. Brown has also recently taken the lead in his race. The sums of money being spent here are huge; Open Secrets estimates Tester has raised US$43 million and Brown US$52 million.
Rated by 270ToWin as leaning to the Democrats are Senate races in Nevada (the Democratic incumbent is Jacky Rosen), Arizona (an open race, with Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego running against Trump-supported Kari Lake), Wisconsin (the Democratic incumbent is Tammy Baldwin), Michigan (an open race, with Elissa Slotkin as the Democratic candidate) and Pennsylvania (the Democratic incumbent is Bob Casey). Texas and Florida are rated as leaning to Republicans.
These last two races are becoming very real opportunities for the Democrats to flip. In Florida, the deep-red home state of Donald Trump, Republican governor Ron DeSantis is slipping in popularity, giving Latina Debbie Mucarsel-Powell a chance to beat incumbent Rick Scott. And in Texas, another deep-red state, African-American Colin Allred’s chances of defeating incumbent Ted Cruz are rising.
Interestingly, recent data from the Cook Political Report shows Democratic Senate candidates running strongly in every swing presidential state, leading outside the margin of error in races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and far outpacing Harris’s support. Perhaps, despite the prognostications above, vote-splitting will remain a feature of this election?
Harris’s performance has also given Democrats greater reason to hope they can chip away at Republican dominance at the state level than they had just a few weeks ago. Gubernatorial races are on the ballots in thirteen states. These races are important given the increasingly critical roles states play in issues like Medicaid expansion, access to abortion and transgender care, school curricula, and what books can be in school libraries.
Ultimately, as the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman points out, the major factor in deciding who controls federal and state legislatures is the most obvious one: voter turnout, which Democrats expect will be boosted by the Harris–Walz ticket. Many voters will also be energised by abortion-related constitutional amendments on their ballots. This has been a winning issue for Democrats in the post-Roe era and could boost support for Democratic candidates in states like Montana, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.
Harris has opened up a number of paths to the 270 electoral votes she needs to secure the presidency. But it is still a very tight race, and much could change in the days ahead. There is a very real chance that the Harris–Walz ticket can help the Democrats win back the House, but as it currently stands, the Democrats’ path to holding the Senate is precarious. Hard work — or luck or fate — could change all that for both the Democrats and the Republicans. •
