One big takeaway: This was a 50/50 election, and the polls are very likely to simply have been right. The anecdotes about ground game, enthusiasm, late movement etc don't square with the simple reality we're seeing, which is that polls were broadly fine.
The national polls look like they'll be broadly okay. Harris may win the NPV by under a point (still possible she loses it altogether).
The swing state polls are also likely to be okay. Michigan, Wisconsin, and PA will probably end up within 2 points of what the polls said.
The models said it was a 50/50 election, the polls said it was a 50/50 election, and...well, it does look like the models and polls were mostly correct.
Despite everything, Trump is doing better than ever in many key areas, which may help stem suburban bleeding.
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The Washington Primary has served as a historical canary in the coal mine. This year, it tells us that Democrats are in pretty good position to make gains in the House and have a modest popular vote victory.
@maxtmcc @washingtonpost A lot of you had been asking us for *something* at least discussing the high-level takeaways of the Washington primary. The piece gives an easily-digestible overview of what it is, why it's important, and what it means.
In short: it's way better than what Dems feared a month ago
@maxtmcc @washingtonpost There is a LOT of room for late movement this time. And we think that Democrats are on track for a modest victory in the popular vote. It doesn't point to a 2008 landslide.
But it helps validate that the current polling environment is decently aligned with polls, unlike 2020.
The pundits see Kamala Harris and they see a candidate with a -14 favorable rating, a horrible 2020 campaign, and similar odds against Donald Trump if she replaces Biden.
When I see Kamala Harris, I see...an imperfect understanding of what candidate quality is
"She's got her issues. She tacked way to the left in the primary in 2020 and came out in favor of ridiculous things like banning fracking and signals to defund the police despite being a DA.
But is she 82 years old? No. No!"
"Chuck. Biden's going on the block and you're my first call."
"[Why?]"
"...Because, he's making the rest of us Democrats look bad."
"[You want Shapiro?]"
"No. I want Kamala and Tim Walz".
It is worth pointing out that however this all plays out, Kamala Harris has played her role as Biden's VP to perfection at this point, and it is a *far* cry from the relative chaos that seemed to permeate her orbit and her office during the 2019-2021 period.
Harris has managed to acknowledge Biden had some issues in the debate, played the role of loyal soldier since then, and has made several high-profile appearances to reinforce confidence in her without making a single move to undermine the President. It's not easy.
When something similar happened to Mike Pence in the aftermath of Access Hollywood, he instantly let it be known to Reince Priebus that he would be very open to replacing Trump as nominee. Morality aside, it was a strategic blunder — Trump had some serious issues with it.
IMO a reason many Dems are upset is that it feels like Calvinball
Dems do well in specials? Doesn't matter.
Trump does poorly in primaries? Doesn't matter.
Biden does poorly in primaries? Sign of weakness on the left.
Biden polls badly? Awful. Polls already overshot him in 2020.
I'm explaining. I'm not saying I agree with all of those arguments.
But it's clear to me that the reason this sentiment on Twitter exists is because there is a lot of talk focused around Biden's vulnerabilities in the data world, and not many about Trump's.
To this point, it's clear why that talk exists. You can easily reconcile Biden's polling woes with data, and show why the special elections and primaries may provide a false signal (IMO, valid counters exist to this too).
But that also pushes back on every point of Dem strength.
There's a very clear dip in support between 2016 and 2020, but it's not obvious that it's part of a massive trend — that dip is comfortably in line with historical margins of variability. Much of the variability you see is in current polling.
But when you dig deeper, you see that there *is* a growing trend of Democratic erosion among nonwhites. For example, younger nonwhite voters being far less Democratic (especially with Black voters) is fairly well established by now and is clearly visible.