Donald Trump
The alarm from within: "Four reasons why Harris is losing"
Hans Österman
Updated 00.55 | Published 00.55
Kamala Harris has lost her lead against Donald Trump in recent weeks of polls.
Now the fear is spreading within the Democrats.
Internally the party mentions four reasons why she is about to lose, writes The Hill's columnist Douglas Mackinnon.
Joe Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris replaced him - and got off to a flying start in public opinion against Donald Trump. In the television company NBC's survey in September, she led nationally with 49 percent to Trump's 44.
Now, a month later and with three weeks until the election, the lead has been erase. The score is 48-48 and the percentage of undecided voters has dropped from seven percent to four.
The trend is repeated in several other measurements.
The site FivethirtyEight's FivethirtyEight's opinion poll still shows Harris leading by 2.5 percentage points, but that's down from a peak of 3.7 percentage points in late August.
The national polls are also a blunt measure of who becomes president.
The election is decided in practice in the seven most important wave master states. There, according to the average value form Realclear polling, Trump has increased his lead from 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points in the last month.
The odds: Trump has passed
It is therefore incredibly even and basically every measurement has a larger margin of error than the lead for any of the candidates. But Trump's tailwind is visible across the board.
Another measure, the betting company's odds, currently gives him a 54.1 percent chance of winning, according to Realclear poll'compilation. For Harris, the probability is 44.9 percent. The average odds have also changed dramatically in just the last few days – Trump overtook on October 6 and has since stretched his lead to nearly 10 percentage points.
Now the frustration within the Democrats is growing.
- People are nervous. They know that it is even in the measurements. Many of us have flashbacks to 2016 as well. We know it can go in the wrong direction even though the feeling is good, a source close to the Harris campaign told CNN.
Lists four reasons
The American political newspaper The Hill published on Sunday a column by Douglas Mackinnon, a political consultant with a background in the White House and the Pentagon under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder.
He cites conversations with three Democratic sources and lists four reasons why they believe Harris is about to lose.
Harris's person
According to Mackinnon's informants, she is simply not seen as a good candidate, something that was already evident in the 2020 primary where she ran and was knocked out. She is considered to lack self-confidence and seems terrified to answer questions that she has not been told in advance. It is, Mackinnon writes, no surprise to those who follow politics daily, but a new insight to voters.
The interview answer
Harris is already weighed down by shortfalls during the term, and last week she made the situation worse in an interview with ABC, according to Mackinnon. Asked if she would have done anything differently than Biden over the past four years, she replied:
- I can't think of anything. Nothing.
Not surprisingly, the Trump campaign has used the clip in its channels, writes Douglas Mackinnon.
The Trump Cult
The cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump makes him difficult to defeat, according to Mackinnon's sources. His die-hard supporters are loyal from the start, and Kamala Harris risks facing the same fate as Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Ron DeSantis in the Republican primaries earlier this year. At the same time, Harris is struggling to mobilize the voter groups necessary for victory. On Sunday, The Hill reported that she is losing ground in several swing states in early voter registration.
The core voters
There are potentially millions of core Democratic voters who feel they were better off four years ago than they are now, Mackinnon writes. According to his sources in the party, it is considered to be the main reason for Harris' headwind. He also writes that there is an internal concern that both Harris and the party have gone too far to the left. It is considered not only to lower her chances in this year's election, but also to make it difficult for the Democrats to find a more centrist candidate in 2028.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar