Everyday the gap shrinks. Above is FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls. As readers can see, it’s not so much Harris sinking (she is) but Trump rising. For those out there who take refuge in the two-point lead for Harris, remember that she needs to be well outside the margin of error to win this election because (a) polls drastically undercount Trump’s support and (b) the Electoral College.
A significant number of Trump supporters won’t declare their support for Trump on surveys because of social desirability bias. This occurs when people alter their responses to appear more favorable or socially acceptable. In the context of polling, some respondents give answers they believe will make them appear more aligned with social norms, even if those answers don’t reflect their true feelings. This can skew poll results, as it leads to underreporting of controversial or socially disapproved opinions. Trump has been demonized such that some people will not admit they support him.
Moreover, polls oversample Democrats, since a lot of working class people are not home or don’t have the time to respond to polls. Since the Republican Party is the party of working class people, this also skews the data. Trump is almost certainly in the lead nationally when these factors are considered.
The New York Times finds the same trend as FiveThirtyEight. Its poll finds the race even tighter:
Trump is more popular now than he was in 2020 or 2016. What is more, Trump was more popular in 2020 than in 2016—which is why he won more than ten million more votes in 2020 than in 2016.
There’s at least one obvious reason for this shift. The percentage of Americans who say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media has trended sharply downward over the years, according to a recent Gallup survey.
People are realizing every day that the media (as well as academia and the culture industry—which is why celebrity appeal is not working for Harris) is progressive propaganda and properly losing their faith in the legacy institutions and popular culture that have grown up around the corporate state to control mass consciousness. As they lose their faith in this domain they see Trump more clearly. What they see in place of a monster is a self-made man from Queens with liberal sensibilities and a wicked sense of humor. They like that.
They also see more clearly that the Republican Party is shifting emphasis towards the democratic-republican principles and classical liberal values that underpin the American Republic. This is the attraction of populist-nationalism over against the corporate statism of the Democratic Party and progressive ideology. As a result, more Americans identify or lean Republican than they do Democrat, 48 to 45 percent respectively. Again, social desirability bias likely means that the gap is much greater than indicated by this poll. Moreover, by a five point margin, Americans believe that the Republican Party is better able to handle most important problems facing America, according to Gallup.
This is the situation in which the Harris campaign finds itself in the battleground states. Trump won 2016 and very like 2020 even though both Clinton and Biden were way up in the polls at this point in the election cycle. For example, Biden is shown here winning Wisconsin by 6.2 percent. On Election Day, he only won by only a few thousand votes. Officially.
Now TIPP has Trump up two points (Trump Surges Past Harris, Seizing 2-Point Lead). This could be a blow out.
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