2024 Presidential Election Odds: What To Make Of New York Times Polling & NC ‘Black Nazi’

The last time we checked in on the Presidential election was at the peak of Kamala Harris pessimism. Since then, we’ve had a debate that Harris won, a string of very good polls in the Rust Belt, and some of her worst pollsters even showed big national leads for her. Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump odds at the legal betting exchange PredictIt had Harris at 52% implied win probability one day before the debate and 58% now; however, there are still six weeks until Election Day. Let’s study the state of the Electoral College.

Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump Odds Movement

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Polls Rebound For Harris

There have been 12 polls in Pennsylvania since the debate. Kamala is leading in nine of them with two ties, the average margin just under 2%, and the highest quality pollsters – NYT/Siena, Suffolk, MassInc, and Marist – have it between a tie and Harris +4. Franklin and Marshall, the first local in-state pollster to go back into the field post-debate, had a Harris +3.

Quinnipiac and Marist both put Michigan relatively off the board and in Kamala’s favor. Wisconsin has seen Marquette and MassInc show leads in the five-point range, and even a Fabrizio/Impact poll – who have been low on Democrats all cycle – have a three-point lead for Harris in the full-field ballot test.

Nebraska Republicans confirmed they don’t have the votes to amend the Nebraska allocation of Electoral College votes by Congressional District, which means Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania is enough to win the Presidency. Harris has stable to expanding leads in all three of those states.

The only poll to show her losing any of those states post-debate is a singular Emerson Wisconsin poll and an InsiderAdvantage/Trafalgar poll of Pennsylvania from two pollsters who openly admit to making methodically dubious decisions to boost Republican vote shares.

The Blue Wall is by no means safe, but the polling evidence north of the Mason-Dixon should encourage Democrats.

How Much To Weight New York Times Poll In Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump Odds

One of the more annoying narratives has come from Monday’s release of new polling from the New York Times/Siena, which have Trump up in all three of Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. There are various critiques/conspiracy theories floating about this, but there’s a basic point here that should be taken seriously – no pollster is, in themselves, a gospel.

Last week, the Times had Harris up four points in Pennsylvania. This week, it’s bad results in the Sun Belt for Harris. Either you take all four of those results as literally and precisely true, in which case Harris wins the Presidency comfortably, or you don’t. But this handwaving away the Pennsylvania result but strictly treating the Sun Belt ones as real is nonsensical.

In 2018, the one place the Times couldn’t poll properly was Hispanic voters. In Texas, their Senate poll hit the white vote bang on the money, and underran Beto O’Rourke’s margin with Hispanics by nearly 20%. However, in 2020, the error flipped, getting Hispanics bang on and overestimating Democrats with white voters. Maybe this is 2020 redux, where the Sun Belt polls are correct and Harris is going to underrun her polling in the whiter North. But it could also be 2018 redux where Harris beats her polls with minority voters and it’s the Harris +6 that NBC had.

More to the point, the Times/Siena is one pollster. They’re a good pollster, sure. But they’re a poll that gets a ton of narrative interest despite the fact they’re one pollster. We haven’t had many high quality post-debate polls of the Sun Belt, so it’s possible we get confirmation of Trump’s strengths there. It’s also possible we get more polls showing the blue wall strengthening.

The Pollercoaster is exhausting enough – don’t make it moreso by only riding the Times/Siena one.

Robinson Crashes And Burns As NC Gubernatorial Candidate

The other development since the debate is one that is hard to know whether it will matter or not. Mark Robinson, the self-described “Black Nazi” who wants to legalize slavery so he can own slaves, thinks Hitler’s Mein Kampf is “very informative,” and cheated weekly on his wife with her sister, is the Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina.

He is losing big for being a far-right lunatic, and that’s before CNN reported on comments they attributed to him on a porn forum where he said/admitted to all the things listed above.

The reason this is relevant, beyond the fact that is it completely insane that Robinson used the same email and online handle for his porn forums as his personal social media, is that North Carolina is a key swing state. It is very hard to see a path for Trump without NC’s 16 Electoral College votes.

And now there’s this Turd Reich to deal with.

The concept of reverse coattails – the idea that a candidate doing so well or so badly down the ticket can have influence that flows up – is hard to judge. We know that coattails can flow down the ticket – see Trump’s better-than-expected performance in 2020 winning the House GOP at least a half dozen seats Democrats were expected to hold in the expected landslide Biden win, or New York and California Republicans gaining House seats on the back of closer than usual Governor’s elections in 2022.

Will It Hurt Trump?

There’s some evidence that better than expected downballot candidates can help in midterms – Democrats burning millions on a no-hope bid to beat Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia did help Democrats do meaningfully better in her district in November than in December’s runoff. But midterms are about turnout in a way Presidential years aren’t, and we don’t know that a similarly well funded no-hope bid would help the same way in a Presidential year.

The case for this hurting Trump is twofold:

1. Trump called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids” on camera, a conclusion you could only come to if you think MLK was actually Bob Guccione or Heinrich Himmler.
2. Josh Stein, the Democratic candidate for Governor, now has a $12.5M and growing ad advantage between now and November in a race he is certain to win. If Stein is a team player and subtly tweaks his ads from anti-Robinson to tying Trump and Robinson together, that could be worth a point.

It’s unlikely this is worth five points in the end, but a point of impact seems possible. And if North Carolina Democrats finally win narrowly, they could have Robinson’s risqué revelation to thank.

2024 Presidential Election Odds Prospects

Harris remains a narrow but clear favorite to win.

It is unfair to say she is in a tossup race, given the sheer quantity of quality Rust Belt polling putting her in the lead. It’s also not at all hard to see how she could end up losing. But right now she’s winning.

Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump odds presently keep trending in the direction of Democrats.

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