The state of the race as we await Harris's post-DNC bounce
An expert on what we should make of Kamala's polling gains.
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We don’t yet know how much the DNC will boost Kamala Harris’s polling. But we do know that the Trump campaign is expecting her to benefit from a bounce.
Given the strength of the convention in general and of Harris’s speech in particular, it would be surprising if she didn’t get a lift, and gaining even a point or two would be enough to put real distance between her and the orange menace.
Trump, meanwhile, has been on tilt. His carny act isn’t working anymore and he spent the weekend basking in his whirlwind bromance with RFK Jr., whose endorsement may win him some votes from anti-vax loons but certainly won’t held him beat the weirdness allegations.
In short, Harris’s campaign feels ascendent, fresh, and exciting; Trump’s feels declining, stale, and weird. And those trajectories are apparent in the polling.
Yet as anyone who lived through 2016 can attest, things can change fast, and a narrow advantage in the popular vote doesn’t mean anything if the Electoral College math doesn’t work out. Even if Harris was ahead by 10 points nationally right now, there would be no good reason to get complacent or take things for granted more than two months out from Election Day — especially knowing Trump’s willingness to use every dirty trick in the book.
We don’t spent a lot of time dwelling on polling here in Public Notice, but every now and then it’s good to check in with an expert to get the lay of the land. So while we wait for the post-convention polls to come in this week, Public Notice contributor Thor Benson connected with Tom Bonier, a senior advisor to the TargetSmart polling firm who we’ve tapped for polling insight before, to get his take on what’s fueling Harris’s gains, her possible paths to 270 electoral votes, and places where she could pick up even more support at Trump’s expense.
“Donald Trump has such high negatives that there are a not insignificant number of Republican-leaning independents who can’t bring themselves to vote for him again, but they still want to hear more from the Harris-Walz ticket,” Bonier said. “A very small persuasion effect with those voters could pay huge dividends when when you look at the battleground states and how close they potentially could be.”
A full transcript of Benson’s conversation with Bonier, lightly edited for clarity and length, follows.
Thor Benson
Does the bump a candidate usually gets in the polls coming out of the convention really matter in terms of who wins the election?
Tom Bonier
It matters because it doesn’t always disappear.