Election 2024

The 2024 presidential election is rapidly becoming the most polled election in Pennsylvania history. As the most important battleground state political observers scour every poll taken in Penn’s woods for some hint as to the status of what again is likely to be a very close battle for the commonwealth’s 19 Electoral votes.

Almost without exception every poll has Donald Trump and Kamala Harris within the margin of error. As such, the drama that surrounds every point or half point change in the polling has made for interesting parlor speculation. But, polling is so imprecise and the race is so close that the polls are in fact meaningless in terms of discerning who is winning the horse race.

Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance will meet for their one and only vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night in New York City.

While the stakes in these kind of running-mate face-offs are typically low – an undercard to the presidential main event – this one might be different.

In a tight race that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, every opportunity to generate positive attention and political momentum is precious.

In 2014, Timothy Walz claimed during a Congressional hearing that he was in Hong Kong in 1989 during Tiananmen Square.

Local news reports from the time, however, show that Walz was actually back home in Nebraska.

Is there anything this guy won't lie about??? pic.twitter.com/IHCcLWjnc2

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 30, 2024

IS WALZ ABOUT TO BE DUMPED FROM TICKET?

Good morning. I did not post yesterday as many of you know. Why? because I was trying to find out if the most unbelievable thing is happening. Is Kamala Harris going to dump Tim Walz after the debate?

Kamala Harris has already laid the…

— Black Insurrectionist–I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS (@DocNetyoutube) October 1, 2024

h/t Mauser

In the last two months, Iran set up fake news sites to defame Trump and promote Kamala, hacked the Trump campaign and tried to pass stolen documents to the Harris-Walz campaign and its media allies, and finally plotted to assassinate former President Trump and his officials.

In a vintage case of the censoriousness for which Keir Starmer’s government is already unhappily notorious, Labour has opted — after a fashion — to cancel Elon Musk for mean tweets. Unfortunately for the Labour PM, he may have done so just at the moment the titans of Silicon Valley begin tilting away in earnest from the kind of progressive consensus most congenial to Starmerism.

An October surprise is usually defined as the well-known (and more often left-wing) tactic of manufacturing or unloading a news story right before voting to surprise a rival without allowing them time sufficiently to respond or recover.

Think of the last-minute bombshell disclosure, five days before the 2000 election, that candidate George W. Bush had been cited for drunk driving over a quarter-century earlier. That surprise may have cost Bush the popular vote that year.

I’m not saying these are likely, I’m saying be prepared for them. Perhaps highlighting them now will act as a deterrent …

A new Siena College/New York Times poll is the latest to point to a new trend in the presidential race. While Democratic candidate Kamala Harris continues to maintain small leads in the Rust Belt, she has begun to lag behind in the Sun Belt — the region of America that includes Southern states such as Georgia and North Carolina as well as Arizona out in the Southwest.

Polling suggests that voters viewed the September 10 Trump–Harris contest differently from the commentariat.

One thing that commentators of the Left and Right agreed upon after the September 10 presidential debate was that Kamala Harris had resoundingly beaten Donald Trump. Harris had been the aggressor, and Trump had gotten angry, routinely taking the bait and venturing into topics more beneficial to his opponent than to himself. But if Harris won the debate so handily, why haven’t voters clearly moved her way since?

“Some people simply do not belong” at the exclusive Bushwood country club, Ted Knight’s Judge Smails reminded Ty Webb (Chevy Chase) — privileged son of the club’s founder — in the 1980 comedy classic “Caddyshack.” Indeed, they don’t. But who doesn’t belong at Bushwood? The scion who takes a personal interest in everyone down to the lowliest caddy or the ego-driven judge who cheats at every game and wouldn’t recognize a good time if it showed up in loud plaid pants and bought drinks for everyone?

Is London a little bit tame for Nate Silver? The stats expert known for his hugely influential US election model is in town promoting a new book about risk, and can’t help noticing all the ways in which we play it safe on this side of the Atlantic. “You go to the tube in London and they have guard doors, which they don’t have in the subway in New York.” (He’s evidently been riding the Elizabeth line). Or, “You’re in an Uber and you don’t put your seatbelt on in the back seat, and there’s like the very polite British beeping,” he says, with a disarming, high-velocity giggle. Not that he minds too much – you get the impression he’s fond of the city, where he spent a year as a student, and in any case “both countries are making different trade-offs” – the US has less regulation and higher growth, but lower life expectancy: the very definition of live fast, die young.

The latest New York Times/Siena College poll has some cautionary data for Kamala Harris and the KHive. The Times found Harris winning Pennsylvania by 4 points, just outside the margin of error, but deadlocked with Donald Trump nationwide. While Harris beats Trump by 13 points on who best will handle abortion, Trump beats Harris by 13 points on the economy, 12 points on the border, and 8 points on Ukraine.

Among independents, Trump leads by 4 points. Asked if Harris represents change or more of the same, 52 percent of voters said more of the same. By contrast, 59 percent said Trump represents change. He’s the disrupter in a year when, according to RealClearPolitics, 61 percent of voters say the country is on the wrong track.

On Wednesday, the Teamsters Union announced that, for the first time since 1996, they would be withholding an endorsement in the race for president. The news, while not entirely unexpected, still stung for Kamala Harris and her campaign. And it’s the latest sign of the Democratic Party’s struggles to retain union — and working-class — voters.

The Dems are trying to shrug this off but this will hurt.