It's the vibes, stupid

A possible peak for Harris, instantaneous shifts in polls, social media, and voter registration, what to look for beyond the topline, another Pennsylvania deep dive

No. 326 | August 16, 2024

🇺🇲 2024

The polling averages stand as follows, with further 0.4 point gain for Harris this week (marked in parentheses), on top of a 1.1 point gain last week. 

• Silver Bulletin: Harris +2.4 (H+0.3)

• The 538 average: Harris +2.6 (H+0.6)

• NYT Upshot: Harris +2 (H+1)

• The Hill/DDHQ: Harris +1.8 (H+2.0)

• RCP: Harris +1.0 (H+0.5)

• Cook Political: Harris +0.4 (T+0.2)

• VoteHub: Harris +1.0  (H+0.3)

Average of the Averages: Harris +1.7 (H+0.4)

Nate Silver sees signs of a top for Harris, but particularly with next week’s Democratic convention, we should be wary of calling one. 

The New York Times/Siena poll finds that Democrats across the battlegrounds are just much more satisfied with Harris than they were with Biden.

Civiqs’ daily trendline data, the best out there, shows that the shifting vibes among Democrats took hold almost instantaneously, with many more “hopeful” about the way things are going in the U.S. The gentle movement of the polling averages don’t always day-to-day shifts very well, since there’s a lag with field dates a week or more in the past.

We wanted to see if we could replicate this with our own real-time metrics, and have historically found a surprisingly simple metric to be revealing: posting volume from audiences on the left and right on X. 

Conversation from the right surged after the Trump assassination attempt but since Joe Biden dropped the left has had a sustained lead for the first time in the campaign season, tracking the polling/vibe shift. 

The vibe shift is also showing up in voter registration numbers, a metric Republicans have been making steady gains in lately:

Going beyond the topline, how will we know the race has shifted again? Politico’s Steve Shepard says to look at three measures: 

Kamala Harris’ favorable rating

On June 27: 39 percent

Now: 45 percent

Third-party vote share

July 21: 12.2 points

Now: 7.1 points

Who do you think would better handle the economy?

June: Trump 54 percent, Biden 45 percent

Now: Trump 51 percent, Harris 48 percent

Add this one to the pile: with boiling frustration over inflation and the border, who do Americans think best can bring change? Harris has improved perceptions of the Democrats here, and Trump has his work cut out for him to reclaim the mantle of change. The incomparably insightful Bruce Mehlman lays out the arguments for both.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s data team has done some amazing work to segment the Pennsylvania electorate, similar to my Battleground Briefs series covering all the swing states. (You can see part 1 and part 2 of my Pennsylvania analysis here). 

They follow up with a deeper look at the Philly suburbs, which are in a race for influence with the white rural working class as the state’s decisive voting bloc. 

Whither the Republican digital revolution? Dems lead on all mediums in presidential spending, with the GOP roughly keeping pace only on broadcast TV.

AEI’s Karlyn Bowman gives us the historical data on convention bounces, which have lately been less of a factor — but might be again given the rapid shifts over the last few weeks: 

There are many historical nuggets in the convention bounce surveys. Mitt Romney was the first Republican not to receive a convention bounce. Three Democrats, George McGovern in 1972, John Kerry in 2004, and Joe Biden in 2020 did not get one, either. All four were challenging incumbent presidents. Bill Clinton’s 16-point bounce in 1992 was by far the largest bounce, followed by Jimmy Carter’s ten-point bounce in 1980. Ronald Reagan had an eight-point bounce that year. In our deeply polarized age, recent bounces have not been large. Presidential campaigns start in earnest after the conventions end, so convention polls may simply be a snapshot in time.

🗺️ Data Visualization

An important primer to understand energy politics in your state: the New York Times’ state-by-state breakdown of how energy is made.