The battle to win over the remaining undecided voters in the 2024 presidential election looks as though it's coming down to which campaign can successfully define Kamala Harris; look no further than the ads you see on TV in battleground states. This may also explain why polls in battleground states can paint a very different picture of the race from that of national polls. In the past several days, we've had a flurry of national polls with mostly good news for the Harris campaign, only to be followed by Monday's release of New York Times/Siena College polls of three Sun Belt battleground states — Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina — that presented a much more favorable view of the race for Donald Trump. I've been on the road recently in the Phoenix area and took a moment to catch Sunday's game between the Detroit Lions and the Arizona Cardinals on TV. Arizona voters are seeing their airwaves blanketed by political ads, and I was struck by the difference in approach from the Trump and Harris teams. Spots aired by Mr. Trump and his allies were largely negative ads about Ms. Harris, highlighting, in particular, her past position supporting the provision of gender transition surgery to incarcerated people. Meanwhile, ads from the Harris camp varied: While some hit Mr. Trump, particularly on the issue of abortion, more than a few were also purely positive ads, including highlighting her comment, during their debate, about her time as a prosecutor who "never asked a victim or a witness, 'Are you a Republican or a Democrat?'" The ads were representative of the mix of messaging that battleground state viewers have been seeing since on-air spending for the two campaigns ramped up in recent weeks. The Wesleyan Media Project estimated that the Trump team has spent almost zero on ads that only promote him in a positive light, while around a quarter of Harris ads are positive. Why are both campaigns spending so much time talking about Ms. Harris? Because while most voters know how they feel about Mr. Trump, views of her remain very fluid. Take the NBC News poll that came out this past weekend, showing Ms. Harris with a five-point advantage over Mr. Trump among registered voters. It also showed that since July, views on her swung significantly from deep unpopularity (a net 18 percentage points unfavorable) to a net positive (net three points favorable). NBC's Mark Murray noted only three other times a presidential candidate's favorability has swung so significantly in such a short period, including George W. Bush's favorability immediately after Sept. 11. Murray wrote, "By contrast, Trump's net rating in the new poll is essentially unchanged from July — 40 percent positive, 53 percent negative (–13)." Or take, for instance, the Times/Siena poll of Arizona, which showed Mr. Trump with a five-point lead over Ms. Harris among likely voters. In August the same survey showed her with a five-point lead and a much stronger brand image for her than for him. Since then, his favorability in Arizona has only slightly changed, while hers seems to have swung from a net two-point positive image to a net seven-point negative. Views of Mr. Trump aren't moving; views of Ms. Harris still are. That's what I think is driving much of the movement in polls of this race. If you've been a longtime resident of the Cleveland suburbs, you probably got blasted with presidential campaign ads in 2012. Today you probably can't escape ads from the Bernie Moreno-Sherrod Brown Senate race, but you're seeing close to nothing on air from the presidential race. The reason is pretty straightforward: Ohio isn't in play. Outside the battlegrounds, Ms. Harris's image is probably being shaped by media coverage or, at the very least, sources apart from the Trump campaign. But in the states where campaigns are spending big on airtime, voters are hearing a lot about her — positive and negative — in a way that voters in other states might not be. Ms. Harris certainly has a path to victory. She could lose all three Sun Belt states in the Times/Siena poll (in 2020, Joe Biden won Arizona and Georgia; Mr. Trump won North Carolina) and still emerge victorious. Her performance in the Industrial Midwest battlegrounds remains stronger, including her slight edge over Mr. Trump in The Times's polling average of the almost-must-win state of Pennsylvania. But if you're wondering why national polls are strong for Ms. Harris while swing-state polls are less so, consider the ways in which the efforts to define her look different in the places where the campaigns are spending big to intrude on your Sunday football viewing. Odds and EndsWe agree to disagree. It's hard to find many issues about which large numbers of Americans across party lines see eye to eye, but at least an overwhelming majority of us believe that we are, indeed, divided. Per Gallup: "Americans have long thought the nation was divided on the most important values, but never to the degree they do now. And that view is shared about equally among all major subgroups of Americans." Cats and dogs. CBS News's latest national poll asked voters if they found Mr. Trump's unsupported claims of Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs to be credible, and two-thirds did not, including nearly one-third of his voters. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Opinion Today: Which campaign will win the race to define Kamala Harris?
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