The race for the White House couldn't be much closer. With less than two months to go until Election Day, the latest New York Times/Siena College polling has Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in a campaign with no clear front-runner. Beyond the national numbers, there are key battleground state polls that suggest the same state of play, with Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump essentially evenly matched. In a race this tight, even a seemingly small development could matter a lot. Swaying a few thousand voters in the right places could make all the difference. In a race with a large portion of voters saying they'll never vote for Mr. Trump and a nearly-as-large portion saying they'll never vote for Ms. Harris, the range of potential movement in the electorate is limited. Love him or hate him, people already know how they feel about Mr. Trump. In the Times/Siena poll, only 9 percent of likely voters say they still need to learn more about him. If you like him today, you're almost certainly choosing him. However, there's a small group I'll call "begrudging Trump voters" — those who dislike him but plan to vote for him anyway. In the Times/Siena poll, about 7 percent of those who said they would vote for Mr. Trump fell into this category; he gets their votes even though they also say they think of him unfavorably. These begrudging Trump voters are the most important audience for Ms. Harris to speak to when the candidates debate on Tuesday night. What does she need to do to sway them? I believe the key will be credibly conveying a sense of confident moderation, as a matter of both ideology and temperament. On temperament, it should be easy to out-moderate Mr. Trump. He has spent years branding himself as a wrecking ball and portraying his unpredictability as a feature, not a bug. Yet while 54 percent of voters think of Mr. Trump as a "risky choice" for president, a remarkably similar 52 percent say the same of Ms. Harris. Much of this comes down to policy. Some 28 percent say they need to learn more about Ms. Harris, and their questions are largely about her policy views. The Biden administration has not been seen by voters as a good model to follow, and Ms. Harris isn't seen as representing a significant departure from the administration's approach — she's part of it, after all, and in the Times/Siena poll, 55 percent said they see her as offering "more of the same." Furthermore, as my newsroom colleagues Jonathan Weisman and Ruth Igielnik write, "47 percent of likely voters viewed Ms. Harris as too liberal, compared with 32 percent who saw Mr. Trump as too conservative." On the other hand, when voters in CNN's recent battleground state polls were asked about the two candidates' agendas, not in terms of left-right but in terms of mainstream-extreme, Ms. Harris held a slight edge, with slim majorities across these states saying her views are mainstream, while for Mr. Trump, voters leaned more toward viewing him as extreme. For the voters who don't much like Mr. Trump but lean toward supporting him on policy grounds alone, Ms. Harris will need to convincingly establish herself as an acceptable alternative, a true turning of the page from Mr. Biden, if she's going to be the candidate for whom they can ultimately get to "yes." Odds and EndsGen Z just wants a paycheck, please: I've studied millennials and Generation Z for some time now, and in the last few years noticed that it was younger people who were most likely to consider their job a part of their identity, saying that what they do for work "says a lot about who I am as a person." This is part of why employers in recent years have found it challenging at times to incorporate young employees who want to bring their politics to the office. But in the last few months, my firm's research has found that this dynamic, particularly among Gen Z members, has changed, and now it is younger Americans who are the least likely to connect jobs to the sense of self, instead opting more for the view that jobs are just what they do to earn money. Swing voters just want wine, please: If you haven't taken a look yet, my Opinion colleagues Patrick Healy's and Adrian Rivera's write-up of our focus group of Pennsylvania moderate voters is worth your time. In particular, I was struck by our respondent, Kay, who described the experience of being a swing voter in vivid terms. When she reported that she wanted to simply abstain from voting but was persuaded to vote for Ms. Harris lest her absence constitute a vote for Mr. Trump, she said: "I'm not going to love it. I'm not going to enjoy it. I'm not going to have fun. There might be wine afterward." Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Opinion Today: Will Harris win over begrudging Trump voters?
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