Election Update #7: Trump seems to Have Forgotten that you Can Motivate the Other Side

A Last Minute Ukraine Pivot Shows Some Panic

Hi All,

A rather remarkable week in the campaign, in that Trump seemed to go out of his way to offend different voting groups (intentionally or not). It somewhat fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Can he completely rewrite the political playbook and win by motivating his base and at the same time doing things that should motivate Harris supporters to turn out as well.

What Must Trump’s Internal Polling Must Be Showing?

All campaigns have their own in-house polling operations, and tbh, they are the ones that the campaigns really care about. Public polls are to many campaigns tools to help the election narrative. One of the biggest things that they do is allow different campaigns to grab the headlines on momentum. “New Poll shows Trump is gaining on Harris”—or—“New Poll Shows Harris is in the lead in Pennsylvania”—that kind of thing. Its one of the reasons Im instantly distrustful of partisan supported polls—I just dont know how robust the methodology is underlining them, and how artfully the questions have been constructed.

However I do think we can say that Trump’s internal polls—the ones he really cares about—are showing that his campaign, and himself in particular, has a real problem with women voters. This is partly down to the abortion question, but almost certainly covers more than that. Why do I say that? Well, some of his strangest, most anguished and preposterous public outbursts have been to try and convince American women voters to back him. And in doing this, he has actually been acting impulsively in a way that might very well hurt his campaign.

There was this Truth Social tweet a month ago—which came out of nowhere one day.