Election Update #9: No, Trump is Not Leading Now

The Phenomenon of the Trump-Hating/Trump-Voter

Hi All,

A quick question for those who read these. Are you a poll-confirmer or a poll-panicker? There seem to be two kinds of people who look at polls. The first are the poll confirmers—those who hunt through all the polls to find one or two that confirm their hopes and make them feel better, and then they latch onto on those. The poll-panickers are the opposite. They fixate on specific poll results that terrify them and play on their worst fears. They are the ones that love to say that the sky is falling. This was, btw, a brilliant week for poll-confirmers and poll-deniers. In particular when it comes to Harris supporters, it was the first week in which the the poll-panickers came out in real force.

Poll-Panickers Should Have a Drink and Relax

No, Trump is Not Leading Now

The update last week seemed to get some people upset—the idea that not much is happening in the campaign. The need to try and provide some excitement and drama into the reporting of the race tends to lead to reporting of supposed swings/changes for which there is really little evidence. Btw, its to dissimilar to the reporting of the Russo-Ukraine War. However the story this week was that not much really changed as well.

Earlier I felt it necessary to stress that things were not changing positively for Harris (no convention bounce for instance) to damp down some of the over-optimism that I thought was creeping into the election by Harris supporters. People got a little too excited about things such as Trump’s terrible performance in the Trump-Harris debate, his obvious mental decline, etc into thinking that it would translate into greater support for Harris. However, what has been apparent is that none of these events made much of a difference at all. The “swings” we were seeing in the polls were so small as to not really qualify as swings at all.