A Very Good Week of Polling for VP Harris, New Harris Abortion Ad, Early In Person Voting Starts Friday!

We call and postcard for Laura Gillen (NY-4) tomorrow night at 6pm ET - Join Us!

Happy Wednesday all. Got a few things for you today:

Top Things To Do - As we do more, worry less here at Hopium here are a few, important things you can do in the coming days:

• Check your voter registration status on the DNC’s I Will Vote voter registration app

• Sign up for tomorrow’s Winning The House Thursday postcarding and phonebanking for Laura Gillen (NY-04). Trump is campaigning for her opponent in the district today so we all need to rally for Laura!

• RSVP for the Harris campaign’s livestream with the VP and Oprah Winfrey tomorrow at 8pm ET

• Donate to our the 4 new House candidates we endorsed this week (more below)

We’ve Had A Very Good Week Of Polling - So we’ve had a week of polling now since the debate and it has been very good for us. I did a deep dive on it all yesterday - be sure to review. We had two more encouraging polls this morning:

• A HarrisX national poll that has Harris up 52-48 (+4). Trump led in this poll by 2 points in late July. As this has been one of the most Republican polls of the cycle this one is going to give MAGA world the shakes this morning.

• The Economist/YouGov weekly track went from 45-45 a week ago to 49-45 Harris today, a gain of 4 points. It also found meaningful gains for us in the Congressional Generic:

One of the most remarkable, and encouraging, bits of data in this Economist/YouGov poll and other recent polling is how well liked our ticket is. Both Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are in or close to positive territory on what’s called favorables and unfavorables in most polls. In this age of hyper partisan politics it’s been believed we might never see a President or Presidential candidate in positive territory again on this measure. But here we are, and it is a very big problem for the Trump campaign:

In yesterday’s Hopium post I talked about the importance of us attempting to win the election in October by working very hard right now - not in six weeks - to reach voters as “voting season” begins. The election is going to start becoming proximate to people - they are going to really start checking in - and it is critical that we help our campaigns, through our donations and volunteering, touch these voters now when things are going so well for us.

The other side appears more focused on the early vote then is conventional wisdom right now. Here’s Elon’s pinned tweet:

To give our community more ways to help in the home stretch I’ve expanded our Senate and House targets, something I discuss below. We are also making it possible for you to postcard and phonebank for our 15 Winning The House candidates any time, not just on Thursday nights. Learn about that here. I want to thank everyone who donated to our new, expanded list yesterday. It was one of our biggest fundraising days of the election cycle!

To go deeper into this very encouraging moment in our politics check out these videos and pods:

• Watch my new in-depth presentation on the 2024 election. I just finished recording parts of a new episode of Closing Strong, my new video series with Tara McGowan. Look for it later today and in the morning tomorrow. So much to talk about!

• Tom Bonier and I joined the MeidasTouch team last Thursday for an extended sit down on the election. You can also catch me on a new episode of Reed Galen’s Home Front podcast, and with the Washington Post’s Jen Rubin in a great new discussion fresh out this morning

• The Harris campaign released three new powerful ads flowing out of her strong debate performance. You can watch them here.

Adding this after posting this morning - good new blue wall polls for Harris:

New Harris Ad With Hadley Duvall - Please watch and share this powerful new Harris ad. And remember friends - as bad it is today for the women of America, if Trump and Vance win it is going to get worse, far, far worse.

And this just in:

New Hopium Senate and House Endorsements - Our community has already done so much. In 2023 we helped win elections in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. We kept working hard in 2024, helping win another election in Florida and NY-3, the Suozzi special election. This year we’ve focused our energy on three big projects:

• Electing Harris-Walz by supporting the ticket and working to win our “checkmate” states of Arizona, Nebraska (NE-2, the blue dot) and North Carolina

• Flipping the House by working to elect Democrats in the 11 mostly likely Republican held seats to flip. We’ve both been raising money for these critical races and launched a weekly Thursday night program to postcard and call into the districts.

• Keep the Senate by getting in early and supporting Ruben Gallego, an open seat candidate in a critical battleground state who started late (due to Sinema staying in longer than expected) and needed a boost.

Together we have now raised over $1m each for Harris-Walz, AZ/NE-2/NC and our Winning The House 11. Thank you all. Every time the Hopium community has been called you have answered.

With new our new ticket and our new electoral landscape, after consulting with folks here in DC, and listening to the recommendations of the Hopium community, today I am updating our 2024 targets by adding four more open seat and challenger races to our Winning The House list and the Tester and Sherrod Brown Senate races. I have also set new, ambitious goals for our existing candidates and states.

In the House we are adding the following candidates to our core 11:

• Amish Shah (AZ-01) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Derek Tran (CA-45) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Christina Bohannan (IA-01) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Janelle Stelson (PA-10) - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

There are now three ways to support our 4 new candidates. Our one click donation now spreads your donation to all 15 of our House candidates. I’ve established a new link to give just to these four. And of course you can go to our Winning The House page and give directly to any one of our candidates.

All of our House candidates with the exception of Bohannan and Stelson are the 13 races rated most likely to flip red to blue in the Cook Report. We’ve added Bohannan and Stelson due to my discussions with folks here in DC, and their optimism about what we are seeing emerge in the new post-Kamala landscape for the House. They are stretch but doable races. I know some of you are advocating for other candidates and I will take one more look at everything in early October and make adjustments if warranted.

So here is our new, updated Hopium doing more and worrying less list, with a new fundraising goal date of November 1:

Harris-Walz For President - $1,054,000 raised, $1.5m goal - Donate | Volunteer | Merch | The Harris-Walz YouTube Channel. Hard work is good work!

Our Presidential Checkmate States - Learn more about our “checkmate” strategy, and support Ruben Gallego and these two frontline state parties:

• North Carolina - $467,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NC Dem Chair Anderson Clayton

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $360,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

• Nebraska/Blue Dot - $169,000 raised, $250,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with NE Dem Chair Jane Kleeb

Winning The House - There are three ways to support our 15 Winning The House candidates:

• Support All 15 With A Single Donation - $1,081,000 raised, $1,400,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer, Learn More and Watch Interviews With Our Candidates

• Support The New 4 - $10,090 raised, $100,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer and Learn More

• Donate Directly To A Candidate - You can donate to any of our 15 candidates directly here. Let’s do this people!

Keeping The Senate Blue - By popular demand, we are now supporting Senators Tester and Brown in addition to Ruben Gallego:

• Montana/Jon Tester - $12,161 raised, $100,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Ohio/Sherrod Brown - $7,683 raised, $100,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More

• Arizona/Ruben Gallego - $360,000 raised, $500,000 goal - Donate | Volunteer | Learn More | Be sure to watch my interview with Ruben Gallego

I view the Tester race as a toss up and Sherrod Brown maintains a small lead. I know there is chatter out there that Tester trails. I don’t believe we have enough data to say that. The last two polls in the state were conducted by the Republican Party and Trump’s pollster. The one before that had Tester ahead. The Senate folks here in DC view this race as a toss up as will Hopium until there is data clearly showing something else, either way.

My general take on the Senate right now is that we are favored in every race expected Montana (an amazing achievement), and Montana is likely to stay close and be decided on Election Day. I am keeping an eye on the other possible Senate stretch races but for now I think adding Tester and Brown is an important additional step for our community, and one many of you have been advocating for over the last few months.

Ways you can do even more -

• Commit to Vote on Day 1 and get everyone you know to join you. Early voting begins in MN, SD, VA on September 20th - just 2 days away!

• Promote I Will Vote to help people check their registration status and register to vote. There are many weeks of voter registration left. Let’s keep making more Democrats!

• Watch my With Dems presentation on the greatness and goodness of the Democratic Party and this six minute video on the incredible stakes in this election.

Grow and Strengthen The Hopium Community - Help grow the Hopium community. Use this link to encourage others sign others up. You can gift a subscription to a friend or student here and get group rates too. From now until Election Day a paid annual Hopium subscription is 10% off. If you have changed credit cards or moved you can update your payment information or check your renewal status by following these instructions from Substack. Let’s keep our community growing and the Hopium flowing! Paid subscribers help keep most of our content free for the 113,000 strong in our community down the home stretch!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you! - Simon