5 Days Out I Would Much Rather Be Us Than Them - New 2024 Election Analysis and Video With Tom Bonier

Welcome New Subscribers!/When We Vote, We Win!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Thursday all. 5 days of hard work left until victory. I ask two things of you today:

  • Make sure you have voted. Voting early helps our campaigns move on to lower propensity voters earlier, helps us grow our vote, and helps us win. Please vote early today if you have not yet. It’s really important.

  • Volunteer for the Harris-Walz campaign. Here’s the official volunteer link. We need to leave it all out there on the playing field in these final 5 days and go win this thing, together!!!!!

Tomorrow we get the final jobs report before Election Day. Here is what I wrote in response to the last jobs report:

254,000 jobs were added in September, blowing past expectations. Revisions from the previous two months added another 72,000 jobs, so 326,000 new jobs in total, and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%. As a nation we should be very proud of how we came through the challenges of the economic carnage Trump left us, as today the American economy is without question the strongest advanced economy in the world, and one of the strongest in my lifetime.

I know we talk a lot about inflation, but I think we continue to overlook the significance of having such a low unemployment rate for so long. Here is how FDR talked about the dangers of unemployment (from his DC based Memorial). It is a sentiment I think about literally every day:

“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”

Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we’ve had the longest period of low unemployment in a peacetime American economy since WWII and the best job market since the 1960s. The stock market is breaking records. GDP growth has been 3% over 3 years. We have the lowest uninsured rate in American history. The rate of formation of new businesses is at an all time high. Wage growth has been running ahead of inflation for some time now. The battle against inflation has been won. Gas prices have been down. The deficit is lower. Crime is down. Drug overdoses are down. Obesity is down. The flows to the border today are lower than at the end of Trump’s Presidency. We passed the first bi-partisan gun safety bill in 30 years. Domestic oil, gas, renewable production are higher than they’ve ever been and we are more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades. The three big Biden-Harris investment bills will be creating jobs and opportunities for American workers for decades to come, while accelerating the energy transition needed to keep the planet from warming.

The Harris campaign is out with a closing video derived from her remarkable speech on Tuesday. Please watch and share widely through your networks.

Here is video of the VP entering her Madison, WI rally last night. Sound up peeps!

You can watch the full Madison rally here and catch all the the closing weekend rallies on the campaign’s YouTube channel. Also be sure to watch Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon’s week out “State Of The Race” video. It is very good.

The campaign’s barnstorming of the battlegrounds continues today:

Vice President Harris will campaign in Nevada and Arizona, with rallies in Reno, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. The Las Vegas and Phoenix rallies are part of the “When We Vote, We Win” concert series and will feature performances by Maná in Las Vegas and Los Tigres del Norte in Phoenix. Jennifer Lopez will also provide remarks at the rally in Las Vegas.

Governor Tim Walz will deliver remarks at a Harris-Walz campaign event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to encourage Pennsylvanians to vote early for Vice President Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot. In the afternoon, the Governor will make a local stop in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Second Gentleman Emhoff will attend the Vice President’s remarks at the “When We Vote, We Win” concert and rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mrs. Walz will hold events in four different media markets in Georgia. She will start the day with a reproductive freedom early voting event in Cobb County, Georgia with Rep. Lucy McBath and President of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson. Mrs. Walz will then hold canvass launch events in Macon, Georgia and Albany, Georgia, before ending the day at a Halloween “Trunk or Treat” event in Valdosta, Georgia, the southernmost media market in the state. She will personally knock on doors after the Macon canvass launch. On drives between stops, Mrs. Walz will be calling undecided voters in Georgia – as well as call into radio stations in Marquette, Michigan, Atlanta, Georgia, and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.                                                                                                                        

My Latest Take On The 2024 Election - I Would Much Rather Be Us Than Them - First up is the video recording of the talk Tom Bonier and I gave to Hopium paid subscribers last night. You can catch it above. We kick off with 25 minutes of an overview of the national political landscape and then answered questions for another 35 minutes or so. As I say in my close at the end of the video, we’ve done a lot of good together over the last 20 months, but our most important work is the work we are going to do in the next five days to turn this close election into a victory for all of us.

Here’s my rough calculation of national polls released since Monday, October 14th broken down by independent polls and those affiliated with right-wing and Republican organizations.

  • Independent Polls Harris +2.4

  • 538 Natl Average Harris +1.4

  • Right-Aligned Polls Trump +0.8 (3.2 pts more Trump than independent polls)

There has been a lot of battleground state polling this week, and much of it has been good for us. Here’s a new set of YouGov polls (2 other independent polls has NC tied this week):

CNN has released 7 battleground state polls in the last 48 hours. Note that CNN’s last national poll had the national popular vote tied:

  • Wisconsin - Harris 51%-46% (+6)

  • Michigan - Harris 48%-43% (+5)

  • Arizona - Harris 48%-47% (+1)

  • North Carolina - Harris 48%-47% (+1)

  • Pennsylvania - Harris 48%-48% (tied)

  • Nevada - Harris 47%-48% (-1)

  • Georgia - Harris 47%-48% (-1)

Here is today’s Washington Post more highly curated battleground state polling averages. While it is close, we win this election.

Where is the election today? I still think we are up by 2-4 points nationally and in a stronger position in the Electoral College - despite what the averages and forecasters say. The VP is far better liked, and likeable, something that matters to late breaking voters. We’ve closed the gap on the economy with Trump - a huge campaign achievement - and the economy itself is doing incredibly well right now. We are closing strong. They are closing ugly, really, really ugly.

A flurry of red wave polls pushed the polling averages down in the past few weeks and tipped them to Trump - illegitimately in my view. Since late August 31 right-affiliated organizations have released close to 100 polls into the averages. In the past few days greater MAGA has begun a new, intense effort to flood the battleground state polls in a desperate attempt to show momentum for Trump at the end. Don’t be fooled. Read more about this illicit effort in this recent New Republic article, my recent post and catch Trump admitting that some of these red wave polls showing him ahead are fraudulent.

Our daily reminder:

Rs would only be working so hard to shape the national narrative to make it look like Trump is winning if they believed he wasn’t. These red wave polls are a sign of desperation, weakness and a campaign that knows it’s losing.

Why is Trump headed to NM and VA today? It’s clearly a weird, desperate stunt. According to public polling neither state is in play. To me it signifies 2 things: 1) they think they are losing and have to try to put more states in play 2) they know when he campaigns in the battlegrounds it hurts them and they are hiding him for at least a day. To be very clear - these events are not what a winning campaign would do right now.

Heading into the final days we should be pleased with the early vote. Using TargetEarly we know that despite a huge new Republican commitment to the early vote we are running even with them compared to 2020 in the battleground states, and are consistently running 6-7 points better in the battlegrounds than the national early vote. This meaningful overperformance of the national early vote in the battlegrounds is similar to what we saw in 2022 and a sign of the strength and superiority of our ground game and our ability to create two elections. We are running ahead of our 2020 early vote results in GA, MI, NE-2 and WI. That’s really good. While Rs got off to a strong start in the sunbelt, we are closing the gap vs. 2020 in AZ, NC, NV - another sign of our organizational strength. Note the improvement in these three states since 10/23/24:

  • Arizona - On 10/23 Rs were outperforming where the early vote was on that day in 2020 by 7.9 percentage points. Today it is just 0.6.

  • Nevada - On 10/23 Rs were outperforming where the early vote was on that day in 2020 by 13.1 percentage points. Today it is just 6.3.

  • North Carolina - On 10/23 Rs were outperforming where the early vote was on that day in 2020 by 11.1 percentage points. Today it is just 4.5.

We’ve seen really meaningful improvement in all three of these states in the past week. In PA it is clear that many Dems have chosen to skip the mail-only system and vote on Election Day. So the early vote data isn’t all that helpful there this year. We are doing fine so far, but PA is going to be an Election Day state, like the old days.

The 2024 early vote in the 7 battleground states. 10/31/24 morning.

Taking a step back, Dems are matching our 2020 results in the battlegrounds despite the current battleground electorate being older, whiter, more male and more rural than at this point in 2020. This is really good. Next, as we expect both the R and unaffiliated vote to be more Democratic this time, it is very likely we are today running ahead of 2020 in the 7 battleground states. This too is really good. Additionally, we are starting to see large Harris leads in polls of those who have voted early, 20+ points. So we are 20+ points in an electorate that is only currently 2 points more Dem today, and 7 points more R than 2020. It’s very encouraging, and suggests there has been a meaningful surge of Republicans and independents voting for Harris in the early vote so far.

This is the national early vote, 10/31/24 morning.

Working Hard And Closing Strong In The Home Stretch - 5 days of voting left everyone - let’s keep working it!

My one big ask today - help us meet at least one of our outstanding fundraising goals below, with a particular nod to helping Harris-Walz and any of the ways we are targeting the battleground states. Tester got some good polling this week, and his opponent is caught now in a very serious scandal, having clearly lied about being wounded in combat. Not giving up there.

I want to thank all of you who are self-reporting on all your remarkable work across the country in our paid subscriber daily chat Postcards, canvassing, back yard phonebank parties - you all are doing the work we need to do to win. 80m postcards are hitting now, and NYC has a postcard shortage because of all of you. Thank you everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some have asked - are donations this late useful? Yes they are. My advice is that whatever you are going to give this year give it no later than Saturday night. Late money goes directly into augmenting paid advertising and reaching more voters. So yes it matters. Let’s keep working it people!

Harris-Walz, Our Presidential Checkmate States and Wisconsin - Learn more about our “checkmate” strategy, and support Ruben Gallego and these three front-line state parties:

Winning The House - Keeping getting very good vibes from our candidates and House Democratic leadership about flipping the House this year. We need to keep working it peeps!

Keeping The Senate Blue - this is a brawl my friends, and we just have to keep working it:

Growing The Hopium Community - We’ve set some goals for the growth of our community so more of us can be doing more and worrying less in the home stretch:

  • Hopium Subscribers - 117,230 this morning, 125,000 goal

  • Paid Subscribers - 13,655 this morning, 14,000 goal

Great work everyone. We are making real progress here. Hopium paid subscribers get access to a weekly live home stretch political briefing and Founding Members will have their own small gathering on Fridays. You can become a paid subscriber and help us hit our goals by clicking on the link below or following this link. The subscription tab includes options for gift and group subscriptions, all 10% off through Election Day!

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

Let’s bring it home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Simon

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