In long election campaigns it is tempting to declare single events the definitive moment. In September, Kamala Harris performed so well in the debate that she surely had secured the presidency. Two weeks ago Joe Rogan had won it for Donald Trump.
The assassination attempt was going to write the election result, four months out. This rally would be the one to turn off Republican voters – honest! The McDonald’s stunt was the tactic supreme. And the hi-viz vest was the fatal blunder.
In reality, public awareness of these events is lower than most political observers think. Voter attention to the news is relatively low. Even Rishi Sunak’s D-Day blunder during the summer’s General Election in the UK was only noticed by a quarter of voters.
So I am going to focus on the numbers, not the so-called “key moments”. Analysts have spent much of the past month explaining that this is a coin-flip election. It is.
It has been. But some new data has thrown a last minute spanner in the works. Ann Selzer of Selzer and Co has an impressive track record for publishing accurate polls in her home state of Iowa.
Iowa went for Trump by an outsized margin in 2016 and 2020. It tends to vote to the right of other midwestern and Rust Belt states. This makes her pre-election poll eye-catching – with Harris at 47 per cent to Trump at 44 per cent.
. If these numbers are right Kamala Harris might not just squeak victory, but cruise it in key areas. Meanwhile, pollsters in the apparently margin.