The waiting is the hardest part

This election could go either way, and it's agonizing.

Two weeks from election day, here’s where we are:

Gulp.

It beggars belief that this race is competitive at all, never mind that Donald Trump - even after January 6, even after the criminal convictions, even after rambling about legendary golfers’ junk during campaign rallies - has a very slight edge over Kamala Harris according to most of the major polling aggregators and prediction markets.

The flip side: considering the Biden administration’s dismal approval ratings and a populist, anti-incumbent mood which characterized elections all over the democratic world in 2024, the fact that Republicans once again nominated the polarizing Trump is the reason Harris can win this thing.

As of this writing, 538 has it 51-49 in favor of Trump - still a coin flip, and for all intensive purposes indistinguishable from last week, when it was Harris who was just above fifty.

Speaking from experience, though, the psychological impact was tremendous. It certainly feels like Trump has the momentum right now.

But momentum can change quickly. It already has, several times back and forth over this campaign. And some recent, high-quality polling from The Washington Post shows Harris winning in most of the swing states, though it’s within the margin of error everywhere:

With two weeks of campaigning left before the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are running nearly evenly across the seven battleground states among a critical portion of the electorate whose votes are likely to determine who becomes the next president.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll of more than 5,000 registered voters, conducted in the first half of October, finds 47 percent who say they will definitely or probably support Harris, while 47 percent say they will definitely or probably support Trump. Among likely voters, 49 percent support Harris and 48 percent back Trump.

Trump’s support is little changed from the 48 percent he received in a spring survey of six key states using the same methodology, but Harris’s standing is six percentage points higher than the 41-percent support registered for President Joe Biden, who was then a candidate.

We’ll see how this affects 538 and other prediction sites. (It may already have done so: they had it as 53-47 in favor of Trump yesterday.) Many of the polls are partisan junk - mostly by Republicans¹ - but they’re still affecting the models even if they’re given relatively little consideration.

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In any event, many pollsters, whether honest or partisan hacks, will be proven wrong two weeks from today.

Which happens pretty much every election cycle:

This, from a Globe and Mail report on fanatical Trump supporters, is the part that keeps me awake at night: