Philip Green
5 min readSep 5, 2024

Interim Report

What’s happening–or not–with the Polls

Two Sundays ago I posted on my blog “Reflections on Kamala,” which received a very enthusiastic response. However on Wednesday, there appeared on 538, (or was it in the Times?) the following from Nate Silver, generally considered the poll guru among gurus, and a political liberal at heart: And he said what I’ve been worrying about for the past few days.

“Although we wouldn’t advise worrying too much about the difference between a 52/48 race one way versus a 48/52 race the other way — it’s not a big difference — this wasn’t a good day for Kamala Harris in our model, as Donald Trump is the slight favorite for the first time since August 3”…And he added, that there is “one big reason” for Trump being the favorite: Pennsylvania.

So what’s the real story here–because that isn’t unequivocally it. But first, the data: in 2020 Joe Biden got 79 electoral votes from six battleground states: PA, Mich, GA, Wisc, Ariz,and Nev. Deduct that from his total of 306, and we’re left with 227, which is the number of votes the Dems can count on going in; and leaving 232 over for Trump: a significant difference, since neither side is likely to lose a non-battleground state; they’re all more or less locked in ideological stone.

Here’s the relevant electoral vote possibility broken down and reading from left to right as above which incorporates a slight down-grading since 2020 in Pennsy and Michigan: 19,15, 16, 10, 11, 6. To keep the election out of the House, where the GOP would surely win it (see Amendment 12), Harris must get from 227 to 270, or 43 EV. (There are single-member districts in the capitols of Nebraska and Maine, but they usually off-set each other.)

Now if f she loses PA, then MICH and WISC together only get her up to 252 with their 25 EVs; no single one of the other three battleground states will take her there: only Georgia + one of the remaining two will do it. Four states in other words, all of them at the moment favoring Trump, though that seems to change every day with the latest closing.

Trump, on the other hand, can get from 232 to 269 (all he needs to get a tie and thus win by getting it into the Supreme Court) without Pennsylvania or Michigan, e.g. Arizona, and Georgia and Wisconsin: three states only. Ouch. Double ouch.

So: that’s it. It’s not as bad as Silver makes it out to be. Assuming he makes his bet by running one thousand iterations of all the polls through a computer, he’s moved from Harris winning 53% of those to winning only 48%: a 5% switch roughly.

But: I don’t know what kind of computer set-up (or roulette wheel) he uses to spin the odds, but he didn’t get it from 538.com. Because their data, going back to the beginning of August, shows a series of results in Pennsylvania that are +1, -1, or “Even.” There might be one + 2 in there, but what it all adds up to, if you divide the total by the number of polls is a +- of .2, and, per 538, favoring slightly favoring Harris, not Trump.

These numbers are all evanescent. So well within the statistical margin of error that neither of them is favored for anything. About all we know right now is that I won’t win Pennyslvania, and my friend Marv Surkin won’t (hyia, Marv), and so won’t just about everybody else–including either Harris or trump.

So we haven’t known anything yet, except a wee bit of careful optimism, which might or might not last. So forget Nate Silver and his computer or roulette wheel: look at the damn polls he’s looking at. Avoid headlines that start with a bang but end with a .1 whimper. Remember everyone’s got their own axe to grind; in Bob Dylan’s words: “Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” And if things look bad, then as Hemingway put it, you’ll feel it in your gut. Maybe we all will, maybe not, but in any event: not yet.

Addendum

One final thought: in last Sunday’s Times, Nick Kristov wrote a piece that is sentimentalist even by his standards–or mine, which admittedly is kind of loose .His argument was that the Left should stop being so lofty (A la Hillary’s “deplorables”remark) about the white working class supporters (the less-educated white working class) of Trump: Instead, to neither demean them or disrespect them, either because it loses votes or is morally wrong (it can’t be both). They, or many of them, are American history’s losers, and deserve understanding in the onrushing of neoliberal capitalism. Failing that: well, you cannot expect to get the votes of people you treat as “we” are prone to do.

OK. No. This is a version of the intellectual stance I once described as “I have a philosophy, you have an ideology.” “Or, you have beliefs, I’m a snob.” As a Left liberal, or a liberal Leftist, I don’t claim to be above ideology, except in two important respects: I don’t lie, and I try to steer clear of all viewpoints that are based on lying about the nature of the social order; and entail deliberately hurting other people within it. And that’s a belief. And a straightforward repudiation of MAGA.

I’ll put it on the table: do you really have to be “educated” to tell the truth about what has happened, visibly, before your eyes? To not attack women, or parents, or young people, whose behavior you disapprove of; and to feel alienated from and behave threateningly toward, those who do? To suppress your true feelings when pregnant women are uniquely subjected to violence: migrant people looking for work or asylum are traduced–or also subject to violence. Black people are being deprived of the right to vote. All this is in the name of an ideology that justifies depriving some people of some rights while others wield power over them–or threaten them with violence.

Just blink my eyes, and empathize with those following the path, I’ve just described, Sure, until they start using their pain as an excuse for causing or justified pain to others. And for lying about the elections that define the U.S. as, if not a full democracy, at least not an autarchy. Can’t do it, Nicholas. And we haven’t even mentioned democracy: neither of us. When will you write about that?