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Last week, we called the presidential race "as close as things can get." This week we have to up that to "even closer than close," we suppose. As things stand, there are two states perfectly tied in the polls, which leaves neither candidate with enough to win the Electoral College outright without adding at least one of them.
Two weeks from tomorrow is Election Day. To be followed by Election Night, when we all gather 'round our screens and watch the returns come in and wait for the experts to call each of the states for one candidate or the other. But remember last time? This time might turn out the same -- instead of just one night of stress, we may all have to live through "Election Week," as the final votes are counted.
Since we are less than three weeks away from the election, we are going to diverge from our normal Friday Talking Points format today.
Instead of brief talking points at the end, instead we tried to make the case against electing Donald Trump in the most effective ways we could think up. But when we got done, we realized that this extended rant also served as a good round-up of the week's political news. Sure, there were a few other things going on in politics, but at this point we are so focused on the campaign and the election that anything else is really just a distraction, this close to Election Day.
Election Day is still over two weeks away, so this might seem a little premature, but I thought I'd write today about the key races I will be watching as the night of November 5th unfolds. Because while the main event will be the presidential election, as we saw last time around these things can drag on for not just hours but days, and in the meantime there are plenty of other races worth paying attention to.
Three weeks out from Election Day, the presidential race seems to be a complete tossup. There was some movement in the past week's polling, but it was so tiny and incremental it all should really be chalked up as nothing more than statistical noise. The battleground races are so close that they're all teetering ever so slightly between the two candidates, but must really be seen as too close to call, or tied.
To put it another way: this is as close as things can get, folks. There's not a lot you can say in any sort of definitive way other than "the race looks tied." Which is going to make for a shorter-than-average Electoral Math column today.
We are entering the homestretch of the presidential election, and who is going to win is anybody's guess. Polling is no real help since it shows many battleground states either perfectly tied or within a point or two. Both candidates are out there campaigning hard, but neither has a clear edge over the other one. It's going to go right down to the wire, that's about the only thing which seems certain at this point.
Looking at the presidential polling for the past two weeks, I am reminded of a famous line from Western movies (that has now become a total cliché): "It's quiet out there... too quiet."
Normally, by now I would have started writing one of these columns every week, but I decided not to do so last week because... well... nothing much was really happening in the polls. This week is largely the same, but I'm going to start posting these weekly anyway since we're only four weeks away from Election Day.
Things have barely budged in the past two weeks. In these charts, the lines are almost completely flat. There have been a few (very few) minor wiggles, but for the most part the important trendlines haven't budged in either direction. If the polls turn out to be right, this could wind up being yet another extremely close presidential election, hinging on a few tens of thousands of votes in a few key states.
The Supreme Court began its new year today. This could wind up being the most consequential term for the high court since they decided Bush v. Gore. Because unless Donald Trump scores a clear win in November -- winning so many of the battleground states that challenging the result would be pointless -- we are likely to see the election results wind up before the Supreme Court in one way or another. Which will give them the power, once again, of determining who will be president for the next four years.
There were two major events in the presidential race this week, but we are left wondering if either one of them is going to make much of a difference one way or the other. Perhaps we're getting a bit jaded by it all....
The first was the one-and-only vice-presidential debate, held on CBS this Tuesday. Republican JD Vance faced off with Democrat Tim Walz, and it was watched by 43 million people as it aired. The second was the public release of a document prosecutor Jack Smith had previously filed with the court in Donald Trump's January 6th case. It laid out Smith's basic case, in great detail (165 pages' worth).
In a normal campaign season, either one of these would have been impactful, perhaps shifting the polling in significant ways. But in our hunkered-down tribalistic politics, the needle barely quivered. Maybe we're all getting a bit jaded?
There were two other rather large events that could affect politics this week: the massive damage Hurricane Helene did -- especially in the Appalachian Mountain region -- and an East Coast dockworkers' strike. The first shouldn't really have been political, and the second was over almost before anyone was aware it was happening.
The makeup of next year's incoming Senate is anybody's guess, at this point. Republicans could wind up winning control, Democrats could wind up maintaining their control, and it all might come down to who wins the White House (since the vice president would break a 50-50 tie for control). From the way things look, there are a handful of states which will determine who winds up with a majority.