ThatOneKrazyKaptain

(Although given Swift is from PA the art potential is...interesting, to say the least. Which Dragon Ball girl fits her best I gotta do some Biden Blast art)

Harris basically spent the first 15 minutes trying to break Trump's concentration and get him to start lashing out emotionally. Trump had a brief edge there. Once she got him that was it though, by the time other areas he was strong at or points Harris was sidestepping came up it was too late, Trump was thinking with his mashed potatoes instead of his notes.

That's basically the game here. Get Trump to act stupid and let him hang his own noose, side step the controversial positions or stuff Harris changed her mind on. Trump needed to keep his cool and play to his strengths, sidestep his faults(he did this ok for Abortion, but after that it crumbled) and tear into economy issues and Harris's flipflops, which he did initially (I will say he never sounded 'Old' in the way Biden did), but once that was gone he went full Weird and lost it, just could not get back on track.

It's inherently a bit of a gamble especially since Trump's handlers know the game and he'll know it today once he's sobered up and calmed down. If Trump held on long enough Harris could have been in trouble with a couple issues, Harris is inherently on the backfoot due to such a short campaign season and stuff like having to change her policies to appeal nationally can't be done gradually the way Hillary did it. There's an inherent vulnerability there that someone like Niki Haley or another democrat would utterly maul her on. Trump can too, if, if he keeps his cool. He didn't.

Walz doesn't have the same weaknesses either. Neither does JD, but that's just mostly going to come down to competency and normalness so Walz is walking in with an edge. (If it was Vance vs Harris and Trump vs Walz there might be a problem for the democrats, that configuration doesn't play to their strengths)

(Oh and Harris didn't score a buzzword on the level of "I'm Speaking" or "Will you Shut up Man?". Best we've got for a Dean Scream type Anti-Line is Trump's "I have a concept of a plan", which while dumb isn't 'We beat Medicare' tier. Sad media world, but that's an important thing to note)

General consensus seems to be(among what's left of the Swing Voters and Moderates, not a large group) is that Harris won the debate, showed she was professional and a capable speaker, and Trump made a fool of himself in the back half and lied chronically in the middle. Harris won, that was what people hoped for.

However, Harris staggered a bit the first 15 minutes before Trump got knocked off balance, and she didn't really do a great job of explaining policy on her more controversial issues or directly addressing the flip flopping allegations(which could have been a problem, but by that point Trump was ticked off and lashed out emotionally instead of going in for the kill). Trump lost, but both the moderates and the betting markets suggest it's not a Biden June level loss. The market loss was 4 points instead of 5 and it's recovering quicker, there isn't the same mass panic you saw after that on the Republican side, it's more subdued panic.

Trump lost, but not campaign endingly so. Harris won, but she didn't do the best job of explaining her policies which is the number 1 concern of swing voters. But also Trump didn't capitalize on this, Harris knocked him off his game early and got him panicking so he couldn't counter attack on those points when they came up.

I have my doubts Trump is going to go again, Harris knows how to push his buttons and get him off course before any of her more constroversial opinions come up. Trump can't afford another debate loss. Harris probably wants to avoid dealing with Vance directly though, I think he could bite his tongue long enough to go at it more directly. Leave him to Walz, Walz doesn't have that baggage.

Also it'll shore up polling a bit, added to by the Swift thing. Probably a good idea for them as the Honeymoon period(which a lot of people were starting to write off as non-existent or a conservative lie or something to that extent) did seemingly end in the week leading up to the debate. Harris slumped and her lead shrunk.

It's sort of a game of chicken at this point. Harris doesn't have time to fully pace a slow burn campaign or bury policy flips deep enough back in the past to commit to a classical strategy. Trump's been in the campaign longer and COULD sit out and try to let Harris slump. but her higher baseline and long honeymoon made that too risky. Harris won last night, she knocked Trump off his game before he had to chance to sink his teeth into the flipflopping. Does Trump risk a second run and hope he can hold his cool until she exposes herself or dodges a question or does he sit it out again and wait for this polling spike to fade by October? A loss in an October debate could be disasterous as it's right before the election and there's no time for a bump to cool down. A minor Trump win could shore up numbers at the last second. Sitting it out depends on what Harris does, which has been a mixed bag, but it puts the ball fully in her court to go on the offensive.

Harris would absolutely win in a full length campaign season, but there's too little time for that and that creates weak spots. Weak spots Trump can exploit, but due to his own weak spots going for it is risky and last night Harris won that gamble.

I think Trump's gains with young men are the main area patching him back up and are what's mostly being missed when people ask how it's this close.

While it's true that Younger Generations are getting more Liberal, that trend is only extremely strong among women. It's a weak trend among men(and it really only works if you compare them directly to like, Boomers). Gen X males have been gradually shifting right compared to the Obama years, and Gen Z is just broadly more right wing than Millennials. Gender may legitimately be the biggest divider right now, only rivaled by Urban Rural.

Rural Male Gen Z isn't as left as many people would think.

These gains(plus slow steady gains among Latino blocs, mostly Cubans and old blood Tejano types) are making up for the losses in women voters he suffered in 2022 and 2016 and the loss in black voters thanks to Harris.

That and the right wing is slowly clawing back control of portions of the media. In the Aftermath of Gamergate most of the mainstream internet platforms swung hard to the left and several became fully controlled like Twitter and Tumblr. Thanks in part to several tech bro defections and bot operations places like Facebook slipped in 2020 and now Twitter and CNN follow. That was keeping most of the bitter young men who weren't involved in GG or Republicans prior in line with the democrats. With that control erroding they're starting to slip. We've seen this playout in South Korea before, who's gender political divide is among the nastiest worldwide among democracies.

My final prediction is that between the Arlington Cemetery thing, Cornel West not getting on the ballot there, and no smaller third parties getting in, Virginia’ll stay Blue. Though it’ll be closer than many expect.

Had a perfect hat trick happened 3rd party wise (Which came close: no Randall Terry, RFK got off the ballot, weakened late Libertarian presense. They just needed Cornel West. Plus ideally some random smaller third party, like how NJ got the two small Socialist parties on), plus no Arlington debacle costing suburban votes in the North near Richmond, I might have been willing to consider the possibility of it going red, maybe(about as likely as Michigan, still strong lean blue, but in swing state territory), but not now.

In the timeline where Cornel gets on the ballot, some smaller socialist parties do, and the Arlington Cemetary thing goes perfectly(low key visit, no physical altercation, maybe Trump takes one picture with families and posts it instead of a spectacle) I'd be saying Virginia is a swing state this time.

And the cemetery debacle is the big one. Even if Cornel wins his lawsuit and gets on that incident tips the balance too much in a state where everything would need to go perfectly for Trump to win.

My final prediction is that between the Arlington Cemetery thing, Cornel West not getting on the ballot there, and no smaller third parties getting in, Virginia'll stay Blue. Though it'll be closer than many expect.

Had a perfect hat trick happened 3rd party wise (Which came close: no Randall Terry, RFK got off the ballot, weakened late Libertarian presense. They just needed Cornel West. Plus ideally some random smaller third party, like how NJ got the two small Socialist parties on), plus no Arlington debacle costing suburban votes in the North near Richmond, I might have been willing to consider the possibility of it going red, maybe(about as likely as Michigan, still strong lean blue, but in swing state territory), but not now.

You could argue this isn't a super fair metric as the reason the national average pulls left is that the Large Blue States (New York and California) are solidly blue, while the Large Red States (Texas and Florida) are two of the pinkest 'safe red' states alongside Ohio and Iowa. Blue States tend to be more solidly blue than Red States, especially in the big ones. A reverse Canada situation. It also doesn't account for third parties (which hurt Trump more in 2016 than in 2020, costing him 5 or 6 states in 2016 instead of only 2 or so in 2020).

But the former is unlikely to change this election(I don't see Florida or Texas tipping, the former is considered a money sink that's too risky this close to the election to fight for and the latter has very harsh voter laws. Even if they trended left again and Harris got Biden level margins they'd stay red by the skin of their teeth and that's unlikely) and the latter factor is actually trending in Trump's favor this time thanks mostly to a weakened and divided Libertarian base. So keep that in mind.

Biden winning by Hillary level popular vote margins in 2020 loses the election, carrying Michigan with Nevada too close to call. A 50/50 popular vote in 2020 flips the other two swing states and puts Nebraska 2 and Minnesota under high pressure.

There was a slight left ward trend overall even accounting for the national swing of 2.4 votes bluer than 201, but it wasn't by a lot. Adjusting for the nationals and comparing with that, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania trended slightly right, a point and a little over half a point respectively. Nevada swung so right it was bluer in 2016 even without adjusting for anything, with adjusting it's a 2 and a half point swing right. Arizona and Georgia both swung solidly to the left even accounting for Biden doing better, a point and a half and 3 points respectively. Michigan had a very slight left wing turn adjusted too. North Carolina is the closest, trending on parr with the nation, maybe a few hundred votes more Republican.

Effectively, assuming a tighter election with a smaller popular vote gap than 2020, Nevada is almost certainly going red (it's at least as red as Georgia or North Carolina if not redder thanks to Harris bumping the black vote). Georgia's trend is good and so is Harris being bumped to top ticket, but it's been a Republican spending ground for years and downballots don't help Harris as well as they did in 2020. Not to mention a potentially nasty third party line up if the judge gets overturned. North Carolina's tilt is more recent(a lot of the same factors as Georgia, but without the same counterbalance as it wasn't seen as in need of immediate GOP pushing), but it also was redder to start with by a few points and didn't swing as hard last time. In a best case Harris scenario where she gets Biden margins these could go blue(Biden was worse with black voters and better with whites, and here this helps), but it's unlikely as Georgia had it's momentum aggressively fought and NC is too late.

Neither Biden or Harris are doing fantastic with Hispanics, but they aren't really doing any worse than 2020. The state leans blue, but it's a very unstable blue that could be vulnerable to a shock event. (Trump would have won this state in 2020 without third parties). I also think there's a hard cap on how blue it can go, the rural whites are dug in.

Michigan is trending a bit blue, was already blue-est, very safe for Harris even accounting for a bit worse white performance.

Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the wildcards as it comes down heavily to how the VP picks help. Tim Walz is probably helping Wisconsin quite a bit, and MAYBE Pennsylvania to a lesser degree? Wisconsin is trending redder in the broad strokes demographic factors, but it's also got more specific 2024 factors helping it (namely Tim Walz). Pennsylvania gets higher spending and is more diverse, but Walz isn't as helpful there and Vance isn't really hated in rural PA compared to national standards.

Things could absolutely change and there are historic things to note (Nevada specifically tends to overpoll Red, Wisconsin specifically tends to overpoll blue, those two have been unusually bad these last two elections), and a few breakthroughs in the South could end this quickly in Harris's favor if she can court the black vote hard enough. Harris definitely has more fringe 'best case scenario' options thanks to that and if the unlikely ones happen that's that, see 2020 repeat. BUT this is probably going to be a tight one if the safe states and obvious trenders play out as expected(Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada Red, Michigan blue). Probably going to come down to Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

In the specific config I came up with, Pennsylvania since in this configuration that's the winning state for either party and the other two don't matter. Shift something however and that changes. Republicans lose North Carolina? Now they need Pennsylvania AND either Arizona or Wisconsin to win. Lose NC and Maine State 2? Now it has to be Arizona and Wisconsin is a tie(which favors R, but messy).

Or the inverse, Republicans take Arizona alongside the 3 likely ones. They just need 1 rust belt state and they're clean regardless of Maine, Dem's need to sweep the belt. Or, if Maine-2 stayed Red AND Nebraska-Omaha lost it's status and the state went winner take all(which it might), they could tie it up and thus score a House win without a single rust belt state period.

Also any race only decided by one or two electoral votes is vulnerable to faithless electors, the volatile Maine-2 race, and whether or not Nebraska changes it's EC laws to be WTA. If it comes down to a single nailbiter state with margins of a thousand or less expect Brooks Brothers style favoring of whichever party controls the state(slight edge to Republicans if the state is split).

Reminder: Every swing state in 2020 voted Red of the National Average. And it's a pretty sharp jump. (Michigan favored Biden by 2.8%, next state down was Minnesota was 7.11%. Nationally it was 4.5%). Meanwhile in 2016 only two states did, New Hampshire and Minnesota.(Meaning if Trump had flat won the popular vote in 2016 he'd only get those two states, albeit cutting Gary Johnson would move others).

If it's a Hillary level margin or closer, the historic data says Trump wins the electoral college. Biden level margin she wins. Hillary got 2.1% lead, Biden got 4.5% lead. 3% - 3.5% is the tipping point for the bulk states.

I should also note the evidence suggests the specific state margins may shift in order. Arizona is trending left, Nevada is trending right. Wisconsin is holding steady, Michigan is trending left, Pennsylvania slightly left(though recent events have masked it to a degree).

The good news is Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania is a knock out safe win. Tie proof. (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin isn't as if Nebraska switches it's law it would be a tie). Bad news is Wisconsin is the whitest of all the swing states(period), least educated of the 3 rust belt states, and aging. Biden(pre-debate) was doing better here than Harris is.

It also basically guarantees that if Harris doesn't break into the South we're in for a drag out election. Michigan is the bluest swing state, Georgia is the reddest, let's say North Carolina holds., but Arizona trends blue again. At that point Nevada literally does not matter, it's down to capturing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Dems need both, Reps only need PA unless they lose Maine-2 and don't get Nebraska law. This sucks because Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are the two states who haven't tweaked their mail in laws, meaning it'll still be a multi day count.

The other dragout scenario is the Rep's breakthrough Arizona and get Nebraska law, but lose Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Then it's all down to Nevada and if the reds get it it's a tie vote. Nevada infamously counts slowly just in general.

Harris weakens the rust belt(Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) at the exchange of strengthening Arizona and getting a shot of taking the Southern states. We'll see how it pays off

also can't believe i forgot to mention this, but perceived flip flopping

538 did really good in 2016, I think an off 2022 prediction hurt their numbers a bit