Top 6 Reasons to Believe We Will Win (I was wrong)
To get us through the red mirage.
It’s going to be tough to get through the day. My faith in the fundamental goodness of the American people took a bad hit in 2016. I need good concrete reasons to believe we will win. I found at least six of them: two ways the polls may be wrong, and at least four reasons why we will win even if the polls were right.
The “Red Mirage”
To those who may not know, the “red mirage” is the false impression from early election returns that Republicans are winning, only to have the Democratic votes catch up as the early and by mail votes get counted. Trump will use this to accuse Democrats of committing fraud, and we’re prepared for that. Still, any suggestion of an early Trump lead will make me a nervous wreck.
I feel like we’re going to win and win big, but since 2016, I don’t entirely trust my own feelings. I need some good solid reasons to remain confident. Here they are:
Top 6 Reasons
Why the Polls May Be Wrong
My friends keep asking me how it could possibly be so close, why the polls keep showing a tight race. Here’s why I think the polls could be way off. These are in addition to the many, many other ways in which polls these days are simply bad all around.
1. Secret Harris Supporters in MAGAland
If you are someone who may have voted for Trump in the past, or live in an area with strong Trump support, why would you tell someone you don’t know that you’re not going to vote for Trump again? Especially given that his supporters tend to openly threaten anyone who shows the slightest hint of disloyalty? We all know that many, many women will vote for Harris and not tell their own husbands or families. I seriously doubt they would tell a pollster.
2. Pollsters may be over-representing Republicans.
Many pollsters increase or decrease the responses from various demographic groups to compensate for under or oversampling of that group in their poll results. For example, if their responses are 44% men, and they know the population they are sampling is 49% men, they will give the men’s answers more weight.
Many pollsters believe that, while candidate support may vary, party identification tends to remain the same. If a pollster gets fewer self-identified Republicans in their sample than they believe exist in their population, they may adjust their poll by giving the Republican responses more weight.
According to super-pollster Celinda Lake, many people are changing from identifying as Republicans to identifying as Independents, because many of the people who are abandoning Trump are no longer identifying as Republicans. This suggests that pollsters who adjust their polls by party identification may be giving too much weight to the poll responses of the smaller number of people who remain Republicans.
Result? Big undercount of crossover Harris support.
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Why, even if the polls were right, we’re still going to win.
3. Women will outvote men.
Women historically turn out at higher rates than men. Women support Harris by wider margins than men support Trump. That’s good math.
Also, you know, Roe v. Wade. So there is an added level of enthusiasm among people like me who are deeply, deeply furious about being relegated to medical property status, not to mention all the allegations of SA, etc.
The Trump campaign is depending on using hate and resentment-based ads on social media to activate and turn out men, particularly young men. If I had to bet on which group is more likely to follow through on an intended plan, I will take women of all ages over young men, any day of the week. (My apologies to capable young men.)
4. Trump has no ground operation.
Historically, both parties have run what is known as “coordinated campaigns” in all swing states. These are large, well funded and staffed operations that organize people to make calls and knock on doors, identify supporters, and make sure they actually get to the polls. This last bit is called Get Out The Vote or “GOTV operations.”
For many years, Republicans out-performed Democrats in ground operations, especially during the Bush era under very smart operators like Karl Rove. This year, Trump shut down the Republican National Committee’s entire operation. He seems to be relying on outside groups run by people like Elon Musk to do the job. There is ample evidence that this is a s**t-sh*w of epic proportions. I won’t waste space listing the many reasons here.
This situation is unprecedented. There has never been a Presidential election where one side has a huge, well-funded, and well-run ground operation and the other side had virtually nothing.
5. The activists are acing the assignment.
In addition to the radical asymmetry in official ground operations, there is a whole additional thing happening on the Harris side of the equation. YOU.
After the 2016 election, a new political activist community was born. It had a heck of a lot of energy, but not much organization. By 2020, it had grown more organized, developed stable leadership and because of the pandemic, branched out into new areas like postcard outreach. By 2022, a more experienced community had increased its capacity, and we saw the results in the better-than-expected election results.
Now, in 2024, groups have specialized into a wide range of specific areas, acquired funding and access to technology, and have increased their organizational capacity such that they could scale up dramatically for this election season.
In addition to staffing up the coordinated campaign with quality volunteers, we have postcard operations sending upwards of 80 million hand-written postcards, we have static and rolling billboards, we have relational organizing and rural organizing, we have rides to the polls and parties at the polls, and so much more.
I have always believed that personal outreach by volunteers is the most powerful, if not the only effective way of persuading and motivating people. I can’t even begin to imagine the impact of this community’s collective effort.
6. The undecideds will break for Harris.
The Enthusiasm Gap
The undecideds always go to the campaign with momentum, and this time, the momentum is all ours. Trump has maxed out his support. He is focused on turning out his followers, because he knows he’s not getting any new ones.
We have the enthusiasm. Kamala Harris’ candidacy is exciting AF. The last-minute switch lit a fire under us. Coach Tim Walz was an inspired pick. We’re feeling the hope. The national convention and the massive and flawlessly executed rallies. (Kudos to the Harris-Walz advance team.) The endless celebrity endorsements and social media influencers, helping us reach vast new non-traditional audiences. Her dominance at the debate! The inspiring messaging. The national news and entertainment media appearances. SNL!
This campaign is peaking at just the right time. We’re not going to drag our a**es across the finish line. We’re going to blast right through it.
Meanwhile, Trump is starting to bore people, including himself. Let’s talk about:
Self-inflicted Wounds
The Age Problem. Trump organized his entire campaign around attacking Biden for being old. Now he’s the old guy. Whoops.
The Cat-lady Problem. The choice of J.D. Vance was epically bad for so many reasons.
The Crowd-size Problem. Trumps obsession with crowd sizes has come back to bite him in the a**. Making an issue out of something that people can see with their own eyes is one mistake. The recent video of empty seats and people streaming out as Trump drones on about his huge crowd sizes is just embarrassing. Claiming you have bigger audiences than someone who has Beyoncé opening for her is just capital S A D SAD.
The “Garbage” Problem. Then there’s the Madison Square Garden rally. Way to radically offend an entire demographic whose support you desperately need, driving them into the open arms of your opponent. Check out this hilarious ad.
And last but not least, Gen-Z just discovered the Hollywood Access tape, which has apparently gone viral on TikTok and, in fine post-me-too fashion, is as properly appalled as we failed to be in 2016.
Trump didn’t need a Comey Letter. He’s tanking his own campaign.
Feel better? I do.
Now I just have to get through the next day, or couple of days, depending on how long this takes. Maybe the universe will have mercy on me and we’ll knock this sucker out by midnight. I can only hope. I look forward to remembering what it feels like to not be threatened by looming fascism.
When we win this thing, it will be because of you, all of you, your years of commitment and incredibly hard work, and yes, your persistence, and the many voters who saw through the BS, had faith in their fellow human beings and braved obstacles to cast their votes.
See you on the other side.
In solidarity and with all my love,
Antonia
Here are just a few ways to watch the returns without the usual BS.
Under the Desk News
V Spehar is hosting an election night show on YouTube Live, with political content creators like our favorite Jessica Craven!
Tuesday, November 5, 2024 (11/5) beginning at 3:30 pm PT / 6:30 pm ET
TikTok LIVE - https://www.tiktok.com/live/event/7428746767698493483
Or YouTube LIVE here:
Red, Wine and Blue: Election Night Family Meeting
Tuesday, November 5, 7:00PM ET
Looking for a space to calm your nerves, hang with friends, and prepare for the night ahead? Join Red Wine and Blue for our Family Meeting. Let’s support each other and celebrate the amazing work we have done as a team. Grab your favorite beverage and get comfortable — wearing jammies is totally acceptable. Your RWB family is here for you – we are in this together!
By the way, the Selzer polling folks in Iowa did their estimation of the likely voters in a very different way than other pollsters: they made use of the actual distribution in the population, updated by who either actually voted this election (early) and those who said they definitely would be voting. They made no use of modeling of past distributions (over age, race, gender etc), which may be biasing the other polls. So while it's only one poll and you still have to have the usual caveats, I think that the Iowa poll (showing Harris ahead in a supposedly reliably red state) is telling us something real.
Antonia, if you can stand it, some of us followers need to hear from you on Wednesday. So much pain tonight.