End Times
Plus: Unexpected shrooming, Trump makes french fries, and more...
State of the race: "Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump are essentially tied—with neither candidate ahead by even a single point—in The New York Times's polling average of five critical battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina," reports Times analyst Nate Cohn. "In North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan, neither candidate even 'leads' by more than two-tenths of a percentage point. Neither can realistically win the presidency without winning at least one of these states."
One interesting feature of the race right now—and we are two weeks out from election day—is the number of uncommitted/undecided voters, and the fact that this group skews younger. Older voters have largely made up their minds, but "43 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds are uncommitted, a larger share than any other age group," reports The Washington Post, noting too that a higher portion of non-white voters have yet to make up their minds when compared with white voters.
"Trump is strongest in Arizona, where he holds an edge of six percentage points among registered voters," reports the Post. "That shrinks to three points among likely voters. His four-point edge in North Carolina among registered voters ticks down to three points among likely voters. That echoes a Post poll conducted last month but contrasts with a Quinnipiac poll suggesting Harris may have a slight edge. Those advantages are within the margin of error."
"The data continues to be pretty negative for Kamala Harris," reported Nate Silver yesterday afternoon, who concurs that the race is super tight but offers additional color. "There are now three recent high-quality national polls that show Donald Trump leading—a difficult circumstance for Harris, given Democrats' Electoral College disadvantage—and her edge in our national polling average is down to 1.7 points. National polls don't influence the model that much, and the race remains basically a toss-up, but it's not hard to think of reasons that Trump could win."
In fact, a bunch of factors may be working against Harris, notes Silver. "Incumbent parties worldwide are doing very poorly, and the historical incumbency advantage has diminished to the point where it may now be an incumbency handicap instead given perpetually negative perceptions about the direction of the country," for example. At least some responsibility for inflation—which reached highs in June 2022, and has climbed downward since but remains stubborn in some sectors—can credibly be assigned to the outgoing administration, with which Harris is associated.
Making matters worse for Harris, the Democrats are increasingly becoming the party of the more highly educated and racial minority voters have started to shift away from them. Their attacks on Trump have been uneven, and their defenses of President Joe Biden have foreclosed much possibility of using Trump's age and mental fitness against him. "Trump presents Democrats with a Three Stooges Syndrome problem: a range of plausible attacks so vast that they tend to cancel one another out," Silver adds.
The final call is "dependent on a number of states, like Pennsylvania, that we believe are going to be reporting in a pattern similar to the way they have reported in the past," Fox News' election forecaster, Arnon Mishkin, told Politico, who predicts that the Saturday after election day is when the final race call will be made—same as when the Pennsylvania call was made last time.
Scenes from New York: The Apprentice, a newly released Donald Trump biopic, focuses "on Mr. Trump's initial days in Manhattan real estate as he untethers himself from an oppressive father to succumb instead to the savage ventriloquy of Roy Cohn," writes The New York Times' Ginia Bellafante, who adds that the film hones in on the many tax breaks Trump lobbied for and on his sparring with the officials who sometimes denied him.
QUICK HITS
- Speaking of: Donald Trump made some fries at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania this past weekend.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2024
Related analysis, from Quillette's Claire Lehmann.
- "'I intend to do a lot of work to improve government efficiency,' [Elon] Musk told a crowd of about 1,200 at an event Friday night in suburban Philadelphia," recounts The Wall Street Journal. "On Sunday near Pittsburgh, he said it should be an easy job, if not for entrenched interests pushing back. 'They'll be grumpy about it, but the American people will be very happy that their tax dollars are being spent in a much more sensible way,' he said."
- "Israel widened its bombing campaign in Lebanon over the weekend, targeting financial institutions it says help fund Hezbollah's military operations," reports Bloomberg. "Israel targeted branches of Al Qard Al Hassan Association—a bank-like institution [though technically a charity]—in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley in the east and Tyre and Nabatieh in the south. The Israeli military launched at least 11 strikes on Sunday evening in Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, according to Lebanese media."
- All about the "middle-class women who are tripping balls," courtesy of Kat Rosenfield.
- True:
It only takes a couple of people to break a norm and all of a sudden life is less good for everyone else, forever. https://t.co/uup1eUZ9LY
— Iain Murray (@ismurray) October 20, 2024
- "If you complain about these trends, the responses you'll get typically fall into two camps. One sympathizes with you, but offers only a resigned 'How are you just now noticing?' The other dismisses your concerns as a symptom of aging. There's plenty of great music, movies, literature, and fashion, and if you don't like it, that's your inability to keep up. Both responses miss something important, though. They both assume that what we know as 'culture' is the only type of culture that could ever exist," writes Katherine Dee on cultural-product slop and sameness. "There's a third possible response, and that's that there's a new culture all around us. We just don't register it as 'culture.'"
- A thread you didn't know you needed, on Zakkyo buildings and this one fascinating feature of Japanese urbanism:
2/Japanese cities feel different than big, dense cities elsewhere -- NYC, London, and Paris, but also other Asian cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore.
There are many reasons for this, but today I'll focus on one: Zakkyo buildings. pic.twitter.com/4oemwrXdaC
— Noah Smith ???????????????????????????? (@Noahpinion) October 20, 2024
