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1. Selzer and Times/Sienna
Let’s unpack the big polls from the weekend and what they mean for our outcome distribution. And let’s do it rundown style.
(1) The polls make sense. For weeks I’ve been writing about how the quantitative polling did not match up with qualitative reality of the race. The shorthand expression I’ve used is that if you came down from Mars and watched this race since Harris got in and never saw any head-to-head poll numbers, you’d assume she was running away with it. It didn’t make sense that she was stuck at +2 nationally.
Both Selzer and Times/Sienna show large movement to Harris. They rationalize the qualitative and quantitative.
(2) There should be a late break to Harris if she’s the change candidate. One of my theses over the last 100 days has been that Harris is the change candidate. And if she was the change candidate, then you would expect to see a late break to her.
This late break validates her position as the change agent. Which means that you should expect that the break which Selzer and the NYT saw is continuing in the final 72 hours since they stopped collecting data.
(3) Harris is going to win the popular vote. This hasn’t been in doubt since the Democratic convention.
But if the Selzer/Times/Sienna crosstabs are even directionally correct,
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