Looks like four is the magic number

| 3:00 pm EDT September 15, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Kamala Harris was ahead of Donald Trump in the national polling averages by a little under four points heading into the debate. Harris won the debate by a mile and Trump turned in one of the most ineffective performances in history. But polls can be fickle, and a change in the real world doesn’t always translate to a change in the polls.

Sure enough, with ten new national polls now having been conducted and released since the debate, nearly all of them show Kamala Harris with a three, four, or five point lead. In other words, for now at least, she’s ahead nationally by an average of four points. That’s not an appreciable change since before the debate. But so be it.

The upside is that at least Kamala didn’t paradoxically go down in the polls after the debate. It’s also worth noting that with nearly all of the respected polling outlets now pegging the race in such a tight range (three to five points), it suggests pollsters are rather confident that they now have a handle on how to poll this unusual and unprecedented race. Not that this necessarily means anything. The polls were a lot closer to being correct in 2016 than anyone remembers, but the polls have been getting more and more inaccurate ever since.

What do we make of all this? We have to keep working. It’s as simple as that. Kamala Harris is firmly ahead by four points, but none of you should feel comfortable even considering taking a day off unless and until her lead grows to seven or eight points. So let’s sign up for the Kamala Harris campaign and actively work to make her numbers go up, instead of simply hoping they go up.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.