Why I'm getting optimistic about this election

It's hard to over-state how much the Des Moines Register's Selzer poll shook things up by showing Harris/Walz leading in Iowa. None of us know if their numbers are on point. But here's what we DO know:

That's one of the ways to look at the Selzer poll. In early Sept, they had Trump up +4. By the end of Oct, they have Harris up +3. Since their methods didn't change, they captured something important. (2/2)

— Nancy LeTourneau 🇺🇦 (@Smartypants60) November 3, 2024

Whether or not Harris wins Iowa isn't as important as the fact that the same pollster found a 7 point swing in her favor in state that has been deeply red. WOW!

But let's forget about the polls for a minute. While Selzer gave us all a moment of hope, a consensus has been building over the last week or so that pollsters and aggregators really don't have a clue about what's going on. Here are the data points that make me optimistic.

Enthusiasm

According to Gallup, Democrats are seeing a surge in enthusiasm.

Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely driving the surge in enthusiasm nationally. In March, 55% of Democrats and Democratic leaners said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting; now, 78% are. Republicans and Republican leaners, who held a slight edge in enthusiasm in March, now trail Democrats by a significant margin, with their current 64% enthusiasm score up slightly from 59% in the spring.

That difference is palpable when you compare what is happening at Harris/Walz rallies to Trump's. 

Meanwhile here was Kamala’s rally, held at the exact coliseum. Both levels plus the floor full of eager supporters! https://t.co/ZJmaeIaIvg pic.twitter.com/w55RKfka1A

— V 🤎 (@veexoh_) November 3, 2024

Fundraising 

It's true that Trump has a lock on money from the oligarchs. The problem is that they only get one vote - like the rest of us. When it comes to small donors, they've abandoned his ship.

Donald Trump’s contributions from small-dollar donors have plummeted since his last bid for the White House...Fewer than a third of the Republican’s campaign contributions have come from donors who gave less than $200 — down from nearly half of all donations in his 2020 race...The total collected from small donors has also declined, according to the analysis. Trump raised $98 million from such contributors through June, a 40% drop compared to the $165 million they contributed during a corresponding period in his previous presidential race.

Here's how that compares to Harris/Walz:

Ground game

When it comes to GOTV, Trumpers are nowhere to be found.

Some battleground state Republicans say they’re worried they see little evidence of Donald Trump’s ground game — and fear it could cost him the election in an exceedingly close race.

In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running.

In comparison, here's at taste of what the Democratic ground game looks like:

The Harris ground game strategy is at once obvious and sophisticated. Harris has more than 2,500 staff and 358 field offices across the battleground states, including more than 475 paid staffers in Pennsylvania. Since July, more than 110,000 people have volunteered with the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, and those volunteers have knocked on nearly 2 million doors in October alone. One third of the Pennsylvania field offices are in rural counties that Trump carried by double digits in 2020, and where Harris’ goal is to hold down Trump’s margins. At the same time, the campaign is attempting to lock down the base in urban areas through long-term relational organizing targeted to hard-to-reach voters. The campaign realizes that Democrats have long taken Black and Latino votes for granted. Now, the campaign is treating them as persuasion targets as much as mobilization targets. And it believes the path to victory goes through the suburbs, where they hope college-educated voters and women could propel the VP to victory.

Harris/Walz voters are "fired up and ready to go!" Their enthusiasm is demonstrated by their willingness to donate both money and time to the campaign. So while I'm certainly not ready to celebrate yet, I'm at least starting to unclench my fists and breath a bit.