U.S. Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris gestures as she speaks at a campaign event in Atlanta on July 30.ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP/Getty Images
A commonplace of politics holds that “campaigns matter.” Whatever the polls may portend beforehand, they can change in the course of an election campaign. A strong campaign can win an election; a poor campaign can lose it. Nothing is inevitable.
Journalists like to believe this because it makes for an interesting story. Strategists like to believe it because it makes their work important. Pollsters like to believe it because it means they’ll be commissioned to do more polls. And certainly there have been lots of campaigns that featured large swings in public opinion, presumably in response to what was said and done on the campaign trail.
Then there is the current U.S. presidential campaign. It would be hard to dispute that the Kamala Harris campaign has been one of the most superbly executed in modern times: from her rapid consolidation of support in the party following Joe Biden’s resignation, to the choice of Tim Walz as her vice-presidential candidate, to the pulsating enthusiasm of the convention, to the unprecedented mauling she gave Donald Trump in the debate.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has stumbled through what is surely the worst campaign of modern times, an infinite loop of listless rallies, slurred speeches, racist tirades and threats of violence, punctuated by the disastrous choice of JD Vance as his running mate and the odd court appearance. The rest has been devoted to running away from his party’s position on abortion and disavowing the Project 2025 shadow platform written for him by a clutch of his former advisers.
And through it all the polls have hardly budged. If anything, the race has narrowed slightly. Ms. Harris got a big lift at the start of her campaign, largely on the strength of not being Mr. Biden. But since then? As of Aug. 31, the FiveThirtyEight.com poll aggregator had Ms. Harris ahead by an average of 3.2 points, 47.8 to 44.6. And now? She leads by 2.7 points, 48.6 to 45.9.
Some of this calcifying of public opinion was evident before Mr. Trump. A successful convention used to be good for several points in the polls. George Bush was 17 points behind Michael Dukakis in July of 1988, yet went on to win the election by eight points. Bill Clinton’s 1992 convention is credited with boosting him 16 points in the polls. But more recent elections have produced much smaller bounces, and in the current election the effect has disappeared altogether.
Before the campaign, the question had been: who are the swing voters? Who could possibly be undecided between two candidates as diametrically opposed as Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump? That question has been answered: there are no swing voters. If you were not already put off by Mr. Trump’s increasingly deranged behaviour before the campaign began, nothing was likely to change your mind during it. The election will come down to turnout.
What’s shocking is not that so few Trump voters have proved willing to part with him, but that so many supported him to begin with. If American public opinion has become immovable, it is because it is so polarized – polarized, not between left and right but between truth and falsehood, reality and fantasy.
Every political movement is a coalition. Mr. Trump’s is a coalition of five different groups of voters. There are, first, those who simply haven’t been paying attention, who think the controversy surrounding the candidate is all a matter of some boorish behaviour, a few “mean tweets.”
Second, there are those who see what they want to see in Mr. Trump: the ones who say they like him because “he’ll get tough with Russia” or “he’ll balance the budget.” Third are the cynics, heavily represented among the GOP hierarchy and donor class, who know exactly what he is but don’t care, so long as their party wins or their taxes are cut.
Then there are the last two groups: those who support him not in spite of his manifold vices but because of them. The first are those who like Mr. Trump because he annoys the people they hate – who are so alienated from their fellow Americans, so determined to destroy them, that they are prepared to see all of America’s institutions destroyed with them.
Last, and most disturbing of all, are those who positively thirst for fascism in America: those who are tired of democracy’s compromises and yearn for a Caesar; who are terrified of Blacks and immigrants and desperate for a protector; who have been radicalized by online conspiracy theories and see in Mr. Trump the fulfilment of their prophecy.
To tame the spirits Mr. Trump has unleashed will test American democracy for years to come. In the short term, the task is much simpler: it is to beat Mr. Trump, and survive election day.