Do polls really matter after Labor Day?

The political pundits like to tell us that general election polls don’t matter until after Labor Day. That, they say, is when the average American actually starts paying attention to what is happening in the election and so you can get a better understanding of which way the electorate is leaning. The only problem with that traditional wisdom is that it’s hard to put much stock into polls when so many are returning drastically different results.

Take the Morning Consult poll that dropped this morning that shows Harris surging with a lead in six of the seven battleground states. The poll has her up eight points in Wisconsin, four in Pennsylvania and Nevada and three in Michigan. To be frank, no one serious believes these numbers. It’s worth recalling that Morning Consult had President Joe Biden polling in his best position of the election cycle after his disastrous debate performance. 

Even the Harris campaign is intoning that the real margins are razor thin and that the election is going to be very close. Political analyst Mark Halperin has reported that the internals of the Harris campaign are not good and that some campaign officials do not believe they will win Pennsylvania. In fact, the RealClearPolitics average has the candidates tied in Pennsylvania, and Morning Consult is the only poll included that shows Harris ahead.

A Michigan state poll by Glengarrif Group has Trump ahead by one point in the battleground state, so effectively tied. But the poll also included RFK Jr., who captured 5 percent of voters. Presumably most of those RFK supporters would move to Trump given the recent endorsement (RFK basically offset the post-DNC bump that might have been enjoyed by Harris-Walz).

Nate Silver, the FiveThirtyEight founder who now runs the Silver Bulletin, has continued to provide sober analysis of the polling landscape. “Setting the convention bounce stuff aside, there just hasn’t been much positive state polling data entering the system for Harris lately,” he wrote last night. The latest edition of the Silver Bulletin has Trump at his highest chance of winning since July 30 and notes “the forecast is still in toss-up range.”

Keep in mind, too, that the first debate between the candidates is next week. Considering the Trump-Vance ticket has done a combined thirty-plus interviews and the Harris-Walz campaign has done one, the debate is actually going to matter quite a bit. A week or so later, some states will start early voting.

So, do the post Labor Day polls matter? It’s hard to say. This is not a usual election cycle in any sense, and it would be a mistake to read too much into any one poll. We can get a better idea of what’s going on by watching the posture of the individual campaigns, who have their own sophisticated data operations. Right now, both are signaling that they know it’s going to be a close one. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

BACK TO SCHOOL Pro-Palestinian protesters took over Columbia University again this week as students returned to campus for the first day of classes. Former university president Minouche Shafik resigned over the summer due to her handling of the disruptive protests. 

CAMPAIGN HACKS Hackers reportedly breached the social media accounts of former president Donald Trump’s daughter Tiffany and daughter-in-law Lara. The hacked accounts posted scam links for a Trump-backed cryptocurrency. About a month ago, the Trump campaign was hacked for its internal communications by an Iran-affiliated group. 

LAKE OF FIRE A Club for Growth-affiliated PAC is injecting $12 million into the Arizona Senate race in a bid to help Kari Lake defeat Ruben Gallego. Win it Back PAC is dumping the money into a massive ad buy to boost Lake in the Phoenix and Tucson markets. Gallego has outspent Lake on the airwaves by more than three to one. 

Biden sounds alarm on Russian interference

The Biden administration is of the opinion that Russia is working to propagandize American voters — again — ahead of the presidential election. Echoes of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election are reverberating today as sources told CNN that Attorney General Merrick Garland is meeting with the Election Threats Task Force and made a public announcement today about how the Justice Department plans to handle the alleged interference.

CNN reports:

It’s expected the US will make a series of moves on Wednesday aimed at addressing the Kremlin’s efforts including the White House publicly condemning the actions and the Justice Department announcing law enforcement action targeting the covert Russian campaign, the sources said.

RT, the Russian state media network, is a major focus of the US announcement, the sources said. US officials see the Russian outlet as a key piece of Kremlin propaganda efforts.

US officials already flagged RT “as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and required it to register as a foreign agent,” the Guardian reminds us. In July, FBI director Christopher Wray told the House Judiciary Committee that Russia and other foreign governments are “still at it. We’ve seen that in election cycle after election cycle.”

The new DoJ indictment claims that RT paid $10 million through shell companies to Tenet Media, an independent media company owned by conservative commentator Lauren Chen and her husband. Tenet houses programs by the likes of Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and other high profile right-wing pundits. It’s not clear if Chen knew the money was coming from the Russian government or if she was an unwitting “victim,” as Pool described himself. 

According to NBC News, RT is accused of “disseminating disinformation using bots and fake online accounts to hurt President Joe Biden, while he was running for re-election, and other Democratic candidates.”

–Teresa Mull

Fani’s follies 

Surely Donald Trump can’t keep getting away with his legal foes being laughably incompetent, right? Not so fast, it turns out. 

Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney whose case against Trump hangs in the balance after reports emerged that she had dated a man she appointed as a special prosecutor, was on scene with her ex — or not-so-ex-lover — after her daughter was arrested for driving with a suspended license last month.

According to body camera footage obtained by the Daily Mail, Willis and Nathan Wade pulled up in a car together. The charges against her daughter were “news to me,” she told the cops who were on the scene. Willis did not attempt to pull rank on the officers, but did ask them to not “put my address down… y’all can have my address, the rest of the world, no.” One of the officers clearly knew who the casually dressed woman who introduced herself as “Fani” was. “For obvious reasons,” he said.

While Willis’s daughter’s arrest doesn’t affect the case her mom brought against the former president, it’s another black eye to Willis, a Democratic Party icon, who brought over forty charges against Trump. It suggests that she and Wade may not have been totally forthcoming about their relationship’s timeline. 

Earlier this year, a judge lambasted Willis for a “tremendous lapse in judgement” for her relationship with Wade. The pair insisted that they had separated, but questions remained about when they started dating — before or after he was appointed to lead the prosecution against Trump — and whether the relationship had actually lapsed. During an ill-advised interview with ABC News, Wade infamously said that his affair was as “American as apple pie,” and he abruptly cut off a CNN interview when he was asked about the timeline of his relationship with Willis. He also turned heads when he showed up at Willis’s primary night victory party.

Wade stepped down from the case after the pair’s time in front of the judge, but a further appeal from the Trump legal team to remove Willis will by heard by the Georgia Court of Appeals in December. Until then, the case against Trump is on pause. 

Wade showing up with Willis to the scene of her daughter’s arrest suggests that love will always find a way — even when, perhaps, it shouldn’t. 

–Cockburn