Opinion - Leland Vittert’s War Notes: 50.5264%
NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight's 7 p.m. ET show. Subscribe to War Notes here.
State of play:
Decision Desk HQ average: Kamala Harris +2.8, as of around noon ET today. Click here to see the latest numbers.
Polymarket betting odds : 59.5 to 40.3 in favor of Trump.
Quick programming note: Set your DVRs for the Nevada Senate debate tomorrow night at 10 p.m. ET on NewsNation – the issue of boys in girls college sports is now top of mind in Nevada and could change the Senate race.
Nevada's Democratic governor just supported the University of Nevada at Reno women's volleyball players for refusing to play a team with a biological male player over safety concerns.
We will be in Nevada tomorrow for the debate, covering how the smallest swing state (by electoral votes) could decide the election.
"War Notes" tomorrow will depend on the reliability of Wi-Fi on both American and United Airlines — I'd give it a 50.5264% chance!
Today's headline comes from the new Decision Desk HQ model that gives Harris a 50.5264% chance of winning the election.
Quote of the day: "Don't read too much into the four digits after the decimal point," writes our data guru, Scott Tranter.
Most significant fact: She's down 4% in likelihood of winning since the last DDHQ model — momentum matters, and Trump has it.
It's That Close (Or Is It?)
Ahead of the election, there are a few things to watch:
The polls: They show Trump even or slightly ahead in battlegrounds. The RealClearPolling no toss-up map has him winning 302 to 236.
The betting markets: They have Trump winning.
The models: Both DDHQ and Nate Silver's models show it a toss-up.
Both the betting markets and models swing radically on the polls — if the polls are wrong, everything is flawed, as they were in 2016 and 2020.
Gallup shows Republicans with a plus-7 advantage in the generic ballot — something we haven't seen in four decades.
Republicans right now are gleeful over Trump's poll numbers vs. 2016 and 2020 . Unquestionably, he is doing substantially better at this time than he was against Hillary Clinton or President Biden.
Frank Luntz highlights NPR saying Trump is "in the driver's seat."
In other words: If the polls were as wrong as they were and wrong in the same way as in 2016 and 2020, Trump would win in a landslide.
But pollsters have changed their polls since 2016 and 2020 to be better.
: Dr. Liberty Vittert, professor of statistics at Washington University in St. Louis and senior data scientist at Decision Desk HQ, joins us with why they are so confident the polls are right this time around.
Wild card: The ground game.
"Pennsylvania is such a mess," quotes Politico .
What I am hearing: Trump's ground game made up of Elon Musk's super PAC, plus God knows what else, might not be much better.
Let's Fast-Forward
Harris' interview with Fox News airs after "War Notes" publishes at 4:05 p.m. ET. We'll discuss it on "On Balance" tonight after it airs.
She needed to change the narrative — did she? That's all that matters.
If she has reset, how does she capitalize on it?
If she hasn't reset, what does she do next?
Abandonment of joy — FACISM!
She's going back to what didn't work for Biden: Calling Trump a threat to democracy.
: Kevin Carroll, the star of a new Harris ad about Trump.
As we told you a few days ago, winning is easy — if you will pay for it.
Democrats want to underpay for the presidency.
There's absolutely zero desire to learn why half the country supports the candidate they find so repugnant.
And absolutely zero desire to compromise on issues that are important to moderate Republicans.
Republicans understand the Left's orthodoxy — it's a desire to create a more equitable, socialist, post-Marxist state. They just don't like it.
The progressive Left just calls Trump supporters fascists and has no understanding of what motivates them.
Even the "Never Trump" Republicans seem oblivious to the disgust from working-class Americans at traditional Republicans.
Batya Ungar-Sargon explains it all in her piece , "The gender divide is a class divide."
She writes, "The Harris campaign exposed a contradiction in the heart of the Democratic base of college-educated women. They want their men to dress like hunters but vote like adjunct professors, LARPing in camo while voting for the Party that shipped their jobs to China."
The other side: Trump's answer at a Fox News "women's town hall" about child care costs reads like a Harris answer.
From the Trump War Room X account :
Q: "What kind of changes can you provide parents to afford children in today's world?"
PRESIDENT TRUMP: "I gave you the largest tax cuts in the history of our country ... we're going to readjust things so that it's fair to everybody, because it's really not fair to everybody."
The Trump campaign thought this answer was good?!
What on Earth does this mean? Are the rich now going to pay their fair share? Are working parents going to pay more?
Remember all the conservatives trolling Bernie Sanders, Harris and Biden over the idea of "fair share"? What was Trump thinking?!
During the town hall, he also called himself the "father of IVF."
America's choice:
A philandering real estate executive who calls himself the father of IVF or ...
A woman who says Blacks voting for her opponent are victims of misinformation and Russian stooges.
Trolling Vance — Where Is Walz?
Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn, went full troll on Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, over comments about Minneapolis.
OK ... defending the honor of your city, but why isn't Walz defending himself?!
Fair questions:
What about Walz wanting to end the Electoral College?
Or this Politico piece headlined , "Democrats clinging to power in Tim Walz's Minnesota."
Writer Paul Demko continues, "With Gov. Tim Walz on the Democratic presidential ticket, the state's policies are drawing national scrutiny."
Or CATO's "F" rating of Walz on fiscal policy. In an impressive feat, Walz took a massive budget surplus in Minnesota and turned it into a deficit.
Must watch: From Erick Erikson's Substack , take a look at the CNN segment highlighting Harris and Walz's flip-flop on fossil fuels.
While Walz appears unable to do interviews, Rep. Phillips is willing to show up — good for him. We've always admired Phillips, and he'll join us tonight.
Backward on Race
We keep going backward on race in America.
There is the Gallup polling suggesting people perceive race relations as worse now than in the early 2000s.
A presidential candidate now promises (illegal) forgiveness of loans based on race.
And an adviser to Pennsylvania's governor is a Black nationalist who supports segregated schools .
A former president who demands men of one race vote for a candidate based on race.
Click here for Don Lemon's take.
: Why are we going backward on race in America? We'll talk to Nina Turner, who asked on CNN , "Why are our black men being belittled?"
Headline Incoming: Conservatives Pounce on Crime Stats
Despite what you heard from David Muir at the debate when he fact-checked Trump, crime is up, according to (quietly) revised FBI numbers.
Erick Erickson has a good write-up about the numbers.
: Just like The New York Times headlined that conservatives seized or pounced on Kamala Harris plagiarizing parts of her first book, tomorrow's headlines will read that conservatives pounced on new crime statistics.
Click here for more on the FBI acknowledging what all of America already knew.
Since the Democratic Party is so concerned about mis- and disinformation on social media, will Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg issue a correction to this post on X last month? Completely out of touch: Watch this CNN segment about crime in America for a lesson on how much of a bubble most journalists live in. Tune into "On Balance with Leland Vittert" weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here .
The views expressed in this are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.
