Earlier today, I wrote that the presidential race appears to have shifted slightly this month in terms of national poll results, and perhaps more substantially in the betting markets. The real currents of public opinion that matter don’t take place on a national basis, however; they take place in the states where the election will be won and lost.
As RCP notes, the trends look different in those two contexts. Kamala Harris leads in the aggregate national polls by 1.7 points, which sounds like good news for Democrats until one looks at the historic trends in the last two cycles. On this date in those two elections, Donald Trump trailed in national polling by significant amounts. In 2016 Hillary Clinton led national polling by 6.7 points and still lost the Blue Wall states and the election. In 2020, Joe Biden’s national-polling lead was close to double digits (9.2 points), and he…
