Kamala Harris isn’t just on track to lose the election; she could lose the popular vote too.
Two self-reinforcing voter trends are conspiring against Harris. One is that Republican mail-in ballots could further strengthen the Trump surge that has closed the last two presidential elections, allowing him to outperform his polling. The other is that, as it becomes increasingly clear Harris can’t win, her untested supporters don’t turn out to vote.
Together, these trends could make reality what seemed unthinkable just weeks ago.
No Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote since 2004. The reason is that Democratic candidates can rack up huge vote margins in California and New York. In each of the last two elections, these margins have been worth about 4.4 percent of the popular vote.
Harris will probably benefit from big margins in both states again — after all, she is from California. But if current polling is accurate, even these may be insufficient to offset what is happening elsewhere. Yet bad as things look now, if two potential trends combine, things could get much worse for Harris.
The first trend is the impact of Republicans’ early voting — especially mail-in voting. In 2020, Trump made a major mistake by discouraging mail-in ballots. With Democrats using the mail and Republicans doing so far less, Republicans undoubtedly harnessed less of their own voters’ support than they could have otherwise.
Leaving votes on the table was undoubtedly costly. Trump lost Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin (whose 43 electoral votes would have flipped the election) by less than 77,000 votes combined.
This election, Republicans have embraced mail-in voting and, as a result, it is already one of the biggest “deltas” between 2024 and 2020. Already faring significantly better in the polls than he did at the same point in 2020 and 2016, Trump will assuredly reap more of that higher support as a result. Higher support and realizing a higher percentage of it would amount to a substantial two-fer for Trump in the end.
The second trend is the possibility that as Harris’s lead in the polls vanishes, so, also, do a significant number of her unproven supporters.
Long gone is Harris’s early lead. According to RealClearPolitics’ average of national polling, she just fell behind Trump on Oct. 26 for the first time since early August. The RealClearPolitics’ average of battleground state polling also has her at a slight disadvantage, she trails in five of the seven individual swing states that will decide the presidency.
On Thursday, Trump’s lead in both the national and battleground averages was slightly higher. If all the polling averages translated into voting outcomes, she would lose the electoral college vote, 241-297. She entered this weekend needing to make up ground.
This polling pressure has put the Harris campaign into a position where it must take risks it had sought to avoid. Most notable was the decision to give in and have her do far more interviews than she had been doing early on. Even being charitable, these have not gone well. Harris has lived down to her long history of past poor media performances. Another has been her increasingly strident language — comparing Trump with Hitler and calling him a fascist.
These and other questionable actions evince a sense of panic in the Harris camp. They also give an impression of increasingly possible defeat. That sense is not limited to just outsiders; it inevitably begins to seep in internally too. A real threat now exists that Harris supporters, sensing impending defeat, could fail to turn out.
While this can potentially happen to any candidate, Harris is particularly susceptible. She has only run nationally once, and then not in her own right. Aside from being Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020, Harris has never won a single vote outside of California. As a result, her supporters’ loyalty is uncertain compared to that of Trump, who has run nationally five times —in primaries and general elections in both 2016 and 2020 and in primaries again this year.
The upshot is that Harris is not simply seeing a lower level of support than Biden and Clinton this late in their respective campaigns, but that she could wind up reaping a lower percentage of that lower level of support, too.
Several trends are appearing late in this race, all of them currently running against Harris. Should they combine, it could unleash a perfect storm for Democrats.
Harris may not simply lose in 2024. She could potentially lose the popular vote as well and take many Democrats down with her.
J.T. Young is the author of the upcoming book, “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left” and has over three decades’ of experience working in Congress, Department of Treasury, and the White House Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
