Bad News for Harris as the Polls Tighten Up

Bad News for Harris as the Polls Tighten Up

Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey
Friday, October 25, 2024

Happy Friday! The stars tonight are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas. Vice President Kamala Harris will deliver a speech in Houston focused on reproductive rights with Beyoncé by her side. Former President Donald Trump was scheduled to sit down in Austin, Texas, for an interview with Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. But the Lone Star State hasn’t suddenly become a presidential battleground; Trump is expected to win Texas’s 40 electoral votes by a comfortable margin. Instead, both candidates are hoping their Texas events reach voters far and wide.

Here's what else is happening while we wait for 8:08 ET.

8 Key Takeaways From the Latest Presidential Election Polls

New polls from The New York Times, CNN and CNBC confirm what we already knew about the presidential election contest: It’s a dead heat nationally heading into the final days of the race and continues to be incredibly close in the seven key swing states.

The race has gotten even tighter. The CNN poll, conducted October 20 to 23, finds Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tied at 47% apiece among likely voters, compared to a negligible 48-47 edge for Harris last month. Just 2% of likely voters surveyed now say they haven’t yet chosen a candidate, though another 9% say that they could change their minds.

The New York Times/Siena College poll, also conducted October 20 to 23, similarly finds the candidates deadlocked at 48% apiece among likely voters. "The result, coming less than two weeks before Election Day, and as millions of Americans have already voted, is not encouraging for Ms. Harris," the Times’s Adam Nagourney and Ruth Igielnik write.

The CNBC survey shows Trump up by two points nationally, 48% to 46%, within the 3.1% margin of error. That’s similar to the results of a Wall Street Journal poll published Wednesday, which saw Trump leading Harris 47% to 45%.

Increasingly negative views of Harris: The Trump campaign (and Harris herself, perhaps) have succeeded in driving down her favorability ratings and increasing negative opinions of her. In last month’s CNN survey, 45% of registered voters said they had a favorable opinion of Harris, while 49% indicated an unfavorable opinion of her, for a net favorability rating of -4 percentage points. The latest CNN poll finds 41% with a favorable view and 52% on the negative side, for a net rating of -11 points. Trump’s net favorability rating, meanwhile, has gone from -12 points in September to -13 points this month in the CNN poll. The Times finds him just two points underwater, 50-48 — the same as Harris.

That means the Trump campaign strategy may be working: At The Bulwark, Steve Schale, a veteran Democratic political strategist, tells Marc A. Caputo that Trump’s playbook for this race looks a lot like the one his campaign advisor Susie Wiles and pollster Tony Fabrizio used to help Republican Rick Scott get elected as Florida’s governor in 2010.

"I’ve been up against the Susie playbook and learned how it works the hard way. It’s pretty simple: drive up the negatives on the opponent to [the] point that the choice comes down to one thing that her candidate has an advantage on—in this case, the economy," Schale said. "I suspect that’s what’s going on here with their ad strategy—driving Harris negatives down into the barrel with Trump—and that’s a real thing my side has to guard against."

Voters also have a particularly dour view of the country right now. Just 28% of voters in the Times poll say the country is on the right track and just 32% in the CNN survey say things are going very well or fairly well today, down from 38% as of January. Only 16% in the CNN survey say their finances have improved over the last year, while 49% say they are worse off now.

But Harris may have narrowed Trumps’ edge on the economy. In the Times poll, Trump holds a six-point edge on the question of which candidate would do a better job on the economy, down from 13 points last month. But the CNN polls still finds Trump with a 13-point advantage on the issue among likely voters, up from 11 points last month.

The CNBC poll found that Trump has a 5-point advantage nationally on "the needs of the middle class" — but Harris had a 3-point edge on the issue in battleground states, suggesting her messaging has worked in those spots.

And she may have some upside remaining. "About 15 percent of voters described themselves as not fully decided, and Ms. Harris is leading with that group, 42 percent to 32 percent," the Times reports. "Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump had a minute edge with undecided or persuadable voters, 36 percent to 35 percent."

Trump might win the popular vote. No Republican has won the popular vote since 2004, when George W. Bush secured a second term, but Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst at The New York Times, writes that "there’s more than enough" in the polling "to make it easy to imagine a Trump popular vote victory."

But Harris could win the Electoral College even if Trump pulls off that rare Republican feat, as Cohn notes that "all the pieces for a Harris victory in the Midwest remain in place, even as her national lead keeps fading."

About 35 million people have already voted. The race has been incredibly close (yes, and extremely loud) for a while now, and with so many votes already cast, it may be harder for the candidates to generate any dramatic shift that would change the outcome.

"Harris has likely banked more votes than Trump so far, given Democrats’ higher propensity to vote early or by mail," CNN notes, citing its new poll, which found that a fifth of likely voters say they have already cast their ballots and those voters favor Harris, 61% to 36%. Those in the CNN poll who say they haven’t yet voted favor Trump, 50% to 44%.

Medicaid Enrollment Drops 7.5%, Expected to Fall Further

The Medicaid rolls declined by 7.5% in fiscal year 2024, the nonpartisan policy research group KFF reported this week in its annual survey of state Medicaid directors. The decline is expected to continue in 2025, with the number of participants projected to fall by another 4.4%.

The number of people receiving healthcare through Medicaid reached record highs during the Covid-19 pandemic, due in large part to an easing of the requirements for participation and a pause on routine disenrollments. Medicaid enrollment grew by 32% during the three-year emergency period, rising from 71.3 million to 94.1 million, according to data collected by KFF. But Congress required states to return to pre-Covid standards for participation starting in 2023, initiating a state-by-state process of disenrollment that has removed more than 10 million people from Medicaid coverage.

Although total spending has not fallen, spending growth has slowed as enrollment has declined. Total Medicaid spending rose 5.5% in 2024, down from a growth rate of 9.1% the year before. The growth rate is expected to slow further to 3.9% in 2025.

Looking ahead, KFF said that states are facing considerable uncertainty in determining what the new normal is for Medicaid spending and enrollment. "Adding to this uncertainty are the loss of pandemic-related enhanced federal funding, shifts in state fiscal conditions, and the upcoming election, all [of] which can have implications for Medicaid spending trends," the report said.

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Biden Rolls Out Student Loan Debt Relief Plan for Stressed Borrowers

The Biden administration introduced a new plan Friday that would provide student loan forgiveness for as many as 8 million people who are experiencing financial hardships.

The proposal describes two new pathways to debt forgiveness. On one path, which would not require an application, the Secretary of Education could provide one-time student loan debt relief to borrowers who are determined to have an 80% chance of defaulting within two years. The other option would require an application to the program and would involve officials assessing the financial condition of a borrower, using 17 factors such as total debt level and income to determine if debt forgiveness is warranted.

"For far too long, our broken student loan system has made it too hard for borrowers experiencing heartbreaking and financially devastating hardships to access relief, and it’s not right," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. "The rules proposed by the Biden-Harris Administration today would provide hope to millions of struggling Americans whose challenges may make them eligible for student debt relief."

The Education Department said that rules for the proposed program would be published in the coming weeks.

Number of the Day: $102 Million

The owner of the cargo ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, destroying the structure and causing the deaths of six maintenance workers, will pay nearly $102 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the federal government.

"The Justice Department announced today that Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Private Limited, the Singaporean corporations that owned and operated the Motor Vessel DALI, have agreed to pay $101,980,000 to resolve a civil claim brought by the United States for costs borne in responding to the catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge," the agency said in a statement Thursday.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton said the agreement "fully compensates the United States for the costs it incurred in responding to this disaster." The settlement does not address the construction of a new bridge, however — a project that is projected to cost more than $1 billion.

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