Kamala Harris needs to beat the fundamentals to win

Analysis by Harry Enten, CNN

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump should be running away with this election given how few people think the country is heading in the right direction.

Instead, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck in the polls. Now, it’s not clear whether Harris can continue to win over so many voters who think we’re heading in the wrong direction. What is clear is that Harris would need to defy certain fundamentals if she wants to win next month, and recent history suggests she has a shot.

When I speak of fundamentals, I mean questions beyond the horse race, like asking Americans whether they think the country is heading in the right direction or is on the wrong track.

A minority of Americans have historically said that the country is heading in the right direction, but it’s usually not as bad as the current figures. Only about 28% of Americans believe the country is on the right track these days, according to the latest NBC News poll. That’s well below where things were when Joe Biden took office in 2021, when that percentage was well north of 40%.

Indeed, 28% is not where a president’s party wants to be a month before the election — whether the incumbent is running or not. Since 1980, in elections won by the incumbent’s party, an average of 42% of Americans have said that the country was on the right track.

But in elections that the president’s party has lost over the same time period, just 25%, on average, have felt that the country was heading in the right direction. That looks a lot like the 28% who say so today.

A closer examination of the stats reveals that there isn’t a single instance of the party in power winning another term when fewer than 39% said the country was heading in the right direction.

We see something similarly troubling for Harris on another fundamental — presidential approval ratings. A president’s approval rating is obviously less predictive when the incumbent is not running for another term. Still, it carries some modicum of importance.

The incumbent’s party has never won when the president had higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings.

Biden’s disapproval rating right now is about 10 points above his approval rating.

These are just two indicators of public opinion that are bad for Harris’ chances in November.

Gallup listed 10 different metrics it looks at heading into an election, ranging from party identification to satisfaction with the economy to presidential approval. Eight of those 10 were deemed to be good for Trump. The other two were neutral. None of the 10 hinted in the direction of a Harris victory.

A fundamental difference

Despite these fundamentals pointing to Trump, Harris may have an ace in the hole: the 2022 midterm elections.

Think back to two years ago. Biden’s approval rating was basically as bad as it is now. A mere 26% of Americans, in my average of polls, said we were on the right track as a nation. That 26% was the lowest figure going into a midterm in the previous 40 years.

In short, there were few, if any, metrics in 2022 that were better for the Democratic Party than they are now.

Yet, Democrats defied the midterm trends, keeping their House losses to single digits, expanding their Senate majority and picking up governor’s seats.

Arguably the two biggest factors that allowed Democrats to do so well are still present today: Trump and abortion.

Trump still sports a net unfavorable rating with American voters. If he wins the presidency next month, he would be the least popular candidate to do so, except for Trump himself in 2016. Harris is more popular than the former president in almost all surveys.

Abortion continues to rank near the top of all issues, two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and measures to expand abortion access are on the ballot in a number of states this fall. Remember, every presidential election in the past 50 years took place when Roe was the law of the land. It’s tough to say what might happen with so many voters upset about the loss of federal protections for abortion.

The bottom line is that something that was true for the past 44 years of presidential elections now conflicts with what 2022 taught us, and that’s what makes this election so interesting.

The past is often prologue, as they say, but sometimes history is not meant to be repeated.

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