The first presidential debate, between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, will take place on Wednesday.
Harris’ recent joint interview with her running mate, Tim Walz, was widely mocked because she was “too scared” to speak without someone by her side.
Dems are understandably losing sleep over how Harris will perform in a live setting without a teleprompter.
One thing on their minds is the accuracy of polls.
“I feel pretty good if the polls are right,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) told The New York Times. “What will still keep me up is, are the polls right or off by a couple of points or underestimating Trump’s support?”
Polling guru Nate Silver recently increased the odds of Trump winning the Electoral College to 64% — up from 58% just a few days ago. In an interview with Fox News, Silver said, “The polls have been wrong before. In both of the last two general elections, they underestimated Trump.”
Silver explained that much of polling is now based on modeling because people no longer have landlines on which they can be reached and typically do not accept calls from unknown numbers on their cell phones.
The New York Times reports on the issues concerning Dems ahead of the upcoming debate. Here’s the start of the story:
After weeks of Democratic exuberance surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris’s sudden rise to the presidential nomination, the party’s joyous August has given way to a season of anxiety, as it braces for another nail-biter against former President Donald J. Trump.
Asked what should be keeping Democrats up at night, Patrick Murray, who directs the polling institute at Monmouth University, replied bluntly, “They could lose.”
That outcome seemed nearly a guarantee before President Biden bowed out of his re-election bid late this summer, Mr. Murray said. Now, he added, the election is merely a “close race, as opposed to a race that you’re almost certain to lose.”
A national poll of likely voters by The New York Times and Siena College released on Sunday found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Harris by 48 percent to 47 percent, within the poll’s three-percentage-point margin of error.
On the eve of the only scheduled debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, here’s a look at a few of the main worries emerging for Democrats, based on interviews with pollsters, party strategists and elected officials: