This election is within the margin of effort
What we do in the next month will decide the fate of democracy. No pressure.
This morning at midnight, a new set of polls dropped from Marist, the fifth-best pollster in the country, according to 538:
**ARIZONA**
🔴 Trump: 50%
🔵 Harris: 49%
**GEORGIA**
🔴 Trump: 50%
🔵 Harris: 49%
**NORTH CAROLINA**
🔴 Trump: 49%
🔵 Harris: 49%
These numbers are remarkably similar to what Marist found in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania last week. And they’re all in what pollsters call the MOE—margin of error, meaning a slip of 3-4% percentage points either way is possible if not likely. And I hope you understand by now that in the last two elections, Donald Trump outperformed his poll numbers in the Great Lakes significantly, though there is some reason to believe pollsters have fixed their shit, at least in Wisconsin.
But the meaning of these polls is clear. It could go either way.
Verily, I tell you, dear reader, these are the only polls you need to know from now until November 5th. The answer is going to keep being the same. This election is a coin flip in these key five states (or six if you include Michigan, which had Harris +5 last week, according to Marist, and you should) that will decide the presidential election.
In four of these states that will decide if we let a man we know wants to be a dictator lawfully seize power, Democrats have extraordinary opportunities to win or hold power denied by gerrymandering for at least a decade. A trifecta is within striking distance in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Dems can hold their trifecta in Michigan. We can win the Assembly in Wisconsin. And we can break an unconscionable supermajority in the still badly gerrymandered North Carolina.
And all of these extraordinarily consequential races are likely to be decided by the slimmest possible margins. Whole-percentage-point wins would be shocking.
“Please, do yourself a favor and if you can't dismount the pollercoaster entirely, understand exactly who is up for grabs in this election: People paying almost no attention yet and needing to be talked into voting in the first place,” messaging demigod Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote on Twitter.
Most, if not all, of these races will be decided by numbers with five, four, or even three figures. Remember every day that there would not be a Democratic trifecta in Michigan right now if 340 votes swung the other way.
2024 is entirely within what Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democrats, calls “the margin of effort.”
It’s on us.
If you’re in a swing state or district, consider Indivisible’s Neighbor2Neighbor. If you’re not, you can do a lot with your devices. Join a Saturday night text bank in Michigan. You can contact rural voters in Pennsylvania. You can join a WisDems phone bank. You can still send Postcards to Swing States. I got one of those yesterday!
You can also give money and invest in democracy. Hopefully, you know our top suggestions for Downballot for Democracy:
I’ll call out a few that I think matter most right now:
Help fund local, trusted organizers to turn out sporadic voters where they matter most with the Movement Voter Project.
Help us flip Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Fund key Assembly candidates in Wisconsin who are acting as a ground game for the whole state.
Back key state supreme court candidates as a bulwark against authoritarianism.
Help us keep Michigan’s trifecta and break the North Carolina GOP’s supermajority.
I can’t stop thinking of this story I listened to with my four-year-old daughter:
To me, this is the story of this election. The day after we heard it, I asked Winnie what it was about. She said, “We all do our part.”
Related.