How Harris Wins
With a record number of college-educated voters, Harris can overcome the shifting alliances of working class voters. Here's how she gets past The Bannon Line in 2024
Many of us got to know each other during the 2020 Presidential election. As the data guy for The Lincoln Project, I had a unique opportunity to open a window into the closed rooms of political campaigns sharing why and how decisions were made.
One of the key lessons I learned was that I needed to communicate our objectives more clearly, especially to those unfamiliar with the inner workings of a political campaign, let alone an operation as massive as ours, aimed at unseating an incumbent President.
We knew that to win in 2020, we had to sway about 6% of Republican voters - all other things being equal. Of course, in a campaign, nothing ever remains equal; voters change their minds, and decisions are made in real time. However, in this one case, even Steve Bannon agreed that 6% was the threshold number – any GOP defections beyond that and Trump was toast. It wasn’t just me saying that - Steve Bannon agreed, and so I aptly named that number “The Bannon Line”.
One significant challenge we faced was the erosion of Latino support for Biden. It wasn’t just a small dip either - it was a historic shift that threatened to undermine everything. The shift was so large that we were running out of Republicans to peel off. You’ve all heard me discussing that Democrats continue to face difficulties with Latino voters, and it’s looking like Latinos will continue to slide away from Democrats. The key to victory now rests on Harris over performing with college graduates - specifically, college-educated Republican women.
After the 2020 race, and again following the 2022 midterms, I tweeted:
This remains true for the upcoming election. In other words, the answer to this question will determine who the next President of the United States will be.
Why?
Because in this era of The Great Transformation, we are witnessing unprecedented shifts in voter demographics along gender, racial, and educational lines. These two groups personify that shift more than any others. Some call them “swing voters” or “double haters” or whatever other term gets cable news views and clicks…but at the core, they represent the most significant movement in today’s highly polarized electorate.
Democrats are becoming a wealthier, whiter, more female, and college-educated party, while Republicans are increasingly becoming a more working-class, non-white, male party. It’s essentially the difference between Joe Rogan’s audience and Taylor Swift’s audience.
Voters without a college degree make up about 60% of the electorate, but that is changing as more and more young Americans attend and graduate from college. This November, we expect college grads to make up 43% of the electorate, a record high.
The CNN political forecaster, Harry Enten, put it succinctly when he recently outlined why the race was so close: “Kamala Harris seems to be on track to put up the best numbers ever for a Democratic presidential nominee among white voters with a college degree & among all voters with a college degree. Those with a college degree are likely to make up a record high share of the electorate.” Check out the short video clip on X here.
In sum, this is how Harris wins – by increasing the college-educated vote, especially among women.
Other polls are showing the same trend. The New York Times/Siena poll released on October 8th shows Harris in her most commanding position of the race, just 30 days before election day. According to Newsweek “The latest New York Times and Siena College poll, conducted between September 29 and October 6, shows Harris leading Trump by 3 points among likely voters, 47% to Trump’s 44%. The poll surveyed 3,385 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 points.”
It’s important to note that the remnants of the old Republican Party I spent most of my life in had a large number of college graduates in it. That has been shifting, as the diploma divide pushes independents and new college grads into the Democratic Party. In recent elections, the number of GOP defectors has been very small - like very small – but the Bannon Line was marginally surpassed nationally (and by greater margins in battleground states targeted by The Lincoln Project, Thank you very much)
The critical question now facing the Harris campaign is: How can we get more Republican women to defect from the GOP and vote for Harris?
The answer here is clear, and it’s not what you’re hearing on cable news or social media.
The answer is to focus like a laser beam on three issues, all of which are new to Republican voters since the 2020 election and have proven to move a considerable number of Republicans away from Trump.
Those three issues are:
The Big Lie about the stolen election
The January 6th insurrection
The Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs Wade
Photo by little plant on Unsplash
All three of these share something in common - and that commonality is very important: they all occurred after Trump was on the ballot. This is critical new information. Yes, other factors may be at play, including the high-profile defections, but that doesn’t mean they are moving Republican voters.
In fact, injecting political figures into the conversation might dilute the power these messages have. Once you empower a person to be the spokesperson, they become the issue rather than the issue itself.
How do I know this? Well, consider that Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney, most of the members of Congress, staffers, and talking heads now seen as “leaders” in the anti-Trump movement all got involved AFTER one of these things happened. That’s right - most of the voices you hear now were engaged AFTER The Big Lie or January 6th. These are the events that moved them!
Every single one of these people had a “permission structure” to leave Trump world. Every one of them. Read that again: All of these people had a permission structure to leave Trump’s GOP before the election. But here’s the key: there were plenty of anti-Trump Republicans fighting the good fight BEFORE any of these three events took place. Clearly, it wasn’t about a “permission structure” for them.
Why should Republican voters be any different? They’re not!
While I welcome all of these folks into the anti-Trump movement, as a political professional I have to look at the data and evidence objectively. These same people being praised for creating this “permission structure” didn’t even act when they had the chance. They only left Trump’s party when the threat became existential, and that’s where our focus should be.
Trump was losing 17-20% of Republican primary voters for the exact same reasons these leaders left. They are not Nikki Haley voters. They are anti-Trump voters who were against him before she even announced she was running. Nikki Haley had ZERO impact on their vote, and if they weren’t anti-Trump voters to begin with they can move along and assemble with the rest of the MAGA crowd. We don’t need more organizations, speakers, or personalities in ads - we have 30 days, and we know what works. Focus people!
The worst tactical mistake any campaign can make is putting politicians or Washington DC personalities in front of their issues and expecting regular voters to respond to it. That doesn’t make these figures less heroic - it just makes your campaign less effective. The message is far more important than the messenger, and messengers don’t amplify the message…they distract from it.
Focus on what works. Focus on Trump’s extremism. Focus on The Big Lie. Focus on his flaws that drove him to lie about the election (notice the response to Vance's non-answer in the debate? Why stop talking about it?). Highlight the horrific events of January 6th and the day he nearly brought an end to our republic. Focus on the loss of Constitutional rights. Remind these Republicans of the threat Trump poses, not the virtue or valor of those standing up - there will be time for that when victory is secured.
Harris wins by winning over more Republican voters. Harris wins more Republican votes by driving home the message Trump has given us.
Insurrection. Lies. Rights.
That’s how Harris wins.
Thank you, Mike. I hope the dem operatives are listening, and that they can tap into sensible Republicans by focusing on insurrection, lies, and especially RIGHTS. As someone who lives in MAGA land, the topic I believe that is most impactful is healthcare rights, which coincidentally can't be projected as if that is really what the other side is doing. (MAGA does this with the danger to democracy topic- they truly believe that the other side is trying to end democracy, not Trumpism. They also do this with voting rights; gerrymandering and purging voting rosters get flipped around as if the suppression is happening with fake votes and illegal voting. When both sides claim the same thing it confuses people and causes them to disengage, or worse, go MAGA). The topic of healthcare rights is clear, however, and even the online echo chambers people reside in can't twist this loss of healthcare rights by an intrusive government to their favor for a majority of the population.
I hear my steadfast Republican friends simply write-off the insurrection as a bunch of crazies, and the lies don't register at all. If they do, it's just a minor character flaw of Trump to them, not an attempt to co-opt an election or wrest power from the people. But having rights being taken away? That lands. 80 year old women are having PTSD remembering the back alley abortions their friends and family endured before Roe v. Wade, and the most conservative 20 something couples are appalled that they may not get treatment that they need should a pregnancy go awry.
Yes! Let’s lean into individual liberties and preserving the constitution as Harris’ vision for America. I think using this approach to disillusioned Republican voters can win some over. It’s also just reality.