Kamala Harris is closing in on 50%

Kamala Harris has hit 50% in one national poll and three others show her closing in on the critical threshold.

Kamala Harris’ extraordinary debate performance has given her a shot in the arm just as the momentum she’s been riding on started to plateau. Her extraordinary rise, started by the Democratic bases elation at replacing Biden, continued through a successful convention but showed signs of slowing after the post-convention bounce.

Not anymore.

Check out these four post-debate polls released on September 12

Reuters poll:

• Harris 47%

• Trump 42%

The Morning Consult:

• Harris 50%

• Trump 45%

Rasmussen:

• Trump 49%

• Harris 47% (most of this poll was conducted pre debate and this firm has a strong GOP bias. Only including it because it also came out today)

The Times/YouGov:

• Harris 49%

• Trump 45%

Harris appears to have further consolidated Democratic leaning constituencies - young and Black voters - that have pushed her campaign past an important threshold.

Harris has hit 50% in The Morning Consult poll. That’s a big deal. That’s a critical measure every campaign manager looks at to determine the viability of the race.

Why?

Because math.

If you can hold that position the best possible place your opposition can get to is break even.

From 50% it’s much easier to look at the remaining demographics your opponent needs to match you and work to prevent that from happening. It’s the equivalent of fighting from the high ground on the battlefield - yes, there’s very much a lot of fight left but the direction of the race is moving Harris to the high ground.

More importantly when a candidate hits 50% in a head-to-head match up the opponent needs ALL of the remaining undecideds to catch them and break even.

No bueno Trump.

Those who have been following me for some time know that I counsel you to look at polls the way campaigns do - not media pundits. Look at polls ‘directionally’, in other words look for movement and which way public opinion is heading. These polls show public opinion moving towards Harris.

Some caveats:

1. These are national polls and not those of the battleground states. We all know this but invariably someone’s gonna point this out so…fine, there’s the qualifier.

2. The Morning Consult poll is not the highest rated. It’s give a 2-star rating out of 3 by 538 ranking of pollsters BUT it’s ranked higher than both Fabrizio and Lee (Trumps pollsters) and Binder Research (Biden’s pollsters) of course it may also be an outlier but again…look for movement. Direction.

3. Morning Consult is the first poll to show Harris at 50 so gotta take it with a grain of salt. Lots more polling to come out in the coming days. We’ll have to see if she can hit 50 anywhere else. Oh, but she did hit 49% in two other polls released today (the Republican propaganda poll Rasmussen has her at 47%). Gonna be a lot of ketchup on the walls at Mar-A-Lago.

4. One other point of clarification. There are no ‘leaners’ in this poll - or any of those released today. Some pollsters use a method I really don’t like. They essentially pressure ‘undecided’ voters to make a decision. The caller from the poll asks an interviewee if they say they don’t know who they’re voting for “If you had to choose a candidate…” and push interviewees to answer. While there’s some value to this it’s preferable to let respondents tell you what they feel. That’s my opinion. How can you tell if a poll is pushing ‘leaners’? The poll responses will add up to 100%

So in the coming days polling will be important to see how much upside movement Harris will get from the debate. Hitting 50 is a big deal - don’t let anyone tell you differently. This is the first polling outfit to show it.

It’s a sign of both momentum and future upside.