Trump is getting wilder and wilder, but the White House race remains a toss-up

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats have bet the destiny of the White House on the premise that once voters remember the chaos and divisiveness of Donald Trump’s presidency, he’d suffer an election-defining slump.

Wild weeks of outlandish rhetoric by the ex-president have revived memories of the cacophony of his four White House years and shattered perceptions that he’s running a more disciplined campaign than in 2020 or 2016. But the nature of the race — a toss-up contest in swing states — has not budged.

Trump has peddled baseless rumors that immigrants in Ohio are eating pets. He’s warned that Jewish voters will be to blame if he loses in November. He’s refused to openly condemn a protege in the North Carolina gubernatorial contest who described himself as “black Nazi” on a porn site, as CNN’s KFile reported last week. Trump also reacted to a second apparent assassination attempt by implying that Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats are inviting such attacks when they highlight his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss and say he’s a danger to democracy.

Despite everything, the ex-president remains locked in what CNN senior political data reporter Harry Enten described Sunday as the closest presidential race since Democrat John F. Kennedy’s narrow win over Vice President Richard Nixon.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose political network will be critical to Harris’ hopes in the must-win state for Democrats, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, “I can just tell you this: This election is going to be close. We have always known that.” She added: “In a state like Michigan or Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, we know that this is going to be a close race.”

The tight nature of the contest was highlighted by the candidates’ remarks and strategies over a weekend of tense campaign exchanges.

Harris suggested that the ex-president was “looking for an excuse” to avoid debating her after she accepted CNN’s invitation to a second contest on October 23. The former president, meanwhile, tried to reduce the wide gender gap with women that threatens his election with a frantic Truth Social post in all caps. Trump vowed: “I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful and great again!”

On Sunday, in a rare moment of introspection, Trump told Sharyl Attkisson on “Full Measure” that he doesn’t seem himself running again in 2028 if he loses in November. “I think … that will be it. I don’t see that at all,” he said.

No clear leader

But despite the rising heat on the campaign trail, the race remains where it has been for weeks: deadlocked.

National polls have ticked up slightly for Harris since her debate with Trump earlier this month, although there is still no clear leader. The vice president is at 50% compared with Trump’s 47% in the latest CNN Poll of Polls average. The survey incorporates five polls conducted entirely after the debate on September 10. One poll added to the average on Sunday, from NBC News, showed Harris at 49% support to Trump’s 44% — the ex-president’s lowest level of support in a poll that meets CNN’s standards since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate in July.

While Harris’ improving trajectory is a reason for optimism for her supporters, the presidency will be decided in the Electoral College. That puts great importance on results in a handful of states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, where polling averages put the contest within a few points either way. As few as several hundred thousand voters could have the power to choose between the hugely contrasting paths that a Trump or Harris victory would mean for the United States and the rest of the world.

In New York Times/Siena College polls released on Monday, Trump leads among likely voters in Arizona, 48% to 43%, in a matchup including third-party candidates who will appear on the ballot there. There is no clear leader in Georgia or North Carolina, the polls found.

So why does the contest remain so tantalizingly close?

Trump’s comeback attempt is, after all, a stunning story considering he left office in disgrace after inciting an attack by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and after refusing to accept he lost the election. Trump, who was twice impeached, is a convicted felon who is facing more grave criminal charges. It’s inconceivable that any other politician could have survived such a torrent of scandal and still be within reach of the Oval Office again.

A core principle of the Biden campaign before the president’s departure from the race was that once voters saw the unfiltered bombast of Trump, their memories of his tumultuous term would return and he’d lose. But Biden’s failure at the CNN debate in June, when his advanced age was painfully obvious, obliterated the comparison. Harris, who turned the race on its head when she replaced Biden, has tried to highlight the contrast between her pragmatism and Trump’s extremism. At last month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, she set up a narrative that Trump was an “unserious man” who poses an “extremely serious” threat. But the best spin on the Harris campaign with just over six weeks to go is that the vice president has returned a race that Democrats looked very likely to lose back into the neck-and-neck fight that it always seemed likely to be.

Trump is an extraordinarily resilient politician — but can he get over the line?

Any understanding of what is ahead must start with an acknowledgment of the extraordinary resilience of Trump as a political figure. He’s transformed the Republican Party in his image and built an unassailable grip on the GOP’s base as the nominee in a third straight election.

And for all of the recriminations of his first term, polls show many voters think their economic security — reflected in lower prices for rent, cars and groceries — was better with Trump in office, at least until the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

But such sentiments may still not get Trump over the line. His support in the CNN Poll of Polls (47%) underscores a liability that has dogged him his entire time in presidential politics — his inability to get a majority of Americans to support him.

With this in mind, it’s worth asking whether an alternative GOP candidate — who doesn’t behave in a way that alienates crucial swing-state, moderate and suburban voters and disaffected Republicans — might be doing better in a head-to-head race with Harris. The party had the chance to move on but overwhelmingly rejected candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during the primary race earlier this year.

Harris, meanwhile, is an eleventh-hour substitution for a president seeking reelection who voters long ago concluded was not fit for a second term. The task the vice president inherited is also daunting — to save the party from likely defeat in November while serving as what many Democrats hope is a savior for democracy itself. While she has billed herself as a new generational force of change, Harris is still a member of an unpopular administration amid a deeply unfavorable political environment.

The NBC poll offers an explanation for this contradictory dynamic. The top concern expressed by voters — at 28% — was inflation and the cost of living. That number was 23% in April. The second top concern of voters was threats to democracy (19%). While this issue appears to favor Democrats, it could also reflect growing traction among conservatives for Trump’s claims that Democrats — with what he falsely claims is a weaponized justice system — threaten democratic freedoms. The third most important issue to voters in the NBC poll was immigration and the border (14%) — another area where polls show persistent Harris vulnerability. Abortion, one of her top issues, was seen the same way by only 6% of voters.

The New York Times/Siena polls also suggest that anxiety over the economy may be overpowering other concerns about Trump. Across Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona, Trump has double-digit advantages among likely voters over who is more trusted to handle the economy. The former president is more broadly seen as having policies that have “helped people like you” than Harris.

The argument that could decide the election

Voters’ concerns over the economy suggest that either candidate could carve out an edge in the final weeks. Trump has been unveiling new economic proposals — sometimes seemingly off the cuff — including his proposal not to tax tips and to repeal a provision in his own administration’s tax plan related to state and local taxes.

Harris is promising to help people afford housing, child care and health care, and has been trying to persuade voters that she really understands the pain of high prices at grocery stores, which remain elevated despite the slowing in the rate of inflation that saw the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week.

The vice president will this week try to counter criticism that she’s not being sufficiently specific about her plans as wavering swing-state voters mull whether they can trust her to make their lives better. “I’m going to be giving a speech this week … to outline my vision for the economy,” she told reporters Sunday. “I’ve named it an opportunity economy, which really, in short form, is about what we can do more to invest in the aspirations, the ambitions, the dreams of the American people while addressing the challenges that they face — whether it be the high price of groceries or the difficulty in being able to acquire home ownership.”

Harris’ tactics underscore the reality of an election cycle in which voter frustrations seem to favor the Republican candidate, but the contest remains competitive largely because of Trump’s tendency to alienate available voters, despite his stunning loyalty among supporters.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top backers, summed up the state of the race in a conversation with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. He said: “Sixty-five percent of the people in your poll say the country’s on the wrong track. Who’s best able to solve the crime problem? Trump by 6. Who’s best on the economy? Trump by 9. Inflation, Trump by 8. Border, Trump by 21.”

“So, what do I get out of this poll? On the things that matter most to the American people, Trump is winning decisively. In a head-to-head, he is not.”

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