Americana

1. On the ground in Waukesha
2. RFK Jr.’s Catholic play
3. Nevada early vote
4. The Nate Silver effect
5. Reader mailbag

Also: What the ads look like on an abortion amendment in a red state.

Thirteen years ago, Wisconsin Democrats thought that the backlash to Scott Walker’s anti-union legislation had won them a state Supreme Court seat. Their candidate surged from behind and held a narrow lead over an uncontroversial conservative incumbent. A new anti-Republican coalition had been born.

That lead was phony. In conservative Waukesha County, the longtime clerk had left 14,000 ballots out of the initial count; when added to the total, the incumbent won. A few months later, another botched count produced the same result, of a Democrat thinking he had a lead and a Republican winning with newly discovered ballots. A joke was born —“crucial Waukesha county,” the GOP’s electoral powerhouse in the state, would decide every Wisconsin election.

Since then, Waukesha has trended more Democratic while still remaining red. And this year, the Democrats’ closing strategy in Wisconsin and around the country relies on former Republicans getting past their differences and joining a broad anti-MAGA coalition. Republicans will win Waukesha County again, and Democrats will win their own “vote sinks” like Milwaukee. But there’s no better place to check whether this strategy is working, and whether it has any limits or downsides.

The fight for the suburbs that could determine the election

WAUKESHA, Wis. – A few days before the Republican mayor of this Republican city endorsed Kamala Harris, Tiffany Koehler came to a nearby theater to hear the vice president speak. She got a prime spot inside the Brookfield venue where Harris talked with Liz Cheney about protecting democracy and abortion rights.

Koehler was impressed. But she was planning to vote against Donald Trump before she got there.

“When someone starts making fun and mocking people with disabilities, and making light of sexual assault, it continues this negative culture that we’re trying to eradicate,” said Koehler, 54, a former Republican candidate who distanced herself from the party in 2017 after initially supporting Trump. “This guy runs counter to everything — everything! — that I believe about service.”

In every Midwestern swing state, as they look to rebuild their 2020 coalition and replace its missing parts, Democrats are campaigning hard for suburban moderates who used to vote solidly Republican. Every new voter in places like Waukesha with a story like Koehler’s can help them make up for a voter lost to Trump in the shakier parts of their base. 

“It’s going from blood red to pink, and heading into purple territory,” said Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, as he spent Saturday catching up with party volunteers and candidates in the central part of the state. “If Harris gets close to 40% in Waukesha County, that’s probably the ball game. The Democratic parties in these places are just exploding in size and energy.”

Republicans expand their play for Catholic voters

Pro-Trump groups are stepping up their outreach to Christian voters, and Catholics in particular, hoping to capitalize on Kamala Harris’s answers to questions about abortion and religion — and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump.

In a 60-second ad for the conservative group CatholicVote, first provided to Semafor this week, Kennedy urges Catholic voters to support a president who’d “take bold action on the economy, on the border, and on restoring children’s health,” even if they might disagree on unspecified issues. There’s no mention of abortion. According to CatholicVote president Brian Burch, that reflected Kennedy’s own complex feelings about the issue, which he had been talking about with the ex-candidate, now-surrogate, for months.

At the same time, Burch saw Harris giving Republicans more openings for Catholic outreach. In an interview with NBC News this week, host Hallie Jackson asked Harris what “religious exemptions” she might consider for an abortion bill, and the vice president rejected the premise. “I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body,” she said.

That was a mistake, said Burch, which might make Catholics worry about hospitals being forced to perform abortions — as Harris campaigns on abortion rights in Texas today. It came after Catholic bishops condemned Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for a video jumping off a TikTok trend that they claimed mocked Holy Communion, a mistake Democrats wouldn’t have made just a few years ago.

“I don’t even think they understand the audience anymore,” said Burch. “Harris is trying to build a political coalition without Catholics or people of faith they’ve appealed to in the past. She’s calculated she can do it. And I think it’s a massive gamble.”

Nevada’s early vote drives a big spending move

Republicans made new investments in Nevada after the first days of early voting found, for the first time in a decade, no advantage for Democrats. The Senate Leadership Fund put $6.2 million more into Sam Brown’s campaign against Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat who has led in every public poll — even a run of polls from conservative groups that have consistently shown better results for the GOP. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, increasingly confident that his own voters are about to oust Democrat Jon Tester, will campaign in Nevada on Tuesday.

The SLF’s investment is its first in Nevada, where Rosen’s cash advantage and moderate image helped her, and where Democrats spent the summer pounding Brown over his muddled abortion positioning. Even when Joe Biden led the ticket, and trailed Trump in the state, Rosen enjoyed a consistent advantage over Brown. But in early and mail voting, Republicans are running better than they did in 2020 — while voting by non-white voters is up, compared to that election. There’s a debate between forecasters about whether the new voters added to the rolls after automatic registration went into effect helps Trump, by widening the path to the polling booth; or, whether it’s put more Democratic-leaning independents in play for Harris.

Why are so many Democrats eager to appear on Fox? With recent appearances from Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Tim Walz, it looks like Fox is dominating this election. Ben and Nayeema investigate the channel’s durability despite massive lawsuits, MeToo scandals, and star exits from Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, and Megyn Kelly. To go inside the machine, they talk to former “O’Reilly Factor” and “The Five” producer Nate Fredman (who spent nearly 20 years at the network) about what makes Fox tick — and stick. Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Why there are fewer polls this year

As the old joke goes, for anxious election watchers, the polls are terrible — and such small portions! In addition to the usual concerns about accurately predicting a race that’s effectively deadlocked in every swing state, the sheer number of high-quality, brand-name polls has been in decline for several cycles. Politico’s polling reporter Steven Shepard lamented that last weekend bizarrely passed without any major polls of note nationally or in battlegrounds, although they picked up later this week on both counts. That means less grist for obsessive news consumers and less data for big aggregators and forecasters trying to make sense of the race.

What’s going on here? Pollsters and forecasters who spoke to Semafor all cited the same number one factor: Money.

Surveys with live phone calls, which are generally considered the most dependable along with some well-regarded online panels, can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The price has been increasing over the years as fewer voters take pollsters’ calls (how often do you pick up on an unknown number?), requiring call centers to work longer total hours to find a minimum number of voters in enough categories to represent the electorate.

“It’s not inflation, it’s that response rates are down,” Nick Gourevitch, a Democratic pollster and partner at Global Strategy Group, told Semafor. “It’s gotten more expensive to do it.”

But there’s another factor possibly at play: As news junkies turn more to star election forecasters like Nate Silver who average and aggregate polls, there’s less value for media organizations with dwindling budgets to pony up to sponsor one that will just be tossed onto the pile. Combine that with the reputational risk of blowing it on an important race, as many well-regarded pollsters did in 2016 and 2020, and staying quiet might be better than putting out anything at all.

—Benjy Sarlin

Americana answers your burning questions

For the next few weeks, I’ll be taking questions from readers and answering them on Friday, replacing our usual interview section with my own Q&A. The queries we got for this edition include “what is the difference between women and men in voting numbers thus far?” and “is there any way to quantify the polling effect of the alleged Trump supporters that refuse to talk to pollsters?”

Some of these questions have clear answers. Some are partially unknowable until the election’s over. The first batch reflects what I’m asked when I travel to swing states, or when I return to a nerve-wracked Washington: Basically, what might everybody be missing, in an election this close? If you have more questions, send them to dweigel@semafor.com and put “finale” in the subject somewhere.

Polls

Battleground state polling has remained tight for two weeks, with slight movement toward Donald Trump, and with Harris giving back some of the gains she’d made in her favorable ratings. It’s had no major effect on Quinnipiac’s numbers, as Harris has closed some of the gap with Trump on the economy. Republicans argued this week that Baldwin was distancing herself from Harris, pointing to a new ad that mentions how she got Donald Trump to sign her Build America amendment into law. She is still winning slightly more Trump voters than Harris: Harris gets 3% of Republicans, and Baldwin gets 7%.

The “likely voter” screen, which pollsters use to narrow down a sample to the voters most intent on turning out, is telling us widely different stories this year. Some national and state polls show the most frequent voters breaking for Harris, in line with the Democrats’ strategy of converting the college-educated moderates who never skip elections. F&M found the exact opposite in Pennsylvania — the most passionate voters support Trump, by a 1-point margin, and narrow Casey’s lead to 1 point. Among all registered voters, Harris has been whittling down Trump’s advantages on the economy (a 6-point lead, down from 11 points in September).

Yes, another Pennsylvania poll — an older one, which wrapped up right after the vice presidential debate, before any of the movement toward Trump seen by pollsters last week. But it points to some continued strength for Democrats in House races, which has shown up in both parties’ polling. At the end of the 2020 campaign, pollsters found the same thing happening, and over-estimated the final Democratic vote in key districts. If that’s not the case right now, Harris and Casey are running ahead of Joe Biden’s 2020 vote and John Fetterman’s 2022 vote in this northeast Pennsylvania district; Harris is winning Northampton County, which went to the winner in 2016 and 2020, by slightly more than Biden.

Ads

• Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, “Always.” Campaigns for abortion rights amendments, or for Democrats trying to ride the issue, tend to focus on women who want to exercise that right only in extreme circumstances. The testimonial here is from a church-going Black woman who’ll vote for legal abortion, overturning the state’s current law, because she knows someone who got an abortion after a rape. “These decisions should be between a woman and her God,” she says, thumbing through a Christian devotional.
• Preserve America PAC, “Insane.” The Trump campaign’s three ads about Harris’ support for gender medicine in prison have been complemented by PAC ads, going after the same topic with their own spins. PAPAC’s ads use straight-to-camera testimonials of people who can’t believe that Harris supports that spending for prisoners and illegal immigrants “now, while Americans struggle” — “not just liberal, it’s insane.” Each ad ends with the new PAC’s 2024 slogan, that “Kamala Harris can never be president.”
• Americans for Contraception, “Protect Our Freedoms.” Democrats introduced a Right to Contraception Act this spring, knowing that Republicans would block it in the Senate and deny it any vote in the House. One downstream effect: This group and its barrage of ads, which feature actors playing worried, normal people who can’t believe that their representative (here, New York Rep. Mike Lawler) haven’t signed on yet. “As a parent, you worry about your kid’s future” says a shocked, unidentified dad.

Scooped!

I spent Labor Day weekend in North Carolina, but didn’t head to “Flagstock,” the party thrown with the donations a UNC-Chapel Hill frat received after its members guarded a flagpole so Old Glory could replace the Palestinian flag. Politico’s Alex Keeney showed up, and got a good hook to explain a major 2020 trend — frustrated young men moving right, rejecting feminism and the deprecating treatment of men in work and pop culture. It’s not unique to America, but I was waiting for a good stateside treatment of the story.

Next

• 11 days until the 2024 presidential election
• 53 days until the Electoral College votes

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One of my clearest memories from 2020 was formed after the presidential election, when I headed to Georgia to cover the state’s dual Senate runoffs. In two days of reporting, I couldn’t find a Republican voter who believed, 100%, that Joe Biden had won the election. I found many who assumed that some deus ex machina would keep Biden from taking office. And when Donald Trump came to campaign for the GOP candidates, he took the same position. That story has truly never ended, and Jim Rutenberg’s deeply reported look in the New York Times at what’s happened to election officials in swing states ahead of this election tells you just how many officials, who are about to preside over the count, believe that anything but a Trump win would be fraudulent.

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