Replacing Biden with Harris has changed campaign’s direction, but not its fundamentals

OPINION:

If you are one of those unfortunate souls who are emotionally overinvested in the presidential campaign, it is probably difficult to accept that the race so far — despite all the twists and turns and noise and excitement — is about where it has been for the last eight months: a close contest being played almost entirely within the margin of error.

Vice President Kamala Harris currently leads by half a percentage point in the average of national survey results (a metric that admittedly has substantial limitations). That is a distinct improvement for the Democrats over former President Donald Trump’s 3.3-point advantage on July 9 or his 1.2-point advantage on May 9. All of those advantages, however, are within the margin of error for most of the survey work done this election cycle.

At the state level, where the results matter, Mr. Trump retains his advantages. At the moment, he is running ahead in Pennsylvania (with a 1.6-point average advantage), Arizona (by 2.8 points), Nevada (4 points) and North Carolina (3 points). He also leads in Georgia by six-tenths of a point on average, despite his ongoing and inexplicable campaign against the state’s popular governor, Brian Kemp. Mr. Trump trails in Wisconsin by half a point. The numbers in Michigan are so shoddy and questionable that they are not yet worth notice.

It is worth remembering that in 2020, Mr. Trump lost all of the current swing states. He now holds modest leads (inside the margin of error) in at least five of them. Moreover, he is running well ahead of where he was at this point in 2020 in each of those states. At this point in the 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump trailed by almost 6 points in Pennsylvania, 6 points in Wisconsin and 2 points in Arizona.

While replacing President Biden with Ms. Harris has changed the direction of the campaign, it has not changed its fundamentals. Voters continue to identify the economy, immigration and social disorder (or crime or other cognates thereof) as the top issues, and Mr. Trump continues to dominate when voters are asked who would do better on those issues.

The obvious and correct conclusion is that Mr. Trump’s campaign and supporters would be better served if he focused on those issues rather than on the size of his crowds or other trivia.

In this respect, his pick for vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, has been an asset to the campaign. Despite temptations to defend his own record, he has stayed reliably focused on the economy, on immigration and on the shortcomings of the current administration and the Democratic ticket’s new shiny object, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Mr. Vance is comfortable enough in his own capabilities that last week, he wandered over to the press pen at an event for Ms. Harris and volunteered to take questions, noting (correctly) that it was unlikely that she would take any.

Whatever happens in November, Mr. Vance has made it clear that he can play the game at the national level.

What is likely to happen in November is a close election decided by fewer than 500,000 votes cast in half a dozen states. That has been the story of this campaign since January, and it is likely to remain the story of this campaign for its last 85 days. Such a campaign places a premium on message discipline and execution and getting out one’s vote.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.