Washington Update From a DC Insider - October, 2024 Edition

[Mike McKenna is a long-time analyst/advisor/polling professional in Washington, DC. Also a former Trump staffer, he currently writes op/eds for the Washington Times. He sends out comprehensive state-of-play reports to a select email distribution, and allows me to share them with paid subscribers here. This is his report for August, 2024.

For what it’s worth, I think this one of Mike’s best updates ever. Be sure to read all the way to the end - you’ll be glad you did.]

From:  Michael McKenna

Date:   October 16, 2024

Re:      October monthly note

The good news is that we are just about done with this election.  The bad news is that it is time to make some best and final observations and predictions.

            Let’s start with the mechanics.

Stasis, despite all the noise

The inescapable, irreducible feature of this campaign is and has been stasis. Despite all of the back and forth and events and what not, the campaign looks, at least with respect to opinion research, just like it did in December.

This stasis is so profound that not even the somewhat dodgy removal of a sitting president (who had in fact, won the nomination) in favor of his vice president (who had, in fact, not received a single vote in the Democratic presidential nomination process) changed the relative positions of the competitors not at all.

This has always been a Trump Yes/Trump No campaign.  The campaign is about whether you feel Mr. Trump’s vibes and like his past performance or you don’t.  The opponent matters hardly at all, which is why the survey data has not moved much since the beginning of the year.