Navel gazers are deeply worried about the slight but durable lead that Kamala Harris has in the national polls. 

Me? Not so much.

That's not to say Trump has this election in the bag because there are a LOT of variables to this equation, including Democrats having control over too much of the election infrastructure for my comfort. 

But there is too little talk about Harris' weaknesses in this campaign, and I'm not just talking about her inability (and Walz's) to speak clearly to the public outside of rallies. 

One of the biggest problems she has no control over is the mood of the country, which is not favorable to Democrats. 

2/ “Chief among these are Republican advantages in U.S. adults’ party identification and leanings, the belief that the GOP rather than the Democratic Party is better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, Americans’ dissatisfaction with the state of the…

— The Reckoning 💥 (@sethjlevy) September 24, 2024

Gallup's latest numbers, released today, make that very clear. The voters are more confident in Republicans than Democrats, and worry about the state of the country and the world. This is not a "don't worry, be happy" but rather a "Flight 93" election. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nearly all Gallup measures that have shown some relationship to past presidential election outcomes or that speak to current perceptions of the two major parties favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. Chief among these are Republican advantages in U.S. adults’ party identification and leanings, the belief that the GOP rather than the Democratic Party is better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, Americans’ dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, and negative evaluations of the economy with a Democratic administration in office.

It's not just one measure, but almost all of them favor the Republicans this time around. If an issue area is closely tied to election results, it likely favors Republicans, while none favors Democrats.

It's important to know that issue areas are not the same as issues. For instance, abortion has proven to be a powerful issue for Democrats, and it has helped boost Harris to unreasonable levels of support among women, particularly young women.

But the broad issue areas--jobs, the economy, safety, and foreign policy all favor Republicans, sometimes by wide margins. To the extent that women are concerned about having consequence-free sex, they will be inclined to vote for Harris; to the extent that Americans are worried about the economy, the border, and dealing with crises, they will be more inclined to vote for Republicans. 

Three separate measures of party performance on issues favor the Republican Party by at least a modest margin.

By 46% to 41%, Americans say the Republican Party is better able than the Democratic Party to address what they think is the most important problem facing the country. The top issues Americans currently name as the most important are ones that tend to favor the GOP, including the economy (24%), immigration (22%), the government (17%) and inflation (15%).

This measure has been highly predictive of election outcomes in Gallup trends dating back to 1948. The party rated as better at handling the most important problem has won all but three presidential elections since that year. The question was not asked in 2000, and the two parties tied in 1980, when inflation was the top issue. The only time the measure was out of sync with the outcome was in 1948, when Americans believed the Republican Party was better able to handle the most important problem (international issues) but returned Democratic incumbent Harry Truman to office.

As you can see from Gallup's chart, some of these variables are weakly correlated with electoral results, but whether the correlations are weak or strong, all the issue areas favor Republicans. 

People are not happy with Biden's America and want to have it in the rear-view mirror. That's why Harris is running on "change" and "forward" and trying to paint Trump as yesterday's candidate. 

It has worked somewhat. But will it work enough to buck the obvious trend here? Harris may be successful to some extent in divorcing her image from Biden, but her vacuous campaign hasn't been able to fill the void left by her abandoning Biden. She is promising generic "change," but nobody knows what that means. 

Obama's "Hope and Change" campaign worked because he was offering a genuine, if vague, alternative to Bushism. If there was one thing you knew about Obama it was that he would be dramatically different than Bush. He was a Democrat, for one. 

Harris's campaign doesn't have that advantage; she can't run against Biden and will be on the ballot as a Democrat in an environment where people are sour on Democrats. 

This is Trump's election to lose. He may not look as good as we would like in the polls, but he is actually polling better against his Democrat opponent this year than in the last two elections. Harris is underpolling Biden by a lot. That's a bad sign for her.

Take heart, Republicans. The election is far from over, but if it is fairly run Trump should come out on top.