Earlier today, I wrote that the presidential race appears to have shifted slightly this month in terms of national poll results, and perhaps more substantially in the betting markets. The real currents of public opinion that matter don't take place on a national basis, however; they take place in the states where the election will be won and lost. 

As RCP notes, the trends look different in those two contexts. Kamala Harris leads in the aggregate national polls by 1.7 points, which sounds like good news for Democrats until one looks at the historic trends in the last two cycles. On this date in those two elections, Donald Trump trailed in national polling by significant amounts. In 2016 Hillary Clinton led national polling by 6.7 points and still lost the Blue Wall states and the election. In 2020, Joe Biden's national-polling lead was close to double digits (9.2 points), and he only barely scraped by with a win.

In part, that demonstrates the difficulties of polling in this environment. It also demonstrates a significant blue-state bias, by which Democrats run up big national polling numbers that don't reflect the state of a race determined in the Electoral College. And with that in mind, it's no wonder that Team Kamala has hit the panic button and attempted to do an interview on Fox News with the national polls much closer than in the previous two cycles. 

What about the battleground states? Currently, Trump has very narrow leads in six of the states tracked by RCP, and only barely trails Harris in the seventh. And that doesn't account for polling issues in past cycles either (October 14 results from those cycles in parentheses):

• Pennsylvania: Trump +0.3 (Clinton +8.2, Biden +7.0)
• North Carolina: Trump +0.5 (Clinton +3.0, Biden +3.3)
• Georgia: Trump +0.5 (Trump +5.3, Biden +1.2)
• Arizona: Trump +1.0 (Trump +0.7, Biden +3.0)
• Wisconsin: Harris +0.3 (Clinton +6.0, Biden +6.3)
• Michigan: Trump +0.9 (Clinton +11.4(!), Biden +7.2)
• Nevada: Trump +0.2 (Clinton +1.5, Biden +5.2)

 Again, one can understand why Team Kamala and Democrats are beginning to panic. Trump outperformed most of these numbers in both cycles when he was much less personally popular than he is at the moment. Add in the -32.9 net wrong-track number and the ongoing unpopularity of the Biden-Harris administration, and this looks like Loser Stew.

That looks even more the case when considering the latest Harvard-Harris CAPS poll on the electoral environment. First off, the biggest surprise is that 14% of voters still have yet to make up their minds, a rather high figure considering the date and the polarization. Fully one-quarter of independents are still mulling over their choices, so the campaigns still matter. In battleground states, they matter a bit more, where 16% of all voters have yet to make a final decision. 

Harris is behind the eight-ball here, too. Among Trump voters, 88% say they have made up their minds; Harris trails slightly at 84%. 

This slide should worry Democrats even more. While Harris has a slight lead among likely voters overall (49.2/47.4), that reverses among both likely and registered voters in battleground states:

Take a very close look at the data on this slide. Trump leads by five points among those who have made up their minds, and gets more than a quarter of the undecideds as leaners. Harris gets four in ten of those, but the momentum is clearly with Trump. Even more worrisome for Democrats are the battleground-state demos:

• Independents: 44/40 Trump
• Males: 54/41 Trump
• Females: 51/42 Harris -- a single-digit gap
• College graduates: 49/49 tie
• Asian voters: 66/20 Trump
• Black voters: 72/22 Harris
• Urban voters: 53/42 Harris
• Suburban voters: 49/47 Trump

Those numbers portend disaster in the battleground states if this poll holds up as predictive. Trump actually wins the gender gap in those states (+4), and 22% of the black vote going to Trump would be an utter catastrophe for Democrats.

Of course, some of this movement occurred after early voting began. The poll accounts for that too, but Harris only leads nationally among early voters by just under nine points, 51.4/42.6. That's not a propitious outcome from what usually constitutes an overwhelming advantage for Democrats, but it's even worse in battleground states -- much worse. According to this poll, Trump actually has a 48/47 lead among early voters in battleground states.

Keep this poll handy for other purposes, and be sure to review it for lots of other interesting data. But for now, Democrats have lots of reasons to worry about Kamala Harris in battleground states -- and that may explain why she's appearing on Fox News after all.