Reading the lie of the green is a golf term that has to do with helping you increase your score by having to putt less. If you've seen any tournament on television or even in person, golfers have all sorts of mannerisms they display when sizing up a putt. Sometimes, they squat and stare. Other times, they walk in a large circle all the way around the ball and the hole to see it from all 360 degrees. You've seen golfers hold up their putter like a pendulum to help measure what slope there is, if any. In politics, especially when media gets involved, there's reading the lie of the green, too.

Hugh Hewitt, for the nearly 25 years I've been producer of the Hugh Hewitt Show, has preached for media to disclose who they vote for and abandon the ridiculous veil of neutrality when it comes to how they cover politics. Most Americans are pretty smart about this, and can usually sniff out where a reporter or journalist sits on the ideological spectrum by the questions they ask, the way they frame those questions, and whether they become a debate combatant instead of an interviewer, depending upon the partisan leanings of the subject of the interview. Dana Bash all but wore a powder blue hat with a white D in a circle Sunday morning trying to wage rhetorical combat with GOP vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance. Hugh's point is to disclose all that up front so that the viewer or reader can correct for the lie of the green. 

When it comes to polling, there's also a lie of the green that needs to be done, which we're going to unpack for you here. Since it is down to 50 days and change until the election, you're about to experience a tsunami of polling, both national and in battleground states, and with that, the analysis of what it all means from people that have desired outcomes for the election, whether those desired outcomes are stated or not. 

Real Clear Politics has been the standard-bearer when it comes to compiling all the polling data out there. And part of what makes them so good is they offer the ability to compare the track records of the pollsters as well as the ability to compare where the race is today compared to prior election cycles. This is especially useful, in this case, because Donald Trump was the Republican nominee in the last two elections of 2020 and 2016, so the comparisons, while not perfect, make it a lot easier to extrapolate where things really sit today. 

Let's start with the polling industry as a whole. RCP tracks 18 different polling outfits that do multi-state polling. And of those 18, 14 of them over the course of the last decade have missed the actual results in favor of the Democrat candidate. Four missed in favor of the Republican. So if 78% of the polling consistently reports polling that overstates the final margin for Democrats, how much is that average miss? 4.6%. The least amount of error on behalf of the Democratic candidate is 2.2%, and the biggest miss is 6.1%, but the sweet spot for missing is just a touch over four-and-a-half. 

As of Sunday, the RCP average of averages shows Kamala Harris with a 1.7% lead nationally. That's down from 1.9% before the debate, by the way. So what does that mean? Using 2020 as a baseline example, roughly 165 million Americans cast a ballot for someone for president. A lot for Trump, more for Biden, and almost 10 million for minor parties and independents. 1.7% of that 165 million is a 2.8 million vote lead nationally for Kamala Harris, giving the polling out there the benefit of the doubt that they're accurate. Now again, using 2020 data as the baseline, take a look at how California voted. It's as deep blue of a state as there is in the Union, and they voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden. The final margin, once they finally finished counting a couple months after Biden was sworn in (I exaggerate, but not by much), was 63-42. In raw vote totals, Biden netted 5.1 million more votes just in the Golden State than Donald Trump. Going back to the RCP average as of Sunday, if Kamala allegedly has a 2.8 million lead nationally, and would have roughly the same results out of California, you could actually make the case that if you were to take California out of the equation, Donald Trump is actually leading the national vote in the remaining 49 states by a little under 3 million votes. 

Now we get to the poll that was released over the weekend by AtlasIntel, the most reliable pollster based upon prediction versus reality over the last two elections - 2020 and 2022. In the former, AtlasIntel was only off by 2.2%. In the case of the latter, they slipped a little bit, missing by 2.3%. AtlasIntel by far has the best track record this decade, earning 2.7 out of 3 stars at out of 538's ranking system. They just released their new national numbers, entirely surveyed post-debate. 

📊 ATLAS POLL - US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
In the scenario considering all candidates on the ballot, Trump's avantage is greater, at 3.6pp. Trump benefited more than Harris from RFK Jr.'s dropout from the race.
🔴 Trump: 50.9% (+3.2)
🔵 Harris: 47.3% (+1.2)
⚪ Others: 1.9% (-4.3) pic.twitter.com/K9rHJJSHne

— AtlasIntel (@atlas_intel) September 14, 2024

3.6% lead for Trump, eh? Let's say they're off by 2.3%. He's still up over a point. Remember that 1.7% RCP lead for Harris as of Sunday? Add in their average miss of 4.6%. That means Trump's probably up even more than that. 

Nate Silver has been getting a ton of grief online by the fever swamp on the left because his election projection has been growing increasing in Trump's favor, currently standing at nearly 60-40 odds. Keep in mind, Silver is a Democrat and a Harris backer, but he's essentially become a pariah on the left because he's looking at all of these numbers and extrapolating the obvious. You can pile up all the raw votes in the blue states of California, New York, and Illinois all you want, but it's not going to equate to an Electoral College victory. 

Polls do two things. The compilation of them show a snapshot of where the election is, and a trend of which direction the race is moving. And you can then extrapolate to what effect the popular vote shown in these polls would have on an Electoral College result. 

People are 100% gonna say I am making this up so here you go. pic.twitter.com/Klqc7d2nTr

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 14, 2024

If the RCP average of Harris +1.7 holds, Trump still has about a 75% chance of winning the Electoral College and the presidency in November. If the average miss by polling is factored in and the final number reflects more where Atlas Intel currently has the contest, Trump will win. Harris has next to no chance. This is not exuberance, it's just calculating the math, as of mid-September. 

As far as Battleground State polling, Real Clear Politics' This Day in History chart is very telling. In Wisconsin, Harris is leading by an average of 1.2%. By contrast, on September 15, 2020, Joe Biden was leading Trump in the Badger State by 6.8%. Hillary Clinton was also ahead on this date in 2016 by 4 points. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and the final margin in 2020 was Biden +0.6%. Harris is underperforming significantly to her two immediate predecessors in a state where the race closed for Trump twice by 5 points or better down the stretch. 

Pennsylvania currently sits at Harris +0.1. It's been oscillating back and forth for weeks. But by historical comparison, September 15th in 2020 reported Biden with a 4.3% lead, and Hillary in 2016 with a 6.2% edge. Remember, Hillary lost the Keystone State, and Biden won it, but only by 1.17%. Harris is way behind where Biden and Clinton were at this time. The advantage has to go to Trump. And in the other Rust Belt state in the blue firewall Kamala Harris has to retain - Michigan.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was leading Trump on September 15th by 5.2%. Joe Biden was beating Trump in 2020 by 4.8%. Hillary lost the Wolverine State in 2016, and Biden's final margin of victory was only 2.78%. Harris is currently leading by 0.7%. Again, she's way behind where both Biden and Clinton were at this time in their respective campaigns in a state that closed twice for Trump in the final six weeks. 

I could go on for every swing state. They all tell a very similar story. Trump is in much better position, and Harris in far worse position, in every swing state save one - Georgia. That state is the only anomaly as of today. Trump is leading, 0.3%, but is a full point behind where he was in 2020, in a year where he lost the Peach State. Perhaps he should start adopting Kamala Harris' fake Southern accent when doing rallies there. 

I'll leave you with two more state polls that media and campaigns are trying to use to play head games with the American public. In Iowa, the Des Moines Register is out with a new survey. 

41-point gender gap in new DMR poll in Iowa. Trump leads Harris by 4, 47-43.https://t.co/cPLycNNXvv pic.twitter.com/OFY2WYW0UJ

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) September 15, 2024

Trump's lead shrinks, the headline in the DMR reads. Of course, the prior poll was between Donald Trump and Joe Biden - addled, infirm, gumming-his-soup Joe Biden. In that June poll, Trump was ahead by 16. DMR has the race now at Trump +4. Panic at the disco, right? Wrong. In mid-September, 2020, the DMR declared the contest between Trump and Biden in a straight-up tie. Trump's final margin of victory was 8 points. Trump is ahead today of where he was in 2020.

Last piece of individual state data for you - New Mexico. I'm under no illusions that New Mexico is going to swing for the Republicans this fall. It's a deep blue state. That said, even in a state like this, you can see how soft Kamala Harris' numbers are compared to just the last electoral cycle. 

📊 New Mexico poll by Research and Polling for @ABQJournal

🟦 Harris: 49% (+10)
🟥 Trump: 39%
🟨 RFK Jr: 3%
🟪 Other: 2%

NM independents: Harris 45-23%
——
Favs
Harris: 53-40 (net: +13)
Trump: 42-56 (-14)
——
Sept. 6-13 | 532 LV | ±4.2%https://t.co/I4h3neAqm9

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) September 15, 2024

A 10-point lead by Harris seems a mortal lock in a state like New Mexico, and it is. However, in mid-September, 2020, the same Albuquerque Journal poll had the race at Biden +15. The final margin was Biden +10.2%. So Kamala is going into the home stretch five points down from where Biden was, and in fact, her margin in polling now is smaller than Biden's actual margin in November. 

The NAACP just came out with a poll of African-American support for the two frontrunners, and the write-up in The Hill laughably reported that excitement for Kamala Harris is even higher than it was in 2008 for Barack Obama. Obama went on to win 95% of the Black vote, becoming the first African-American president in history. 

The Hill's spin is laughable, because missing in context is where Harris is currently polling with Blacks compared to how Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton fared. 

So I read this poll and it’s actually a disaster for Kamala Harris.

Obama won over 95% of the black vote.

The NAACP has Kamala winning 63% of the black vote, including only 49% of black men under 50. https://t.co/KO145tLeWs pic.twitter.com/W20a6gX2zj

— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) September 15, 2024

African-Americans accounted for 12% of the vote in 2016. Hillary Clinton received 89%, compared to Donald Trump's 8%. In 2020, Joe Biden easily defeated Trump among Blacks, 87-12. And according to The Hill, it's great news that Kamala is getting 63%?

Using the 2020 baseline of 165 million total votes cast for president, Blacks accounted for 12% of those votes, or 19.8 million. Doing the math here shows that Kamala Harris, if the current NAACP polling is correct, is running around 5 million votes behind where Biden was four years ago. 5 million. Keep in mind that the 2020 Election was decided by only 43,000 votes between three swing states - Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin. 

Again, the caution of Scott Rasmussen remains in the forefront of my mind every day. 

Irrational exuberance among Trump supporters is growing... The race remains way too close to call... Events to come, starting with tomorrow's debate, could well determine the outcome. @Radioblogger @hotairblog https://t.co/xpLkR8aoQH

— Scott Rasmussen (@ScottWRasmussen) September 9, 2024

I'm not exuberant. I'm looking at the numbers, and the numbers buttress why Nate Silver sees the odds for a Trump victory increasing. This data, however, has an expiration date of...today. There's still a lot of places this election cycle could go, any turn of which could impact Election Day turnout and in which direction late-breakers break. For Team Trump, a few points of caution:

• X-nay on the aylor-Tay ift-Sway stuff. Leave it be. 
  
  
• Go into every rally, press conference, or interview with the thought on your mind that there might be a handful of undecided voters listening to or watching you. Reinforce both what you did do for their financial position for four years, and what you will do for the next four years, and also remind them that Kamala Harris has only offered a fog bank of an answer on economics. 
  
  
• You successfully got the country to look at the immigration problem again. Now hammer home the impact 15 million people here illegally are having on the job market, on crime, on housing, on national security, on education, on the health care system, and on the social safety net. 
  
  

Now if I were to be accused of being exuberant, I'd enter this into evidence as my defense. 

Exhibit A: Fact-checking from a combat zone. 

Kamala just got fact checked unlike any lying politician has ever been fact checked before.pic.twitter.com/ll2N4VKcAR

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 13, 2024

Exhibit B: Word salad makes a triumphal return. 

Exhibit C: The accent for Black audiences also makes a triumphal return.

Exhibit D: Tim Walz apparently hasn't been to a supermarket in a long time.

Tampon Tim instructs his supporters to have "hard conversation[s]" with strangers in the grocery store to convince them to vote for him. pic.twitter.com/QHUU4rtRTt

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 14, 2024

And finally, Exhibit E: The ghost of James Carville lives on.

ABC: "You're supporting...?"

PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: "Trump. Economics — it's as simple as that." pic.twitter.com/o4gFRQ08mF

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 15, 2024

"It's the economy, stupid" does not mean the winning message is to consistently say stupid things about the economy. Kamala Harris has not, and seemingly cannot figure this out.