Anything can happen obviously, but I just can't square these anemic rallies with him being a coin toss away from winning even the electoral college. People are fucking tired of him
Nothing I have seen since the Harris debate squares with decades of election momentum. By this point in 2016 people really paying attention were feeling real fear even before "her emails" because it felt like Hillary's campaign was becoming lifeless and there was too much energy surrounding Trump.
The life has drained out of Trump and his campaign (literally and figurately) week over week. The media has, by its standards, begun turning on him. Everywhere Harris goes she creates energy. All the people coming out for her feel like a "death of a thousand cuts" we often see for opposing campaigns; the animal instinct in the air, is one creature is vital and the other, wounded.
Experience says that pollsters are trying so hard to herd and correct for the unshakable grip Trump has on his core cult, they are creating a statistical illusion without quite lying via statistics.
The only other real possibility is that American is truly THAT misogynistic. That despite Trump's campaign being a dead fish, and nobody outside the crazies at all excited or even interested in him, despite Harris legitimately having all the momentum and the "it" factor, and energy - a vast sea of people will hold their nose and vote for Trump to prevent a woman from being "my commander and chief".
Sadly, that's a real possibility.
But, it might not quite square with this neck-in-neck horse race being mostly confined to the traditional swing states. If enthusiasm was really that down due to pure distaste towards a woman candidate, I'd think there would be more evenly salted signs of it even in unremarkably blue states.
Instead, national polling keeps putting Harris over 50%. And the horse race keeps coming out of swing state polling. (Again, mostly; more often than not.)
Which wraps back around to pollsters swing state work creating a sense Trump has momentum where he doesn't. The signs that PA is burning down for him might be an indication of what's actually happening.
