If you fit that description, we’re here to tell you: stop it. This isn’t over til the fat lady sings, and we don’t hear Anita Dunn warming up her pipes. Yes, the polls vaguely favor Trump in swing states, with some notable outliers. Yes, the Democrats’ attempts at October surprises have so far fallen embarrassingly flat. Yes, in our eyes, Kamala Harris removes all doubt that she is dumber than a box of rocks every time she opens her mouth. Yes, even Nate Silver (slightly) favors Trump as the eventual winner. Yes, the market is pricing in a victory for him, and betting markets skew toward him winning. Newsflash: All of that – all of it – was true of Hillary Clinton at this time in 2016. There are still about two weeks to go, and unless conservatives do as President Trump suggested after his first assassination attempt and “fight, fight, fight” for all of them, we could be in for exactly the kind of nasty surprise that Hillary voters had when they crowded into the Javits center that fateful November night expecting a coronation, and left in disbelieving tears.
To start with, here is one very concerning fact from the most recent Emerson poll: According to Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, Trump leads among voters who made up their minds over a month ago by 52-48. But among voters who made up their mind less than a month to a week ago? Harris leads by 60-36. That’s a giant, blaring warning sign that Harris’ closing argument is (somehow) working on undecided voters. Granted, according to Emerson, the majority of voters made up their minds long ago, but 3 percent of voters still haven’t made up their minds, and given that Trump trails Harris by one point even now, those three percent could be decisive if they swing by the same margins.
And frankly, that’s making a very generous assumption – namely, that everyone who’s being polled will actually vote. But for MAGA, that is far from a safe assumption; in fact, historically, President Trump tends to do better among voters who vote either irregularly or not at all. In other words, it’s not enough to just think his supporters will show up, you have to help turn them out. You have to get your Trump-voting neighbors registered. You have to check that they’ve voted – repeatedly, if necessary. You have to make sure that everyone who could vote Trump shows up.
And, most importantly of all, you have to make sure they do it as soon as possible. We cannot stress this enough, expecting everyone to be able to turn up on Election Day is not only reckless, but verges on foolish. Anything can intervene on Election Day, from weather, to traffic, to protests, to God-knows-what. Voting early shortcuts the necessity of all of that; in effect, it’s skipping the Election Day line and banking your vote immediately, which is one major reason why Democrats are so fond of it. Even discounting the possibility of fraud, early voting makes maximizing turnout for your voters massively easier. If you want Trump to win, you need to take advantage of all the same resources they do, and time is perhaps the most important one. Polls, encouraging though they may be, are not votes. They are only projections of what the vote will look like – in essence, educated guesses. And almost all the swing states are within a point of flipping; higher-than-expected turnout by Trump voters would shift that from a nailbiting win to a conclusive victory.
Which is not even discussing the fact that according to even Fox News, it might take four days to count the ballots. Or, to put it less politely, there will be four days in which lawfare by Democratic lawyers like Marc Elias can try to legitimize all sorts of fraud and dirty tricks in the election. The only way those shenanigans will become less attractive is if President Trump banks enough votes to win outside the so-called “margin of fraud.” Right now, he’s polling well, but not that well. Not to reference Nate Silver twice in the same column, but he has Trump with a 53 percent chance of winning the election. That’s better odds than he’s ever had in Silver’s forecast, but in 2016, Trump won despite only having about a 35 percent chance according to polls. If Trump can win with only a 35 percent chance of forecasted victory, then Kamala Harris can win with a 47 percent chance. 53-47 is barely better than a coin flip, and if it happened to come up Harris, no one with even the most basic knowledge of statistics would find that suspicious or unbelievable. Unless, of course, Trump’s margin of victory is larger than any pollsters expected. That would essentially be weighting the proverbial coin flip toward him. You have the power to weight that coin by turning yourself and others out. Take it.
We know you’re tired. We know you just want to have faith that Trump will win. Believe us, we understand this has been an extremely stressful campaign season, even relative to others, because we’ve had to cover it. But ask yourself this: do you want it all to be worth it? Do you want to be able to go to sleep on November 5th secure in the knowledge that you made sure America would be back in sane, capable hands, or do you want to end up worried that the election, far from being over, is only just beginning to be fought? We can’t speak for you, but we’d much rather know if Trump has won sooner rather than later, and as decisively as possible. That means that until polls close on November 5th, you can’t get complacent, no more than we or President Trump or anyone can. You have to outwork, outfight, and outthink the opposition at every step for the next 13 days, and perhaps longer, if the Democrats try to muddy who the victor is. Yes, Kamala Harris is a vacuous, dishonest fake whose campaign is as empty as her own head, and therefore easy to underestimate. But we can tell you one thing for sure: she’s hoping you do underestimate her. She’s hoping you don’t turn out, full of false confidence that no one could seriously vote for someone like that. It is, in fact, her only sure path to victory. So do not just yourselves, or us, or President Trump, but America itself a favor, and don’t get complacent. This thing isn’t over yet. Let’s make sure those of us who believe in making America great again end it on our terms.
