It’s been a relatively quiet week.
Perhaps the most important event of the week transpired in Nebraska, where State Senator McDonnell confirmed his continued opposition to a winner-take-all electoral vote allocation in that state, prompting Governor Pullen to rule out calling a special legislative session to try and change the law prior to the 2024 election. This preserves a Democratic path to a 270-268 victory that involves retaining MI/PA/WI while losing AZ/GA/NV, with the 270th vote coming from Nebraska’s 2nd district, the ‘blue dot’ of Omaha in the midwestern sea of red.
The importance of NE-2 was underscored by a new CNN poll this week, showing Harris with a 53-42 lead in that district. The same poll also showed that district’s incumbent representative, Republican Don Bacon, trailing 44-50 in his race against Tony Vargas; this is the second recent poll to show Bacon, previously considered the favorite, 6 points behind in what could be a key race for Democrats in their bid to retake the House.
As of this morning Silver’s model has Harris at 57.3% to win, on a national popular vote margin of +2.7%. Silver currently has NV, PA, WI and MI all in the 59-66% range for Harris, and NC, GA, and AZ all in the 58-65% range for Trump.
We are now only three days away from the Vice-Presidential debate, which seems increasingly likely to be the last debate of this electoral cycle. Harris had recently accepted a CNN invite to debate Trump on October 23rd, 13 days before the election; however Trump refused, claiming it is too late to hold another debate. (In 2012, the third and final Obama-Romney debate took place on October 22nd; the third and final Clinton-Trump debate in 2016 was on October 19th.)
On the legal front, this week a New York appellate court held oral arguments on Trump’s appeal of Judge Engoron’s verdict in the Trump Org fraud case. It is unclear from the arguments how the court might rule, and whether or not that ruling will come before the election. And Special Counsel Smith just filed with Judge Chutkan, under seal, an supersized brief on how the SCOTUS presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. U.S. impacts the indictment in U.S. v. Trump (D.C. edition); however as of this writing it is unclear if/when portions of the brief will be redacted and unsealed.
In political corruption news this week, federal charges were filed against the sitting major of New York City, Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat. Interestingly, he is currently on the slate of Democratic electors in New York, raising one observer to raise the possibility of Harris winning 270-268 but Adams acting as a faithless elector to swing the election to Trump (since a Republican house would get to break a 269-269 tie).
Finally, just like any Presidential candidate would do forty days out from the election, Trump this week announced a new line of Trump watches, including a limited edition watch priced at $100,000. Ah, the cognitive dissonance of Vance incorrectly complaining about the high cost of eggs while Trump is trying to get people to pay $100,000 for a watch that likely costs $20,000 to produce.