The slump

Donald Trump is out of luck.

Just a month after the assassination attempt on his life and the disappointing debate performance that knocked President Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, new polls suggest the Trump belly has disappeared and the Harris waltz has begun.

Three thousand, five hundred registered voters surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos over an eight-day period this week made one thing abundantly clear: What once seemed like an easy ascent to the White House has, in the strangest of ways, become perhaps Trump’s biggest challenge yet.

Not only has he fallen by 4 points among registered voters (he was down just 1 point in July), Harris is suddenly beating Trump in key demographic groups (women and Latinos). Harris, who led Trump by nine points among women in July and six points among Latinos, now leads both protesters by 13 points in August. Even more troubling, Trump’s lead among voters without a college degree, a demographic group he relied on to win in 2016, has been halved, from 14 points to seven.

And Harris has surprisingly — at least for Democrats — brought a breath of fresh air to the race. In March, Reuters found that 61 percent of Democrats voted for Biden as a means to “stop Trump.” Today’s poll showed that a majority of Democrats now say they for Harris, not against Trump. The vice president’s rise to the top of the ticket has turned shy Biden supporters into vocal Harris voters.

And it’s not just Reuters confirming the fluctuation.

Data firm Target Smart told CBS News on Wednesday that “among young Black women, registration is up more than 175%” in 13 states since Harris entered the race.

“I’ve checked more than three times,” said Tom Bonier of Target Smart. “It’s incredibly unusual to see changes in voter registration that are anywhere near this. I mean, just to remind people, 175 percent is almost a tripling of the registration rate among this particular group. You don’t normally see that kind of thing happen in elections.”

And as if things couldn’t get any worse for Trump, Fox News released its latest poll on Wednesday showing that Harris has “closed the gap to Trump in the Sun Belt states.”

“Harris is up one percentage point in Arizona and two points in Georgia and Nevada,” noted Fox, whose polling department found one bright spot for Trump, arguing that the former president was “up one point in North Carolina.”

Not so fast. Just as Fox News gave Trump a narrow lead in North Carolina, the Cook Political Report moved the state from Trump’s camp to a toss-up. A state that Trump comfortably led by a seven-point margin in July’s aggregate polls is now Kamala’s to lose.

Even Nate Silver couldn’t overshadow what polls in state after state showed Thursday afternoon: that the numbers suddenly swung in Harris’ favor.

The numbers are even worse for Trump’s biggest contenders: Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake and North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson.

In Arizona, Lake is down 15 points and without a paddle, according to Fox News. Phoenix-based pollster HighGround Public Affairs has his Democratic challenger Ruben Gallego up 11 points. Despite a border plagued by drug and human trafficking, Democrat Gallego is looking for a landslide, while Republicans and their tough-on-the-border message are “losing support” with Trump and Lake at the top of the ticket.

“The playbook they used in 2022 won’t work in 2024,” Phoenix pollster Paul Bentz said in response to the numbers.

In North Carolina, too, MAGA’s favorite son appears headed for a substantial loss. Although Trump and Harris are neck and neck in the Sun Belt state, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is viewed unfavorably by more than half of the state’s voters, and polling aggregate FiveThirtyEight shows Robinson losing the governorship by a wide margin.

And it’s not just the polls that are lighting Trump up over Labor Day weekend.

His social media app Truth Social is a digital graveyard, so much so that the former president has taken to posting campaign ads and statements on his 𝕏 account. Truth Social’s stock price ($DJT) fell below $20 a share on Thursday, its lowest point since its IPO and a far cry from its eye-popping price of $94 in October 2022.

Amid all this, Trump on Wednesday reshared QAnon posts calling for military tribunals and “The Storm.” And while his allies in Congress and political advisers have publicly urged Trump to avoid personal attacks on Harris, Trump yesterday unleashed one of his most virulent attacks yet, suggesting that both Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton achieved their political positions of power solely through sexual favors.

On Monday there was the incident at Arlington National Cemetery.

What initially appeared to be Trump’s proudest moment of the week — a private salute to honor fallen American service members killed during Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan — was ultimately marred by controversy and made headlines for all the wrong reasons.

“An ANC (Arlington National Cemetery) employee who attempted to ensure compliance with these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the U.S. military said in a terse statement Thursday about the Trump campaign’s alleged violation of restrictions on the use of images from the cemetery.

“This was unfortunate,” the letter continues, alleging that Trump associates “unfairly targeted” an employee when he tried to prevent employees from taking photos that could be used in political ads.

Trump’s team later released a controversial video of his appearance on the former president’s TikTok account. (The clip has since been viewed more than nine million times.)

A U.S. military spokesman reiterated in the statement that Trump’s camp had previously been informed of “federal laws that clearly prohibit political activity at cemeteries.”

Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita, whose job security has been the source of speculation as Trump struggles on the trail, posted a video of Trump in Arlington on Thursday. LaCivita doubled down on the gamble: “I hope this triggers the hacks at SecArmy.”

Such have been the trials and tribulations of Donald Trump in recent weeks as he heads toward the final barrel roll. The bounce he hoped to gain from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s (sort of) exit from the race remains in doubt as the independent presidential candidate has failed to remove his name from several critical battleground states he vowed to abandon.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fought to Get on NC Ballot,” read the headline NC Newsline“Now he can’t get off.”

And it’s not just North Carolina where Bobby won’t be off the ballot. In a cruel irony for everyone involved, Kennedy also appears to be staying on the ballots of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Trump still has time and opportunity to turn the tide, but it’s hard to deny the aspects of the 2024 race that now seem clear: If he wants to win the race, Trump will once again be the underdog.

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