| Trump may have more paths to victory than Harris: Polls are showing Trump has small leads in the Southern and Western states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. Winning those states, combined with winning at least one up North, will get him 270 electoral votes to get to the White House. Momentum may be on this side, too: Gallup recently found that more voters are identifying as Republicans than Democrats for the first time in decades. And President Joe Biden is also unpopular, which usually points to a loss for the party in power, said Jeffrey Jones, the senior editor of Gallup polling, in a recent interview. Republicans I talk to say that if Trump wins, it will be for three issues: the economy, immigration and global unrest under the Biden administration. “Kamala Harris will try to make it a choice, but it’s a referendum on her,” said Mike Davis, a conservative judicial expert who works with the Trump campaign in a recent interview. But here’s how Harris could win There are a few reasons Democrats are still optimistic. “I’m still in a cold sweat,” said Democratic strategist Jim Kessler, with the center-left think tank Third Way, “but I feel like it’s more likely she’s going to win than not.” Trump’s closing argument is controversial: His final major rally before the election, in New York City, is breaking through to voters because what he and other speakers there said may be so unpalatable to swing voters. One speaker made a crude sex joke about Latinos and called Puerto Rico “garbage.” Trump also called Harris “low IQ” and described his political opponents “the enemy within," language that experts warn raises the prospect for election violence. Trump’s still deeply unpopular with about half the nation: That’s the main reason Democrats don’t think Trump can win. In the past two presidential elections, Trump won about 46 to 47 percent of the popular vote, and that’s how much he’s averaging in polls now. The Democratic candidates who ran against Trump in the past two elections got more votes. “And he’s doing nothing to expand his support,” said Democratic strategist Terrance Woodbury, who polls Black voters for the Harris campaign, in a recent interview. Harris might actually have the momentum: Democrats are closely watching early voting to see if people vote in the range of the 2020 election, the last time they defeated Trump. So far that looks to be the case — although there are a lot of caveats. Republicans are also voting earlier this year than they normally do. But more than half of the ballots cast in the swing states so far have been by women, which is how Democrats performed much better than expected in congressional elections two years ago. That was the first national election after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and this will be the first presidential election since then. | 
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