The Vance Vibe Shift?

It appears, with just a little over three weeks to go in the election, that the Trump-Vance ticket is building some momentum. The Republican ticket captured an 10-point lead in Polymarket odds, took important swing state leads in RealClearPolitics polling aggregation, and prompted public concern from leading Democrats. There is a political eternity between now and election day, but halfway through October, Republican “vibes” are decidedly positive. 

To date, there have been a handful of distinct “vibes” that have overhung the 2024 election. In the run-up to the Republican National Convention, and certainly after the Butler assassination attempt, Republicans by-and-large felt triumphant. Joe Biden’s fragility, Trump’s personal courage, and the public’s sense of national chaos seemed to guarantee impending victory. After Kamala’s coup, the cringeworthy “brat summer” adrenalized Democrats and delivered marginal polling leads to their candidates. 

As Kamala’s basement campaign carried on into the fall, however, vapidity was exposed as an insufficient communications strategy. Polling tightened throughout September and another down-to-the-wire electoral fight, circa 2016 and 2020, felt likely. That was until early October’s vice-presidential debate, which marked the beginning of a fortuitous streak of developments for Republicans. The current vibe shift, which I’ll dub the Vance vibe shift, renewed early-summer’s prospects of a comfortable Republican win. 

The vice-presidential debate was a rough one for Democrats. Tim Walz, who carried the manner of a deer in headlights, failed to reassert his campaign’s narrative that Senator J.D. Vance is “weird.” He instead spent a considerable portion of the night agreeing with Vance, subtly discrediting the media’s crafted narratives of extremism. Vance’s relatable persona and command of the issues, by contrast, carried the night for the GOP. Though no polling implied that Vance swayed a critical bloc of voters with his performance, elite media’s subsequent praise for Vance seemed to trigger a strategy change inside of the Harris campaign. The New York Times called Vance’s performance “dominant.” POLITICO dubbed it a “very midwestern debate” before conceding that “Vance won.” The Harris campaign’s ongoing media blitz, consisting mostly of eyeroll-inducing softball interviews, started within days of these Vance-friendly headlines. 

The Harris campaign committed to a litany of traditional cable appearances including 60 Minutes, The View, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Notably, Harris started to branch out into non-traditional media, making an appearance on the crass but popular Call Her Daddy podcast among other programs. Harris’s struggles in the polls, immediately following immense media exposure, suggests that sunlight may be the GOP’s best disinfectant. After two election cycles, Vance’s debate forced the DNC out of the “basement” and back into the sunlight. 

Barack Obama’s recent comments at a Democratic field office in Pittsburgh reflect liberal unease. Obama warned a smattering of volunteers that “based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running.” 

Obama added the problem “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.” Recent polling does suggest that black men, in particular, are breaking towards the Trump camp in unusual numbers. They are joining Arab Americans and a steady stream of Latinos in their exit from the Obama coalition. Weakness with previously dependable electoral blocs, combined with decreased mail-in ballot requests in Pennsylvania, provide good reasons for the 44th president’s concern. Left unstated was the incumbent president’s muddle in the southeast, a region that now understands that FEMA’s disaster relief is a tertiary concern for an administration miring the United States in two overseas conflicts. Clearly, the Democratic Party’s electoral woes are many. 

Given Donald Trump’s decade-long tenure as the media’s public enemy no.1, it’s doubtful we’ll see any politically damning information about him emerge in the coming weeks. October surprises, if they mean anything in our fractured media environment, are likely to break for Trump’s benefit at this stage of his political saga. Discounting possible Israeli strikes in Iran, which will spiral in unknowable ways, there are no obvious developments that could alter Trump’s current momentum. 

Still, a political eternity remains before November 5. Harris is continuing to consolidate her gains with white, college-educated voters. Abortion remains a tough political topic for the GOP. Polling and prediction models are hardly wholly reliable, and campaigns tend to make mistakes. But self-inflicted wounds or egregious polling misses notwithstanding, the Trump ticket is in a better position today than it was in 2016 or 2020. The race is still too close to predict with confidence, but with three weeks to go, conservatives have much to cheer.