When Both Campaigns Take Big Gambles - 10/14/24

This has already been an incredibly unusual election for all sorts of reasons. Joe Biden and Donald Trump were the first presidential rematch since 1956. Trump is the first former president to seek the White House in over a century. Biden became the first incumbent to withdraw from the race so close to Election Day in the modern political era, making Kamala Harris the first non-white woman to win the nomination of a major party in our nation’s history.

But if that’s not enough unprecedented election activity for one cycle, consider this: both Trump’s and Harris’ teams have made outcome-defining strategic decisions that directly contradict decades of accumulated political wisdom on how to win a presidential campaign. Both sides are intentionally flouting long-standing conventional wisdom that has dictated political decision-making since…forever.

Harris’ decision may have been borne out of necessity. Unlike most presidential candidates, who spend years developing a relationship with voters, she has been in this race for less than three months. When politicians are operating on a more conventional schedule, they are able to devote large amounts of time to introducing themselves to the electorate before shifting their messages to their policy priorities. Like most candidates, Harris began her campaign by emphasizing her personal biography (“a middle-class child”) and her professional experience (“a border-state prosecutor”) But three weeks before the election, Harris is still spending most of her time telling her story to an electorate that is instead hungry to learn more about her governing agenda.

It’s impossible to know whether this approach is a result of her extremely abbreviated calendar or the innate caution to which she reverts when forced to talk about controversial issues. But either way, the vice president is running out of time to explain in sufficient detail what she would do if elected. If Harris is victorious, the decision to stick with her biography will be viewed as a masterstroke, but betting that voters will make their decisions based on their personal comfort level with her rather than Trump is a huge gamble. 

The temptation is obvious. Trump is strongly disliked by most Americans: even many of his own supporters are uncomfortable with his personal conduct. But the same polls showing that voters prefer Harris as a person also make it clear that a majority believe that Trump’s issue agenda will be better for them. Can a human connection beat policy goals? We’re about to find out.

Trump’s gamble is even more audacious. Successful campaigns have always been based on simultaneously accomplishing two goals: motivating your existing supporters while also persuading undecided voters. As politics has become more polarized, top politicos in both parties now put much more emphasis on making sure their loyalists are sufficiently enthused to cast ballots than on reaching out to the political center. But no presidential campaign has ever dared to run such a single-minded base motivation strategy that almost completely ignores uncommitted voters. 

That is exactly the unprecedented path that Trump is taking. His senior advisors have made it clear that they believe their most committed backers are so fervent in their support for him that heavy turnout from them will ensure his election without expending such effort to attract new followers.

Conveniently, this strategy is a perfect fit for Trump’s scorched-earth philosophy of campaigning. He thrives—and excels—in rallies and other similar settings where he and his biggest fans can fully enjoy each other. He is less comfortable and less effective when he tries to reach beyond those core loyalists. But while this unproven theory does conveniently play to Trump’s strengths, it’s also entirely possible that it could succeed. His campaign has been aggressively targeting politically disengaged young men, identifying them as a potentially valuable source of votes if they can be motivated to turn out.

It can be argued that Trump’s gamble is one he is making out of necessity, too. The task of persuading swing voters might simply not be possible for a candidate with such high unfavorable poll numbers. But this, too, is an immense risk. By definition, low propensity voters are unreliable. That doesn’t mean that Trump can’t get them to the polls, just that no other candidate has ever done so. If he succeeds, he wins. If not, he loses. 

Which is what high-stakes betting is all about. In this extremely close and high-stakes campaign, one of these two candidates is going to be rewarded for their risk-taking. We just don’t know which one.