Donald Trump leads Kamala Harris in the polls. I have a few theories why | Robert Reich

With less than 40 days until Election Day, how is it that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia, two swing states he lost to Biden in 2020? How can he narrowly lead Harris in the swing state of North Carolina? How can he now be essentially tied to her in the other key states of Michigan and Wisconsin?

More generally, how was Trump able to wipe out Harris' advantage in early August? How is it possible that more voters seem to view Trump favorably today than several months ago, when he was in the race against Biden?

How Trump, the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 counts and impeached twice, whose character and leadership flaws have been directly experienced by the American public in his four years at the helm, can he be neck and neck – and – neck and neck with a young, talented and intelligent person with a commendable record in public service?

Since his horrible performance in the Harris debate, he has doubled down on false claims that Haitian migrants are eating pets in Ohio. He was accompanied almost everywhere by Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy nut. He said he hated Taylor Swift after she supported Harris; that the Jewish people will be responsible if they lose the elections; that the second assassination attempt against him was provoked by the communist left-wing rhetoric of Biden and Harris. And so on.

He has become so inconsistent in public that Republican aides are begging him to reverse his message.

So why is he neck and neck with Harris?

Before we get to what I think is the reason, let's reject the other proposed explanations.

The first is that polls underestimate voters' support for Harris and overestimate their support for Trump. But if polls are systematically biased, one might think it would be the other way around, since some non-college voters are likely reluctant to admit to professional pollsters their preference for Trump.

Another reason is that the media intentionally creates an extremely tight race in order to sell more ads. But this cannot be true, because, on the contrary, more and more Americans seem to be turning away from politics altogether.

A final theory is that Harris has yet to allay voters' fears about inflation and the economy. But given that the U.S. economy has rebounded, inflation is down, interest rates are falling, wages are rising, and the jobs engine continues, you would think that marginal voters would turn towards her rather than towards Trump.

The simplest explanation concerns information asymmetry.

By now, almost everyone in America knows about Trump and has made up his mind about him. Recent polls have found that nearly 90% of voters say they don't need to learn more about Trump to decide their vote.

But they don't yet know Harris, or remain undecided about him. More on that in a moment.

Trump exploits this asymmetry so that when it comes to choosing between Trump and Harris, voters choose the devil they know.

This requires, first, that Trump suck all the media oxygen out of the air so that Harris has fewer opportunities to define herself positively.

Americans, overwhelmed by chaos, are turning away from politics altogether, particularly in swing states where political advertising is incessant. And while they ignore Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, because, once again, he is the devil they know.

In other words, Trump is neck and neck with Harris, not despite the mess he has created over the past few weeks, but because of it.

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Trump's strategy also requires that he and his allies simultaneously flood the airwaves and social media with negative ads about Harris, which are then amplified by the right-wing ecosystem of Fox News, Newsmax, and Sinclair Radio.

Trump's campaign has given up trying to promote him in a positive way. The Wesleyan Media Project estimates that Team Trump now spends almost nothing on ads that portray him in a positive light. There's no point because everyone has already made up their minds about him.

Instead, ads run by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly negative toward Harris, highlighting, for example, her past support for gender transition surgery for incarcerated people.

Cognition researchers have long known that negative messages have a greater impact than positive messages, probably because in evolutionary terms our brains are wired to respond more to fearful stimuli than to positive stimuli (which could explain why social media and even mainstream media are filled with negative stories).

Finally, Trump's strategy requires that he refuse to debate her again, lest she gain additional positive exposure (which is why he declined CNN's invitation for a debate on October 23 , which she accepted).

Behind information asymmetry lie racism and misogyny. I can't help but wonder how many Americans who continue to say they don't know or are undecided about Harris are hiding something from pollsters and perhaps themselves: They feel bad about themselves. comfortable voting for a black woman.

That said, I am cautiously optimistic about the outcome of the election. For what? Because Trump is deteriorating rapidly; Lately, he was barely able to string sentences together coherently.

Harris, on the other hand, is growing in strength and confidence by the day, and despite Trump's attempts to exclude her, more and more Americans are learning more about her. As she becomes more exposed, the devil's edge you know from Trump disappears.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that I'm nauseatingly optimistic, because, to be frank, I'm heading into the next five weeks with a bit of a stomachache. Even if Harris wins, the fact that so many Americans seem ready to vote for Trump makes me worried about the future of my country.

Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is available now. He is a columnist for the Guardian US. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com

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