How Americas double haters could send Trump back to the White House

Pundits and analysts are looking at head-to-head polling numbers to read the presidential race’s tea leaves.But to understand where the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will end, rather than where it stands today, look at the candidate’s favorability numbers instead.Historically, a presidential candidate’s favorability rating is highly correlated with his or her ultimate share of the vote.In 2016 and 2020, almost all those who told exit pollsters they had a favorable opinion of a candidate voted for that person.That fact was obscured in 2016, though, because of the unusually high share of voters who disliked both candidates.Trump won the Electoral College because he carried the 18% of voters who were “double haters” — that is, who said they disliked both him and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton — by a thumping 17-point margin, 47% to 30%.Trump lost in 2020 because almost everyone liked one of the two nominees — and while 52% of voters said they liked Biden, only 46% liked Trump.

Each candidate lost only 4% of those voters to the other.But look at the math: Trump lost the popular vote in 2020 by only 4.5%, a bit less than the 6% implied by the differential in the two men’s favorability scores.That suggests he again won the “double haters” — but on Election Day there were too few of them to matter.The 2024 election is shaping up to be something between those two contests.As of Oct.

16, Trump had a 45% favorability rating among polls of likely voters listed on the Real Clear Politics average since Oct.1.

Harris’ favorability was higher, at 49.3%.This would appear to imply that she should have a lead of about 4 percentage points.But in fact, the head-to-head horserace numbers in those same polls showed a Harris lead of only 2.4 percentage points.There’s only one way to square those two numbers: Harris must be losing the roughly 6% of voters who are “double haters” — and by a significant margin.Strategically, this sugge...