Trump vs VP Harris: In 2024 Trump’s ‘Ceiling’ is Harris’ ‘Floor’
Momentum Shift Among “Unique Authors” Indicates Trouble for Trump’s Campaign
In terms of consequential days in a Presidential election, an assassination attempt of one participant and the other dropping out and being replaced by their VP of the other takes the cake. We’re in the middle of the summer, the Olympics are on, and people aren’t supposed to be paying such close attention.
And yet here we are!
With Vice President Kamala Harris, and Former President Donald Trump facing off news and vibes are indicating that the momentum has shifted in VP Harris’ direction. To prove that out, some outlets will use fundraising totals. One such article by Financial Review indicated that Harris raised more money ($200 million) in a single week than Trump or President Biden did in a whole month.
VP Harris Increased Unique by 327% While Trump Declined By 33%
For my money, it is worthwhile to take a look at a key metric that helps highlight voter intention, that being Unique Authors. Unique authors is useful because it reduces the impact of spam and bots. Just posting a lot can trigger changes in what’s “Trending” on social channels, but unique authors takes author value at 1:1, while bot networks can create thousands of accounts, having 10s of thousands of new conversation-participants rounds that error out.
What I’m seeing is a historic and enormous shift in attention and energy as depicted by the volume of authors publishing about either candidate. What’s so useful about running this evaluation during such a heightened time of excitement (candidate assassination attempts don’t happen every day) is that it potentially highlights the ceiling of the public and the media’s attention to Trump.
Taken in isolation, this could be seen as a honeymoon period, but this isn’t the only metric to evaluate against. Those fundraising numbers are enormous, similarly volunteering numbers show that in the short time she’s been running VP Harris has added 170,000 volunteers.
In evaluating the 2016 election cycle, with Trump competing against Hillary Clinton, Trump had more negative mentions than Clinton had mentions at all. The difference in excitement and motivation played a large role in Trump winning in 2016 (the Comey letter aside). If Trump is going to win, he’ll have to do more than just energize his base, that base led him to lose in 2020.
What if Biden stayed in? He’d have lost at least if Unique Authors indicates anything.
President Biden, coming off of a terrible debate in which age and illness caught up with him, couldn’t compete with Trump on this metric. He had a little more than half the audience that Trump did.
When you combine Harris and Biden’s metrics, a story of strength begins to appear. Even with author, veteran, and senator JD Vance in the mix, it doesn’t look great for the GOP campaign. How many more people can be persuaded to vote for Trump, who aren’t dissatisfied with his first term, his volatile speeches, and his federal convictions?
The Trump-Vance ticket has seen a decline in unique authors of 18% from their assumed peak during the media attention toward the assassination attempt. Harris and Biden saw a 58% increase during the same period. Harris becoming the standard bearer for the Democratic Party is showing true upside, the VP’s own VP selection will be an interesting pivot point. Even so, Biden may be an ace in the hole, sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office gives the Democrats an ostensible third ticket member, Harris is his VP, and this is a continuation of the existing administration.
Incumbents have advantages in elections. Whether incumbency is a transferable property or whether Harris needs it at all with this much excitement remains to be seen.
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