American elections, because of their absurd length, tend to focus a lot on various statistics in order to gauge the changing political fortunes of the candidates. But while each measure provides some indication of how things are going, one needs to treat each with some caution.

Opinion polls: These are probably the best measure of where the race stands but there are important caveats. The weird electoral college system in the US tends to have a bias towards red states so national polls have to be treated with caution. There are roughly seven so-called swing states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina) that usually determine the outcome of the election. Polls taken in just those states have more significance than national polls. This does not mean that national polls are useless but it is estimated that Democrats need approximately a +4% margin in the national polls in order to have an even chance of winning the Electoral College.

Right now, it looks like Democrats are approaching that 4% margin, making the race even, which is a huge improvement from the situation just a month ago.

A fresh Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday showed Harris leading Trump nationwide by 45% to 41% – a margin consistent with other surveys since last week’s boisterous Democratic national convention in Chicago that confirmed the US vice-president’s status as the nominee.
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A Fox News poll on Thursday showed the vice-president with narrow leads in three out of four southern Sun belt states; 48 to 47% in Arizona, and 48 to 46% in both Georgia and Nevada. In the fourth, North Carolina – which Trump won by just 1.4% in 2020 – the Republican nominee was ahead by a single point, 48 to 47%.

The poll represented a big jump on recent numbers recorded by Biden, who trailed Trump by six points in Georgia in April and by five points in Nevada and Arizona as late as June.

Money raised: Campaigns periodically report how much money they raised in the previous quarter and how much cash they have on hand. But this is a complicated process since contributions can go directly to the campaigns, or go the parties, or go to PACs and other supposedly ‘independent’ groups some of which may not have to report. Furthermore, there is a lot of so-called ‘dark money’ from wealthy individuals and organizations that do not get accounted for. Furthermore, by this stage of the campaigns, expensive TV ad time has pretty much been booked through election day. So money raised ceases to be much of a factor, except that the number of small donations can be a measure of voter enthusiasm

The Harris-Walz campaign has recently been raising more money than the creepy Trump-weird Vance campaign but the latter campaign has a few supporters with very deep pockets so the result is about even. However the Harris-Walz campaign seems to have an edge when it comes to the number of small donations.

Crowd sizes: I have never placed much faith in this as a measure of of support. It seems mainly to provide bragging rights. Large rally sizes may show enthusiasm among the most loyal supporters but that is about it. Harris seems to be drawing larger crowds at her rallies than creepy Trump, which I am sure must be infuriating him, since he is the bragging type.

TV Ratings: This may largely reflect curiosity and enthusiasm among supporters, rather than breadth of support. However, given that creepy Donald Trump obsesses over ratings, this measure has the chief consequence of driving him crazy when he gets worse ratings than Kamala Harris, as happened with the two party conventions where the DNC beat the RNC every night, especially on the last night where Harris beat creepy Trump.

There are some other important measures that are not as exciting or are hard to quantify and thus do not get reported as much.

Number of field offices and paid officers: These offices are the ones that lay the ground work for the crucial part of getting out the vote operations before and on election day.

New voter registration: This is the number of new people who register to vote in an election cycle by party, and is a really important measure of support.

Mail-in ballot requests: The more people that a party can get to sign up for mail-in ballots and get them to cast them before election day, the less likely that supporters will fail to vote due to some last-minute snag. By casting aspersions on mail-in voting as somehow more prone to cheating, Republicans have really hurt themselves because they tend to use this option less.

Volunteer sign ups: This again is an extremely important measure of voter enthusiasm. These are the people who canvass door-to-door, put up yard signs, organize home meetings, and the other hyperlocal efforts that keep supporters energized and bring in their neighbors and friends.

On all these last four measures, Democrats seem to have the edge.