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Guest Essay

By Kristen Soltis Anderson

Ms. Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer, is a Republican pollster and a moderator of Opinion’s series of focus groups.

Whatever your feelings are about Donald Trump as a candidate, the pollster Tony Fabrizio, a top adviser for all of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaigns, knows his business. He saw a path to a Trump victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 that others didn’t. Campaigns often leak polling memos to drive a preferred narrative, so it’s sensible to take such memos with a grain of salt, but when Mr. Fabrizio puts one out, I take it seriously.

So when he warned last week of a “Harris Honeymoon” as Democrats were rallying around the vice president, I knew it was only a matter of time before the public polls would show what the Trump campaign was likely seeing privately. Two days later, there it was: the New York Times/Siena College poll showed the race narrowing to just a one-point Trump advantage nationally over Vice President Kamala Harris among likely voters, a major shift from a prior Times/Siena poll which had shown Mr. Trump ahead of President Biden by six points.

This is, to use the parlance of our time, a vibe shift. It’s hard for me to overstate the euphoria Republican activists were feeling about the election coming out of their convention in Milwaukee. And, indeed, before the shake-up atop the Democratic ticket, most voters said that they thought Mr. Trump would win November, according to a July poll by Echelon Insights, where I am a founding partner. Now, with around $200........

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