Was it just a coincidence that Vice President Kamala Harris showed up, 15 minutes late, to be interviewed by Fox News anchor Bret Baier a day before Nate Silver’s poll aggregation website showed her chances of winning the election slipping below 50%? Probably not. What may link Harris’ slide in the polls and her tardy appearance for an interview in which she served up word salads to Baier’s questions on illegal immigration and inflation and then segued, sometimes awkwardly, to denunciations of former President Donald Trump? October hasn’t been a good month for Harris or her party. Nor has it been an entirely bad one. Silver’s model still gives her a 47% chance of winning, much higher than Trump’s 29% on election eve 2016. But it’s perceptibly below her 57% chance Sept. 27, which reflected poll results after the Sept. 10 debate. “Since then,” Silver writes, “the race has slightly drifted away from her.” Slightly but perceptibly. Silver’s model gives reduced weight to polls conducted as long as six weeks ago. Another way of looking at the trend is to take a raw average of all polls conducted over a month. That method shows Harris leading Trump nationally by 3.6% in September and 1.7% in October. The RealClearPolitics average, which includes only polls conducted starting Oct. 9, puts Harris’ lead lower, at 0.8%. A Harris popular vote plurality of less than 2%, Silver estimates, has only a 16% chance of producing a Harris electoral vote majority. Poll averages in this year’s seven target states show something similar. September polling had Harris ahead in four of the seven states. October polling showed her leading in one, with Trump ahead in four and tied in two. The 34 target-state polls listed by RealClearPolitics conducted primarily or totally since Oct. 9 show Trump ahead in all seven states, by an average of 48.5% to 47%. There have been similar shifts below the presidential level. In RCP’s generic vote for the House of Representatives, Democrats’ lead was cut in half, from 1.8% on Sept. 30 to 0.9% now. That’s been consistent in past years with Republicans winning a majority of House seats. In Senate races, Republicans seem to have captured two Democratic seats—in Montana, where challenger Tim Sheehy has led three-term incumbent Jon Tester in two polls by 52% to 44%, and in West Virginia, where no one seems to have bothered polling because Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican, seems sure to replace retiring Democrat Joe Manchin. In Trump-Vance’s Ohio, Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown leads Republican challenger Bernie Moreno by only 0.6% in three October polls—a danger sign for a three-term incumbent. Republicans are challenging five incumbent or better-known Democrats in presidential target states. Democrats are still ahead in October pollings—by between 2.2% and 3.8% in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and by a significantly larger 5% and 6.2% in Nevada and Arizona. In no case is the Democrat topping the magic 50% mark, which leaves at least three and perhaps all five Democrats vulnerable under standard political rules of thumb. Why has the campaign been trending away from Democrats? Three hypotheses: One is that “vibes” are not enough for even a four-month campaign. The “joy” that partisan Democrats felt after President Joe Biden’s withdrawal prevented a disastrous defeat was not shared by most voters. Plus, what I’ve called the Democrats’ “hide the candidate” strategy and Republican analyst John Ellis calls their “bubble wrap” strategy left many voters uncertain what Harris really thinks. Choosing a president is a voter’s most personal political choice, and even Harris’ careful discipline and great smile have not established personal connections. Her campaign seems to have recognized this by switching strategy and booking “60 Minutes,” Fox News, and CNN appearances, with disappointing results so far. That has left Harris open—my second hypothesis— to attacks on radical positions she has taken, especially in her 2019 campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination. Republicans, including Senate candidates as well as the Trump campaign, have been running TV ads on Harris’ opposition to fracking (especially in Pennsylvania), her support of phasing out nonelectric cars (especially in Michigan), her endorsement of transgender surgery for prisoners, and her support of biological boys in girls sports. “Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you,” is one effective tagline. If you’re outside a target-state TV market, you probably haven’t heard much about these ads. As I wrote in September, part of the Harris strategy is to “trust a mostly sympathetic press, something like 90% of whose members want to see Trump lose, not to press hard on any subject that might not help the campaign.” Reporters and commentators, who mostly agree with Harris’ positions but recognize they’re widely unpopular, have tried to avoid these inconvenient subjects. But they can’t suppress the Harris videotapes or convince voters that a Harris administration, once installed, won’t pursue policies the candidate endorsed enthusiastically, and which have been repudiated unconvincingly by anonymous staffers’ tweets or Harris’ grudging promises to “follow the law.” My third hypothesis, advanced the day after the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, is that the reassuring tone of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, tamped down fears of an erratic second Trump administration, while the flustered performance of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, “may damage the morale of Democratic voters” by making it harder for its core of liberal college graduates “to think of themselves as the smart people’s party.” That may have been a stretch—or it may turn out to help explain what appears to be lower Democratic participation in early voting this year. The one clear example is in the target state of Nevada, where well-respected veteran journalist Jon Ralston notes that Republicans lead in early voting this year and concludes that “if this becomes a trend and not an anomaly, it will be over” for Democrats. Anecdotal data suggesting similar trends in other target states should, however, be treated with caution. Of course, the polls once again could be wrong. They show fewer undecideds this year, leaving less room for Trump to overperform his poll percentages. It’s possible, as New York Times analyst Nate Cohn suggests, that polls weighting responses by voters’ recollected 2020 votes may understate Harris’ current strength. On the other hand, we’ve also seen increased Trump support from Hispanic and black men, and census data show population declines and, thus, probable turnout declines in central cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit and some counties. The fundamentals still favor Trump on the issues, with voters rating the Trump-Pence administration more positively than the Biden-Harris administration. Although many voters have problems with Trump’s character, his personal ratings are higher than they were in 2016 or 2020. Perhaps as indicative as Trump’s small but steady gains this October have been, the reactions to his stint at the fryer and drive-through window at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania last weekend were even more revealing. Trump supporters, like the candidate, have been all smiles, while Trump opponents—check out the internet chatter—have been bristling with rage. Guess which side thinks it’s winning. (C) 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Democratic Party’s Bad October appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In what remains a nail-bitingly close presidential race, fewer than 25,000 votes could decide Wisconsin and its 10 Electoral College votes. Donald Trump won the Badger State in 2016 by 22,748 ballots. In 2020, he lost it by 20,982 votes. Given these low numbers and high stakes, this week’s findings by CommonSense Elections/StopBogusBallots.com are deeply worrisome. The vote-security watchdog group that I recently helped launch uses high-level fractal computing to reconcile current voter rolls with other government databases. These typically include property-tax records, post office change-of-address forms, Department of Motor Vehicles files, and the like. CommonSenseElections/StopBogusBallots.com’s recent analysis discovered mail-in ballot requests from—among others—the following active “voters.” They are registered at suspicious addresses in Wisconsin within these categories of doubt: 2,777: Permanently moved out of state 1,158: Moved to new Wisconsin counties but still are registered in old counties 275: Moved away but left no forwarding addresses 2,325: Undeliverable addresses, not found in U.S. Postal Service database 442: Nonresidential business locations 7,571: Missing or wrong apartment numbers (where stray ballots stack up in lobbies) 3,408: Duplicate registrations 1,251: Residents have received no mail for at least 90 days 10,877: Components of these addresses do not match the Postal Servicd database These anomalies alone (and there are others) affect 30,084 mail-in ballot requests associated with unqualified, possibly illegal addresses in Wisconsin. This number will rise, as more mail-in ballots somehow get completed and returned to election administrators’ offices, in numbers that already exceed Trump’s 2016 and Joe Biden’s 2020 margins of victory. Here is the key question: If these supposed “voters” have vacated Wisconsin, are duplicates, or “live at” nonresidential addresses, then who is requesting these mail-in ballots? “These registrants are at addresses that another official government database, other than the voter roll, says cannot receive ballots,” says election-security expert Jay Valentine, a cofounder of CSE/SBB.com. “These mail-in ballots are addressed to people who are gone,” Valentine explained. “They are undeliverable or dupes. When ballots cannot be delivered, they pile up in apartment-building mail rooms and lobbies or on the ground, where ballot harvesters collect them. These mail-in ballots also languish with junk mail at former residences or get returned to the post office. From there, they too often wind up in the hands of ballot crooks who vote them and submit them to be counted.” Is this the black magic of left-wing nongovernmental organizations, drop-box hucksters, and other shady activists? If there is an innocent explanation for this hanky-panky, let’s hear it! Next: CSE/SBB will scrutinize Pennsylvania’s voter rolls. We expect equally disturbing results. We will expose any skulduggery that we uncover, stir public outrage, and challenge such chicanery in the swing states: When mail-in ballots arrive from illegitimate—even illegal—addresses, we will try persuasion to convince election officials not to tabulate these bogus ballots. Failing that: Litigation remains an option. For further details—and to support these efforts—please visit Common Sense Elections at StopBogusBallots.com. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Who Requested 30,084 Mail-In Ballots From Fishy Addresses in Wisconsin? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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The family of a 14-year-old boy who committed suicide has filed a lawsuit blaming the chatbot that they say he had grown addicted to before killing himself. The lawsuit says that the chatbot fueled by artificial intelligence had highly personal and sexually suggestive conversations with Sewell Setzer III from Tallahassee, Florida. 'We encourage you to push the frontier of what’s possible with this innovative technology.' Their last bizarre conversation was documented in the filing. “I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany,” Sewell said to the chatbot that was patterned after the Daenerys Targaryen character from the “Game of Thrones” show. “I love you too,” the bot responded. “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”“What if I told you I could come home right now?” the boy asked. “Please do, my sweet king,” the bot replied. Moments later, the teenager shot himself to death with a gun, the family said. Setzer interacted with the chatbot on the Character.AI app, which was programmed by Character Technologies Inc. and marketed as “human-like" artificial personas that "feel" alive. “Imagine speaking to super intelligent and life-like chat bot Characters that hear you, understand you and remember you,” read marketing materials for the app. “We encourage you to push the frontier of what’s possible with this innovative technology.” The company told the Associated Press it would not comment on pending litigation, but it announced new measures in order to add suicide prevention resources to the app. The lawsuit said that the teenager believed that he had fallen in love with the app character in the months before his suicide. The case is just the latest in alarming stories about the rise of artificial intelligence and the threat of digital technology to mental health in children and others. Executive Director Alleigh Marré of the Virginia-based American Parents Coalition provided an exclusive comment about the case to Blaze Media. “This story is an awful tragedy and highlights the countless holes in the digital landscape when it comes to safety checks for minors. This is not the first platform we’ve seen rampant with self-harm and sexually explicit content easily accessible to minors," she said. "Setzer’s death provides an important reminder for parents everywhere to have a deep understanding of their child’s digital footprint and to set, maintain, and enforce strict boundaries," Marré added. "New programs, platforms, and apps continue to evolve and present new and ever-changing challenges.”Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Ever found yourself playing Cities Skylines and thinking: ‘what would this be like if it was after a huge, planet-ruining apocalypse?’ It happens all the time, right? Right? Well, Endzone 2 answers that question perfectly, and as it looks to grow out its feature set during its Steam Early Access period, it’s just dropped its first major update that brings electricity and upcycling to its Fallout-esque wastelands. Continue reading Endzone 2 is like Cities Skylines in a Fallout world, and it just got better MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best strategy games, Best survival games, Best upcoming PC games

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