Donald Trump was three minutes into his speech before a moderately sized crowd of 2,000 in Las Vegas when the first of the night’s exit-eers made their move, taking the short walk from the back of the hall out into the balmy night, leaving the echoes of their hero’s voice behind.

Fifteen minutes later, 50 people had left, and 30 minutes after that the number had climbed to 400. Journalists were laying in wait, ticking them off  - an odd thing for journalists to do when they had a story to write. The problem these days for Trump is that the only story of interest surrounding his rallies is that they look a lot less crowded at the end than they do at the start. 

“We have these huge rallies, massive rallies, and guess what, the media is lying to you because the people love them and they stay all the way to the end,” the former President told his former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders,  in a town hall interview in Michigan this week.

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If Ms Saunders had been a journalist and not a fully paid-up member of Team Trump she might have invited her former boss to take a cursory scrawl through social media, where any number of videos have been posted showing audience members departing arenas across the swing states of America with the former President still in mid-flow. 

The contrast with the excitement and energy at events staged by the Harris campaign is stark. The vice president appeared at two rallies in North Carolina last weekend - 7,000 showed up at the first, 20,000 at the second.

Election outcomes are not based on the size of the candidates’ crowds, obviously, but campaign morale most certainly is.

There are less than 50 days to go until election day. Conventional wisdom insists the outcome is too close to call but the opinion polls and the behaviour of the campaigns suggest this is  off the mark.

(Image: Alex Brandon)

On the polling side, the ABC television network and the Washington Post released a joint survey last weekend giving Harris a 6% lead over Trump - her biggest advantage since entering the race. In the days since, there has been a flood of polls giving her national leads outside of the margin of error. More importantly, she is beginning to take a grip in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. This week a Seltzer poll in Iowa, seen as the most historically accurate in the country and a national bellwether, gave Trump a 4% lead  (compared to an 18% advantage over Joe Biden early in the summer, before the former President withdrew).  If he  is only just winning in Iowa - a Republican stronghold in recent elections - then he is struggling mightily in the more keenly contested states.  

The 538.com election forecast, the most avidly followed of all the prediction models, now gives Harris a 63% chance of prevailing on election day - another high water mark.  

“Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020,’’ her campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon wrote in a cautionary memo to her staff.  “Make no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs.” 

There are fewer observers of the current state of the race who are buying that line, least of all the Trump campaign. Publicly, advisers and the candidate himself insist victory is assured. But their conduct suggests rapidly growing doubt. 

Recent expenditure reports reveal that the former president’s campaign is now spending the majority of its cash reserves in just Pennsylvania and Georgia, an indication it no longer has faith it can win in the likes of Michigan and Wisconsin, two states that were pivotal to Trump’s 2016 triumph. Still, if he can win all the traditional GOP strongholds, and add  Pennsylvania and Georgia, he will secure a narrow electoral college victory, even if he loses the popular vote count. But it’s a high-risk strategy. 

Team Trump’s decision to embrace the harshest anti-immigrant rhetoric of any mainstream candidate in modern Presidential politics - all based on a false story of immigrants in Ohio eating family pets - serves as another indication of panic. It is a base play by the campaign, one aimed at maximising the vote amongst the most virulently racist section of American society.  It’s all morally reprehensible in the eyes of a reasonable observer but as a campaign strategy it begs the question - don’t these people already vote for Trump? 

By contrast - again - the Harris machine has been the model of consistency, grinding out a daily message of  “We’re not going back”, as well as mixing in details of policy proposals. The messaging has been backed by record spending on advertising, especially in the digital space, where the intended target is the younger voters, a demographic that ranks amongst the lowest when it comes to turning out to vote. 

There is time yet for the race to change its apparently steady course. October in any US election cycle is not October unless it comes with a surprise. But for now the campaign sits at what the author Malcolm Gladwell identified as the ‘tipping point’ - a moment in time when an idea, or a fashion, or a social behaviour tips over and takes hold of the mainstream. 

Harris appears to be on the cusp of such a moment. The crowds. That smile. The debate victory. The energy. The endorsements of Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish in rapid succession. She has escaped the relative anonymity of her vice-presidential years. The American public has taken its first proper look at who she is and what she stands for, and it appears to like what it sees. Or to put it another way - this race is now hers to lose.