Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. Or at least, la meme chose circa late spring.

CNN has new battleground-state polling data, some of which looks good for Kamala Harris -- but only in a literal sense. Harris has reset the race to the status quo ante that existed before the debate, erasing the sharp drop in support for Democrats. However, CNN's analysis overlooks critical context of this data:

The 2024 presidential campaign’s home stretch kicks off with a mixed outlook across six key battlegrounds, according to new CNN polls conducted by SSRS in each state. Vice President Kamala Harris holds an advantage over former President Donald Trump among likely voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump has the edge in Arizona. The two split likely voters almost evenly in Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the state with the largest electoral vote prize that’s widely seen as up for grabs.

Across each of them, an average of 15% of likely voters say they have not yet firmly decided their choice, suggesting a sizable share of voters could shift their views on the race as attention to the campaign rises and campaign activity, especially in these states, hits a fever pitch in the final nine weeks before Election Day.

Likely voters in Wisconsin break 50% for Harris to 44% for Trump, and in Michigan, it’s 48% Harris to 43% Trump. In Arizona, Trump lands at 49% to Harris’ 44%. In Georgia and Nevada, 48% back Harris to 47% for Trump, and in Pennsylvania, the candidates are tied at 47%.

This shows some improvement for Democrats, to be sure. Even where Trump maintains a lead, it has narrowed; Harris has overtaken Trump in other battleground states listed in the analysis. However, all of these except Wisconsin are essentially dead heats, and the Wisconsin result is an outlier of existing post-convention polling to boot. Harris has made the race closer, but even with any convention bounce/honeymoon period in play, she hasn't changed the race -- yet, anyway.

Why? We elect presidents in the Electoral College, and these results don't indicate that Harris will win there. Biden beat Trump in every one of these states in 2020, which means that Harris is still losing ground in the election, eve if these results hold up. Even if Harris wins Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump gets to 281 EC votes by winning PA, GA, and AZ.  And he either ties or leads Harris in all three, even as the "vibes" still ring out from the convention:

Harris has to win Pennsylvania to win the election, and not lose any other ground than what's on the map. The chances for Democrats to hold PA have improved, clearly, but Harris has only led in one poll (Morning Consult) since the convention, and Trump has led in one as well (Trafalgar). 

Furthermore, as Breitbart points out, the fundamentals in this CNN poll favor Trump. The more this election returns to the economy, the worse Harris will do, perhaps especially in these battleground states:

Seven states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada — will decide the president, longtime Democrat adviser Doug Sosnik wrote in the New York Times. If Trump wins one or more of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Harris’s chances of obtaining 270 electoral votes become narrower.

Trump dominates Harris in the five major swing states [on the economy], according to the surveys:

• Arizona: (Trump+15) – Harris 37%, Trump 52%, Neither 11%
• Georgia:  (Trump+4) – Harris 44%, Trump 48%, Neither 8%
• Michigan: (Trump+5) – Harris 44%, Trump 49%, Neither 7%
• Nevada: (Trump+16) – Harris 37%, Trump 53%, Neither 9%
• Pennsylvania: (Trump+8) – Harris 42%, Trump 50%, Neither 8%
• Wisconsin: (Trump+2) – Harris 45%,  Trump 47%, Neither 8%

The vibes may play well for Harris now, although the tracking on polling aggregation suggests that voters may have vibed out. Now that we're past Labor Day, the economy will matter more than vibes, and so will immigration and crime. Those are the top issues for voters this fall, as numerous polls have demonstrated, and Harris trails Trump on trust in all of those issue sets. In fact, Harris still doesn't have any policy proposals on her campaign website, so in essence voters have to trust Trump by default. 

Finally, this is just one set of polls; we will see others, national and battlegrounds alike. The polling in all of the latter shows a dead heat, as do the betting markets as of this morning, with both Trump and Harris at 49.3. The next potential inflection point will come next week at the debate, when Harris will have to offer coherent policy positions and withstand Trump in real time. If Trump can stick to the issues, he can win this election. Stay tuned.