FITSNews Political Stock Index – 9/26/2024

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With October in sight, the quadrennial American presidential election cycle is hitting its most pivotal stretch. As our Dylan Nolan reported earlier this week, this race – which has seen indictments, assassination attempts and a successful Democratic coup – remains too close to call.

As of this writing, the latest aggregate battleground state polling has former president Donald Trump narrowly leading vice president Kamala Harris in Arizona (+1.6 percent), Georgia (+2.2 percent) and North Carolina (+0.6 percent). Harris narrowly leads Trump in Michigan (+1.8 percent), Nevada (+0.4 percent), Pennsylvania (+0.6 percent) and Wisconsin (+0.7 percent).

Were those percentages to hold, Harris would win the White House… but Trump’s numbers have been on the rise of late, and as we have frequently pointed out the GOP nominee has historically outperformed the polls.

Will he do so again?

The tightness of this contest makes keeping your political portfolio up to date more essential than ever. Who is rising? Falling? Holding? Find out in this week’s FITSNews Political Stock Index.

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For more than a year, our founding editor Will Folks and political columnist Mark Powell have been monitoring the unprecedented political chaos of the 2024 election cycle via our FITSNews Political Stock Index.  As noted, each installment is an assessment of how our subjects fared over the previous week. Positive reports don’t reflect endorsements, and negative ones aren’t (necessarily) indicative of vendettas.

We just call ‘em like we see ‘em…

To view the most recent index, click here. And to get your historical fix, click here.

Got a hot “stock tip” for our consideration? Email Will (here) and/ or Mark (here). Just be sure to include “Palmetto Political Stock Index” in the subject line.

Where should you invest your political capital this week? To the index…

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LABOR UNION ENDORSEMENTS

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STOCK: RISING

This is the time in the election cycle when groups start announcing which candidate they’re backing. And there’s been no shortage of endorsements in recent days. But two in particular from organized labor stand out.

First, the Teamsters Union shattered recent historical precedent by not endorsing either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. That’s a big blow to Harris’ campaign. Why? Because for decades, the group representing the folks who drive the big rigs has stood solidly behind Democratic nominees including both Clintons, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Biden, et al. But not this year.

“Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before big business,” explained Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, who, you may recall, made news by speaking on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in July.

Given how the Biden-Harris administration spent the last three years giving concierge service to Big Labor, losing the Teamster’s support is a huge slap in the Harris campaign’s face – although some locals say they’re sticking with her.

Harris did receive one union endorsement that she won’t be bragging about on the campaign trail. She now has the National Treasury Employees Union’s enthusiastic backing. The lion’s share of its membership is IRS agents, the same folks who want your tax money every April 15.

“When it comes to treating federal employees with respect, valuing their service, and investing in their work, Kamala Harris is the clear choice,” NTEU president Doreen Greenwald said. “She shares our values and our commitment to making sure that the federal government works for all Americans.” 

What Greenwald didn’t mention was Harris’ tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act – a measure which included hiring a staggering 87,000 new IRS agents to round up more revenue for Uncle Sam’s insatiable fiscal appetite. The NTEU endorsement is the union’s way of saying thanks. Birds of a feather stick together, right?

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MURRELL SMITH

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STOCK: FALLING

South Carolina House speaker Murrell Smith might want to stock up on ibuprofen… because the odds of a particularly raucous 2025 session of the S.C. General Assembly keep climbing.

Nobody under the State House dome in downtown Columbia is particularly happy these days. Moderate “Republicans” are livid because Smith failed to deliver on a $2 million bid to oust members of the S.C. Freedom Caucus members in last June’s primary. Not only did this costly campaign fail to remove any Freedom Caucus members – the conservative group actually gained several seats.

Smith is also under fire for allegedly denying pork to certain members’ districts – while ensuring his hometown of Sumter, S.C. was well-fed at the taxpayer trough.

Based on the massive pork buffet “Republicans” approved this year, it’s hard to imagine there were any little piggies left out of the feeding frenzy, but be that as it may – Smith’s rank-and-file members remain unhappy.

With trouble on both his political flanks, Smith will sally into the upcoming legislative session minus his political right arm. As this news outlet reported earlier in the week, Patrick Dennis – Smith’s influential chief of staff and chief legal counsel – is heading across town to work for Prisma Health.

How will he maintain his tenuous hold on power shorthanded? We shall see…

The GOP is expected to pad its supermajorities in both the House and the Senate in the upcoming elections, but if Smith’s situation is any indication – Republicans’ numerical monolith will continue to be a “majority in name only.”

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EARLY VOTING

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STOCK: RISING

Election Day was last Friday – and you missed it. It’s also today, and tomorrow – and next week. In fact, every day through November 5 is now Election Day.

Early voting officially began Friday in Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia. While a case can be made that September 20 is insanely early, ballots are now being cast – and the pace will only pick up in the coming five weeks.

There is no longer an Election “Day,” in the sense that voters physically go to the polls on the first Tuesday in November. It’s now “Election Season.” Whether that bodes good or ill for our republic’s future is open to debate. But it is a reality, an essential truth that political pros cannot deny. Meaning the time to change minds and win voters shrinks with each passing hour.

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KAMALA HARRIS

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STOCK: HOLDING

Is the “Harris honeymoon” over? Maybe… or maybe not.

Don’t get us wrong; she’s in a strong position and has at least an even money shot at becoming Madam President next January. She also has an equally viable shot at becoming the next Dan Quayle.

When you look at the one area that’s the lifeblood of any political campaign, she’s leading by a country mile. “Money changes everything,” Cyndi Lauper once sang. And Harris’ overflowing war chest is putting that proposition to the test.

When it comes to fundraising, Harris is so far out in front Trump has literally been left eating her dust. Her campaign raked in four times as much as he did in August. She’s blowing through those Benjamins at an equally brisk pace, too, spending nearly three times more than Trump did last month.

Topping it all off, she’s got a cool $100 million more in the bank than her Republican rival.

What is all that money getting her, though? Despite her massive financial edge – and what most viewed as a decisive win over Trump in their one and only debate earlier this month – all Harris has to show for it is a 2 percent national lead over her rival, according to RealClearPolling.

By contrast, Biden led Trump by 6.9 percent in the polls at this same point in 2020.

This may suggest the “new candidate smell” has worn off her campaign. People are starting to take the election seriously, and what they’re seeing and hearing may be giving them pause. Or it may not. We’ll soon see.

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NIKKI HALEY

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STOCK: FALLING

This outlet was so busy talking about the former governor-turned-ambassador’s adventures into pay radio recently that we haven’t discussed her other new side hustles.

It was announced earlier this month that Nikki Haley is the new vice chair of the public affairs consultancy for PR powerhouse Edelman. She also has her gig as a neoconservative cheerleader at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

And now a new Sirus XM platform to tout her establishment clientele?

What Haley clearly lacked in electoral appeal she is more than making up for in terms of shaking the money tree… now the only question is whether she will ever be able to leverage that largesse into the national influence she so clearly covets.

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DONALD TRUMP

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STOCK: HOLDING

Win or lose, this will be the last time you see Candidate Trump. The former president and current GOP nominee says should he lose this election, he won’t run again in 2028. And should he win, he would be term-limited. As a result, the next race will be the first time in nearly a generation that the name “Trump” hasn’t appeared on ballots. (Franklin Roosevelt’s ghost is likely heaving a sigh of relief; his record of four consecutive presidential runs remains intact.)

For the moment, as this news outlet reported earlier this week, Trump’s campaign remains very much alive. A new New York Times/Sienna College poll showed him back in the lead in swing states Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. Overall, his national polling numbers have been incrementally ticking upward in recent days. Though he still has a long way to go to recover the commanding lead he held over Joe Biden when summer began.

There is also some question about whether pollsters are undercounting Trump support, perhaps in a bid to boost Harris’ chances. Democrats are terrified of a repeat of 2016, where Election Day began with polling numbers pointing to a Hillary Clinton victory, only to end with surprise a Trump upset on Election Night.

Democrats are also trying to goad Trump into debating Harris a second time. In fact, the Democratic National Committee says it will launch static and mobile billboards with a campaign labeling the notoriously thin-skinned former president as “chicken.” But after the mauling Trump took from the MSM following his lackluster performance in the September 10 debate, don’t look for him to climb back into that ring anytime soon.  

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JIMMY CARTER

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STOCK: RISING

The man from Plains, Ga., turns a hundred years old on Tuesday, October 1. That will make him the first president to ever reach the century mark. (Five others—John Adams, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush—made it to their 90s. And Joe Biden isn’t far behind.)

It’s quite a milestone for the most improbable of presidents. He rode a wave of distrust in government following the Watergate Crisis with a squeaker against Ford in 1976. His greatest accomplishment was brokering the landmark Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt in 1979. But that was overshadowed by the Iran Hostage Crisis, the Energy Crisis, and runaway inflation and painfully high unemployment, both caused by out-of-control federal spending.

His reputation was rehabilitated in his retirement years through his ceaseless work with Habitat for Humanity, pushing for fair and open democratic elections around the world, and as a successful author.

The Stock Index joins millions of Americans of goodwill in putting politics aside to say, “Happy Hundredth, Mr. President!”

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