FITSNews Political Stock Index – 10/17/2024

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The 2024 presidential election is coming down to the wire with the two major party candidates – Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris – seemingly poised for a photo finish. We are officially less than three weeks away from election day, and polling averages from all seven swing states continue to fall within the margin of error.

As of this writing, RealClearPolling‘s averages have Trump ahead in Arizona (+1.1 percent), Michigan (+1.0 percent), Pennsylvania (+0.5 percent), Nevada (+0.5 percent), North Carolina (+1.2 percent) and Georgia (+0.9 percent) while Harris leads in Wisconsin (+0.3 percent).

While the race is too close to call in each state, momentum is solidly on Trump’s side. As a result, he has opened up a big lead in markets hosted by PredictIt and Polymarket, showing where the smart money is moving on the race.

Will the race continue trending in Trump’s direction? Or does an ‘October surprise’ await?

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For more than a year, our founding editor Will Folks and political columnist Mark Powell have been monitoring the unprecedented insanity of the 2024 election cycle via our FITSNews Political Stock Index.  As noted, each installment assesses 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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KAMALA HARRIS

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STOCK: RISING

It was a high-stakes gamble. The progressive Democrat sat down for thirty minutes on Wednesday evening with Brett Baier of Fox News, an outlet with a stanchly conservative-leaning audience.

Harris had just wrapped up an event in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania featuring Republicans who are supporting her candidacy. Baier said afterward that Harris arrived late (coming within a whisker of missing the interview). The conversation began contentiously and stayed that way. It felt as though Harris and Baier spent half of the exchange talking over one another.

Amid the crosstalk, nothing earthshaking was revealed – nor was any new ground covered. Harris brought the passion when she was dumping on Donald Trump, but otherwise her appearance was predominantly pedestrian. That was really all she needed, though. Harris avoided drowning in one of her infamous ‘word salad’ answers – and emerged from the sit-down able to say, “see, I’m not skipping tough interviews… I went into the opponents’ lion’s den and held my own.”  

While the much-ballyhooed Fox News interview didn’t cost her any votes, Harris probably didn’t pick up any support, either. That’s not how you win elections – especially in a race as close as this one.

While we noted previously Trump has edged ahead of Harris in several key swing states, she remains a formidable force at this late stage in the game – thanks in no small part due to the $1 billion her campaign has raised. For that reason alone, her stock remains rising even as her polling numbers appear to have plateaued.

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DONALD TRUMP

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STOCK: RISING

There are several ways to gauge what’s really happening in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign. Fundraising is one. All those new opinion surveys coming out of pollsters’ ears is another. But there’s one giant giveaway which reveals the true thinking inside a campaign’s HQ: Following the candidate’s appearances on the campaign trail. Time is precious at this stage of a race, and sending candidates to places where they don’t have a legitimate shot at victory deprives them of traveling to places where they actually can move the needle in the Electoral College.

Judging by Donald Trump‘s travel schedule, his team is brimming with confidence.

The former president has rallies scheduled in the coming weeks in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. That’s significant because outgoing president Joe Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020. In fact, at 13 points Colorado had the “closest” margin of any of those deep blue states. Spending so much time in places that went so strongly Democratic last time suggests Trump-Vance’s internal polling reveals something important is afoot there.

Policy-wise, Trump vowed during a televised town hall event with women voters Wednesday that if he wins, “we’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy.” 

He renewed his call for no taxes on Social Security benefits and decried what he referred to as “the enemy within.”

Plus, he’s continuing to blast CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ for failing to release the full transcript of Harris’ recent interview. That comes amid mounting claims that the network edited it to make her look good.

After being caught flat-footed by Harris’ ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket back in July, Trump has found his stride at the most important moment in the race: The homestretch.

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TIM WALZ

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STOCK: FALLING

Call it the shotgun blunder heard round the world.

It was supposed to have been an easy photo-op for Democratic veep candidate Tim Walz. Saturday was the opening day of pheasant season in Minnesota. So, the governor donned an orange hunting vest and went before the cameras in a bit aimed at appealing to Second Amendment supporters. But what happened next left many gun owners doubled over in laughter instead.

As he chatted away in his amiable manner, Walz couldn’t load his shotgun. No, seriously, he couldn’t. This from the same guy who once bragged about “weapons of war that I carried in war.” (Spoiler alert: He didn’t.)

Compounding matters, CBS News reported that Walz didn’t get off a single shot all day.

“No pheasants were injured during the filming of this campaign ad,” one person posted on X.

While Walz fumed at the explosion of memes comparing him to hapless hunter Elmer Fudd, his political effectiveness also took a nose dive this week… at the worst possible time for the Democratic ticket.

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RACIAL PANDERING

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STOCK: RISING

Picture this: A presidential campaign stumps on a proposal that would benefit only white people. Can you imagine the 50-megaton reaction that would follow?

Yet, when the Harris campaign rolled out its “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” there was nothing but dutiful fawning from liberal Democrats and sycophantically loyal MSM mouthpieces.  The words “equal protection?” Those were nowhere to be found.

Harris wants to provide forgivable government loans of $20,000 for one million black entrepreneurs (If you’re white, Latino, or Asian, you’re out of luck). But it gets better. The plan would also create “new partnerships” between the Small Business Administration and community leaders and banks “with a proven commitment to their communities.”

Which, obviously, is code for “directing federal funds to favored black banks and institutions.”

Legal experts are saying you could set your stopwatch in the time it would take for the courts to find these ideas unconstitutional.

But the overt racial pandering didn’t stop there. At a widely panned campaign event in Pittsburgh late last week, former president Barack Obama angrily chided “the brothers” who aren’t voting for Harris.

“That’s not acceptable,” he scolded.

Former Georgia state representative Vernon Jones said Obama had been dispatched by his party to “whip black men back on the plantation to vote Democrat.”

There’s more. When radio host Charlamagne Tha God asked Harris about reparations for slavery, the Democratic nominee answered, “It has to be studied, there’s no question about that.”

What you won’t hear from the Harris-Walz campaign in the closing weeks of this race are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who famously dreamt of living in a nation where his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

There are no votes to be found in that, apparently.

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J.D. VANCE

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STOCK: RISING

There’s an old expression “when people show you who they really are, believe them.” That goes double for this story.

ABC’s favorite left-wing “journalist” Martha Raddatz was grilling GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance last Sunday about Donald Trump’s claims that members of the violent Venezuelan immigrant gang Tren de Aragua were running wild in Aurora, Colorado.

“I’m going to stop you because I know exactly what happened,” Raddatz said. “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes, and the mayor said, ‘our dedicated police officers have acted on those concerns.’” 

Vance wasn’t having any of it…

“Martha, do you hear yourself?” Vance shot back. “Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border?”

“When you let people in by the millions, most of whom are unvetted, most of whom you don’t know who they really are, you’re going to have problems like this,” Vance added.

That swift comeback won Vance rave reviews among the GOP base.

“Win or lose, Vance is going to come out of the election smelling like a rose,” one Republican strategist not affiliated with any presidential campaign told us. “If Trump wins, he’s vice president. If he loses, he’s positioned as the frontrunner in the next cycle. Either way, J.D. Vance heads into 2028 as the likely leader.”

Are you listening, Nikki Haley?

Bottom line? The MSM showed it is still in the tank. But Vance – unlike so many “Republicans” before him – showed he’s not going to suffer its foolishness gladly.

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1976 REVISITED?

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STOCK: RISING

An unpopular Republican president is seeking reelection. Democrats, desperate to win, decide to go with an unknown political commodity as their candidate. A nail-bitingly close race follows. 

Sounds like 2024, right? Wrong. Try the year of our bicentennial: 1976.

Gerald Ford, our country’s only unelected president, was seeking a full term of his own. Hampered by the triple burdens of the lingering Watergate scandal (capped by his presidential pardon for Richard Nixon), a bruising primary contest with conservative stalwart Ronald Reagan, and an ailing economy, Ford looked like political roadkill. So Democrats countered by putting forth a fresh face, the largely unknown one-term former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter.

At first, Carter’s sincerity and promise of a clean break with corruption in D.C. appealed to many Americans. His prospects looked rosy. But as the leaves turned that year, voters took a closer look at the Carter-Mondale ticket. And slowly but steadily, they began backing away from it. When Election Day finally arrived, Carter was only able to pull off a squeaker, besting Ford by 50.1 percent to 48.0 percent.

Some historians speculate that if the campaign had lasted another week, it might have produced a repeat of 1960’s Kennedy-Nixon race – which ended in almost an exact tie 49.72 percent to 49.55 percent.

Timing was a factor in the ’76 contest. Election Day fell on November 2 that year – its earliest possible date. That certainly hurt Ford’s chances.

While 1976 and 2024 aren’t apples and apples, there are enough similarities for strategists on both sides to ponder as independents continue inching away from Harris. 

Election day falls on November 5 this year – midway in the window of dates on which it can fall. Whether that will help Trump or Harris remains to be seen.

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GRETCHEN WHITMER

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STOCK: FALLING

A politician with a sense of humor is cool. Mocking the religious beliefs of others isn’t.

Michigan’s Democratic governor took a break from her relentless stumping for the Harris-Walz ticket last week to make a short video. Feminist influencer and Canadian author Liz Plank is seen seated as if to receive holy communion. A hand reaches out and places a Doritos chip in her mouth. The camera then pans over to reveal Gretchen Whitmer wearing a camo Harris-Walz cap.

When the clip was shared on Plank’s Instagram account (which boasts 611,000 followers), the backlash was swift and sharp. Catholics descended on the governor’s home and held a “Rosary Rally for Religious Respect.” Michigan’s Catholic bishops blasted her as well, saying the video “had an offensive impact.”

Whitmer offered the lame excuse that the clip was meant to call attention to the Biden Administration’s 2022 CHIPS Act and its importance to Michigan jobs. She even tossed in a mea culpa, saying, “I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith.”

But the record shows otherwise.

Whitmer once posted a photo on X depicting failed Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as a saint on a prayer candle. Republicans in the state legislature unsuccessfully tried to impeach her in 2020 for her executive orders, which they said “restricted and effectively banned the free exercise of religion in the state of Michigan in violation of the First Amendment.” 

Publicly mocking a ritual held sacred by millions of practicing Christians? There’s a word for that: Blasphemy.

And to think: If Joe Biden had gotten his way, Whitmer – not Kamala Harris – would be the vice president right now.

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