Trump and Harris are deadlocked – could an October surprise change the game?

With just a month until Election Day, the contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is the equivalent of an electoral brawl.

The race for the White House still appears to be deadlocked, both nationally and in battleground states, so victory is decided by narrow margins – every new voter who gets involved, every undecided voter who has influence, could help land a knockout blow.

“In any extremely close race where the electorate is split down the middle, a difference of one or two percentage points could be crucial,” said David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University.

While party strategists are focused on gaining that decisive lead, it could just as well be an event beyond their control, an unexpected twist that is upending the election campaign in recent weeks.

It’s already been a year of political shockwaves – from one candidate surviving two assassination attempts and being convicted of a crime to another, President Joe Biden, abandoning the race in favor of his much younger vice president.

But when the surprises come in October — think Trump’s Access Hollywood tape or Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 — there’s little time to recover or get back on track after a misstep or bad news spiral.

This week alone there have been several new rumors that could lead to political storms between now and November 5th.

The first potential political storm was a literal one. Hurricane Helene devastated two key campaign hotspots last week: Georgia and North Carolina. Due to the intense focus on both states during this presidential election, a humanitarian disaster with a death toll already exceeding 130, has also become a political issue.

Harris promised long-term help to the region during a stop in Georgia earlier this week and visited people affected by the storm in North Carolina on Saturday.

“We’re here for the long haul,” she said in Georgia.

Both states are now essentially must-wins for Trump, and polls show a dead heat. During his visit to Georgia, the former president claimed Americans were missing out on emergency relief funds because they were spent on migrants. In fact, the two different programs have different budgets, and the Biden administration accused Republicans of spreading “blatant lies” about disaster relief funding.

When a disaster strikes, it’s not easy for the government to keep everyone happy. If Trump’s attacks succeed, voter dissatisfaction with recovery efforts could potentially impact the outcome in two of the most closely watched states in the country.

Thousands of miles from the catastrophic American Southeast, a man-made crisis continues to permeate American politics. The Gaza war is threatening to expand into a regional conflagration as Israeli forces battled Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and Iran fired hundreds of rockets into Israel earlier this week.

While Harris presented herself as a candidate for change, she did not distance herself from the current administration when it came to U.S.-Israel policy. That carries risks.

Hopes for a pre-election ceasefire in Gaza appear to be utterly dashed, and the White House is currently trying to ensure that the inevitable Israeli response to Tuesday’s attack on Iran does not lead to all-out war.

On Thursday evening, Biden didn’t exactly make reassuring comments.

“I don’t think there will be an all-out war,” he said. “I think we can avoid it. But there is still a lot to do.”

The war also has consequences for Democrats at home, even if American voters don’t usually think directly about foreign policy when they cast their ballots.

Harris’ pledge to continue supplying weapons to Israel poses a problem for two key segments of the Democratic base: Arab-Americans in the must-win state of Michigan, and young voters on campus, where anti-war protests could flare up again.

The conflict in the Middle East has also fueled concerns about the purse strings. Biden’s mention of the possibility that Israel would target Iranian refineries sent oil prices up more than 5% on Thursday.

If there’s one thing American consumers are particularly sensitive to, it’s higher prices at the pump.

Opinion polls consistently show that the economy is the top issue facing American voters. And Harris and Democrats got some good news on that front Friday: The latest jobs numbers showed robust job growth in recent months and an unemployment rate that fell to 4.1%.

But Greenberg says voters’ concerns about the economy are about more than just the latest jobs numbers.

“When people complain about the economy, what they’re really complaining about is the longer-term failure in certain parts of the country – America’s deindustrialized rural communities,” he says. “These are parts of the country that are doing poorly even in a good economy.”

For most of the election season, Trump did better than Harris when voters were asked who they thought would do a better job on the economy. also in a recent CNN poll. But there are signs that his leadership may not be set in stone. such as a Cook Political Report poll on swing states This showed that the two candidates were neck and neck as to who would best handle inflation.

A looming economic trap for Democrats also evaporated this week – The dock workers are on strikewhich briefly closed key ports on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico for the first time in 50 years. Both parties agreed to return to the negotiating table in January and reopen the ports. Had there been a sustained work stoppage, it could have disrupted supply chains and driven up consumer prices in the weeks leading up to the election.

Meanwhile, undocumented crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have returned to pre-Covid levels after reaching a record 249,741 last December.

While the effects of this border surge are still being felt in many American cities, the urgency of the crisis may be waning.

While much of the news this week could spell trouble for Harris and the Democrats, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Trump.

His conduct during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol came into focus again Wednesday when a federal judge released a document from special counsel Jack Smith outlining his case and evidence against Donald Trump, who had tried to to overturn the 2020 election results.

The document, which argued that the former president should not be granted immunity from prosecution, contained new details about Trump’s words and actions that led to the Capitol riots by his supporters.

A recent CNN poll shows voters favoring Harris over Trump on issues of “protecting democracy” by 47% to 40% – so anything that draws attention to the chaotic final weeks of Trump’s presidency could work to the Democrat’s advantage be.

The term “October Surprise” has been a staple in the U.S. political lexicon for nearly 50 years. Campaigns fear unexpected headlines or crises that throw their candidates off message and change the trajectory of a race.

Even the smallest ripple in public opinion could liberate the White House in a year when the electoral margin in swing states can only be measured in tens of thousands of votes.

The November vote, Mr. Greenberg says, is shaping up to be a nail-biter.

“I don’t have any fingernails anymore,” he says. “I could certainly imagine that this election will go one way or the other and that this vote will have extremely serious consequences, no matter where your loyalties lie.”

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher explains the race for the White House in his twice-weekly article US election unfounded newsletter. Readers in the UK can Register here. People outside the UK can do this Register here.