NINE WEEK COUNTDOWN — The hour is later than you think. While in some ways it feels like the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump just started, the reality is that it’s nearly over. North Carolina begins mailing out absentee ballots this week. Early voting begins in Pennsylvania in two weeks. Just 63 days remain until Election Day. At the beginning of the post-Labor Day homestretch, the race is incredibly tight — Harris leads in national polls by between 2 and 4 percentage points, on average. The election, of course, is not decided by a national vote. The outcome will be determined in seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And there, the contest is exceptionally close as well. Harris holds a narrow lead in six of the seven battlegrounds — all but North Carolina, according to FiveThirtyEight polling averages in those states. But the margin between the candidates is so slim that it’s under one percentage point in more than half of those states. At the moment at least, this is a margin of error contest wrapped in a photo-finish inside a dead heat. For Democrats, the outlook is better than at any other point in the 2024 campaign. Before dropping out, Biden trailed in every battleground state. Even his own campaign conceded that his path back to the White House had narrowed to a harrowing ride through the Rust Belt, with no room for error. Today, Harris has two plausible routes, one through the Rust Belt and another through the Sun Belt. She’s even in striking distance of winning North Carolina, which would all but doom Trump’s chances. Republicans also have reason for hope. Their nominee for president has weathered 88 alleged criminal offenses across four criminal cases and has been found guilty of 34. He still owes hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties to E. Jean Carroll and New York state. Despite all that, he remains essentially tied in the polls. The GOP base remains wildly enthusiastic about voting for Trump. While Democratic enthusiasm has spiked in the aftermath of Harris’ ascension to the party nomination, Republican enthusiasm for Trump has kept pace — and even shows signs of improvement. According to an early August Pew Research Center survey, 72 percent of Trump supporters said they are extremely motivated to vote, up from 63 percent in July. In that same poll, 70 percent of Harris supporters said they are extremely motivated to vote. Trump supporters have another reason to believe: polls have underestimated the level of support for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. It’s been a campaign that has already witnessed a lifetime’s worth of October Surprises — indictments, convictions, an assassination attempt, a catastrophic debate performance, the withdrawal of a president from a reelection bid — and yet there are still some potentially catalytic moments to come. A presidential debate between Trump and Harris is slated to take place just one week from today, on Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News. The two camps remain held up on the rules — including whether the microphones will be hot. Boiled down to its essence, the mic fight is a Harris campaign bet that an unmuted Trump is an unmoored Trump, easily baited into a spectacular act of self-immolation. Throughout the campaign thus far, Harris has stayed relentlessly on message while Trump has swung wildly at her identity; that’s a distinction that the vice president’s campaign is hoping they can show the American public in miniature next week. A week after the showdown before a national audience, the first of three significant economic moments will arrive — occasions that could go a long way toward determining how Americans feel about the economy, and bolstering or undermining the candidates’ arguments. On Sept. 17-18, the Federal Reserve is set to hold its September meeting, where Chair Jerome Powell is expected to recommend an interest rate cut. A 25 basis point cut is likely already priced in, but if Powell recommends a larger cut of 50 basis points — unlikely but not out of the question — it could spur optimism in the market about inflation, but also could mean that the Fed sees the labor market as particularly weak. In October and early November, we’ll get final, pre-election looks at both the state of inflation and the strength of the job market, which will color the closing arguments in an election where inflation and the economy are the number one issue for many voters. On Oct. 10, the final Consumer Price Index — the most important measure of inflation — before the election will be released. Then, three weeks later on Nov. 1, just four days before voters go to the polls, the final jobs report will be released. Harris is trying to sell voters on an economy where inflation is under control and the job market remains robust. But if one of these indicators suggests otherwise right before Nov. 5, Republicans will have a key data point to leverage in their case against Biden-Harris economic policies. Polls suggest Harris is closing the gap on Trump regarding how much voters trust each candidate to handle the economy. But as she claims more credit for the policies of the Biden administration, these three dates become essential as voters build their impression of how she might handle economic issues as president. With just over two months to go, the race looks tighter than any in recent memory. And while the polls rarely change dramatically between Labor Day and Election Day, the fact that the contest is so close means that even a small atmospheric change could decide who will be the next president. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s authors at cmahtesian@politico.com and cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie and @calder_mchugh.
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