Donald Trump is gaining on Kamala Harris in the polls. I have some theories why | Robert Reich

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : One is that the polls are understating voters' support for Harris and overstating their support for Trump.
51% : By now, almost everyone in America knows Trump and has made up their minds about him.
46% : But given that the American economy has rebounded, inflation is way down, interest rates are falling, wages are up and the job engine continues, you'd think voters at the margin would be moving toward her rather than toward Trump.
41% : How can he now be essentially tied with her in the other key swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin?More generally, how can Trump have chiseled away Harris's advantage from early August?
38% : How can Trump - the sleaziest person ever to run for president, who has already been convicted on 34 felony charges and impeached twice, whose failures of character and leadership were experienced directly by the American public during his four years at the helm - be running neck-and-neck with a young, talented, intelligent person with a commendable record of public service?
35% : But if the polls are systematically biased, you'd think it would be the other way around, since some non-college voters are probably reluctant to admit to professional pollsters their preference for Trump.
35% : This requires, first, that Trump suck all the media oxygen out of the air so Harris has fewer opportunities to define herself positively.
29% : Even if Harris wins, the fact that so many Americans seem prepared to vote for Trump makes me worry for the future of my country.
28% : Recent polls have found that nearly 90% of voters say they do not need to learn more about Trump to decide their vote.
27% : How is it possible that more voters appear to view Trump favorably now than they did several months ago when he was in the race against Biden?
27% : In other words, Trump is running neck-and-neck with Harris not despite the mess he's created over the last few weeks but because of it.
26% : Trump, widely regarded as the sleaziest person to ever run for president, is leading or tied with Harris in crucial swing statesWith less than 40 days until election day, how can it be that Trump has taken a small lead in Arizona and Georgia - two swing states he lost to Biden in 2020?
19% : Because Trump is deteriorating rapidly; lately he's barely been able to string sentences together coherently.
17% : Instead, the ads aired by Trump and his allies in swing states are overwhelmingly negative about Harris - emphasizing, for example, her past support for gender transition surgery for incarcerated people.
12% : And as they tune out both Trump and Harris, Trump is the beneficiary, because, again, he's the devil they know.
9% : Trump is exploiting this asymmetry so that when it comes to choosing between Trump and Harris, voters will choose the devil they know.

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