Democrats are poised to win. But only if they make the election about Trump | Michael Podhorzer

It does not matter who is up and who is down in the polls. It's about if Democrats turn out

Now that Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee, you'll be hearing a lot of speculation about how she might poll against Trump. What if I told you that the polls are almost immaterial to the final election result? Instead of making much ado about who is up and who is down, let's keep our eyes on a different question - in October, what will voters think this election is about?

The evidence of voter behavior over the last eight years paints a clear picture of what lies ahead. Critically, we can't use polls today to predict this outcome. That's because the winner in November will be determined by what, to most voters, the election seems to be about" by the time voting starts. This will determine whether the voters Democrats need to win will turn out, or stay home.

Michael Podhorzer, the former longtime political director of the AFL-CIO, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the chair of the Analyst Institute, the Research Collaborative and the Defend Democracy Project and writes the Substack Weekend Reading.