Philadelphia Inquirer: “The trend was consistent across racial groups, though it was most pronounced in majority-Latino neighborhoods. In two North Philadelphia political wards — including the one where Lopez lives — Biden in 2020 performed worse in nearly every voting division than Clinton did in 2016.”

“In some areas, voters increasingly cast ballots for Trump. In others, Democratic vote totals declined because turnout did — fewer people showing up in blue strongholds is effectively a gain for Republicans.”

“Turnout in Philadelphia has been a perennial concern for Democrats. Some blame ideological divisions within the party, and others point to the Democratic City Committee and the state party, which are responsible for driving turnout in every election cycle but have been criticized as ineffective.”

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump nationally among likely voters in a multi-candidate field, 49% to 46%.

Donald Trump  praised Sen. J.D. Vance’s debate performance and said it “reconfirmed my choice” to select him as his running mate, CNN reports.

Said Trump: “J.D. was fantastic last night — it just reconfirmed my choice. There was a brilliance to what he did.”

As I predicted last night, the Kamala Harris campaign released an ad on the exchange between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance on Jan. 6 and Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, CNN reports.

A new Marquette University Law School poll in Wisconsin finds Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump among likely voters, 52% to 48%.

That shows no change from the last poll, released in mid-September, which had the same numbers for both registered and likely voters.

In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) leads challenger Eric Hovde (R), 53% to 46%.

David Frum: “I’ve known Vance for 15 years. In that time, I’ve witnessed many reinventions of the Vance story, heard many different retellings of who he is and what he believes. Last night, he debuted one more retelling. His performance of the role was well executed. The script was almost entirely fiction.”

Emily Shugerman: “Trump has long polled significantly better with men than women and has recently made inroads with even the youngest male voters, fueling a historic 51 percent polling gap between Gen-Z women and men. But according to an analysis of polling from the conservative American Enterprise Institute, his pull may actually be strongest with divorcés…”

“While divorced men have been trending right for at least the past two decades, the poll found some 56 percent of divorced men now support Trump — more than single men, married men, and women of any relationship status. Daniel Cox, who conducted the poll, tells me that the divorce divide started widening in the mid-2010s, around the time of Trump’s first presidential campaign and changes in how we handle sexual assault and harassment.”

Said Cox: “Politicians like Trump are saying men are getting the raw end of the deal here after the Me Too movement, and giving voice to some of the pain and challenges men are facing. You have an undercurrent of resentment that leads them to try to leverage it for political purposes.”

Bloomberg: “Political campaigns are expensive in the US and keep getting pricier. Spending on presidential and congressional elections totaled $14.4 billion in the 2020 election, more than double the record amount spent on the race four years earlier. For the 2024 election scheduled for Nov. 5, candidates and groups supporting them had already raised more than $14.8 billion as of Aug. 31, Federal Election Commission records show, with the biggest fundraising still ahead.”

“Just a third of the $14.8 billion was raised by candidates and political parties. The rest is money donated to political action committees, which often represent business, labor, professional or ideological interests. They include so-called super PACs, groups that can support campaigns as long as they are nominally independent from them. Unlike the other campaign spenders, super PACs can accept unlimited contributions from donors.”

Jonathan Last: “Vance had mostly nice things to say about Tim Walz. He wasn’t mean at all. When Walz talked about his son being near a school shooting, Vance expressed his sympathy and said, ‘Christ have mercy’ while shaking his head.”

“He didn’t say MAGA once. He implied that Obamacare was good, while Trump’s official policy still seems to be that it should be repealed. He accepted the reality of climate change and acknowledged that some unnamed Republicans needed to ‘earn back; the trust of Americans on the subject of abortion.”

“He was young and svelte and perfectly deferential to Trump. So perfectly that it felt a little cloyingly. Almost like he was putting the shine on the old man.”

“I doubt Vance did anything meaningful to help Trump’s electoral prospects. But he absolutely helped his own prospects for 2028, or 2032, or whenever Trump leaves the scene.”

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!”

— Sen. J.D. Vance, quoted by the Washington Post, complaining to debate moderator Margaret Brennan.