New York Times: “For Democrats, who rely on Black voters to power their electoral advantages in America’s urban centers, the difference between good and great Black voter turnout is often dependent on how many Black men go to the polls. Black women are the party’s most loyal demographic base — often referred to as its backbone — but motivated Black male voters were a crucial distinction between former President Barack Obama’s record-setting Black turnout in 2008 and 2012 and the diminished performance of Hillary Clinton in 2016.”

First Read: “According to exit polls, Black men have only made up about 5 percent of the electorate in presidential elections since 2008.”

“But the share captured by Democrats has been shrinking. In 2008, 95 percent backed Obama. In 2012, that was down to 87 percent. In 2016? Down to 80 percent.”

Nathan Gonzales: “Confidence in the analysis that Democrats are poised to win in November comes from the depth and breadth of the data. Biden not only leads Trump in the national polls, but in most of the individual battleground states that will decide the Electoral College. And Trump continues to struggle to reach his 2016 performance in key congressional districts around the country.”

“It’s hard to identify any state or district where Trump is performing at least as well as he did four years ago, let alone better. And that’s critical considering 2016, when Trump was just the right candidate at just the right time against just the right opponent winning by just enough in just the right states to win.”

Andrew Slack notes if you rearrange the letters in “Republican National Convention” it also spells “Con Vulnerable Nation Into Panic.”

The FiveThirtyEight forecast shows Joe Biden’s win probability down to 70%, after some mediocre polls for him this morning. He had been hovering around 73% for much of the last week.

Nate Silver: “First, Biden does not appear to be getting much of a convention bounce. He’s at +8.8 in our national poll average (still quite good) but that’s only up from +8.4 before the conventions.”

“Second, Biden has gotten some not-so-spectacular swing state polls lately. His lead in Florida is down to +5.4 and in Pennsylvania to +5.8, which remain the most likely tipping-point states. Not bad, but the Electoral College – popular vote gap would appear to be widening a bit.”

A big caveat: “This is not based on the world’s most spectacular set of polling, especially at the state level. And almost all of it is online panels, with a robopoll thrown in here and there; basically no live caller polls since the pre-convention round from ~10-14 days ago.”

Ezra Klein: “The problem for Republicans is that the main thing Trump has told them to support is himself. There are no detailed policy proposals, much less a coherent ideology or set of governing principles. And so speech after speech followed the same template: How was America going to stop the coronavirus? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to revive its economy? By reelecting Donald Trump. How was it going to ensure domestic harmony? By reelecting Donald Trump.”

“The contradiction at the heart of the convention, of course, is that Donald Trump is currently president. I’m dead serious. How would reelecting Trump resolve these crises that Trump has proven unable to resolve — and has, in many cases, worsened — in office? No one even took a shot at that Rubik’s cube. Instead, the speakers awkwardly talked around the fact of Trump’s incumbency. He was presented, strangely, as both incumbent and challenger; the man who had fixed America’s problems, but also the man needed to fix an America beset by more problems than ever.”

Amber Phillips: Trump isn’t doing much to shore up his weaknesses at the convention.

A new CNBC/Change Research survey finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by a 49% to 46% margin across six  key states. He has an edge over the incumbent in five of the six states, while North Carolina is virtually tied.

• Arizona: Biden 49%, Trump 47%
• Florida: Biden 49%, Trump 46%
• Michigan: Biden 50%, Trump 44%
• North Carolina: Biden 48%, Trump 47%
• Pennsylvania: Biden 49%, Trump 46%
• Wisconsin: Biden 49%, Trump 44%

Axios has several signs:

• He’s doing better in some swing-state polls than he was at this point in 2016. And his floor of support holds strong, regardless of what he says or does.
• Not only is the stock market on fire, but a lot of blue-collar workers in building, plumbing and other manual crafts are doing quite well, too.

Trump’s big bet is that there are a lot of working class voters, especially in rural areas, who did not vote in 2016 but will this time.

Politico: “Donald Trump is getting pummeled on the TV airwaves, alarming Republicans and prompting the president’s allies to plead for outside help. August has been a blowout: Trump has been outspent on TV more than 2-to-1 over the past month… And in the last two weeks, Joe Biden is outpacing the president more than 5-to-1.”

“The shortfall comes at a pivotal moment in the campaign, with Biden essentially monopolizing TV advertising in key battlegrounds before the start of early voting. Trump has ceded the airwaves in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where he’s gone dark in August. In Wisconsin, Trump has been out-gunned more than 8-to-1. The president is not slated to be on the airwaves anywhere during the final week of the month, as Republicans hold their convention.”

New York Times: “Since Mr. Trump plucked Mr. Pence from the governorship of Indiana to serve as socially conservative ballast on a thrice-married real estate mogul’s ticket, Mr. Pence has grown accustomed to performing such acrobatics, maneuvering around or dialing back in private what Mr. Trump bellows in public.”

“The cumulative effect of Mr. Pence’s conduct is to create around him a kind of artificial bubble of relative normalcy, in which the vice president avoids Mr. Trump’s most explosive and divisive behavior mostly by pretending it does not exist.”