Portland isn't the only city where homelessness will be a key issue in the mayoral race. A competitive race in San Francisco, focused on crime and homelessness, is also shaping up to potentially change local dynamics in the city. Like Portland's mayoral election, the race will be conducted using ranked-choice voting. And for the first time this year, the San Francisco mayoral election will coincide with the presidential election, after voters passed a ballot referendum in 2022>) to move the date of the mayoral race — a change that gave current Mayor London Breed an extra year in office.

Unfortunately for Breed, that extra year doesn't seem to have helped her reputation in the city. According to an early September poll by Emerson College/KRON-TV, only 27% of San Francisco voters approved of the job Breed was doing as mayor, while 51% disapproved, numbers that are in line with other surveys of the city.

Breed first became acting mayor in 2017, after the death of Mayor Ed Lee, and was elected to a full term in 2019. She initially took more progressive stances on issues like police funding and homelessness, but she's since reversed course. Over the last few years, Breed has boosted funding to law enforcement, and in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision allowing cities to arrest or fine people sleeping on the streets, she encouraged officials to start issuing citations to homeless people and offer them free bus tickets out of town, rather than housing them.

And while overall crime in the city is down significantly even from pre-pandemic levels, Breed has also struggled to manage a looming budget deficit and a significant number of overdose deaths in the city.

As a result, the incumbent is facing some tough competition today, with a total of 11 candidates appearing on the ballot. Her main competitor, based on polls of the race, is Daniel Lurie, a political outsider who is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and founder of a local nonprofit organization that has worked on many of the key issues in the race — homelessness, criminal justice and poverty — a biography he's leveraged on the campaign trail. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin is running slightly behind them, though not far enough that he's out of contention.

The latest poll from Sextant Strategies for the San Francisco Chronicle shows Breed winning the largest share of first-round votes, but losing out to Lurie by 12 points in the final round of ranked-choice voting. Other polls released by the Peskin and Lurie campaigns have shown a similar picture, with Breed doing well in the first round, but trailing when voters' second and third choices are tallied.

Polling and anecdotal evidence ahead of this year's election suggests that Democrats' longtime advantage with Latino voters is continuing to shrink, which could create a massive vulnerability for Harris and congressional Democrats in pivotal swing states.

Since 2016, at least, Latino voters have gradually been shifting toward Republicans — and this trend is expected to continue today. To be clear, Latinos still prefer Harris over Trump by comfortable margins, but their support for Democratic presidential candidates has waned: An NBC News/Telemundo/CNBC poll fielded in September found Harris with an advantage among Latinos (54%, compared to 40% for Trump), but her margin represents a new low for the party. In 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020 each Democratic presidential nominee cleared 60% support among Latino voters. And, similar to Black voters, polls have found a gender gap: According to recent polling from the [](), Harris had a slight edge with Latino men (55% to 41%) and a larger edge with women (58% to 37%).

The rise in support for the GOP comes as Trump and his campaign surrogates continue to deride immigrants, including Latinos. (Just last week, the Trump campaign scrambled to do damage control after a comedian at one his events []() about Latinos — "they love making babies" — before moving on to describe Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage.")

These comments may not turn off conservative Latinos, however. Among other factors, how these voters align politically varies based on where they live, to what extent they prioritize their American identity over their ethnic identity and whether they went to college. And 538's own reporting suggests that Latino voters might be more prone to Republican candidates' messaging on race specifically. For example, many Latinos want stricter immigration reform more in-line with Republican's messaging. Some polling and research also shows that evangelical Latino voters buy into American nationalism and are turned off by identity politics, so they could be more receptive to the idea that the Democratic Party is out of step with their views.

A pronounced rightward shift this year wouldn't only hurt Harris, however. It could also affect Senate races in states with large Latino populations, particularly Arizona and Nevada. In both states, polling suggests that the Democratic candidates enjoy a comfortable lead over Republicans. Still, Harris and Trump are essentially neck-and-neck in both states, and a close margin at the top of the ticket could drag down Democratic Senate candidates. In Texas, too, Republicans have made inroads with Latino voters, especially those who live in the 28 counties bordering the Texas-Mexico border. A shift toward Republicans among those voters could be bad news for Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat who polls show is within single digits of ousting Senator Ted Cruz.

In any case, both Harris and Trump continued to make a play for Latinos in the lead-up to today. And given the size of this electorate (Latinos make up about 15% of the eligible voting population), how this group votes this year could ultimately decide the eventual outcome of the 2024 race.

In the months leading up to Biden's decision not to seek reelection, pundits speculated about the advantages and drawbacks of an open convention or a "mini-primary." to choose a potential replacement. But when Biden eventually did make that decision, that's not what happened. Instead, the party coalesced around Harris very quickly. She won endorsements from moderates like the New Democrats Coalition as well as congressional progressives, from party and movement figures like former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards and former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, and, crucially, from potential competitors like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

One thing about these "invisible" party primaries, whether they happen in a hurry as they did this year, or over the course of a longer campaign as they normally do, is that we often don't know exactly how it happened. The legacy of Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in 2016 may have left Democrats especially wary of potential internal disagreement. It is notable that congressional progressive leaders Sen. Bernie Sanders (Clinton's main challenger back in 2016) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among Biden's strongest defenders during the final weeks, when calls for him to drop out intensified. Intentionally or not, this may have held off a progressive challenge that could have complicated Harris'Harris's path.
As Monica noted earlier, an area where it's unclear whether Harris has successfully consolidated the party is the vocal faction that opposes the Biden-Harris administration's policy toward Israel and the war in Gaza. There were pro-Palestinian protests at the DNC in Chicago, and complaints that a speaker representing the pro-Palestinian movement was not featured. Questions have remained about whether the issue might hurt Harris particularly in Michigan, where the Uncommitted National Movement showed some strength in protesting Biden's nomination during the primaries. Recently a group of Muslim leaders endorsed Harris in hopes of preventing that outcome. What remains to be seen is whether the election will be close enough that these cracks in the Democratic coalition prove decisive.

This summer saw major political events occur one after the other (or occasionally at the same time), with unprecedented news breaking seemingly almost every week about the presidential race. Between the assassination attempt on Trump to Biden's disastrous debate performance that ultimately led him to drop out of the race, it's fair to say that this summer was one of the most volatile periods in recent presidential campaign history.

But the unpredictability of news events didn't necessarily translate to huge swings in the polls. In fact, we've had one of the steadiest presidential races in modern history, according to the polls. Before Biden dropped out, neither candidate's standing in our old national polling average changed by more than 3 percentage points over a span of almost five months. The story is similar in our new average that we launched after Harris took the reins as the Democratic nominee. Compare that to the 2020 campaign, where Biden maintained a consistent lead, but the polling average changed more dramatically throughout the year, with a difference of over 7 points between the largest and smallest margins.

There's been a variety of theories floated about why this year's polling looks more stable than past cycles. The shift may be a result of pollsters making methodological choices that increase the stability of the polls, or it could just be a reflection of a stubbornly polarized electorate in which relatively few voters are actually up for grabs from either campaign. Either way, 2024 has emerged as one of the most stable presidential elections in the modern polling era.