Ruth Nathaniel walked us through literally how we got here but this was not pre-ordained I mean had there not been a debate we could still be here in September with Biden um at the top of the ticket the party didn't need to Rally around Harris the way it did and also it probably wasn't written in the stars that the numbers would flip so aggressively I mean from a three-point lead for Trump to a three-point lead for Harris in the span of a month so from your maybe numerical understanding of how we got here or party minations of how we got here how do you make sense of the summer that Nathaniel just laid out yeah I mean I think the best place to look is at voter enthusiasm voters were deeply depressed about their choices for candidates earlier in this summer and into the spring like we saw you know record levels of Voters who disliked both candidates people were miserable they were unhappy and in a way they were kind of looking for an alternative and that's why to some extent you saw a spike with some of these third party candidates like RFK Jr people were looking for an outlet and maybe in a surprising way Harris was that outlet for a lot of people that change in the top of the ticket for Democrats swung a lot of those voters who were frustrated with both options to be considering Harris I mean if you look at her favorability alone before she was the party's Nomine her favorability was very very low nationally and it swung I think in our poll it swung something like 19 or 20 percentage points in her favor after she was selected as the party's nominee and that's a pretty dramatic change in this polarized era where these things are pretty stable I mean they called you know Trump Teflon Don because his favorability and his approval ratings didn't change for anything but this really swung Harris and I think a lot of that that kind of how did we get here was just voters were deeply unhappy with their choices they were looking for an alternative they were happy with this alternative and it doesn't mean that their attitudes on Trump haven't changed meaning people who like Trump still like Trump but the electorate as a whole is just more energized scan this QR code to go to the apple and Spotify podcast apps to download the full 538 politics podcast