Will October Surprise Affect Trump-Harris Electoral Battle?

Naomi Lim of the Washington Examiner reports on a potential factor in the outcome of this year’s presidential race.

As potential voters flip their calendars over from September, Vice President Kamala Harris’s and former President Donald Trump’s campaigns are preparing for an October surprise.

But during an election cycle that has been repeatedly upended by unprecedented political developments, voters, particularly those who cast their ballot early, could be inured to this year’s surprise.

From Trump’s civil and criminal convictions in New York for sexual abuse, defamation, financial fraud, and falsifying business records and his two assassination attempts to Democrats mounting a pressure campaign on President Joe Biden to step aside as their 2024 presidential nominee 3 1/2 months before the election, Democratic strategist Mike Nellis joked that “it feels like every week has brought some kind of October surprise.”

“I have no idea what could upend the race at this time, especially since Trump is refusing to debate Harris,” Nellis told the Washington Examiner of a second debate between Harris and Trump. “We’ve had a lot of news condensed into a short period of time. I suspect people are largely just ready for this thing to be over.”

With William Casey, former President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign manager, popularizing the term “October surprise” more than 40 years ago, Republican strategist Cesar Conda did not “dare” to predict this election’s iteration but described them as traditionally involving a “war, an economic crisis, or a big political scandal.”

“Aside from the Middle East, there has been a lot of recent saber-rattling by China in its territorial disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea and by North Korea with its simulated nuclear counter strikes,” Conda told the Washington Examiner. “The 2008 market crash was a big economic one and the lesson learned is that candidates need to be prepared for anything so as to avoid a PR nightmare this close to the election.”

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