After months of alternating between despair and terror, a lot of Democrats are feeling positively unburdened. In the day since President Biden stepped aside and the party coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris, a euphoric giddiness has fallen over the party. Intuitively, it seems like the newly effervescent vibes should help in the very serious project of defeating Donald Trump, but I’ve been curious if the political science literature backs that up. “I don’t know of any political science or economic forecasting models that explicitly include a measure of voter enthusiasm,” the political scientist Alan Abramowitz told me. But the scholar Samuel Popkin, whose books include “The Candidate: What It Takes to Win — and Hold — the White House,” said that intangibles like joy and passion can matter a lot.

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Persons: Biden, Kamala Harris, Charli, Ariana Grande, Donald Trump, I’ve, Alan Abramowitz, Samuel Popkin, ” Organizations: Democratic