The days are drawing short. That is not just a commentary on the declining hours of daylight and the challenge of getting out of bed on dark mornings, but on the withering number of days remaining until Election Day is finally upon us.

As of this writing, over 21 million ballots have already been cast across the country. As of your reading, that number will exceed 25 million and could be closer to 30 million.

Of parenthetical note, I was led to believe that voting early has the advantage of turning off or, at least, slowing down the volume of super-annoying political texts. My ballot was returned over a week ago. Yet the texts continue.

Breathless reporters are still chasing down and trying to get a read on that remaining undecided voter in rural Michigan or small-town Pennsylvania or suburban Phoenix. Though in my take, such voters are very few in number and no longer the center of the story.

Help me conjure up a picture of that voter, ever diligent, who just can’t figure this one out. He or she is still weighing the nuances of Donald Trump’s tariff policies and checking out the speculation as to whom Kamala Harris might appoint to run the Department of Energy.

Yeah, such a hypothetical person, a caricature even, is a rare creature.

At this point, the overriding imperative of each campaign is one of turnout. Heaven and earth will be moved, and no dollar spared, to get each candidate’s identified supporters to the polls along, more broadly, with those belonging to favored demographic groups.

If you are female, college-educated and reside in a large metropolitan area, Harris get-out-the-vote volunteers will take their chances on you. Ditto for Trump operatives if you are male, with but a high school diploma and living in a small or medium-sized town. The stereotypes exist because they have a solid basis in statistics.

Of course, all of this activity is on massive steroids in those seven swing states that will decide the election. As I write, a text just came through from close friends canceling dinner this weekend as they have decided to go to Pennsylvania to knock on doors.

Beyond the turnout drive, the target of each campaign is far less the undecided voter than the marginal, disengaged one. Per above, fence-sitters are very few and far between. The prize is the irregular voter, largely alienated from the process or just uninterested, who needs to be spurred to get up off the couch.

In lower turnout elections, such a voter is a non-participant. In higher-turnout affairs, including Obama 2008 and Biden 2020, many such folks will finally awake and chime in.

In these closing days, this is far more a battle of motivation than of persuasion. The race may well come down to which side is better able to rally that last disengaged, distracted voter to show up and check a box.

Enough prelude. Let’s look at the winning scenario for each campaign.

A Trump win and a return for him to the White House would be due to the widespread public dissatisfaction with the Biden years. Trump is waging a campaign of nostalgia to accompany all of the grievance. “Make America Great Again” is a wistful sentiment. He is playing to the widely-held notion, even if non-specific, that things were better in America during his time in office pre-pandemic.

The issue set for most voters works distinctly to Trump’s advantage. With inflation and immigration heading the list, the 2024 top-of-mind agenda resolves around dissatisfaction. That is Trump’s wheelhouse.

While there are tangible sides to the immigration issue, it becomes particularly alluring for voters unhappy with life, not prospering to their level of expectation and feeling left behind. Trump has fueled that sizable constituency to great effect.

Beyond that, a Trump victory would owe much to demographics. As the two parties have separated along lines of educational attainment, over 60 percent of Americans lack a college degree.

Trump is also propelled by a slackening of Democratic appeal to younger males. Maybe we will call that the Joe Rogan effect.

Further, while Black and Hispanic voters, especially the former, remain overwhelmingly in Democratic ranks, those margins have softened. Hispanics tend to be more culturally conservative and a good number have been put off by the left’s excesses on a number of hot-button issues.

Then, there is the reality that Trump under-polled his final performance in both 2016 and 2020. Either pollsters have not figured out how to reach some Trump voters or there is some small cadre of his base who will not acknowledge their intention in polite company. If the pattern holds and if Trump remains essentially tied in swing state surveys come November, that could portend another win.

If that is the scenario leading to a Trump victory, what leads to a Harris triumph in this nailbiter-close contest?

Her victory and the breaking of that glass ceiling is predicated on enough voters finally seeing her as the candidate of “change.” Though she has occupied the number-two spot in the incumbent administration, the change voters crave is less between governing regimes and more an end to this decade of Trump-centered drama, volatility and vengeance.

A Harris success would be a statement that the country is tired, even exhausted, and wants to turn the page, less on policy than on mood and bearing.

Hers would also be a generational transition and a vote against replacing one old, past-prime man perhaps in some stage of cognitive decline with another.

Trump is very much the focal point in this election. Many of his supporters are drawn to his unique persona as much of Harris’s support is rooted in disdain for him accompanied by fear of the consequences for American democracy. If Harris prevails, it will be less an affirmation of her than a rejection of Trump based on both his time in office and the unvarnished years since.

The gender gap in American politics has long been growing and this election could send it into overdrive. In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, female voters largely drove the Democrats’ far better than expected results in the 2022 mid-terms. That intense reaction has not measurably faded and would be central to a Harris victory.

Lastly working in Harris’s favor is Trump’s growing brand identity as a loser. That was the case in 2018, in 2020 and again in 2022. His desperate and needy claims about “stolen elections” only underscore the point. His search for a redemptive win bumps up squarely against this track record of defeat.

Those are the two ways this plays out. As to which of these competing scenarios will soon come to pass, your guess is as good as mine.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann