I’ve written a lot about this election, but only one thing really counts: the winner. So it’s time to make my predictions for tomorrow’s Presidential Election:
- Kamala Harris will win the popular vote by a lesser margin than Joe Biden did in 2020
- Despite this, Harris will win the midwestern battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin by more comfortable margins than Biden, securing an electoral college victory
- Harris will also win the southeastern swing states of Georgia and North Carolina, although by narrow margins
- Donald Trump will reclaim the southwestern battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada
- Harris’s victory will rest on relative strength among White voters compared to Biden, especially those with college degrees
- Trump will make major gains with Hispanic voters and smaller gains with Black voters
What are the bases for my predictions? Well, I’ve already laid them out in my other updates. But I’ll summarize them here with links to the previous posts that contain more thorough analysis.
For starters, the 2022 midterms suggested that Republicans, despite big gains in New York, California, and Florida that enabled a recapture of the House of Representatives, had actually lost popularity in northern and midwest states—especially Michigan and Pennsylvania. This raised the prospect of a decreased gap between the popular vote and electoral college in 2024. (Update #1)
In addition, since Trump’s ascendancy, Democrats have made major gains among college-educated White voters from the suburbs, leading to flips of Georgia and Arizona, two states with exploding suburban growth around major metro areas. All signs point to continued gains with those voters in 2024—and suggest another state ripe for a possible flip: North Carolina. (Update #2)
Harris, though, has seen inconsistent polling in those three racially diverse states, thanks to disappointing numbers with Black and Hispanic voters. I predict that she’ll indeed lose some support with Black voters, although not as much as some earlier polls had shown. (Update #3) On the other hand, I believe the losses with Hispanic voters will be large, as they were in 2020, and will likely cost her Arizona and neighboring Nevada—especially given that voters of all ethnicities in these states may be more receptive to Trump’s rhetoric on immigration on account of their proximity to the southern border. (Update #4)
Democrats will undoubtedly wake up on Election Day with high anxiety, thanks to memories of polling underestimates of Trump in 2016 and 2020. But indications abound that, this time, pollsters may actually be overestimating Trump by using unsophisticated weighting techniques designed to beef up his numbers. (Update #5) Furthering suspicion for this phenomenon, polls in late October tightened in Trump’s favor despite no apparent change in the dynamics of the race, with notable statistical evidence of pollsters “herding” toward an exact tie instead of publishing their unfiltered data. (Update #8)
The nail in Trump’s coffin may have come on Saturday night, when J. Ann Selzer posted her final statewide poll of Iowa showing Harris up by 3 points in the state, a disastrous result for Trump given her unmatched historical accuracy and his previous victories in Iowa victories by around 8 points. Selzer’s poll seems to indicate that Trump has lost support among non-college White voters, particularly senior women. If other pollsters have in fact been herding toward Trump due to fear of underestimating him again, Selzer’s poll could in hindsight represent the canary in the coal mine: the first mainstream sign that Trump, in his bid to court new constituencies (especially disaffected young men), had left himself vulnerable to major losses among the demographic that fueled his initial political rise. (Update #9)
If Harris does prevail, postmortems won’t be kind to Trump’s 2024 campaign. He has run an unfocused, uninspired operation ostensibly intended to emphasize inflation and illegal immigration—but more frequently featuring hours of unrelated rambling that no casual voter could possibly comprehend without detailed knowledge of his myriad obsessions. Back in 2020, Trump seemingly refused to court moderate voters, instead spending the election season threatening the media, tweeting angrily at random civilians, and holding indoor rallies during a generational pandemic (and himself almost dying of the illness as a result). In 2024, he appears to have learned nothing—insulting moderates like Nikki Haley and Brian Kemp; choosing a smug, angry VP candidate; questioning Harris’s race (?); and concluding with an undisciplined rally that insulted various constituencies.
Why does he do this? Why is he like this? Regardless, I’m starting to stray from my carefully maintained evenhandedness. So it’s time to end this series. The election is tomorrow, and the voters will decide.
Good luck.
–Jim Andersen