My nickel is on a Harris win, very possibly with room to spare. But to preface today’s remarks with some context:
This could be the closest presidential election since 1876
A lot of state poll results show ties. So are they tied because of voters — or pollsters?
There is a narrative at play if you follow the news, of an election that will be decided by razor-thin margins. Even after having blocked the most preaching of sites, exactly half the news each day is about Trump surging here or fading there, and the other half is about Harris fading there or surging here. It’s relentless. I caught a headline in my feed noting the prevalence of election-based anxiety out there, but this isn’t a sociology paper and “society” can go sing kumbaya somewhere. My concern is that it’s driving me up the wall.
But I have to take a step back and remember that that tension comes only from believing what I’m reading. Now, nuances of ‘Arabs here’ or ‘Latinos there’ aside, the consistent thread has been of an electorate split down the middle. THAT’S the source of tension, that so much, after so long, could be at the mercy of a coin toss. Heads, all of Trump’s treasons are not just swept away but amplified, women and minorities revert to being property, and the 2025 folks dismantle almost a century of learning about how to run a government. Tails, we get a more equitable corporate tax rate and the po’ folk get to upgrade from crumbs to croutons. How, and I mean HOW can this possibly be how the world works? How are YOU not panicking?
That wasn’t rhetorical, I’m seriously looking for tips on how to avoid panic.
But deep breathing, right? So I take a deep breath and remember this is not how the world works. Buried in the first prefaced article is the point that Harris has a 17% chance of beating Trump by more than 10%. That’s a LOT. That same article links to a 538 odds page that has Trump’s chance of winning the actual vote at less than 1 percent. The second article points out how Biden won by a comfortable margin despite tight polling in 2020 as well, and that there has been no revolution in poll methodology since.
And that brings up a good point, that those margins aren’t worth a hill of beans anyway because it’s the Electoral College numbers that matter. If this were a rematch of Trump v Biden, we would look at their 2020 map and consider how things have changed since. In a Trump v Harris scenario, 2020 remains the start of the electoral logic. It’s more than a little ironic though that my electoral logic will be underwritten by a popular vote trend going back to 2016.
…They’re not bad beans.
Consider Biden’s map in 2020:
Looking at this map, I can see Nevada potentially tipping red weighted by a desperate rural crowd. I can see Georgia (Biden +.2) likely flipping, with whites leaping to the polls in fear of a second loss. But… that’s it. Even just flipping those, Harris still wins 284-254. But that’s not all that’s going on. Those wacky polls say North Carolina (Trump +1.4) and even Ohio (Trump +8) could be a fight. There are ten states with abortion measures on the ballot. Colorado, Maryland, and New York are already safely blue and irrelevant here. South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, and Florida are all red enough to likely maintain their status quos. But Nevada (Biden +2.4) and Arizona (Biden +.3) could go from close to solid blue.
So though all of those calculations and maneuverings, the likeliest net changes to the 2020 map are the flipping of North Carolina and Georgia. Harris 303, Trump 235. Perhaps just in my head, but it makes perfect sense, really. There are more outrageous outcomes possible to be sure; if Ohio is really in play – if the push to against a national abortion ban really swings the gender gap that far – then any state Trump carried by less than ten percent could be at risk.
While it would be nice, an abortion measure on the ballot probably won’t flip any deep red states. There are more than enough Republicans in favor of abortion and willing to split their votes that an abortion measure can pass in a red state. Kansas passed an abortion measure; they’re at no risk of turning away from the Right. But in close states like Nevada or Arizona, they could be the turnout push that makes the difference.
Before I started locking down my 2024 map, “polling” had Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all too close to call. In 2020 Biden won each by less than 3%. So where does this reasoning come from?
Well consider for a moment the broader reality that Biden won 306-232, and nobody was excited about Joe Biden. He was just the candidate we all settled on after we finished beating up on everyone else.
The last time the Left was excited about a candidate was Clinton (setting aside the Bernouts). Her leftward popularity bought her almost 3 million more votes, but losses in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – each by less than 3%. In 2020, Biden won by 7 million votes and carried all three. It was categorically not Biden’s charm or force of personality that carried the day, it was revulsion of either Trump or what he stands for. When you combine that revulsion of Trump with a compelling Democrat, I just don’t see those states being quite that much in play.
Throughout the country, I think Covid took more from the Right than it did from the Left. I think the flighty youth remains solidly blue, that they’re generally aging blue, and that the Right has fewer sources of new blood. I think the same thing as everyone else, that polarization has run amok and the Right has more thoroughly radicalized, but those factors have also led to the entrenchment of some demographically favorable realities (and yes, unfavorable pathologies). That same deepening divide only helps to cement the results seen the last time the fate of human civilization was at stake.
Consider also that Trump was the first president in 24 years to blow an incumbency advantage and lose reelection. That is a tremendous fall, and the time since has been spent racking up convictions and spewing outright hate.
I think the polling is wrong. I think there’s a reasonable center somewhere out there that Gallup doesn’t have a good handle on. I think that suspicion is borne out by Biden’s win over Clinton’s losses, despite the drop in celebrity. I think Harris wins.
10 things Harris supporters should keep in mind if they’re nervous about the election
Which of course brings up the topic of next week’s discussion: Irony, and the value of ignoring the right news in a society where people ignoring the wrong news is breaking the world.