It’s prediction time, yet again… My “official” predictions for the 2024 election are below. There are plenty of perfunctory notes and caveats, especially this year. First and foremost is the skepticism over polling this year. Pollsters may have not been able to get a true representative sample of voters. For most normal people, the election histrionics and fear-mongering has caused them to tune out. I treat polls with a pinch of salt unless I have been given reason by those I trust.
The 2022 midterms showed that people were tired of the performative MAGA candidates and fearful over the end of Roe v. Wade. There are plenty of initiatives on plenty of ballots that could bring out those some voters who favor the right to abortion, but this will be blunted by time and the lack of The Handmaid’s Tale future materializing. While there is still plenty of Trumpian candidates, people tuning out the election might blunt the negative effect they had in 2022. Additionally, time heals all wounds and Trump has been out of sight and out of mind… and doesn’t represent the incumbent party. Many people are unhappy over the direction of the country over the past four years, but ultimately it will come down to if the moderate median voters in the swing states are unhappy enough to vote in the man they voted out in 2020 and continued to reject by proxy in 2024.
The Presidential race this year has been less of election campaigns and more a game of chicken where each side has tried to get a low as possible while ending up only second worst. If anyone could beat out Trump in a race to the bottom, it’s Kamala Harris. The probability seems wide, but it’s probably rather narrow.
So…
President
To encapsulate the uncertainty, predictions will use probability fitted to a Gaussian curve.
Jake Walker has been presenting a trustworthy analysis of Georgia, and the number there look good for Trump, not so much due to a surge of support for Trump as it is the collapse of the Black vote. It’s the most likely state to flip back to the GOP column. North Carolina was won by Trump in 2020, and while it is likely close, there is little reason for him to lose it now if he hasn’t lost it yet.
Nevada will be discussed below. Arizona might forgive Trump, but only because Harris hasn’t been the paragon of the “generic Democrat” that Biden was able to pull off in 2020. Still, the entire Southwest remains weak for a Trumpian GOP. The closest states will be Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. They will likely swing together, though Pennsylvania will yet again. Trump is still toxic in many parts of each state, but enough people will be repulsed by Harris and the Biden record to swing it back.
The only Democratic pick-up from 2020 they are likely to retain is Michigan, though narrowly. It is unlikely that more states will swing from where they swung in 2020. But a major caveat is that one possible reason for the questionability of polling this year might be due to a realignment, or at least the beginning of a realignment, nationally, which pollsters are “correcting” for. As doubtful as it may be for some, at this juncture doubt should not be replaced with absolute dismissal.
Senate
This year should have been a huge year for Republicans in the U.S. Senate. The past four cycles for this Senate class have been huge for Democrats, and they are very over-represented. When your best hopes involve winning the Senate seats for Texas and Florida, you really don’t have much of an opportunity to keep your one-seat majority. While Cruz was weak in 2018, he was able to survive and there is no reason to believe that he won’t now.
On the flip side, the GOP is assured to pick up the open seat of West Virginia. No state in the past quarter of a century has swung so dramatically from Democratic domination to blood-red Republican dominance.
Montana is a state that Trump won twice and will win again. Jon Tester’s luck has run out, and him being able to retain his seat would mean a Democratic blow-out that would give the Democrats a trifecta at the Federal level. That is unlikely. The other seat the GOP will likely pick up is Ohio. If Vance can win in Ohio, then Bernie Moreno should as well. While Vance ran for an open seat in 2022, it has become Republican enough that incumbent Sherrod Brown would need luck that he likely no longer has.
Additional pick-ups for the GOP, if they do well enough, are possible, with Wisconsin and Michigan being the most likely pick-ups. Nebraska should likely stay Republican regardless, barring a Blue Tsunami.
Nevada
Nevada changed the way it votes due to the Covid Pandemic in 2020. Comparisons from early turn out with 2020 are questionable due to it happening during a pandemic where there were lockdowns and a plethora of other restrictions. The only real comparison can be made with the one election undertaken with the current rules: 2022. Analysis of the early vote in Nevada indicates that the GOP is doing better, and the Democrats much worse vis-à-vis 2022. Since the end of in person early voting, the mail vote has continued to be anemic for Democrats. They have reduced the overall voter lead of Republicans down to 3.9% statewide, with only a 20K voter lead in Clark County (2.7%).
In 2022, The GOP went from a voter lead of 1½% to ½% after all the votes were in and counted. Additionally, the more Trumpian candidates for Treasurer and Secretary of State lost by a couple of percent or so. Taking all that into account, then ceretis paribus, this indicates a narrow Trump win of <1%. In 2022, the Democrats won the nonpartisan vote for the first time in many cycles, and it’s a question if they can even keep that.
However, not all else is equal. The Republicans might have “cannibalized” their Election Day votes (which is not a bad problem to have), while the Democrats have shown to be unable to have the turnout in mail ballots that they did in the 2022 midterms, not just by percentages, but in some ways by absolute numbers. They have so far, according to numbers released, been unable to add even half the total number of votes over the three days between in person early voting and Election Day. While it’s not impossible for a huge rush mail ballots be dropped off on Election Day (or arriving through the week), but the ability of Democrats to produce those numbers is without any evidence whatsoever.
While the Election Day turnout for in person votes may be less for the GOP this year than in 2022, it was so overwhelming (2:1 ratio of Republicans to Democrats), that they have far more flexibility and less certainty in how low it will go compared to Democrats’ mail ballot numbers. One major caveat is that your humble prognosticator has been told that Clark County has a bunch of mail ballots that they haven’t.
Additionally, the Democrats have in the past been able to raise their registration numbers starting in the late Summer and early Fall before an election due to the work of the Harry Reid Machine. Not only have they not done that, but Republicans are continuing to gain with the registration advantage of the Democrats falling below 10K voters. This helps down ballot races.
Trump will likely win by <1%, but the opposite result is almost as strong as a possibility. Vegas odds, so as to speak, give Trump 3:2 odds in his favor. Unfortunately for the Republicans, their Senate candidate has been a dud, with a campaign centered around being a wounded Veteran… and nothing else. The GOP has an even chance at picking up a Congressional seat, but picking up another or even all three will only happen if there is a GOP blowout.
On the state level, narrowing registrations combined with already narrow Democratic wins in the Assembly in 2022 will help the GOP. Of the four swing seats, the GOP will retain one of the two it now holds (redistricting will likely doom a seat in Washoe county), and a pick up or two in Clark County. This will not only prevent a Democratic supermajority in this election, but prevent one in 2026 due to the Democrats already holding all three of those swing seats up that year. In the Assembly, the Republicans should be able to pick up four seat, give or take a seat. In Clark County, after narrowly losing a Clark County Commission seat in both 2020 and 2022, they have better than even odds of picking up a seat in the West of the Vegas Valley. And all these predictions assume that the Republicans don’t win over nonpartisan voters big-time.
Dark Horse Picks
Here, I will present three picks for dark horse candidates/outcomes, where I don’t think they will win, but wouldn’t be totally shocked if they were to win.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
In all honesty, the only real “Dark Horse” prediction is if there is a strong break in the vote one way or another. This is more likely on the individual state level than nationwide, but something unexpected seems like the only real expectation here.
Conclusion
In a race to the bottom, the Democrats have the marginal edge. Victory for the Republican, or for the Democrats if they somehow manage to win, will be short lived. In a race to be second worst, you cease to become second worst then the prior worst is no longer a threat.
Mood Music
