Joel’s 2024 Election Primer

I still vividly recall the moment it became clear that Donald Trump was going to win the 2016 election.

All through the night, the final exit polls seemed to suggest that Hillary Clinton would hold off Trump in the ‘blue wall’ Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and the Democratic-heavy counties there were giving her an early lead in Pennsylvania.

But then Wisconsin began to show signs of failure, as did Michigan. I wasn’t aware in 2016 how aligned those three states typically are, but if those two were falling, so too would Pennsylvania.

Trump hadn’t yet cleared 270 electoral votes, but Clinton read the writing on the wall and called Trump to concede the race in the early morning hours of November 6

Like so many others, I wondered how I got it so wrong. Why were the polls so wrong? How did I misread the national mood so incorrectly?

Four EXTREMELY LONG YEARS and a global pandemic later, Trump was back on the ballot against former Vice President Joe Biden.

It was another close race, but Biden’s saving grace was the lack of an intrusive third-party candidate siphoning votes the way Gary Johnson and Jill Stein did in the ‘blue wall’ states and in the Sun Belt of Arizona and Nevada.

Johnson alone took more votes (106,327) in Arizona than the difference Between Trump (1,252,401) and Clinton (1,161,167), which was 91,234.

The majority of those votes came out of blue counties such as Apache, Coconino, Pima, Santa Cruz and, crucially, managed to swing Maricopa.

That was ball game in Arizona.

It wasn’t that Trump was popular, it was that both Trump and Clinton were so unpopular that third party candidates were able to siphon off a massive swath of voters who would typically have gone Democratic.

The story is much the same in Nevada and the ‘blue wall’ states, so the big difference in 2020 is that voters had nowhere to go but the two major party candidates.

Coming into this election, it was the rematch no one asked for between Trump and Biden, and it seemed to all be heading towards an inevitable conclusion when suddenly, Biden drops out of the race amidst inter-party pressure following his disastrous June debate and sinking numbers in the polls.

In comes the vice president, the former California senator and San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris.

Democrats immediately consolidated behind the new candidate, avoiding a messy primary, and the polls shifted violently towards Harris in all of the swing states, as well as a number of reliably red states, with Trump’s leads in places like Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, and even Trump’s adopted home state of Florida receding.

So here we are. The pundits are in overdrive, the nerves are plentiful across the country, and we’re all waiting to see the results.

But elections are much more than presidents, and we’d do well to try to remember that we’re not trying to anoint a savior or a messiah.

We’re hiring a person to put together an administration that will represent the United States in a way that makes us all stronger and prosperous.

Just as well, we’re hiring the person we feel we can push with the most potential for productivity.

Presidents, and all elected officials, are scapegoats for our disillusionment and anger, and they’re the potential solution to those very same feelings.

We would also do well to remember that a president is best represented by the people they surround themselves with — their experience, talents, and abilities should make up the sum of a great administration, not become canon fodder for the world’s worst reality game show.

In this election, I’m combining the hard-earned knowledge obtained through the past two presidential elections, as well as the mid-terms that occurred between them, to provide what I hope is a comprehensive (and correct) perspective of this election cycle.

Like any journalist (or aspiring one) worth their salt, I’m relying on triple confirmation.

This means that not one single method will drive my predictions, but I’ll be using three wildly different methods to strengthen my confidence in this race’s direction: The Keys, polling momentum, and the lack of intrusive third party candidates.

Professor Alan Lichtman has been accurately predicting presidential elections since 1981, when he accurately predicted incumbent Ronald Reagan’s re-election in 1984.

Using his 13 keys, which ignore polls, pundits, and any other outside noise, his method weighs very simply whether or not the presiding party in the White House will keep their place, or give way to the challenging party.

The 13 Keys

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

His method completely ignored Trump’s cult of personality and declared him the winner two months before he actually stunned the world. The same method would accurately predict Trump’s downfall in 2020.

To date, he has a near 100% accuracy rating*.

• Lichtman’s one blemish is the highly contested 2000 election, which the Keys called for Vice President Al Gore but instead went to Texas Governor George W. Bush after the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount.
• Studies later found that Gore would have won Florida, and the presidential election, if not for Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot misdirecting over 2,000 votes from Gore to third-party candidate Pat Buchanan, shifting Florida to Bush by 537 total votes (0.009%).

All of this is to say, Lichtman has predicted a victory for Vice President Harris in 2024, with only four false keys present for the Democrats.

Personally, I love anything that allows me to cut through the endless media noise to get a clear view of what the people think, but also how good or bad the incumbent administration has really been.

If I watch Fox News or any other transparently right-wing outlet, the Biden administration has been a nightmare hellscape, and the vice president has broken everything, including that window that you THOUGHT your kids broke playing backyard baseball. Nope. It was Harris.

If I watch MSNBC, the Biden administration has actually been pretty fucking great, even if the man himself is aging as many in their 80s do.

If I watch CNN, it’s BREAKING NEWS: Biden says stuff. BREAKING NEWS: Biden still doing president stuff. BREAKING NEWS: Biden hasn’t solved the Israel thing, Trump says he’d end it in a day.

I can only take so much breaking news before I want to break the news over my head like a pumped up slugger who just struck out for the 20th time in 43 at-bats (here’s looking at you, Aaron Judge!).

That said, CNN’s election night coverage is BY FAR the best in the business, which is what you would expect from a network that’s been doing it since 1981. I watch all the networks on election day, but CNN gets the big screen.

But in the end, pundits are just pumping air. Lichtman’s keys cut through all of it.

Image captured via FiveThirtyEight’s interactive election map

The image above is how the U.S. has voted in every election this century. These states are essentially baked in.

Of course, others are also relatively new additions to the partisan dance, but if you take a note of some history, you can see that Harris enters this race with the west coast sewn up, as well as the upper northeast, minus Maine’s second district.

None of these states being called as they have been through the years will be a surprise, or anything to get excited about, because it all comes down to math in the end.

But what *IS* going to be worth watching is which of these states will provide a red flag for the candidate that carries them?

Winning a state is the ultimate goal, but winning it by certain margins is absolutely essential.

For instance, Trump only won Texas by 5.6 points in 2020. The lowest margin in decades for a Republican.

He’s currently polling at around 6–7 points ahead there currently, but if you adjust for Republican overestimation, which has become a major theme since 2020, and note that there is an extremely competitive down ballot senatorial race between incumbent Ted Cruz and Democrat Collin Allred, Texas could very easily be living within the normal statistical margin of error.

I don’t think Texas is going full blue, but the longer it takes for Texas to be called, and the margins that we end up with could signal a nationwide Republican outage, or at least some purple rain.

It’s not a guarantee, it’s not even likely, but it’s more possible now than it has been.

Then there’s Kansas, another red state in the above image. Trump is only about +5 in a state he typically carries by double-digits and without a second thought.

Are recent polls there an anomaly? We’ll see, but the simple fact that we’re even thinking about these states is very notable.

Trump isn’t being shut out here though. He’s made some minor, but notable polling inroads in uncompetitive New York, his former home state.

While he’s expected to lose that state fairly quick, it’s notable that we’ve seen it go Harris +21 to Harris +16 over the past couple of months.

Again, are we dealing with a polling anomaly, or is the GOP finding some refuge in pockets of New York? We’ll see. Won’t help Trump, but it could feed some down ballot races.

But nationally, what we’re seeing is polls regularly overestimating Republicans while voter turnout favors Democrats by a wide margin.

Before an election even begins, it’s so critical to look under the hood and see if the places you’re expecting to carry without an issue are actually an issue. Not doing so often leads to big, unwanted surprises on election day.

If we give each candidate the states we’re confident they’ll win, you’ll see that this race is quickly narrowed down to the Sun Belt, the ‘blue wall’ Rust Belt, North Carolina, Georgia, and…. Iowa??

Yep. Motherfucking Iowa.

Iowa comfortably went for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 by over nine points in both years. So why are we even talking about Iowa and it’s six electoral votes?

Two words, one name: Ann Selzer.

In particular, the Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll conducted by J. Ann Selzer, easily one of the most revered pollsters in the United States.

In her latest poll, Selzer has Trump losing a red state to Harris, 47–44.

That is massive, huge, game-changing. Hell, it might even be true! But again, even if it’s an anomaly, which is not something Selzer deals with, it is absolutely notable that we’re talking about deep red states trending bluer than usual.

It sets the stage for an election that isn’t “the closest in our lifetimes,” as the pundits keep professing, but for one that has the potential to be an absolute blowout.

Look, this is not a race to 270. It’s a race to 44 for Harris and 57 for Trump.

As the candidate who is behind in that setup, Trump cannot afford to lose anything. Harris and the Democrats could lose the Sun Belt, Georgia, and North Carolina and still win by a 270–268 margin if they hold the blue wall.

High voter turnout, which we’re seeing, in those states favors Democrats, so Trump must hold every state he won in 2020, plus take back the states he won in 2016.

That’s a tall order. Trump does not appeal to a wide base of the citizenry, and his base has only narrowed over time.

At this moment, Donald Trump is the most well-known and overexposed politician in national politics. The opinions of him are baked in, he is not extending olive branches, and he isn’t any less the bloviating figure he’s been in the past.

What we’re seeing in reliably red states across the country, and in the battlegrounds, is the seeds for overperformance by Democrats. We’ll see if those seeds grow or if they were false flags, but it would be a MAJOR surprise if they didn’t take root in most places we’re seeing.

The lack of a viable third-party candidate in this race is a massive blow to Trump.

Robert Kennedy Jr. may be the son of a fallen political icon and the member of an American political dynasty, but his apple has fallen far from the family tree.

That said, when Biden was in the race, Kennedy’s presence on the ballot was setting us all up for a 2016 redux, where Trump benefits from disillusioned independents and shift away from Biden.

But the moment Harris entered the race, Kennedy’s support cratered, supporting the theory of his voters coming primarily from the Biden voting pool. Kennedy dropped out in August, with the remnants of his support being absorbed by Trump after RFK Jr.’s endorsement.

His name remaining on the ballot in certain battleground states is also a massive blow to Trump, as any RFK Jr. supporters who still won’t go to Trump, could simply fill-in his name on the ballot as a protest vote, providing the chance of a reverse 2016 effect.

This race offers the clear opportunity for a mandate. A decisive win either way achieves that, but as tonight rolls on, I’ll be watching the down ballot races for control of the Senate and the House, while also cautioning repeatedly that any declaration of victory before a call is made is simply that — a man child who sees the numbers falling away and says he won so his supporters will get all fired up and go overthrow the government for him.

Also, I’ll be using 538’s benchmark estimate to follow these races at the county level as the counts are made. I urge you to do the same if you wanna take a break from pundits being all pundit-y.

Finally, here is my prediction for the 2024 presidential race.