With less than 48 hours to go before U.S. election sites open on the East Coast, the nation is sitting on pins and needles. The only time in recent memory when the level of societal tension surrounding an election was at comparable levels was four years ago, in 2020, when Donald Trump, then occupant of the Oval Office, ran for reelection against Joe Biden.
Election workers are receiving death threats, crisis hotlines are already open to take calls from panicked voters, and virtually the entire country expects there will be some amount of mayhem and/or lethal violence either on election day or in its immediate aftermath. Additionally, a prolonged drought affecting most states east of the Mississippi River is making the U.S. feel like an actual tinderbox in addition to a metaphorical tinderbox, deepening the widespread sense of unease.
Given this heightened state of tension, it feels a little bit odd to write the following sentence:
Greymantle actually believes the tension level in 2024 is significantly lower than it was four years ago. Lower than in 2020, although still very high, and much, much higher than when Donald Trump first ran for President against Hillary Clinton in 2016; that feels like a lifetime ago.
In 2020, the United States and the entire world were living through the first major pandemic in a century. Schools and offices were locked down. Social distancing measures were in place. Parts of California and the West had just been through the worst summer of wildfires on record, which blanketed San Francisco, Modesto and Oakland with heavy smoke for weeks. Mass protests, both peaceful and otherwise, had shaken not only major U.S. cities on the largest scale since the riots of 1968, but many smaller cities and suburbs experienced similar outpourings of pent-up emotion.
Today, societal conditions are…much calmer, at least outwardly. Inwardly, people are still a bit of a mess, but it must be said that a tenuous normalcy has been restored. Ball parks are open. People are going out to dinner and to concerts. Taylor Swift just wrapped up her Eras tour in New Orleans.
But we’re not here to play Daniel Defoe or Samuel Pepys. Another ‘Journal of the Plague Year’ this is not. Our purpose today is to call the 2024 U.S. election, so let’s get to it.
THE VICTORY WILL BELONG TO KAMALA HARRIS
Despite public opinion polls that have shown the likely election outcome deadlocked at roughly 50-50 since late September, Greymantle believes that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris will eke out a narrow, but respectable election victory by winning five of the seven so-called swing states, and lead the popular vote by approximately 5.5 million ballots.
We conclude that Harris will win the overall majority, and the electoral votes, of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada. The total margin of victory will be less than 300,000 votes across all five of these swing states. A narrow victory — but sufficient.
Donald Trump will win the states of Arizona and North Carolina, but with narrow margins that reflect somewhat of a ‘flip’ compared to 2020. Trump will keep the rest of the ‘red states’ in his column, but his margins of victory within those states will shift notably compared to both 2016 and 2020. Trump will win Florida and Texas by larger margins than he did in 2020, but his margins in states like Kentucky, South Carolina and Kansas will appreciably shrink.
In addition, though Trump will lose states like New York, New Jersey and Oregon, his margin of defeat in those states will be smaller than in 2020. Lengthy COVID lockdowns of schools and other facilities that continued into early 2022 due to the policies of Democratic-controlled statehouses and school boards have generated considerable popular anger, mobilizing conservative voters in ‘blue’ states.
Our level of confidence in our election forecast is 60%. In other words, we believe there is about a 40% chance that our forecast is wrong. We believe there is a 30% chance that Trump will win, and a less likely, but real chance (10%), that Harris will score a near-landslide with 53.5% of the popular vote.
TURNOUT WILL BE DOWN BY ABOUT 10 MILLION VOTES
In 2020, 158 million Americans cast their vote in the highest voter turnout in a national election since 1900, when William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan. Not only were the total number of votes cast in 2020 the highest number on record, but voter turnout of 66.6% (the proportion of registered voters who turned out to vote) was the highest in 120 years and one of the highest on record.
Greymantle attributes the extraordinarily high turnout in 2020 to the combined effects of the pandemic, widespread societal upheaval, the controversial nature of Trump’s presidency and behavior will in office, and elevated unemployment, which made it easier for more people to vote, as they did not have to juggle a job with the time needed to vote. Loosening of regulations regarding mail-in ballots also made it easier for more older and disabled Americans to vote, although the loosening of these rules also caused something of a backlash, as it generated various unproven allegations of voter fraud.
Greymantle believes a calmer 2024, with low unemployment and quieter social conditions, will result in a somewhat reduced turnout. We anticipate 149 million votes will be cast, with Trump receiving 2 million votes less than he did in 2020 – 72 million votes – and Harris receiving 77 million votes, about 5 million fewer than the 81 million received by Joe Biden in 2020.
MARGINS OF VICTORY IN THE SWING STATES: KAMALA HARRIS
Pennsylvania: Harris will win by about 102,000 votes out of 6.4 million votes cast, carrying slightly north of 51.5% of the popular vote, and taking Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes. Harris will improve slightly on Joe Biden’s 80,555 vote margin of victory in 2020 and percentage of the popular vote due to a better-funded ground game consisting of a large number of paid campaign workers. Crossover votes by former or disaffected Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley against Trump in the April 2024 GOP primary (155,000 of them, or 17% of the total) will be critical to Harris’s overall victory in Pennsylvania.
Michigan: Harris will win by about 115,00 votes out of roughly 5.2 million votes cast, taking slightly less than 51% of the popular vote and closely matching Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Her vote totals will be lower than Biden’s, as he won Michigan by 154,500 votes in 2020. A lower overall turnout will explain the drop, along with some disaffected younger Arab-American voters who will not vote for Harris due to anger over the Biden Administration’s support for Israel against Hamas. The Biden Administration’s strong support for organized labor and high Black turnout will balance out this weakness.
Wisconsin: Harris will win by about 26,000 votes out of about 3.2 million votes cast, taking slightly over 50% of the popular vote. Again, Harris’s victory will closely match Biden’s in 2020, when we won Wisconsin by 20,682 votes versus Trump. Harris will slightly outperform Biden in terms of the total vote tally and margin of victory, due to support from moderate Republicans and conservative figures such as Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk radio host from Wisconsin.
Georgia: Harris will win by about 23,000 votes out of 2.8 million votes cast, surpassing Biden’s victorious vote tally by over 11,000 votes. Biden won Georgia in 2020 by 11,700 votes, and Georgia is where Harris will outperform due in part to her having attended college in Atlanta (Howard University), so having a personal connection with the state. High Black turnout and lower rural White turnout will hurt Trump. Support for Harris by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, a native Georgian, and negative feelings towards Trump by some Georgia Republicans due to his bullying treatment of the popular GOP governor, Brian Kemp, will keep some Republicans at home, and swing a small number towards Harris.
Nevada: Harris will win by about 29,000 votes out of about 1.3 million votes cast, largely matching Biden’s tally and margin of victory in 2020. Biden won Nevada by 32,592 votes in 2020, and Harris’s victory in 2024 will basically track the victory of four years’ prior adjusted for a slightly lower voter turnout in the current year. Continued strong support from labor unions, tech workers, and various minority voter groups in Nevada will allow for a Harris victory, winning her 6 electoral votes.
Taken together, we forecast Harris will win these five swing states by approximately 295,000 votes.
MARGINS OF VICTORY IN THE SWING STATES: DONALD J. TRUMP
Arizona: Trump will win by about 45,000 votes out of about 2.2 million votes cast, winning about 49% of the popular vote compared to slightly less than 48% for Harris. Third party candidates including the Libertarian Party candidate will take the rest. Trump lost Arizona to Biden in 2020 by about 12,000 votes, but he won Arizona in 2016 by 91,000 votes against Hillary Clinton. Frustration over the Biden border policies and high inflation will drive some voters back to Trump in 2024 (many reluctantly). Many Republican women will split their votes by voting for a state referendum to make abortion broadly legal in Arizona, vote against GOP senate candidate Kari Lake, and vote for Trump as President.
North Carolina: Trump will win by about 65,000 votes out of nearly 3.4 million votes cast, or slightly less than the 74,500 votes that he received in North Carolina in 2020. Many Republican voters will also split their vote in the Tarheel State, voting for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein against his mercurial and controversial GOP challenger Mark Robinson, but also voting for Trump as President. Voters supporting Trump will cite Biden’s mishandling of the border, inflation and foreign policy as influencing their vote for Trump against Harris. Pro-life sentiment is also high in NC.
MARGINS OF VICTORY IN OTHER STATES
We anticipate that Trump’s margin of victory in Florida will be by around 3.5% or by roughly 310,000 votes, slightly lower than his plurality of 370,000 votes received and 4% margin of victory in Florida in the 2020 election. However, Trump will perform better in Texas than he did in 2020, taking 53.5% of the vote compared to 52% in 2020.
Trump will perform slightly worse in Ohio, taking 52.7% of the vote versus over 53.3% in 2020 despite having Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. President Biden’s strong support for labor unions and onshoring will boost Harris’s support in Ohio slightly, as will disquiet over Trump’s accusations that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio have been eating their neighbor’s pets. These accusations and the surrounding controversy will lose Trump about 30,000 votes in Ohio. Ohio has 18 electoral votes.
MINORITY SCENARIO #1: A SOLID TRUMP VICTORY (30%)
Greymantle believes there is a 30% chance that Trump will win the 2020 election by winning Wisconsin and Nevada, along with Arizona and North Carolina, and possibly another state. In this scenario, Trump wins north of 300 electoral votes but loses the popular vote by about 4 million votes. This is the most likely scenario modeled out by Nate Silver and separately by Doug Sosnik.
I respect Silver and Sosnik, and believe Trump’s chances of victory under their scenario are very real. In both 2016 and 2020, the polls undercounted Trump’s support by about 5 percentage points. Hillary Clinton was ahead in 2016 by 5% overall and 4% to 6% in several swing states, but narrowly lost. In addition, in 2020, the polls undercounted Trump’s support by about 3%. If that pattern holds in 2024, then Trump will be elected President again. Harris’s polling margins are narrower than both Clinton’s and Biden’s at the same point in the 2016 and 2020 races – bad news for Harris.
Under these conditions, Harris can only win if the polls have badly under-counted her support.
MINORITY SCENARIO #2: A HARRIS SWEEP (10%)
Under the second ‘minority’ scenario, Harris wins Arizona and North Carolina as well as the other five swing states described above. This would give her more than 320 electoral votes. Under this scenario, Harris might also win one solidly red state, possibly Kansas. She will win nearly 7 million popular votes under this scenario more than Trump, taking 79 million votes to Trump’s 72 million – a near landslide.
Greymantle believes it’s very possible that, similar to 2022, the polls have under-counted Democratic support for candidates by 4% across the board. Democrats over-performed in 2022 (which Greymantle thought and predicted they would) because of the abortion issue (overturning of Roe v. Wade), positive feelings about a return to normalcy as pandemic restrictions ended, and lingering bad feelings and scandals related to Trump’s attempt to invalidate the 2020 election result.
According to Allan Lichtman’s ‘13 Keys to the White House‘ model, scandals associated with a particular candidate and their party tend to hurt them at the polls. The fake electors schemes dreamed up by Trump’s allies such as Rudy Giuliani in states including Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada continue to make local and national news as the court cases move through the legal system. According to Lichtman’s model, this should hurt Trump and other Republicans, as it did in the 2022 midterms.
Greymantle would tend to split the difference under this scenario and believes it is more likely that Harris wins six out of seven swing states, most likely failing to win North Carolina, despite the scandals associated with GOP gubernatorial candidate Robinson. This would still put her over the top, even if she failed to win another potentially winnable state such as Kansas or Iowa.
THE FIVE REASONS KAMALA HARRIS WILL WIN THE 2024 ELECTION
1. Female opposition to Trump and lingering anger over Roe v. Wade. This motivated female voters, including Republicans, to come out in droves and vote down state referenda that would have put in place near-total abortion bans in conservative states in 2022, 2023 and early 2024. Several abortion related measures are on the ballot in November 2024, including in Arizona and Florida. This will drive the female and pro-choice voters heavily to the polls. The ‘Gender Gap‘ rules.
2. Young males are less reliable voters than females of all ages. Despite leaning heavily toward Donald Trump, young men are much less reliable voters. For example, even though Trump has gained support from younger Black men, Greymantle views much of this support as merely rhetorical. Young men in the Gens Y and Z tend to spend a great deal of time online. It takes actual civic commitment to get off your X-Box and go to the polls. Women are, in general, more civically engaged.
3. Trump’s failure to triangulate and reach beyond is base. Trump has run a campaign focused almost entirely on turning out his base supporters, with limited outreach to Haley voters, other moderate Republicans, or Independent voters. By co-opting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., it appears that Trump believes he has sown up the ‘crank’ vote and ‘Joe Rogan weird voter’ vote. But a stronger permission structure put in place by the Harris campaign to win the support of disaffected Haley voters and Liz Cheney fans may bear fruit at the polls, if Republicans who voted for ‘neither’ in 2016 and 2020 vote for Harris.
4. Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior and alarming statements since August. Even as the polls have tightened, Donald Trump’s behavior at his rallies and public remarks have become more and more bizarre and unsettling. This may scare of some Independents, moderate Republicans and other ‘swing’ voters that Trump badly needs to win. Trump’s actions and inflammatory statements are helping to promote the argument put forth by David French and other Never Trump conservatives that Trump is too unhinged to be trusted with power again, and that conservatives should vote for Harris.
5. Death has the last laugh. Though little remarked on in 2024, the anti-vaccine sentiment stirred up by Trump and his surrogates in late 2020 and throughout 2021 led many middle ages male Trump supporters to refuse the COVID vaccine. As a result, there is some evidence in the public health records that Republicans in states such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin died at higher rates than Democrats in the same states. With a smaller base of Fox News-watching middle aged white men due to a higher death rate from COVID in this group, Trump may have inadvertently shrunk his own base in 2021.
THE CAKE IS ABOUT TO BAKE
The cake is about to be baked. We’ll all know the answer in roughly 10 days, given the slow count of votes in the week after election day. If Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania get called ‘blue’ by AP News, CNN and Fox News by dawn on November 6, however, then it’s all over for Trump.
The strange thing about Trump, given his position in the polls and indications of a tied race, is that he doesn’t appear all that confident. He seems exhausted, petulant, and discouraged.
As we have suggested before on this blog site, Trump’s appeal is strongly correlated with an indefinable ‘mojo’ that Trump has and which his voters ‘sense’ rather than ‘know’. His emotional appeal and ability to project an image of control and power may be weakening. See various news stories of audience members drifting out of his rallies early in 2024, in stark contrast to 2016 and 2020.
Maybe he already knows something that the rest of us don’t. Trump is likely obsessed about his age (78 years old) compared to Harris (she turned 60 in October) and is worried that enough of the ‘double haters’ of him and Biden will shift to Harris, given her comparative youth and great physical beauty.
Exercise your right to vote as Americans. Stay safe. Be respectful of your fellow citizens.
We’ll communicate again soon.
Until this national drama is over (or just beginning all over again!), I remain —
Greymantle
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