Who will be the next president of the United States?

▼ The US is currently in uncharted political waters with the presidential elections in just over a month. The candidate for the republicans in Donald Trump, for the third time in a row. I started going over some of Trump's antics since becoming president in 2016 and losing the elections in 2020, but who has time to read all of that? Joe Biden performed terribly at an early debate in june and dropped out of the race some weeks later, endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris. Harris quickly improved favorability ratings and in the polls.

However, even after a very solid debate performance from Harris, repeatingly goading an increasingly agitated Trump into irrelevant asides, the polls barely moved from high 40s percentages for each candidate, be it with a slight edge for Harris.

How is it possible that after all the lies, the januari 6 riots, mishandling of the country's most sensitive secrets, several convictions and more court cases ongoing, nearly half of the US electorate still says "Trump" when asked who'd they vote for if the elections were today? I don't get it. Yes, there are people that believe Trump. Or think the other side lies just as bad. Or think the economy was better under Trump than under Biden so obviously the economy will return to that earlier state when re-electing the previous president. None of this makes sense to me. But obviously these people exist. What I don't get is that it's 47% of the electorate. Or that there are people who are genuinely undecided between Trump and Harris.

With that limitation of understanding the US electorate in place, can I still say something reasonable about the outcomes of the election? I don't know. But let's give it a try.

I'm thinking that all voters have some idea about what kind of persion Trump is. I don't see how any new information about Trump is going to sway any voters in his direction. Harris, on the other hand, is not all that well known. She can both gain and repel voters. I'd say for anyone not yet decidedly in the Trump camp, it's hard to see how they would disqualify Harris after learning more about her. So as people get more info, they should break for Harris at least a little better than 50/50.

Also, Trump is light on the policy front, except for the project 2025 stuff, which is unpopular and he's trying to distance himself from. Trump himself is fairly unpopular and his vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance even more so. Harris, on the other hand, is just above water in popularity (more people like her than dislike her) and her vice-presidential candidate Walz even more so. People tend to go for more popular candidates.

Harris hasn't been batting homeruns on policy every time, but she seems to be improving, and there's still some time to convince people. Especially with the huge ad buys they've been making. While Trump is trying to grift his supporters by buying Trump sneakers or Trump coins and pocketing the money himself rather than put that into his campaign.

So I'd say, unless something catastrophic happens, Harris has room to grow but Trump doesn't. That said, I see three possible results.

The polls stay the same and prove accurate

If there would be elections today and the polls would be 100% accurate, the swing states Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina would go to Trump, and Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Harris. That would be 276 electoral college votes for Harris, with 270 required to win.

The polls stay the same or go up for Trump and/or Trump support is better than expected

If Trump can close the 1.3 point gap in Pennsylvania and not lose anything else, he'd be at 281 electoral college votes. That doesn't seem impossible at all, hence all the talk about this election being super close.

The polls stay the same or go up for Harris and/or Harris support is better than expected

The poll averages ever so slowly inch towards a bigger lead for Harris. And that's with the pollsters very likely applying some Trump secret sauce because they underestimated him back in 2016 and 2020, when he was able to get voters out who usually don't vote. But Harris also appeals to people who normally don't vote en masse: young people. Voter registrations have been through the roof, so it's easy to see how this effect could go into the democrats' direction this time.

Also, the republicans have some extremely unpopular candidates for governor or senator on the ticket. In general, often the difference between the polling for Trump and for other republicans "down ticket" shows a significant difference. Will Trump pull them up or down, or will they pull Trump up or down? Especially North Carolina, with a self-proclaimed "black nazi" highly praised by Trump running for governor, seems ready to flip to Harris with her being only 0.2 points behind currently.

Last but not least, a number of states, including swing state Arizona that looks somewhat republican now, and also former swing state Florida that has been in the republicans' pocket for a while, have abortion ballot initiatives. It's hard to see how that wouldn't hurt republicans at least a little.

Swing for the fences

Based on all of the above, I'm going to predict that Harris will continue to improve in the polls slowly but surely, while Trump and Vance won't be able help themselves and further shed support. I think that the biggest risk for the democrats would actually be leaping ahead in the polls too much so they won't be able to get out the vote on election day because people think it's a done deal anyway. This was probably a large part of the reason why Clinton lost in 2016. But if they can avoid that, I see a landslide for Harris and I'll go out on a limb and say she gets Texas.

Permalink - posted 2024-09-29