Four More Years But For Whoah....Wait a Second. (2024 General Election Forecast, Take Five)

 In 2020 I updated my forecast sixteen times. This is just my fifth in 2024 and I don't expect to do another one. 

1. The State of the Race.

The race is too close to call. Extremely so.

There are only seven states that are being contested. The polls in all seven states are well within the margin of error. The most likely outcome is that one of the two candidates will sweep all seven. There are 128 permutations of the seven swing states. According to Nate silver, there is a 25% chance that Trump will win all seven and a 15% chance that Harris will win all seven.

In this situation, complicated electoral college map is pretty useless. Flip a coin seven times and you'll be in as full command of the facts as any pollster or pundit. So I'm not going to do that today. I'm going to talk about why this race could go either way.

2. Reasons for Trump to be Optimistic.

a. The American people have not disqualified him. By now I expected enough people to have ruled out voting for for more years of that amoral aspiring tyrant. I thought he would be stuck around 45 or 46 in the polls. He isn't. He's mostly between 47 and 49.  He probably wins at 49. He probably loses at 48 and will lose at 47.  It's that close.

b. The forecasts and betting markets have shifted towards him in the past few weeks. The FiveThirtyEight.com model gives Trump a 53.9% chance of winning. Nate Silver gives him a 54.4% chance of winning. 

The betting markets now lean in Trump's direction slightly more. Predictit has him as a four to three favorite. Polymarket is about 2 to 1 in his favor, although some of that is due to some distortion by Crypto Bros who want to shape the narrative that Trump is inevitible.

c. He is eager to cheat and a lot of his party is willing to go along with that. Whatever dirty trick they can pull, it shall be pulled. Trump has long assumed that this race will be won or lost in the courts because he has convinced himself that the courts cheated him out of victory in 2020. (They didn't. He's an idiot.)

3. Reasons for Harris to be Optimistic.

a. Women hate Donald Trump. The world has been unkind to incumbent parties since COVID-19. But the United States has one issue that makes our election different. Donald Trump appointed three justices to the Supreme Court and they all voted to give states the authority to criminalize abortion. Red states have not been shy about exercising that authority. Women have noticed.

b. Kamala Harris is more popular than Hillary Clinton was in 2016. Hillary was less hated than Trump in 2016 but they were both unpopular. Harris's personal approval ratings are roughly neutral. Trump is still unpopular generally.

c. The Democrats have raised more money and have a much better ground operation than Team Trump. 

d. Trump's age is really showing. He is tired and he rambles even more than he did in his previous runs. He is old and the people have noticed. I think in the end, this will make the difference.

4. Things to Ignore.

People are naturally trying to divine the meaning of early voting patterns. There are some theories that bolster Trump (especially in Nevada) and others that bolster Harris (especially with gender differences and the numbers in Pennsylvania).  But I am going to hold off on putting too much stock in any of that because 2020 was such an outlier for early and mail voting. Four years ago we were in a pandemic. One campaign acknowledged that and the other actively discouraged people from voting before election day.  The situation is different now. The overall numbers will be lower but I don't think they will be as lopsided in favor Democrats either.

5. My Updated Forecast.

This race is going to be very close. For the past few weeks Trump seemed to have a slight bit of momentum behind him. I think that has petered out. In the home stretch he looks tired and frail.

Harris has run a good campaign. I don't think she's a great retail politician but she has run well. She's done the appropriate mix of interviews, rallies and advertising. She's focused on the right issues and I think she is more likely to close this deal than not.

With one week to go, I think this is where the probabilities of each swing state stand:

1. Michigan (Harris 67%)

2. Wisconsin (Harris 60%)

3. Nevada (Harris 55%)

4. Pennsylvania (Harris 53%)

5. North Carolina (Trump 51%)

6. Georgia (Trump 55%)

7. Arizona (Trump 60%)

But there are 128 permutations for how 7 coin flips can go. Next week all 128 are possible. This is the one I find most likely:

VP Debate Night, 2024

 I. The State of the Race.

I have not had a reason to update my map since late July. For all the daily weirdness of the Trump campaign, the race has been pretty stable. Kamala Harris is a slight favorite. She will probably win the popular vote but there are enough very close states to keep the winner uncertain.

The simple version of the race is this. Harris is likely to win states worth 226 electoral votes. She has to win 44 more votes among the seven swing states. At the moment, I classify them this way:

Leaning Harris: Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and (just slightly) Pennsylvania.  

True Toss-ups: North Carolina and Georgia.

Leaning Trump: Arizona

So Harris probably has just enough votes to win the election as it is polling now. There are five weeks to go. While there will certainly be unexpected news, there aren't many big events left on the calendar. Which leads us to tonight.

II. The Vice-Presidential Debate.

The VP debates are almost never consequential. The most memorable moment in their history was when Lloyd Bentsen insulted Dan Quayle for presuming to compare himself to John F. Kennedy. Bush-Quayle crushed Dukakis-Bentsen that November.

Tim Walz has been a great candidate so far. His favorable numbers are by far the best of all four candidates and he hasn't committed any gaffes. No dirt has come to light and his super power of normalcy has been a refreshing change of pace.  

J.D. Vance has brought absolutely nothing to the Trump team. He has said a lot of dumb things and never, ever looks comfortable on the campaign trail. People do not like him and they are right to not like him.

But the previous paragraphs only set the expectatio0ns for tonight. Vance is a pretty smooth speaker when he has a script and he had the oddly misplaced confidence of a much smarter man. He could do well tonight. Well enough to exceed expectations at least. And in a pinch, he is not afraid to lie.

III. The Questions That Should Be Asked.

1. To Tim Walz, "Vice-President Harris and you have derided Trump's plan to place a tariff on all imported goods. But Joe Biden has kept many Trump-era tariffs in place. What metrics would you use to determine the difference between good and bad tariffs?"

2. To J.D. Vance:  "After spreading the false rumor that immigrants from Haiti in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets, you said  that you felt the need  "to create stories so that the media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people." How should voters know when you are telling the truth and when you are making stuff up?

3. To Tim Walz. "Does the United States of America admit too many, too few or just the right number of legal immigrants to this country?  What criteria would you use to determine what that number should be?"

4. To J.D. Vance: "If you become president in the next four years, would you sign a national ban on abortion and if so, what would be the parameters of that ban as to length of pregnancy and exceptions for medical emergencies."

5. To Tim Walz, "Are there any specific programs or areas of the military budget that you believe should be reduced or eliminated?

6. To JD Vance, "Was the 2020 presidential election free and fair and who was the lawful winner of that election?"

7. For both candidates, "What benefits does the United States get from its relationship with Israel and are there any changes that you would make to how the United States provides aid to Israel?"

With five weeks to go the election is probably about a 60/40 tilt in favor of Kamala Harris. Tonight probably won't change that dynamic. I don't think it will much change how people feel about Tim Walz. But J.D. Vance could do a lot of good for himself by just being normal. I'm not sure he has it in him.