Four More Years But For Whoah....Wait a Second. Final 2024 General Election Forecast.

I. Four Scenarios.

The race remains extremely close. The betting odds are close to even money. The forecasts are nearly tied. But in less than 48 hours, we will probably know the winner and almost certainly the narrative will be one of these four things:

1. For a third consecutive election, the polls underestimated Trump. In this scenario the popular vote is close and Trump wins enough of the battle ground states to become president again.

2. The pollsters underestimated Harris organization and ability to turn out voters. In this scenario, the Harris campaign turns out low propensity voters and people who are simply sick of Donald Trump and all of his baggage.

3. Chaos. There has been a lot of discussion about whether 2024 will be a repeat of 2016 (Trump surges to victory) or 2020 (America turns out Trump.)  But we have to consider a repeat of 2000. the polling in swing states have been so close that it's very possible we will not know who is going to be president until the courts weigh in. 

4. Harris Wins Big. The Des Moines Register poll of Iowa (conducted by Ann Selzer) has been the golden child of polling the last two cycles. They found Trump up big there in 2016. Not only were they right about that, but the shift was replicated in other midwestern states and Trump took down the "blue wall" that was supposed to save Hillary Clinton. In 2020 they had Trump up in Iowa again and Trump won Iowa easily for a second time. The result was echoed in other states,  and the election wound up being closer than expected.

Trump won Iowa by nine points in 2016 and by eight in 2020. Selzer had Trump winning Iowa by seven in both of those cycles. Two days ago the final Des Moines Register poll had Harris up by three. If this poll is once again extremely accurate, than Harris would flip a bunch of states that Biden lost last time. 

I do not expect this poll to be that accurate for a third time in a row. But I also don't expect the wider pool of pollsters to under estimate Trump for a third straight time. In short, I think Harris is going to win. But I think it will be close.

II. Seven Swing States and Two Stretches.

The election has been narrowed to seven states for some time now.  To win the election Harris needs 44 Electoral votes from these states. Trump needs 49. From most to least important, this is what I expect.

1. Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes). This is the dog fight. The candidate who wins this state is the heavy favorite to be the 47th president. Almost every recent poll has it within a point or two. But a lot of that polling has been from partisan Republican pollsters. And they only find Trump up by a point. That should be encouraging to Harris. I think she will win the state by a point or two. If we know that result by Wednesday morning, then we are probably avoiding the chaos scenario.

2. Georgia (16 EV) Harris won this state by 11,779 votes in 2020. The state also has elected two Democratic senators. It was also the place where Trump's attempts to steal the 2020 election were most blatantly corrupt. The states demographics are trending left and Harris has made a full court press to win this state. Recent polling here has been extremely close but I think Georgia is more likely than Pennsylvania to go Republican this time. I favor Trump slightly.

3. North Carolina (16 EV) Georgia and North Carolina are interchangeable for the electoral map. They each have sixteen electoral votes and they are both southern. It is the only closely contested state that Trump held on to last time. (He won by about 94K votes.) Most of the polls here have shown Trump with a slight lead but the final New York Times poll had Harris up by three.

NC was hit very hard by Hurricane Milton. The response by the federal government was extremely competent.  North Carolina also have a very popular Democratic governor and the Republican candidate to replace him is a full blown loon. I think that helps on the margins. 

One other piece of data worth mentioning is that inflation was relatively mild in North Carolina. Nate Silver has been talking about this a lot. It seems that the states that avoided really high inflation are going to swing more to the left than other states. (This could be significant for the House-New York and California were hit hard by inflation. That would change the presidential result but it could hurt Democrats in the House.)

So my pick in North Carolina is Kamala Harris. By about a point or two.

4. Michigan (15 EV) Michigan will be one of the most closely scrutinized states regardless of the results. Michigan is home to large Arab and Muslim populations and they are concentrated in specific cities. There are a lot of Muslim and Arab voters who feel they cannot vote for Harris because of Joe Biden's decision to support Israel's response to the attacks of October 7th. I am sympathetic to this argument but also very aware that Trump will be much worse for the people of Gaza than Kamala Harris.

I think the protest vote will be measurable and I think it will cut into Harris lead. But it won't be enough for Trump to win the state. Trump won Michigan by less than a quarter of a point in 2016 and Biden won it by three points last time. Harris will win Michigan again.

5. Arizona (11 EV)  This is a weird one for me. I think AZ is a tough state to poll. Several really smart people that I follow on Twitter think this state will stay in the Dem column. It's possible but I cant' ignore that it's been awhile since Harris lead in a poll there. I think Arizona flips back to red.

6. Wisconsin (10 EV) This is where I will be on election day. I have also done a good deal of phone banking for this state. The polls are close but the Wisconsin Democrats have a great organization. I think Harris will win Wisconsin.

7. Nevada (6 EV) Nevada is the state that Dems always worry about and then they win. Polling has been a bit scattered and the Republican party has done a pretty decent job of running up a lead in early voting. But if history holds, the Reid Machine will carry Kamala over the line. Harris will win a close one, but the state will probably not be called for several days. Hopefully this time it won't hold up the call of the national race because Harris will be declared winner in Pennsylvania by Wednesday or Thursday.

The Two Stretches:

1. Kind of small beer here, but I think Harris might win Maine's 2nd congressional district. The Selzer poll of Iowa suggests that Harris is doing better with white voters than some expected. This could be a nice bonus but it won't affect the outcome anywhere.

2. The Selzer poll means we have to consider Iowa competitive. She has been accurate within a point or two the last two times and she has a reputation for letting the data speak for her. I admire that. Iowa passed an abortion ban that only took effect recently. It seems to have shifted the state left. One fun wrinkle of the Selzer poll is that it had RFK junior getting three percent of the vote. I don't think he will be much of a factor anywhere, but weird old Iowa might be the one place it matter.  

I'm keeping Iowa red on my map, but I think it will be close. Let's say Trump by two.

The only changes from my last forecast are moving NC and ME-2 blue. Here is what my map looks like now:

III. A Quick Word About Why You Should Vote For Harris.

I did my last round of phone banking today. A point of emphasis was to encourage people to tell their friends and loved ones to vote for Harris. It's unlikely that you are undecided voter if you're reading this but maybe you know an undecided voter or two. Feel free to share with them my top seven reasons to vote for Kamala Harris.

1. Trump threw a riot to steal the last election. He really did. And he has said openly that he will pardon the people who were convicted of crimes committed on his behalf that day. It will be the first order of business if he wins tomorrow. As an undecided voter, you're probably sick of being told that this election is especially important but this is the kind of stuff that ends democracies.

2. Harris will work to keep abortion legal.  Women have died because of the state bans that Trump made possible by appointing three justice who overturned Roe vs. Wade. If he regains the presidency, our government will do more and more to treat abortion as a crime. Harris probably can't fix this problem over night if the Democrats don't control the senate. But she'll work in the right direction. And rejecting Trumpism will send the message that we do not want women to die or doctors to be prosecuted for performing abortions.

3. Trump will align the United States of America with dictatorships and authoritarians. Trump does not care about democracy. He admires dictators and has PROMISED to be one, at least on his first day in office. We Americans might treat that statement like a joke, but it's not. In his heart he is an authoritarian. He will use the next four years to settle scores and to do favors to the people that he thinks helped him. This has some very real effects.

Ukraine will have to surrender a lot of territory to Russia. Trump won't give them any additional aide and he will want to take credit for brokering "peace." But this kind of appeasement will not be peace. It will give Russia permission to try to grow its boundaries. He will not stop with taking 20 percent of Ukraine. His goal and the goal of his successors is quite simply to restore the Russian and Soviet Empires. Trump will green light that.

NATO will be compromised. Trump doesn't think it is in the interests of the United States for NATO to survive because he thinks America is a fortress and we can get along with Putin and the Chinese Communist Party because we should not care about human rights or treaty obligations.

4. Trumps tariffs will wreak havoc on our economy. Donald Trump's single major economic idea is to impose large tariffs on all imported goods. He think the United States can survive as an insular economy. It can't. And the price of your smart phone and your clothes and your cars will go up immediately.

5. If Donald Trump wins, he will run rampant. He will likely have both chambers of congress. He will have an extremely sympathetic six to three majority on the Supreme Court. His first act will be stop the Department of Justice from prosecuting the crimes he committed during his first term. He will not be restrained by the cabinet members and generals who were there to put some roadblocks in his way. Moreover, he will have just been told by the American people that we don't care about the excesses of his first term. He will take a victory as a mandate for revenge. He will govern like a king who is immune from prosecution for anything that he can call an "official act."  He will have the Supreme Court he appointed and the voters he conned to thank for that. But he won't bother to be grateful.  He will be too busy, building his wall, deporting hard working people regardless of whether they are married to or the parents of American citizens. He will, as he promised, act like a dictator on day one. And who exactly is going to make him stop on on day two?

If Harris wins she will probably have control of the House but not the Senate. The Supreme Court will be hostile if she tries to do anything ambitious without congressional assent. In short, voting for Harris is to vote for moderate, restrained policy within the checks and balance of our system. Voting for Trump is voting to empower a lunatic as he passes into his eighties. Oh. and his running mate is a goober that's been in the senate for 20 months. 

IV. Just One More Thing.

 It's time to elect a woman president. Harris has avoided making this plea, and that's probably a smart decision. Hillary Clinton's campaign suffered from leaning into this bit of history a little too much. It rubbed some people the wrong way. But I'm not Kamala Harris or a woman. So I can tell you-I want a woman president. This is the ninth presidential election that I have voted in. At 51 years old, I might not vote in nine more. 

When Barack Obama was elected my friend showed his then three year old daughter one of those place mats with all the presidents. He was curious whether she would notice something different about the last face on the paper.  He went through all 44 pictures and told her just a little about each one. When he was done, she had two questions. "Why are they all boys? "And "Why were so many of then named James?"  She is in college now. I assume she has learned why all the presidents have been boys so far. I doubt she likes the answer. 

Donald Trump is in obvious mental and physical decline. He is a convicted felon and serial sexual pest. He recently told a crowd at a rally that Arnold Palmer had a large penis. He laughs when he talks about Nancy Pelosi's octogenarian husband being hit in the head with a hammer. If you want four more years of that, well you've got the company of about 45 percent of your countrymen.  

The American economy is in exceptionally strong health. We are no longer at war.  Crime is falling and we've even reduced our dependence on fossil fuels. The current administration has been a success. 

Kamala Harris is a good and bright person. She has run an excellent, moderate campaign. She is someone that will make the country proud.  If she wins, she will be proof that the American Experiment is alive and well.  You should vote for her. 

V. Putting My Predictions Out There.

Presidency:

Electoral College Harris 293, Trump 245

Popular Vote: Harris 51.03%, Trump 47.16%

Swing States:

Pennsylvania: Harris by 1

Georgia:  Trump by 0.3

North Carolina: Harris by 1.1

Michigan: Harris by 2.4

Arizona: Trump by 1.6

Wisconsin: Harris by 2.1

Nevada: Harris by 0.8

Stretch States:

Iowa: Trump by 2.4

Maine 2nd: Harris by 0.02

Florida: Trump by 2.9

Texas: Trump by 3.3

New Hampshire: Harris by 5

Virginia: Harris by 4.8

Other Big States:

New York: Harris by 20.4

California: Harris by 27.9

Illinois:  Harris by 17.4

Ohio: Trump by 6.7

The House: 
Democrats 223, Republican 212

I have paid very little attention to the house this cycle. The seats to watch are in Iowa. If people are really motivated by the abortion ban, the Dems will win one or two seats there. But control of the House will be determined by New York and California. 

The Senate:

Republicans 51, Democrats 49

Key Senate Races:

Ohio  Brown (D) by 1.8

Montana Sheehy (R) by 3.9  (Republican pick up)

Wisconsin Baldwin (D) by 3.2

Nebraska Fischer (R) by 5.7

Texas Cruz (R) by 2.3

Florida Scott (R) by 3

Arizona Gallego (D) by 5

Michigan Slotkin (D) by 4.1

Pennsylvania McCormick (D) by 3.5

West Virginia Justice (R) by 34 (Republican pick up)

Nevada Rosen (D) by 4.1

This would mean the incumbent party retaining 32 out of 34 races. But more importantly, the senate would flip to Republican control. 

     

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:

Debate Night! 2024

The second debate of the 2024 general election will be begin in under four hours.  It is the first debate to include Kamala Harris.  As I usually do, I will post some questions that I would like to hear the candidates be asked tonight.  But first, a quick word about the state of the race.

I believe that Harris will win the popular vote by something between three and six points. I believe she will sweep the Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. I also think she will win Nevada. I think Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are true tossups that either candidate could win if the election were today. So my hunch is that she will win one or two of those, but not all three.

This is slightly more bullish than the average forecast, as you can see below.

I. The State of the Race.

The race is very close. Most recent national polls have been within two points. Harris has led in the majority of them, but that doesn't tell us much since she probably needs to win by a point and a half or two points to become president. The professionals and hobbyists who look at this stuff in some detail tend to put the likelihood of either candidate winning somewhere between 40 and 60 percent.

Which of course is making everyone on Politics Twitter mental.  The uncertainty is grating and not everyone is taking it in stride. But I don't think there's much difference between 60/40 and 40/60 when there are eight weeks to go. Here I have round up the predictions from various models and prognosticators. And I'll include myself because well, why not?

That's quite a spread, but of course the two most optimistic forecasts are amateurs with a rooting interest. The real divide seems to be between 538.com and it's prodigal son, Nate Silver. 538 gives Harris a nearly 56 percent chance of winning but Nate only a 38.4 percent chance of winning

II. Questions That Should Be Asked.

1. To Donald Trump, "Who won the 2020 election for president?" 

I'd like to get even more specific and ask Trump which states he is willing to admit that he lost last time. But last week Trump seemed to make some news in admitting on a podcast that he lost "by a whisker." He probably said that to avoid the podcast host from beating him up on election denialism. I think the moderators need to push further on this today because well, shit, democracy matters.

2. To Kamala Harris, "How would you have handed the withdrawal from Afghanistan differently than Joe Biden and Donald Trump did?"

I continue to believe that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was the most successful large-scale operation carried out by the American military this century. Many disagree with me on that, although, none of them can name one more successful.  But this is an issue and I want to hear both her talk about it and Trump respond to it.

3.  To Donald Trump. "You are awfully fond of Vladimir Putin,  the House of Saud, Xi Jinping and Kim Jung Un. Do you believe it is important for America to promote democracy abroad?"

I am recycling this from my post about the June debate, because I think it's a great question.

4. For Kamala Harris: "Why specifically did you change your views on fracking since 2019?"

5. For Donald Trump: "The first time you ran for president you promised to balance the budge and pay off the debt in four years. Your current campaign is predicated on a lot of tax cuts and a lot of new spending. The only new revenue source you have endorsed are tariffs on all imported goods. Have you crunched the numbers on all of these plans and how much do you think the national debt will be four years form now if you are elected."

6. For Kamala Harris " Do you think that any tariffs currently in place contributed to the inflation of the past few years and will you repeal or reduce any of them?

7. For Both Candidates:  Three out of four of your parents were immigrants. Mr. Trump's father was born about 2 year after his parents arrived in this country from Germany.  Why do you think so many voters s have hostile feelings about recently arrived Americans and what will you do to change that?

As always, I would also like to have them answer the questions on the test to become a naturalized citizen but I don't think we will get anything like that tonight.

III. If This Were a Baseball Game.

As the election proceeds, I will play around with probabilities from a different passion, baseball.  

To think of think of the election as a baseball game. We'll treat the remaining weeks as innings. And we'll make Harris the home team, since we are root, root, rooting for her and if she doesn't win it will be a shame. 

So with eight weeks to go, the game goes to the second inning today. 

A. 538 Baseball Forecast: The game is tied in the top of the 2nd. There is one out and no runners on base.

B. Nate Silver Baseball Forecast.  The visitors have a 2-0 lead in the top of the second. There are two outs and no runners on base.

Bottom Line: A lot of baseball left to be played.

 

The Election Reduced to One Chart.

Today is Labor Day, the traditional beginning of the general election season. I have no changes to make to my previous forecast of Harris winning 292 Electoral Votes to 246 for Trump.   (This means Harris winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia while Trump wins Arizona and North Carolina.)

I. Polls, Betting Markets, Forecasts and Wishes.

Harris holds a modest lead in most national polls. Five Thirty Eight, the Economist and Nate Silver have up by about three and a half points. Real Clear Politics has her up just under two points. 

The Prediction Markets are very close. Predictit favors Harris slightly (54 cents to 49 cents) and Polymarket favors Trump slightly. (50% to 47%)

Most of the forecasts favor Harris by narrow margins. Five Thirty Eight has her winning 57 percent of the time. The Economist 52 percent of the time. Nate Silver has Trump winning something like 52 percent of the time but he has all but admitted that his model is suppressing Harris' vote too much because it's within two weeks of the DNC. (Put differently, she didn't get as large of a post-convention bounce than his model expected.)

So, you know.....close.

I for one am slightly more optimistic than these models. I think Harris has about a 65 percent chance of winning. I am of course biased in her favor. I want her to win. But the reasons for my optimism is that her personal approval ratings are about 10 points better than Trump's. That will make it difficult for him to change minds in his favor. 

Right now the median undecided voter is a normie who is sick of Trump's shtick. I believe they will be willing to turn things over to the next generation. Trump's job, as cynical as this sounds is, is to make that person afraid to turn things over to Kamala Harris. I think his attacks will get uglier over time but I don't think it will work on enough people for him to win.

He does not have the personal charisma, political skill, fund raising or even the personal energy to make that happen. He is old and declining. It shows more and more when he speaks and it is reflected in the less robust campaign schedule that he has been keeping compared to four and eight years ago. 

But campaigns are there to be won and stranger things have happened. A bit of bad news can always hurt the incumbent party and Harr is not yet running away with this thing. 

II. The Electoral Math.

We pretty much know what the result will be in 43 states and the District of Columbia. If we also assume that Harris will win Nebraska's 2nd congressional district and Trump will win Maine's 2nd congressional district, we can assume that the election starts with 226 electoral votes in the Democratic column and 219 in the Republican column.

That leaves seven swing states to decide the contest. There is an easy way to divide them-Northern and Southern. The three Northern swing states were all won by Biden last time and they generally poll to the left of the four Southern swing states.

If Harris wins all three Northern swing states, she will hit the magic number of 270 electoral votes. If she loses any of these states she will have to make up for it by winning a matching number of electoral votes in the southern part of the map.

Here's a way to think of it.  

1. Harris is expected to win 226 votes in reliably blue states.

2. She needs 44 more Electoral Votes to get to 270.

3. The quickest way to do that is to win the three Northern Swing States-Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Pennsylvania (19). That puts her on exactly 270.

4. For every electoral vote she loses in the Northern Swing States, she must make up for them by winning that same number in a Southern Swing State: Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Arizona (11) and Nevada (6).

Here a chart for what combinations of Southern Swing States would make up for losing one or more of the Northern Swing States.

That is the scorecard you need for election night. As the weeks progress, I'm sure I'll update my expectations. But the math on getting to 270 is pretty simple here. Harris needs to rebuild the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania or patch any cracks in it with an equal number of Electoral Votes from Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

PS: I want to plug a new election forecaster for this cycle. He goes by Theo and I came across him on Twitter. (His Twitter handle is @ctolga_ )  

He has built a neat and visually appealing website for his forecast. His fore cast is considerably more optimistic than the older established forecasts. But I have a hunch that those forecasts are going to trend in his directions as the weeks go by.  Here is the link to his website:

https://theo-forecast.github.io/

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

Folks, the tide has turned. Kamala Harris has had an amazing month of good fortune and better politics. For the first few months of this year I assumed that voters would eventually reconcile themselves to the fact that they had to choose between two old declining men and enough of them would choose the one who wasn't evil. 

But Father Time came for Joe Biden a little faster than I expected. Remarkably, he recognized that this was true, or at least the fact that the public believed it was true, so he stepped aside in favor of his vice-president. Then the institutional party rallied behind this decision. Since becoming the presumptive nominee, she has made a very popular choice for running mate, posted incredible fundraising numbers and staged a string of flawless campaign rallies. 

Now America has a choice between an old man, malevolent in being, choleric in temperament and declining in his faculties or a woman in the prime of life, upbeat in bearing and riding a wave of good sentiment that should carry through her convention. When the dust settles around Labor Day, this could be looking like the best presidential election cycle for Democrats since 2008.

But let's not get over our skis just yet. Harris hasn't done an interview, press conference or debate yet. A lot can go wrong and it's inevitable that a she will have a bad press cycle or two between now and November 5th. But for now, she is the favorite. And her opponent seems incapable of adjusting to this reality. 

The electoral college favors the Republican party. A few bad bounces could lead to another 2016 where Trump rides a lucky streak to the White House. He can win Pennsylvania and I'm not lighting any cigars until  that state is called on Election Night (Or the day after. Maybe Thursday. Seriously, folks, margins matter in PA. Let's get this done in a timely manner.)

I. The Roads to 270.

The colored chart at the top of this post is a list of every electoral contest from deepest blue DC to brightest red Wyoming. I don't do toss-ups, because that's boring. But any state or district in a pale color could reasonably won by either party. The darker shades are "safe." But I use that term a little more loosely than more serious outlets. They are safe for now. They are safe in a close election. I'll move the bricks around as polling and prediction markets shift. 

A. The Safe Blue 226.

Just a month ago, team Trump was eyeing Minnesota and Virginia. Trump himself was making noise about New Jersey. (That last one was never going to happen.) But for now, I thin those states are off the board. Unless something horrible happens in the next 87 days, Harris-Walz will win at least 20 contests worth 226 electoral votes.

B. The Swinging 93.

i. Michigan. This state is trending blue and I'd be shocked if Harris doesn't win it. Polymarket gives Harris as 62% chance of winning it. Until that gets over 70%, I'll leave it where it is. (Five Thirty Eight has not yet turned their forecast back on which is embarrassing).

ii. Wisconsin. Also trending blue, but not quite as fast as MI. Polymaket has it 56/44.

iii. Pennsylvania: WI and MI get Harris to 251. From there the clearest path is Pennsylvania, which gets her to exactly 270. The most recent polls have looked good there and I think Harris will probably win it. But let's face it 270 to 268 is a terrifying proposition. Especially for the 270 members of the electoral college in the states that vote for Biden. (And their alternates-thank God the electors have alternates.)

iv. Nevada.  If there is one state to flip because of the switch from Biden to Harris, it is this one. Biden was polling terribly there and Trump was polling weirdly well there all year long. I guess they like casino owners, even lousy ones. But Harris stepping in has led to a swift endorsement by the big culinary union there and it looks like the Reid machine will carry this one over the line for now. If I owned a polling company, I would spend a lot of money on this state the next two months. If Harris doesn't win PA, she probably has to win Nevada.

v. Georgia. After Pennsylvania, this state is most likely to put Harris over the top. If she wins the 251 states, plus NV and GA, she'll be at 273. A slightly less terrifying scenario than 270 to 268.

vi. North Carolina.  If I had to predict the closest margin in this election, I would pick NC. The Dems have only carried it once in the last 11 cycles but the state is nudging its way leftward and the Republicans, God love them, have nominated an absolute nutter to be their candidate for governor. It was the only state that Trump won by a narrow margin in 2020 and I hope this year it will fall the other way.

vii. Arizona.  This is another state that was very close last time and in which the Party of Lincoln has chosen a full-blown lunatic for the senate race. She will lose. But for some reason, this state feels like a reach for Harris. Polymarket still favors Trump there and I'm not ready to bet against that. Picking Kelly for Veep would have helped, of course. But I don't think AZ will be the tipping point state, so it's probably not worth worrying about. And Harris certainly has a chance to win, especially if Trump keeps making his cognitive decline so obvious.

C. The Safe Red 219.

I have written somewhat cautiously so far. I am very encouraged by the current state of the race. But I know there are limits to the popularity of the Democratic party and I'm not about to discount the possibility of attacks on Kamala Harris sticking with a certain kind of "independent voter" who think the President of the United States should be man, just the way more sensible folks believe that James Bond should always be a man. (Or God, if that's your thing.)

Part of my caution stems from the fact that I don't see Harris flipping any big states that Trump won in 2020. Florida could wind up being close. But it makes little senses for Harris to commit the kind of resources it would probably take for her to win there. Texas was fairly close last time, but I don't seeing it moving nearly five points to the left in a second consecutive cycle.  Ohio might be closer than last time and that's good news for Sherrod Brown's senate campaign. But it's not flipping Blue

One persistent prediction I have made is that Florida will again vote to the left of Texas this time. And I think they will both be Red in the end, whether by one point or five.  (The last time TX voted to the left of FL was 1988-when Dukakis-Bentsen lost FL by 22 points but Texas by 12 and 1/2 points. Good job, Lloyd!)

Other than NC, it's hard to see where Harris picks off a state that voted for Trump twice. She might win both of Maine's congressional districts, but that's hardly a trivial effect on the election. If we're talking about a blow out, then Iowa and Alaska could become kind of, sort of close. But if we're worried about that in November, then this will be a good cycle indeed.

II. The Bottom Line.

This election will be decided in seven states worth a total of 93 electoral votes. Kamala Harris needs to win 44 of those 91 votes. Trump needs to win 51 to win outright or 50 to get a 269-269 tie and force it to the House of Representatives*. 

The contours of this are shaped by how the three Blue Wall states vote. 

A. Harris has 3 Paths to winning at least 44 of these votes:

a. The Blue Wall: WI+MI+PA (exactly 44)

b. The Hybrid: Any two Blue Wall States plus NV+ GA or NC (47)

c. The Southern Belles:  NV+AZ+ GA + NC (49)

I do not see the Southern Strategy working. If Harris gets swept in the Rust Belt states, she probably does not win all four southern states. But stranger things have happened.

B. Trump's Needs A Rust Belt Swing State to get to 270:

The good news is that Trump has to win at least one of the Blue Wall states. The bad news is that winning one or more of them gives him several paths to 270.

If Trump wins one of the three Blue swing states, he has the following paths:

If Pennsylvania,  he is up to 238 and he needs either: 

a. North Carolina and Georgia 

b. North Carolina or Georgia plus NV and Arizona.

If Michigan, he is up to 235 and he needs: 

a. North Carolina and Georgia and NV or Arizona.

If Wisconsin, he's up to 229 and needs: 

a. North Carolina and Georgia and Arizona.

If Trump wins any two of the Blue Wall states, he's up to at least 244 and needs to get 26 more. 

a. Georgia plus North Carolina  

b. Georgia OR North Carolina plus Nevada AND Arizona.

If Trump wins any two of the Blue Wall states and one of them is Pennsylvania then he's up to at least 248 and needs to get 22 more. 

a. Georgia and North Carolina

b. Georgia or North Carolina plus Arizona or Nevada.

If Trump wins Pennsylvania and Michigan but not Wisconsin, then he's up to at least 253 and needs to get 17 more. 

a. Georgia or North Carolina plus Arizona or Nevada.

b. Arizona and Nevada.

If Trump wins All  Three of the Rust Belt states, he's up to at least 263 and needs to get 7 more. 

a. Any of the four southern swing states would probably work. House of Representatives. Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia or Arizona would give him a clean win. Nevada would make it a 269 to 269 tie, which means that Trump probably gets elected president by the House of Representatives*. 

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

 Kamala Harris has had a very good week. Nearly everything in the news this week has been good for her and today we saw the first meaningful polls conducted entirely after Biden's withdrawal on Sunday. The results were quite good. To put it simply, the race went from favoring Trump and trending his way, to more or less a dead heat.

Not every week will go this smoothly. But for the moment, she has reenergized Democratic voters and independents seem glad to not have to choose between two very old men.

I. Veep Stakes Update.

I still think the VP choice will be one of the five that I wrote about in my last post. But it has been fun to watch them and a couple longshots jockey for position.  I'm adjusting my ratings based on the week that was and a sharper sense of where the Electoral College will likely tip.

The Top Tier:

1. Governor Josh Shapiro. He's had a strong audition. And Pennsylvania is the most important swing state because it has the most electoral votes. He's still not quite my favorite, but he's certainly unobjectionable and the logic of picking the guy most likely to get you to 270 is pretty hard to counter.

2. Governor Roy Cooper.  Same logic as above with the added twist that Harris is said to be on very good terms with him. NC has 3 fewer EC votes than Pennsylvania and that might cost Cooper the nod here. But he's definitely getting a long hard look.

3. Senator Mark Kelly. You know what overcomes the stigma of being short and bald? Being an astronaut. Kelly is probably the best national candidate. He will be a great contrast with JD Vance. I also like the way that he and his wife are going for the job without being unseemly about it. 

The Stretches.

4. Governor Tim Walz. If Minnesota is in play, then the Democrats are probably losing. But Walz will play well in WI and MI too. He's probably had the best television appearances this week, largely driven by a simple motto "Take care of your neighbors and stop being weird." That plays really well and is a nice reprieve from almost a decade dominated by Trumpism.

5. Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  I still think she's a great candidate. But she has said she doesn't want it and I think both she and Harris buy into the notion that they shouldn't put two women on the ticket. Let me push back against that idea for a moment. Can you imagine a voter who says, "I will vote for a woman but only so long as her vice-president is a man." If you find that unlikely, then you probably understand why I don't really buy this argument. 

But the issue is probably more subtle than this. So she has to be considered a long shot. But I do think that's a shame.

The Bad Ideas.

6. Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He's great on television. And it would be fun to watch him debate JD Vance. But...no. He's too young. He needs to get a bigger job before I can take him seriously. In 2032 he will be 50 years old. That seems like a good time to run.

7. Governor J.B. Pritzker.  Well if you really want someone to balance a ticket, I guess Kamala + JB weigh about the same as Trump + Vance. But let's not take that too literally.  Pritzker has been a pretty good governor of Illinois but he's a little smarmy and picking him will bring 14 weeks of Trump making fat jokes and (more importantly) talking about Chicago in the most ridiculous ways ever.

II. The Roads to 270.

As discussed last time, I think Harris is pretty locked in for 226 electoral votes. I think she is favored in Michigan (15) and slightly favored in Wisconsin (10).   That gets us to 251.  The last 19 are the interesting part. There are 2 ways to get there.

1. Win Pennsylvania. That gets Harris up to exactly 270.  If Shapiro is picked, this is probably why.

2. Win North Carolina or Georgia plus one more state. GA and NC both have 16 electoral votes, so winning one gets us to 267 and we need just one more state.  Winning both would get us there. The  other options are Nevada (6), Arizona (11).

III. My Updated Forecast.

So I am optimistic. The race has been joined and I hope things go well. But I understand that the GOP has an Electoral College advantage. The betting markets still favor Trump. 

I'm not ready to say Harris is the favorite. We need to see more polls. We need to know her roommate. But I started by saying it was a good week, and I am going to move Wisconsin from light red to light blue. 

Onward and Upward.

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

This is the fourth presidential election cycle that I have forecast on this humble blog. For the first time ever, I am predicting that the Republican candidate is more likely to win than the Democratic candidate. But as of today, we at least know who the Democratic candidate will be and her name is Vice-President Kamala Harris.

My Thanks to All of You.

Joe Biden did something really great and patriotic today. I am a huge admirer of him and I think he's been the best president of my lifetime. I have also vocally supported him as the candidate this time around.  But Father Time is undefeated. After a dreadful debate performance, Biden gave three lengthy interviews and a long press conference. His performance at each was underwhelming. 

It had to be frustrating for him to realize that he's still doing a great job but can no longer project the strength and vigor that voters want from the president. I give him a lot of credit for making this difficult decision. But he's much more a patriot than egotist, so I'm not surprised he got there.

Now It's On To Chicago.

Kamala Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee. No one important will challenge her. The other day I tweeted that the roll call vote will be something like this:  Harris 3,974 Newsom 15, Bernie Sanders 7, Gretchen Whitmer 4, Michelle Obama 3, Dean Phillips 1, Seth Moulton 0.

That's right about where I am still, with one exception. I forgot that some guy named Jason Palmer got on the ballot in American Samoa and beat Joe Biden in that caucus. He earned three delegates and deserves to keep them. Mr. Palmer-you rock.

But sometime between now and the Democratic convention in Chicago, Kamala Harris will have to pick a running mate. She has a handful of attractive options.

When picking a Vice-President, one should consider the following criteria, in order:

1. Are they plausibly qualified to be President of the United States?

2. Will they hurt me by pissing off a specific voting block or bringing scandal to my ticket?

3. Can they help me in a specific swing state?

4. Do we make a good team? Put differently, can they be part of sending a specific and cohesive message to voters?

In the hours since Biden dropped out, most of the running mate talk has focused on four governors. I think there is also one senator worthy of being vetted and considered by VP Harris.  Here are the five most likely running mates, listed in order of my preference.

1. Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan. I'll be direct. I think she's the best choice. She probably takes Michigan off of the map. She is wildly popular in her home state and is good on television. I also think that picking a woman would be bold choice for Harris. It would reflect confidence and really underline that this election is about transitioning to the next generation

2. Senator Mark Kelly, Arizona.  He's an astronaut, which is about the coolest thing a person can be. He doesn't alienate any particular block of voters and he could help in Arizona, a state that Biden won by just 10K votes last time. The only downside here is that it would put his senate seat up for a special election in a midterm. But he has to be considered seriously. He's also a good man with a very sympathetic personal history that ties into the issue of gun violence. 

I don't know if I see a "brand" angle but I think a Harris-Kelly ticket can make this vote about abortion access and gun violence. Those issues are winners for Democrats.

3. Governor Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania. He's going to be a popular source of speculation because Harris probably needs to win Pennsylvania and she doesn't have the connections there that Joe Biden did. But he's in his first term, which means he's green. Like Harris he is a former attorney-general of a large state. The creates an interesting brand idea but this one might not catch on with some younger voters.  He's also Jewish and the first black woman to run for president might be tempted to stick with a white Christian man. 

4. Governor Roy Cooper, North Carolina.  I don't know a lot about him. But he's a popular governor of  light red state.  But NC is a slight reach for the Democrats this year and his lieutenant governor is a full-blown nut bag and when Cooper is out of the state, the Lieutenant Governor gets to be the "acting governor."  (This particular lunatic is also the Republican nominee for governor this year.) I don't like this pick but Harris is said to be fond of him, so he could end up getting the job.

5.Governor Any Beshear, Kentucky. He is a really good politician and his electoral success in a red state shouldn't be ignored. But he doesn't shore up any particular swing state and I'm not aware of any personal connection between he and Vice-President Harris.  He's worth a look, but well, he's not as strong of an option to my mind.

Other names will be floated but I really think she's going to pick one of these five. Time is short so she can't get too creative. Better to stick with prospects who have been closely examined by voters, at least in their home state.

And Let's Win There.

Okay, so now for the hard part. Winning the general election.  

I expect that Kamala Harris will get a good round of press and that will probably translate into modestly better poll numbers than we have seen over recent weeks. There are a whole lot of people who don't link Trump but claimed they were more worried about Biden because of his age. The fight for those votes in November will probably determine the winner.

But I still think she's the under dog. The map I post below is exactly what I would have posted if Biden were still the expected nominee. 

The Roads to 270.

I'm reasonably confident that Kamala Harris will win at least 226 Electoral College Votes. That leaves her 44 votes shy of 270. The states at play can be put in two broad categories:

The Blue Wall: Pennsylvania (19), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10)

The Sun Belt: North Carolina (16), Georgia (16), Arizona (11) and Nevada (6).

1. Sweep the Blue Wall.  

226 + Pennsylvania (19), Michigan (15) and Wisconsin (10) get her to exactly 270.

2.  Win Two Blue Wall and Two Sun Belt.

226 + WI + MI =251  

NC (16) or GA (16) gets Harris to 267. She would then need to win more state to get to 270.

3. Michigan and 29 Sun Belt Votes

4. Wisconsin and 34 Electoral Votes. (This seems very unlikely. If Harris loses MI and PA, she is probably not winning Three of the four Sun Belt states.)

It's not easy to write that I think Donald Trump is more likely than not to win this next presidential election, but right now I think Kamala Harris is on a path to winning 241 Electoral Votes .She has 106 days to get that up to 270. If you live in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, I hope you like political ads on during TV commercial breaks.

. 

The 2024 GOP Presidential Race.

Just kidding. There is no 2024 GOP presidential race. Donald Trump will be the nominee of that party next year. It does not matter that he has been indicted four times. It will not matter that he will likely be a convicted felon by Super Tuesday. It does not matter that he is a corrupt, incompetent drama queen. The Republican party likes him. They like him because he gives them license to vocalize their prejudices and take pride in their ignorance. They like him because he tells them that they are victims, which is very comforting. 

Most all they like him because he is their guy. They chose him seven years ago and there is an entire echo chamber that exists for the sole purpose perpetuating this status for him. Some pieces of this machinery wish to move on, but the masses say otherwise. He is currently polling at 55% of the field in a race with a dozen candidates.  He will win early. He will win often and the only thing that can stop him is the right Twinkee clogging the wrong artery between now and March 1st or so. If Donald Trump is capable of breath and basic mobility, he will be the Republican party for president next year.

Nevertheless, we are about 48 hours out from the first "Debate" of this presidential cycle. This event will look more like auditions for the vice-presidency than a traditional debate. The front-runner is staying home. Only one guy is expected to say anything mean or critical about him from the stage. He will be booed heartily when he does so. 

So this post is a look at the dozen or so other people who have decided to pretend the last three paragraphs are not so set in stone. They are worth looking at, at least once. After all, they pretend to think they're going to be president in 17 months. That's wild.

For each candidate,  I will ask three questions: Is he qualified?, Why is he running?, and what would a successful campaign look like for him? Then I'll make a brief prediction about how I think they will do in this sham of a primary. 

I have already squeezed the suspense out of who will win. But maybe these questions can help us begin to understand how this ill-fated clown car got quite so jammed.

TIER ONE: The Nominee Presumptive.

1. Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States.

National Polling Average among Republicans: 54.8%.

a. Is he qualified? Well, he's the first former president to seek the office since Grover Cleveland so, I guess technically....no. The answer is good lord, no.

b. Why is he running?  To fill the love-shaped hole in his heart.

c. What would a successful campaign look like for him?

To be elected President of the United States again. The full Grover Cleveland experience. It is the only thing that will ever make him feel a moment's happiness. And he has a chance. I would say he has about a 35% chance of achieving this, which is based entirely on the fact that Joe Biden's approval ratings remain stubbornly low. I think those numbers will change when the country accepts that we only have two options, but Biden is not as popular as he should be given the state of the economy, lack of meaningful scandal and his various successes in passing domestic legislation and forging foreign policy successes. But that is the subject for another post.

Trump will be the nominee and he has a chance of winning the election. We will go to the polls in 441 days and we won't be certain who the winner is until late that night.

TIER TWO: The Plausible Alternative.

2. Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida.

National Polling Average among Republicans: 14.3%.

a. Is he qualified? Yeah, sure. He's the governor of a big state and he was in congress before that. 

b. Why is he running? Because he assumed that his success in Florida would translate to a national mandate as the alternative to Trump. This was stupid. He should have waited until 2028 when he could have waltzed to the nomination. But I guess he had FOMO. Or an overly ambitious wife.

c. What would a successful campaign look like for him? 

Being the nominee. It is still possible. Trump's likely convictions could start happening early in 2024 and maybe that will give some voters pause about whether he can beat Biden. (One small problem there-Republican primary voters all think that Joe Biden is awful and assume that the rest of the country share that sentiment.)  At the risk of being morbid, there is also the fact that Donald Trump could die in the next six months. But short of that, DeSantis is probably fated to get his ass kicked in the early primary states and return to Florida with his national brand deflated.

It's worth noting that DeSantis has already done something very stupid. Instead of running a traditional campaign he has decided to let his Super PAC do most of the fundraising. This means that he can't "coordinate" with the Super PAC openly, so they have to talk to each other through the public press releases. It really is as stupid as anything any presidential candidate has ever done. If you want the details, Josh Barro does a great job with them here:  https://www.joshbarro.com/p/memo-to-ron-desantis-be-smarter

So this is where the GOP golden boy stands. He's still second in most national polls but he has hopelessly destroyed his relationship with Trump and he has exposed himself as a terrible retail politician. He might be able to have a comeback in 2028 but as of now it looks like no one will lose more political capital in this cycle than Ron DeSantis.

Prediction: Second in Iowa. Third in New Hampshire. Dead after South Carolina. 

Tier Three: The Quadrennial Flash In the Pan.

3. Vivek Ramaswamy, Media Gadfly.

National Polling Average Among Republicans: 7.2%.

a. Is he qualified? Not on your life.

This stupid motherfucker is an insult to American democracy. It's early days but I think he might be less qualified for the presidency than Donald Trump. He started the campaign without having ever held a job in government and without even knowing what the nuclear triad is. His biggest "ideas" are for the United States to befriend Vladimir Putin and he thinks 9/11 may have been an inside job. I hate this prick. tl;dr:No.

b. Why is he running? To become famous. Did I mention that he is a prick and that I hate him? Because he is and I do.

c. What would a successful campaign look like for him? Mission accomplished. He is the only candidate in this horrible field who is exceeding expectations. Of course, starting as 3o-something whose only accomplishment was to start a business that has never turned a profit, expectations were not exactly high. But he knows how to talk to old white people and make them feel good. That's a valuable commodity if your goal is to be a guest on Joe Rogan and maybe set up a reverse mortgage concern. 

This vapid asshole has already gotten tons of free press. The people who watch Fox News have picked him as their official token minority for this cycle. He is in the Alan Keyes-Herman Cain-Ben Carson fraternity for life. Two years from now he'll be writing books and hosting a podcast and being an irritant in our national life.  It beats working. 

Prediction: he'll finish 2nd or 3rd in Iowa. Then 4th in New Hampshire. He'll probably bow out before South Carolina, in order to stay in Trump's good graces.

TIER FOUR: Garden Variety Losers.

4. Mike Pence, 48th Vice-President of the United States.

National Polling Average: 5.2%.

a. Is he qualified? Yeah, sure. 

b. Why is he running? It's what vice-presidents do.

c. What would a successful campaign look like for him? 

Second or third place. Staying in past New Hampshire. Maybe staking some claim to his legacy as having done the bare minimum to keep our republic in place?

Primary Prediction: 4th in Iowa. 5th in New Hampshire. Extremely boring concession speech.

5. Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina.

National Polling Average: 3.4%.

a. Is she qualified? More than most in this field.

b. Why is she running? Because she is a try-hard who is in denial about the racist, sexist nature of her party.

c. What would a successful campaign look like for her? Proving me wrong about the racist, sexist nature of her party by coming in second and/or winding up on the ticket.

Primary Prediction: She will not run a successful campaign. But she will burn through a lot of money that would have otherwise been spent on second boats and fourth golf club memberships. But she'll probably cling on to her place in the national discourse-going on Sunday talk shows to prove that the Republican party is not racist and sexist. Someday she'll probably be a cabinet secretary.

6. Tim Scott, Junior Senator from South Carolina.

National Polling Average: 2.8%.

a. Is he qualified? Yeah, I guess.

b. Why is he running? Because a lot of rich people told him that the party is dying to nominate a never married black man to be president. And he probably thinks he can wind up being Donald Trump's running mate. 

c. What Would a Successful Campaign Look Like For Him? Being on the ticket. 

Primary Prediction: He seems like a nice enough guy. He'll get some traction in Iowa. If he can finish second there, then he will just need to survive New Hampshire and probably come in second again in South Carolina. That could be a strong enough performance to get Trump's attention. 

7. Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey.

National Polling Average: 2.6%.

a. Is he qualified? Yes.

b. Why is he running? He seems to think he can out bully Donald Trump. But he has no idea the difference between being a Jersey caliber asshole and a world-class malignant narcissist. I genuinely believe that if Donald Trump participated in even one debate, he would make Chris Christie cry on the stage. That's the only thing I will regret about Trump not doing these debates.

c. What Would a Successful Campaign Look Like For Him? I suppose he thinks he can rehabilitate his image. And be there in case the party wakes up to how weak a general election candidate Trump is because of his baggage. But the party will never nominate him.

Primary Prediction: 4th in New Hampshire, out of the race soon after that. He'll probably go back to a cushy media job although I personally hope it's a peg or two lower than the one he had at ABC before entering this race. We need to stop making presidential candidate a good thing to have on your resume.

TIER FIVE: The Dreggs.

8. Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota. 

a. Is he qualified? Yes.

b. Why is he running? He is a rich guy that wants to be a national player. He actually has one admirable quality-he believes in climate change. (Although being from North Dakota, he also loves the fossil fuel industry, so that's kind of a wash. But I hope he gets to make that point on the debate stage this week because more Republicans need to hear it.

And he's a patron of the arts. Which is nice. But he also signed a sever abortion ban for his state, so fuck this guy after all. 

c. What Would a Successful Campaign Look Like For Him? Try not to blow too much of that fortune, Doug. Who knows, you might want to do this again in 2028.

Primary Prediction: Maybe the field thins out after Iowa and he wins some delegates in New Hampshire. If he really wants to burn a hole in his billion dollar fortune, he can hang on and win some more delegates in the early primaries. +

9. Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas.

a. Is he qualified: Almost.

b. Why is he running? He thinks he can govern like an old-school mainstream Republican free from the taint of Trumpism. That ship has sailed, but he's going to go down swinging.

c. What Would a Successful Campaign Look Like for Him? Qualifying for all the debates Not dropping out before Iowa. He also has shown some glimmers of independent thought on the subject of Trump's corruption, so he might be able to have a moment in this first debate. 

Primary Prediction: Hopeless.

TIER SIX: Sludge and Slugs.

There are some other dirt bags running in this race. The mayor of Miami. Lawrence Elder. One or two rich weirdoes (besides Trump and Ramaswamy.) Oh, and Will Hurd, who is sort of decent guy that is gaining all the traction you would expect a sort-of decent guy to get among these swine. I won't waste your time with them but I'll leave this a place holder. There is one scenario worth thinking about-what if Trump clobbers this field in the early states but then gets convicted of a crime and the party tries to turn on him? Well then we'll probably need a compromise candidate.  If DeSantis has done okay in the first few primaries, it could be him. But he'll probably alienate a lot of people in the coming months by spending a lot of money to get his ass kicked.  

If I had to pick someone to be the nominee who is not in the current field, I would go with Glenn Younkin, the governor of Virginia. He's a lightweight but he doesn't offend any of the major constituencies and the the party will probably fall for the hype of possibly winning Virginia for the first time in 20 years.

But brokered conventions and white-knight candidates are the stuff of history books and West Wing fan fiction. This is the real world and we are stuck with Trump v. Biden II. 

\

A Look Back at the Midterms and a Peak, God Help Me, at 2024.

I. What Did We Learn?

I will get to my predictions report card, but first I want to discuss a few things the midterms taught as about about where the voting public is.

1. Abortion Access is Very Popular.

Any serious analysis of these midterms has to begin with the simple fact that a clear and convincing majority of American voters want abortion to be generally legal.  The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade was an electoral disaster for the Republicans. It probably determined control of the senate and might have made the difference in at least two governor's races. (Wisconsin & Arizona.)  The issues was on the ballot directly in at least five states and all five states voted in favor of keeping abortion legal. 

Voters in Vermont voted to create a constitutional right to reproductive autonomy by more than three to one. California voted for something similar by two one and Michigan voted for one by 14 points. But even in Kentucky and Montana anti-abortion measures were defeated by five points. 

The Republicans would be wise to let the Democrats codify Roe during the lame duck session. Murkowski and Collins could provide 2 votes if Manchin and Sinema are still hold outs. (Sinema, at least, would be wise to changer her mind on the that point anyway.)

But I don't think the Republicans are ready to cut ties to their hardcore base just yet.

2. State Political Parties Matter.

Democrats got amazing results in places like Michigan. They won close senate races in EVERY presidential battleground that had a contest this time. But they also got clobbered in Florida, lost some important house races in New York and (to a lesser extent) in California. 

Ron DeSantis was expected to be re-elected governor of Florida. But no one had him winning by almost 20 points. There are three things that helped DeSantis here:

1. The FL Democratic Party is just not very good. 

2. FL had a major hurricane in late summer and the response to it was pretty well organized and competent. Voters remember that.

3. Some independent and moderately conservative Republican voters probably wanted to build up DeSantis as an alternative to Donald Trump.  (Trump v. DeSantis will be the subject of an upcoming post.)

Other governors with good ground games from both parties were rewarded with wins by larger than expected margins. This happened for Democrats in Wisconsin and Michigan and for Republicans in Georgia and New Hampshire. Worth noting that Wisconsin, Georgia and New Hampshire favored people from different parties to the senate and the governor's mansion. (Michigan did not have a senate race this year.)

One governor who did struggle a bit is Kathy Hochul in New York. It's worth noting that this is her first time running for Governor. The NYS Democratic party had a bad night. Hochul can expect to be governor for as long as she wants, but she will have to grow into the job a little bit and not let the narrative around crime dominate the discussion next time. But her bigger task is to reform the state Democratic party with an emphasis on getting the Cuomo holdouts to get on board and let go of what their boss did to himself. This will not be as easy as it should be. Control of the House of Representative just might depend on it.

It appears that the California Democratic party also underperformed in some House races. Two there and 2 in New York could have kept the House blue, but that was always a long shot. 

3. Americans Like Democracy. 

The most heart-warming story of election night is that election deniers lost in every secretary of state election across the country. Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada were all in real peril of nominating someone who was very unlikely to certify the presidential election if a Democrat carried their state. The 2024 election will be far from perfect but it seems likely that every state will certify whatever candidate gets the most votes. And that makes all the difference.

4. Biden's Favorability Ratings are Deceptive.

The biggest reason that most pundits expected a Red Wave is that Joe Biden's job approval numbers have been underwater ever since he made the decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.

The 538 average has him at 42 approval, 53 disapproval. That number should have meant disaster for Democrats. But they held their own. 

I think some people disapprove of Joe Biden simply because he is old. They wish he was younger and snappier at press conferences. They suspect he has lost a step. But it is equally true that they like his policies. And I suspect in 2024 they will prefer him to the alternative, but more on that later. 

II. What Does This Mean for 2024?

A. The Primaries.

The day after the election, two story lines sunk their hooks into the Zeitgeist: Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee (correct) and DeSantis was going to beat Trump for the GOP nomination. (unlikely).

1. Yes, Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, assuming he is still alive and well. He is really fucking good at politics. The institutional party has figured this out. Look at the job he just did in keeping the Senate and nearly holding the house.  

He end our longest war. He rallied the world to the cause of Ukraine. And our economy is better off than most of the world. Some of these things may change in time to hurt him in the general election, but they will not prevent him from sailing to the nomination. 

2. Ron DeSantis is the biggest threat to Trump in the Republican primary but he is a clear underdog. 

DeSantis can probably convince a whole bunch of rich people that he is Trumpism without Trump. They will write him large checks because most of those guys (and all of their wives) find Trump to be personally ridiculous. They also now know that he's not terribly popular with swing voters and has terrible political instincts. (The GOP might have won GA and PA senate seats if Trump didn't big foot on behalf of terrible candidates there.)

3. Beating Trump in the 2024 Primary is a Booby Prize. Does anyone think that Trump will graciously accept losing the nomination to DeSantis?  If so, you have not been paying attention for the past seven years. He will either try to mount a desperate third party campaign or merely discourage his followers from supporting whoever "stole" the nomination from him. 

If Ron DeSantis wants to be president, he should wait for 2028. He can serve out the rest of his term, nominally support Trump from the sidelines and then enter the presidential race to be held two months after he turns 50. He can be a rich ex-two term president before he is 60. So the real question is, is Ron DeSantis smart enough to know this or too anxious for his own good?  He has been awfully quiet since the election That's probably best for him. He can let Trump suck up some oxygen for a few months and decide in the spring. 

I suspect he is getting a lot of calls from people telling him to announce or else they will declare for some other candidate. That will have some influence. But most of the field are light weights. He's not going to lose to Nikki Haley or Rick Scott. The only thing he has to worry about is a large field of 10 or 12 candidates forming and allowing Trump to get the nomination by winning pluralities in the key states. 

4. Keep an eye on Brian Kemp of Georgia. He beat Stacey Abrams by eight points and got more than 200,000 more votes than Herschel Walker did in the senate race. He has a much more credible story to tell as a post-Trump candidate than Ron DeSantis will.  If I'm a Republican primary voter in 2024, I might just decide that any Republican can win Florida but Kemp is the best chance of picking up Georgia. 

B. The General Election. 

A lot can change in 100 weeks, but I expect the election will probably be won or lost in just four states:  Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. Of course it's possible that either party could have a good or terrible campaign and the election will be a modest blowout. But we are still mostly working with a hybrid of the 2012 and 2016 maps.  

1. The Trump 2016 States. 

a. Florida, Iowa and Ohio have been pretty consistently Republican since then.  I think they are likely go Republican in a close 2024 election.

b. Pennsylvania and Michigan have been trending blue since then. I think they will probably go Democratic in a close 2024 election.

c. Wisconsin has been a swing state, including an incumbent Democratic governor and an incumbent Republican senator just a few weeks ago-both by close margins. It could go either way in a close 2024 election.

2. The Biden 2020 States.

Biden won back PA, MI & WI in 2020. He also hung on to NV and flipped Georgia and Arizona.

d. Georgia and Arizona are closely divided states. This year the Republican party squandered good opportunities in AZ-Gov, AZ-Ssen and GA-Sen by running terrible candidates. Brian Kemp trounced Stacy Adams in GA-Gov. And he will easily carry the state if he is the Republican nominee in 2024. But the state is moving leftward and will be competitive in 2024. (Kemp being on the ticket as vice-president would help the GOP too, but not by as much as him being at the top of the ticket.)  Arizona will be competitive in 2024 no matter who is on the respective tickets.

e. Nevada. 

Nevada elected a Republican governor this years but stayed blue in the senate. The Dems have won NV four straight times. But the margin in each of the last two presidential elections was 2.4%. This state will be competitive but because it only has six electoral votes, it is less likely to be decisive than the others.

3.  Electoral College Math. 

The picture at the top of this post is what I think the map will probably look like going into election night 2024. I give MI and PA to the Dems. FL, OH, IA & NC to the Republicans. The second congressional districts of Maine and Nebraska are both in play.

 Our starting point is Democrats 259, Republicans 234. To win, the Democrats will need:

1. Georgia (16 electoral votes) 

~or~

2. Arizona (11 EV).

~or~

3. Wisconsin (10 EV) plus Nevada (6 EV)

~or~

4. Wisconsin (10 EV)  plus NV-2 and/or ME-2. 

That's what a close election looks like. Joe Biden needs to string together 11 EV from the 45 EV available in competitive races. Here's my first crack of the probability of winning for various likely match-ups.

1. Biden beats Trump 80%.

2. Biden beats DeSantis 65%.

3. Biden beats Kemp 52%.

4. Harris beats Trump 55%.

5. DeSantis beats Harris 55%.

6. Kemp beats Harris 75%.

III. Predictions Report Card.

Allow me to be a little wonky and to review the predictions I made just before the midterms. Accountability and all-that.

First Prediction: The House Will Go Republican but By a Small Majority.

To be specific, I said the house would turn out 228R, 207D.  (Republicans gain 14 seats.)

It looks like the final result will be 222R, 213D. That's a gain of eight instead of 14. But I think I got the gist of it. 

I mostly avoided talking about specific house races, although this one will haunt me for a while: 

"Lauren Boebert had a couple close polls but she too is a heavy favorite." Oh, how I wish I was wrong about that. But it looks like she will pull out this race by about 500 votes. And her opponent will be swimming in money next time around.

For the record, I do expect Kevin McCarthy to be the next Speaker. A few hardliners are talking him down but I don't think they can convince a majority to rally behind some other nutter.

GRADE: B+

Second Prediction: Dems Will Keep the Senate-Barely.

To be specific, I said the Senat would be 50D, 49R, with GA going to a runoff.  

Here I did get specific on a few races. 

a. Arizona: Dems win. Kelly 51, Masters47. (Nailed it!)

b. Georgia goes to a runoff.  Let's call it Walker 49, Warnock 48. (Nearly nailed it. It wound up Warnock 49, Walker 48.)

c. Nevada: Cortez Masto 50, Laxalt 49, (Another virtual bullseye. The result was 49-48. I'll take it.)

d. Pennsylvania Fetterman 49.5, Oz 49.1. (Well I got the result right, but the margin was much larger than I expected, 51 to 46.)

e. Wisconsin   Johnson (R) 50.4, Barnes 48.6. (Actual result 50.5 to 49.5. So Barnes did about a point better than I expected.)

f.  Ohio.  Vance 51.4, Ryan 48.6.  (Actual result 53-47. So Vance did a couple points better than I expected but I wasn't too far off. And Ryan did well enough to drag a couple House seats over the line for the Democrats there. They were only supposed to get three or four seats. They got five.)

g.  North Carolina.  Budd 51, Beasley 47. (Actual result: Nailed it! Bullseye! Huzzah!)

h. New Hampshire.  Hassan 51.1, Bolduc 47.5 (Actual result, 54 to 44. My biggest miss in margin. I should have known Bolduc was going to do poorly but I still think of NH as vaguely right wing. The Boston Exurbs may have finally fixed this.) 

So I was Eight for Eight in Results. My Democratic margins were off by 0, -2, -4, -1, +3, 0, -6. That's an average bias of 1.25 points in favor of the GOP.  (Can't accuse me of Homerism this year.)

I was also right in saying that IA, CO & WA would not be as close as some polls suggested.

GRADE: A.

Third Prediction: Governor Races: Treading Water, But Look at the Margin.

a. "The incumbent or incumbent party will win in all seven of the biggest states-CA, TX, FL, NY, IL, PA and OH. Those polls showing Hochul in a tight race a week or two ago will be fodder for jokes."

(Actual Result- 7 for 7 although the Hochul polls don't seem quite so funny now. She won by six and the Dems underperformed down ballot in NYS.)

b.  Democrats gain Maryland and Massachusetts easily. They gain OK narrowly. They hold OR & WI very narrowly. (Actual Results: Four out of five ain't bad but I have to own up to missing OK big.)

c. Republicans gain Kansas and Nevada. They will also probably hold Arizona, which just might have dire consequences on a lot of fronts.

(Actual Results: Happy to say I was only one for three here. Holding on to Kansas was great news, and it makes up for the loss in OK. Nevada was close)

GRADE: B.

  

El Camino (The Road to 306, Take One)

Writing about the 2020 presidential election feels as timely as writing about the Treaty of Ghent. So much has happened since then-a 5 day delay to find out the official winner, a two month long period of denial and attempted theft by the loser, a literal riot that almost derailed the certification process and did cause an impeachment trial. But accountability is a part what we do here, so let's take one final look back at my predictions.

I. I Was (Mostly) Right.

"Well, I was wrong and I was wrong loud. I'm the Dick Morris of 2016."

Your correspondent, the day after the 2016 election.

I did better this time. I got 48 states right, all but Florida and North Carolina.   I predicted the popular vote to be 52.6% to 45.2%.  It wound up being 51.3% to 46.9%. 

The night I posted my final prediction, a Twitter follower who really knows the numbers said that if I was right, Biden might get 80 million votes. Well, he got over 81 million, despite underperforming my estimated percentage by about a point and a half.  So the real surprise of the 2020 election was not the winner or the margin but the turn out. A LOT of people voted this time around. 

November 3rd and 4th, 2020 may be the first time that being an uber-election nerd actually improved my life. Yes, I was concerned when I saw the terrible numbers in Florida. But I didn't panic. And I have the screen shots to prove it:

That was in response to my text chain freaking out about the early returns. By the next morning, (coincidentally my birthday), most of them had  moved on to lamenting the size of Biden's win.

It wound up being 306. And it wound up being seven million. Ten million would have been nice. But seven million votes is a pretty clear message to the loser-we don't like you.

Of course, Trump did turn out his people. That's what kept the race closer than it should have been. There are a few conclusions we can draw from his performance in November.

II. The Biggest Lessons Learned.

1. Jared figured out Florida. 

For the 2nd straight election, Donald Trump performed better than the polls and pundits expected. For all his cartoonish behavior and general incompetence, he twice pulled off campaigns that held together and functioned as well as could be expected. His clown show did not come off the rails enough to earn him the humiliation that he deserved to suffer.

Trump won Florida in 2016 by just over one point with 4.61 million votes. The early voting data seems to suggest a very close race and a lot of prognosticators thought it pointed toward a Democratic victory. Indeed, a lot of Democrats did turn out in 2020. Joe Biden got 5.297 million votes, almost 800K more than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. But Biden lost by almost three points.

Jared Kushner figured out how to keep the Cuban-American voters in the Trump camp. The moment Miami-Dade numbers came in was the only time that I seriously wondered if Trump was going to win again.  But Trump also did well among Venezuelan and Puerto Rican voters in other parts of the state. Their ground game for early voting was excellent. Governor DeSantis probably deserves some of the credit for this, but the simple fact is that Florida moved from a true toss-up state to leans-Republican for the next cycle. 

2. Trump made advances with non-white voters.

Trump won white men by 23 points and with women by 11. Joe Biden won black and latin voters of both genders by tremendous margins. This is not surprising, but the trend between 2016 and 2020 migh surprise you. 

Joe Biden made a significant advance among white men. He lost them by 23 points, four years after Hillary Clinton lost them by 31 points. Trump made gains among every other gender/ethnicity group.

Demographic	Hillary Clinton	Joe Biden	Shift
White Men	-31	-23	8
White Women	-9	-11	-2
Black Women	90	69	-21
Black Men	69	60	-9
Latina Women	44	39	-5
Latino Men	31	23	-8

Trump's gains among minority voters probably reflect the normal boost that an incumbent gets when running for a second term. Among Latino votes, the gains can be attributed to his track record. In 2016 Trump ran as the guy who was going to build a wall on the Mexican border and end NAFTA. Four years later he was the guy who did not build that wall and who merely renamed NAFTA. (His gains in southern Texas are largely explained by this.)

Trump also benefitted electorally by at least making a play for black votes.  Most recent Republican nominees have assumed they were going to get very few black votes but Trump made a genuine effort to get some black votes. He bragged about his modest attempts at prison reform and he used the pardon power to show that he was willing to take some baby steps towards ending mass incarceration. He also chose not to follow the anti-drug zeal of his first Attorney General.  I hope that Republicans see these numbers and continue to pursue at least some time of criminal justice reform.

Trump also did better among Asian voters. They are a smaller demographic, so exit poll date is less reliable but the few places where he made relative gains from 2016 tended to be states with large Asian populations. His best performance relative to 2016 was Hawaii, where narrowed the gap by almost three points. His anti-Chinese rhetoric seems to have helped, especially among Japanese-Americans. 

3. Trump Did Worse Almost Everywhere. 

Incumbents usually win, and by a wider margin than their first election. Barack Obama was a recent exception because his win in 2008 happened at the exact nadir of the Republican brand. By 2012, the party had regrouped rallied enough to staunch the bleeding.

Incumbents who lose, usually, to borrow a phrase, get schlonged. Jimmy Carter was trounced. George H..W. Bush managed just 38 percent of the vote.  Trump made it competitive, at least in terms of the Electoral College. If you slide the result one percent to the right, Trump probably wins after a 269-269 tie. Go another quarter point, and Trump wins clean by taking Pennsylvania. 

But he did not repeat the miracle of 2016. He lost every really close state except North Carolina. Nationally the vote margin moved to the left by two and a half points. Trump only improved his performance in a handful of states-the aforementioned Hawaii (2.7%) and Florida (2.2%) are the only places where he improved by more than one percent. California (0.9%) and Arkansas (0.7%) are the only other states where he improved by even half a point.  (Nice to know the Clinton name still means something in Arkansas.)

4. Americans Still Think Republicans Are Better for the Economy, Despite All Contrary Evidence.

Polling on issues showed that voters favored Democrats on almost every issue except for the Economy. These voters simply gave Trump a pass on the recession and job losses of 2020. They blamed COVID and ignored the fact that Trump's response to COVID made those economic losses so much worse.

The American economy has consistently done better during Democratic presidencies than Republican presidencies. This has been true for decades. There is nary a stitch of data on the other side. It's comical.

I'll just put up one data point to support this absurdly solid argument-job creation by every presidential term that started while I was alive:

Presidential Term	Jobs Created (in Millions)
Clinton	12.3
Clinton 2	11.3
Regan 2	10.8
Obama 2	10.4
Carter	10.3
Reagan	5.3
Bush 41	1.9
Obama	1.2
Bush 43 2	1.2
Bush 43 2	0.089
Trump	-3

Notice anything about the color distribution there? The only blue block in the lower half was Obama's first term, and that was because America was still losing massive amounts of jobs his first year in office because of the Great Bush Recession of 2007-8.

But the American faith in "business" and particularly of the acumen of "business men" is unshakable. Even putting one in charge and that leading to an economic disaster has not changed it. Hopefully Biden will put up good numbers and win re-election. But in 2028, the GOP will still run on the bullshit lie that their dumb, failed policies are just what the economy needs.

II. What Does This Tell Us About 2024.

1, Not Much.

2020's turnout is unlikely to be repeated in 2024. If COVID-19 is still raging, then Joe Biden will lose. If (as is more likely),  COVID-19 is gone or largely under control, the election will be fought on different terms.  A lot of states will rescind or limit access to early and absentee voting. (States will Republican legislatures are salivating to do this  already.)  

COVID's biggest impact on the 2020 election might be that one party unilaterally decided not to knock on doors. The Democrats completely skipped the most elemental part of voter turnout-going to talk to voters in person. Republicans did not. That monopoly of in-face interaction probably explains why Trump's turnout game exceeded expectations. That will not be repeated next time.

And the Democratic base may not be as united in 2024 as they were this time by animus toward Donald Trump. Biden may face a primary challenge from a leftist, which will distract and depress him in the same way that Jimmy Carter (Ted Kennedy) and George H. W. Bush (Pat Buchanan) were by challenges from candidates with committed followers further away from the political center.

2.  The Scoreboard is probably 302-236.

We don't know exactly what the Electoral Vote distribution will be for 2024, but the Republicans are likely to net a few votes. The best projection has the 2020 map shifting from 306-232 to 302-236.

Texas and Florida will probably gain 5 votes. California, New York and Illinois will each lose one. Most of the other changes cancel each other out- Colorado gains, but West Virginia loses. Oregon gains, but Alabama loses. Ohio and Iowa lose but Rhode Island and New Jersey do too.

Several traditional battlegrounds will lose a vote- Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Two others will gain-North Carolina and Arizona. The country is slowly moving south. If you look at the states that were very close in 2020, it's pretty much a wash. Biden gains a vote in AZ but loses one each in MI and PA. Trump gains one in NC.

Keep an eye also on Nebraska. The Republican legislature might try to make NE-2 a little more red, although their state law limits their options, because they have to used county boundaries when drawing the lines.

3. We're Going to Do This Again, People.

A lot of voters seem to assume that Joe Biden will not run for a second term. These voters must have not met many politicians. Politicians at this level are not normal people. They have tremendous ambition and a healthy ego, even relatively nice guys like Joe Biden.  Joe Biden is old. He's also fit and trim and healthy. His father lived to be 86 and his mother 92. Joe is not going anywhere. If he is alive in 2024, he will be the Democratic nominee. 

Donald Trump also ain't going anywhere. Tomorrow Donald Trump will close CPAC with a rousing speech that the crowd will lap up. He will tell them they were robbed in 2020. He will tell them that Joe Biden is already a disaster. He will tell them, implicitly or explicitly, that he is the only person who can defeat the man who just defeated him. They will roar with approval.

Donald Trump loves running for president more than anything except the adoration that comes with being president. If he is alive, he will run for the 2024 Republican nomination. There is no one in the Republican feed who can compete with him for that prize. Most of them have prostrated themselves before his altar, and they simply can't run against his record after having followed him so doggedly. Some, like Ted Cruz will try. They will be destroyed.  There will also be a Never Trump candidate or two, the too will be destroyed. Someone will emerge as a bridge between Trump world and the Republican establishment.  He or she (Nikki Haley) will also be destroyed.

The 2024 Republican primary will be another go-round of outrageous lies and insane circus-like appearances at minor league hockey arenas by the only man who that base really loves.  After he wins the nomination, he will face Joe Biden again.  And the race will be a referendum on whether Biden's boring, conventional style has done well enough to satisfy the American electorate.

In three years and eight months I will spend part of my 51st birthday telling you who I think will win the Electoral College the next day.  Right now I think it will be Joe Biden. My best guess is Biden 318, Trump 220.  God help us all.