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Darren Monaghan's avatar

Just in case, I think Gov. Moore & Obama should headline a rally for Alsobrooks in Baltimore suburbs or something to shore her up; can't take any chances!! 💙🇺🇲

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sacman701's avatar

Here's my take on the current state of the race. My baseline for this election is 2020, on the assumption that most people will vote the same as they did in 2020, but that some factors have changed which might move smallish numbers of voters one way or the other. In this case positive numbers mean more favorable to Democrats and negative numbers to Republicans. “1” does not mean 1% of the vote, it means an indeterminate number of voters.

Trump 2020 v. Trump 2024: +1 to +2. Trump is no longer the incumbent, which is likely to hurt him to some extent. Since 2020, Trump instigated the 1-6 coup attempt, was convicted of 34 felonies, and has become even more unhinged and incoherent. Vance also appears to be a drag on the ticket whereas Pence wasn’t.

Biden 2020 v. Harris 2024: Uncertain, -1 to +1. Harris’ image and some issue positions from 2020 appear to make her less positioned to pick up swing voters than Biden was. On the other hand, she seems to have generated a level of popular excitement that Biden didn’t have, which might make it easier to activate lower-propensity voters.

Issue environment: +1. The abortion issue has been helping Democrats, and is going to be front and center again. Also, Trump is saddled with the unpopular Project 2025 which is more of a focal point than anything from 2020. Dem Senate candidates have generally been polling very well, which also suggests a favorable issue environment.

Economy: -1 to 0. People are still grumpy about high prices (although inflation itself is mostly back to normal) and high interest rates, although the economy issue didn’t appear to help the GOP much in 2022. The weak 2020 economy probably helped Biden. Low unemployment will help Harris.

Campaign/mobilization issues: +1. Democrats didn’t do rallies or canvass in 2020 because of the pandemic. Being able to do this again should boost Harris. Harris also has more money to run ads, more field offices, and apparently more volunteers.

Random events: -2 to +2. The closer we get to the election, the more likely that this will end up around zero, but there’s still always the possibility of an event (financial crisis, public Trump meltdown, etc) that could shift the vote a few points either way.

Aggregate: -1 to +7. Trump’s best case is probably narrowly winning the electoral college while losing the popular vote again. Harris’ best case may be something close to 2008 where she wins all the swing states with room to spare and picks up a state or two that wasn’t supposed to be in play. The most likely result appears to be something very close to 2020 but with Harris maybe doing a little better in the swing states. Basically I don't agree with the consensus that the election is a tossup. I think Harris is a modest favorite.

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