2024 Presidential Election Prediction

*For this post, I’m back to being a one-man editing team. Please excuse any typos.*

What is real?

That’s the question behind every election prediction. You must clear out all the noise to get to the true signal that’s going to tell you what will happen.

I have personally spent long hours researching, at least two spreadsheets, and 12,271 edited words on the 2024 presidential elections. And there is still a mountain of information and analysis that I would still like to have before making a prediction. Internal polling data, voter sentiment captured by canvassers, and some more time to do even more excel modeling based on data would be great. However, I’m out of time.

Yet even if I had every analysis I wished for, I know I would still want more, and I would be left with the same question . . . What is real?

2024 has been one of the most tumultuous elections in recent history. This has made determining what is real even more difficult than it already is. However, as a strategist, I cannot be deterred simply because it is difficult. I still must make my best objective case for my prediction and stand by it.

And the best case I can objectively make says that. . .

Vice President Kamala Harris will be the 47^th President of the United States.

With that said, I will now explain how I got to this prediction. We’ll look at the strategic assessment of the race using the 2024 Election Scorecard, recap what the polls are telling us, and make final assessments of the ground game to get a sense of what is real or not. We’ll also look at possible electoral maps and my confidence levels in them.

And this will be brief. As mentioned above, there are already three blogs with some very detailed thinking on the campaign that I’ll be referring to along the way.

Final 2024 Election Scorecard

The Election Scorecard is my tool to strategically assess the race. Per “Can Biden Win? “ and “Will Kamala Harris Win?”, this scorecard is based on a comprehensive view of the strategic factors that led to Trump’s 2016 victory and allows us to rate how likely and impactful those factors are in 2024. My assumption is that Trump can only win under 2016 conditions, and nothing so far has made me rethink that.

My analysis from the last scorecard update in “Will Kamala Harris Win?” has not changed. Here is the scorecard:

And here is a link for you to fill out the scorecard.

After narrowly losing six of the seven battleground states in 2020, Trump’s biggest challenge was to expand his appeal or find additional new Trump voters to close these margins. These narrow losses occurred despite the fact Trump turned out hundreds of thousands of new supporters. The issue for him is that Biden and the Democrats turned out more.

Data from Dave Liep’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

Per Gallup, Trump has a favorable political environment.[i] Other polling showed him with strength on the economy, inflation, and immigration.[ii] This gave him a strong basis to try and persuade voters. But that basis was eroded long before Harris entered the race. January 6^th, election denialism, and 34 felony convictions distracted his campaign and eroded his appeal. This is evident in his high unfavorable ratings.[iii]

Despite all of this, Biden’s performance in the first presidential debate gave Trump an opening. However, Biden took this opening away by stepping aside and giving the race to Vice President Harris. Since then, Harris has eroded Trump’s advantage on the economy and inflation[iv] and activated a dormant part of the electorate.[v]

Since Harris’ entrance, it is not totally clear what Trump’s goals have been. He appears to be betting on young men, including black and Latino men.[vi] Trump’s message to men is that he speaks and works for them while Harris radically supports other groups. The transgender community has taken the brunt of Trump’s discriminatory message.[vii] The campaign clearly sees an opportunity here and has invested a lot of time in the “manosphere.”[viii]

It is not entirely clear whether this is working. A recent NPR/PBS/Marist poll shows Harris closing the gap with men nationally.[ix] Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson has seen a “drop off for Trump among college educated men.”[x] There also hasn’t been a noticeable uptick in his favorability, and there is a large gender gap in the early vote, which doesn’t scream enthusiasm from male voters to me.

Additionally, Trump is betting on men in a post-Dobb’s world, where women are already feeling alienated and motivated by losing their reproductive rights.[xi] Furthermore, Trump has distracted from his preferred message with rhetoric about “the enemy within,”[xii] which got amplified when Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly called him a fascist.[xiii] Trump’s infamous Madison Square Garden rally provided further distraction due to all of the discriminatory and hateful rhetoric.[xiv] The rally is moving late-deciding voters away from Trump.[xv]

Look, this is nothing new. Trump’s approach and demeanor really defies strategic assessment outside of the Scorecard. It did last time, and it does now. This is just Trump, and that’s why he needs 2016 conditions to win. He’s not getting those conditions.

Anything good or bad that I would say about Harris’ strategy is captured in the scorecard analysis.

Latest Development in the Polls

The polls are having a weird year. As previously covered, in “Will Kamala Harris Win? Pt. 2 (Polling Analysis Edition)”, the pollsters fear they’ll underestimate Trump’s support a third time. In response, the pollsters are using primarily mathematical methods to boost Trump’s support in polling. However, this approach only amplifies sentiment shifts towards Trump and discounts sentiment shifts towards Harris. This has led to a polling environment, where the polls, polling averages, and election model forecasts are all over the place.

As covered in the prior blog, depending on the mathematical adjustments the pollsters make, the electoral map will either look like 2020 or 2022. Polls that don’t rely on too many mathematical adjustments indicate positive movements towards Harris (e.g., Ann Selzer’s Iowa Poll showing Harris +3).[xvi]

Polls are still good at measuring public opinion on issues. I also still rely on polls that cover a specific segment. For example, Marist and CNN polls show Harris performing strongly among early voters,[xvii] and Harris’ internal polls indicate late-deciding voters are breaking towards her by double-digits.[xviii] Usually, I don’t pay too much attention to staffers’ claims about their own polls, but this is matched by reports about Trump’s campaign panicking.[xix] In fact, some Trump surrogates are panicking out loud about men getting outvoted in the early vote.[xx] Therefore, it seems reasonable this time to pay attention to the Harris campaign’s assertion.

This is further evidence that Harris is doing better than the polls indicate, which would bode well for her electorally.

Ground Game Advantages Harris

A campaign’s field operations are where the rubber meets the road. The campaigns use voter and other consumer data to find individuals who are likely to vote for their candidate. The campaigns then text, call, visit, and provide voter assistance to those people. Tracking data and voter sentiment from the field can provide accurate insights into the elections, including early warning signs.

Trump outsourced the bulk of his ground game to Turning Point USA and Elon Musk.[xxi] This has led to dissention within the campaign and outright criticism by Republican operatives.[xxii] Speaking anecdotally, I’ve never seen Republicans so loudly criticize their own ground operations. But Elon Musk has been sued over his GOTV efforts, provided poor working conditions for volunteers, has been defrauded by volunteers, and is struggling to hit door knocking goals.[xxiii]

Meanwhile, the Harris Campaign has received glowing remarks about the ground game. [xxiv] Sen. Mark Kelly fully believes that Harris’ 120,000 volunteers will deliver Arizona.[xxv] The Harris campaign claims to have knocked 16 million doors across the battleground states.[xxvi] According to an ABC poll, the Harris ground game has had better reach in the battleground states and has been more proactive in offering voter assistance when compared to the Trump ground game.[xxvii]

This advantage in the field is also tied to Harris’ fundraising advantage. Since July 21^st, she has raised over $1 billion.[xxviii] While Trump has raised . . . less.[xxix]

A quick note on the early vote . . .

Some say to totally ignore early vote data. I disagree. It is too much data to ignore, but it can be a lot of work to get useful insights from it.

That said, Democrats are encouraged by the growing vote firewall in Pennsylvania[xxx] and the geographic turnout in Wisconsin.[xxxi] John Ralston, editor for The Nevada Independent, has predicted that Harris will win based on analysis of the early vote data.[xxxii] My own number crunching in Georgia shows a viable but very close path for Harris.

Among other trends, we’ve seen Republicans turnout more in the early vote, which raises questions about whether Republicans are cannibalizing their Election Day vote.[xxxiii] As mentioned above, there has been much commentary about the gender gap in the early vote being advantageous to Democrats.[xxxiv] Young voters are also overperforming in the early vote, which would logically favor Harris.[xxxv] I also think the high turnout tends to favor Harris, and as mentioned above, the pollsters seem to think Harris is doing well among early voters.[xxxvi]

I think one could make a case that the early vote favors Harris. However, that case would come with some major caveats. For example, some Republicans are seeing optimism in early vote numbers in North Carolina.[xxxvii] More broadly, there is going to be a lot of Election Day vote available for either side to try and tip the scales. Pennsylvania is going to be determined by its Election Day vote due to inconvenience in its early voting system.[xxxviii]

Conclusion

The realest forces moving this election cycle point to a Harris victory. Trump has bet his whole campaign on the idea that he can’t lose support and new low-propensity supporters will push him over the top. We’ll know for sure in short order if that bet pays off for him. But as we enter this Election Day, I would much rather be Harris than him. Therefore, I can only conclude that Vice President Kamala Harris will be the 47^th President of the United States.

Electoral Maps:

Harris Sweep- 45% confidence