As Election Day approaches, there is increasing pressure
for pundits and other commentators to make predictions
about the major political races —- in this cycle, this
includes the presidential race, the competitive U.S. Senate
races, and control of the U.S. House.
As we learned especially in 2022, however, the political
prediction business is quite risky.
So, with that in mind, i will forego specific race predictions,
and instead suggest, based on observations so far, the
outcomes most likely, as well as best-case and worst-case
results.
The presidential eace, of course, gets the most attention,
and this cycle, it has seen much more than usual surprise,
twist and turns.
The conventional means to evaluate this race is with the
published political polls, of which there are many. These
vary widely in the quality of their methods and in the
credibility of their results. In addition, public political
polling itself has declined in recent years because of
increased resistance by voters to respond to pollsters,
and to range of subjective adjustments off the raw polling
data by the individual pollsters.
Historically, in recent cycles, many media and other
establishment pollsters have routinely underestimated
the views of one party in their samples —- more often, but
not always, of Republican or conservative voters.
The polls of the 2024 political cycle have consistently
suggested that the presidential, competitive Senate, and
control of the House races are each extremely close,
with most of them polling within the so-called margin of
error.Since so many of the published polls have a
partisan bias, I have consistently been skeptical of many
of these polls —- quite a few of which show signicantly
different results even taken at the same time with similar
samples.
A majority of current polls show Kamala Harris slightly
ahead in the national polling which reflects the popular
vote. In recent cycles, Democrat nominees have won the
popular vote even if they don’t always win the all-important
electoral vote which actually determines who wins and
who loses. Since even most establishment polls show
Harris ahead by only 2 percentage points or less, the
implication is that Donald Trump will win the election —-
since it is estimated that the Democrat must win by 3-5
percentage points to win the electoral college vote.
Also, almost all of the non-establishment polls are
showing Trump up 2 percentage points or less ahead
in the race, or exactly tied..Election betting sites, a
completely different measure, show Trump now
favored —- although not by much.
A best-case result for Republicans would be a slight
win for Trump in the popular vote and a decisive win in
the electoral college. Conversely, that would be the
worst-case outcome for Democrats. A best-case
result for Democrats would be a large margin in the
popular vote (more than 4-5 points) and a clear win in
the electoral college (more than 290). A conventional
outcome, based on current information, would be that
Harris wins the popular vote by a relatively small
margin but loses the electoral college by a narrow
margin.
The latter result, incidentally likely would mean the
winner won’t be really decided until well after Election
Day, as absentee, mail-in and recount votes are
tallied. That might be the worst-case outcome for the
nation, if the 2000 and 2020 close elections proved to
be.
There are about 6-8 competitive U.S. Senate races this
cycle, all of them currently held by Democrats. The
open seat (held by a retiring Democrat) in West Virginia
appears to be a near-cartain pick up for thr GOP, and
the seat held by a Democrat running for re-election in
Montana appears to be a likely GOP pick-up. Thus,
Republicans are expected to take control by 1 51-49
margin. Although this would mean control, several
senators in each party have often acted as mavericks,,
and passage of legislation and Senate confirmations
would often be up in the air. The best case .outcome for
the Democrats would occur if the Harris-Walz ticket won,
giving the liberal-progressives the tie-breaking vote
by the vice president who is also the presiding officer
of the Senate, and winning all of the competitive races.
For the GOP, its bast case result would be the victory of
the Trump-Vance ticket, and winning 2-5 more of the
seats now held by Democrats.
It should be noted, as well, that there are two senate seats
held by Republicans, and 2-3 more seats held by Democrats
that were, and could still be, competitive.
Finally, there are only a relativeyly small number of House
seats which appear undecided. Currently, Republicans
have a slight lead. Best case for the Democrats then
would be to win most of the undecided seats and thus win
back control by a very narrow margin. Conversely, the best
case for thr GOP would be to win most of thr undecided
races, and thus keep control by a slightly larger margin than
the last session. Although the presidential race usually does
not impact House races very much, the winning presidential
ticket cthis year ould have a larger impact than usual.
With about three weeks before Election Day, these appear
to be the bast case-worst case-normal case parameters on
voting outcomes.
It has been a very unconventional cycle, with lots of political
surprises, and a very unsettled electorate. Predicting
elections has always been guesswork, but rarely if ever
more so than this one.
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Copyright (c) 2024 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.
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