Dr. James Todd Associate Professor of Politics Chair, Politics Department
The 2024 presidential election falls into the usual pattern. Like all recent elections, a handful of swing states will decide the outcome. If Donald Trump wins in Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, he’ll likely be headed back to the White House. Kamala Harris’s task is to deny Trump all three of these states—creating the “Blue Wall” that often protects Democrats in presidential elections. If the Blue Wall holds, Harris will likely win the presidency even if she loses Georgia, Arizona and Nevada (states Biden narrowly carried). It is likely that neither candidate will win convincingly and that all six of these states plus North Carolina will
be decided by a razor-thin margin. With the mail-in ballots, expect vote counting to extend beyond the November 5 Election Day.
Both Trump and Harris chose running mates who may appeal to Midwestern white men. Biden won in 2020 because he made inroads into Trump’s white support base. Trump only won men by 2 points in 2020. “Scranton Joe” Biden was well positioned to compete for these voters, yet he still barely managed to win the Blue Wall states against Trump. Kamala Harris, a San Francisco liberal, faces a tall task. She has to defend the Biden economic record to voters who fear a recession and with whom she lacks natural chemistry. There is no wonder that her campaign is marketing camouflage
merchandise and launched the initiative called “White Dudes for Harris.”
The 2024 election also comes down to the usual fundamentals. The 2024 environment favors Trump. Americans are dissatisfied with their economic circumstances. A recession may be coming: job growth has slowed, and supposed job gains in recent months were overstated. The affordability crisis that has dragged down the Biden presidency did not suddenly disappear because of Harris’s entry into the race. The issues that voters tell pollsters are most important to them—the economy and the border—play to Trump’s strengths. To date, Harris has not offered policy proposals that would allow her to distance herself from Biden, but she will have to offer solutions to the problems of the Biden era. She will also have to explain why these solutions have not already come while Americans are struggling.
It is also unclear whether Harris can put the Biden coalition of 2020 back together. To do so, Harris will need a greater share of male, Hispanic and Black voters than she has received in recent polls. And, on average, Trump is polling better in the Rust Belt states now than ever before. Trump tends to outperform the polls in his actual vote
share. Trump is working hard to court union voters.
Even if this is Trump’s election to lose, he can certainly lose it. If the election is a referendum on the candidates themselves, Harris probably wins. If the election is a referendum on the Biden/Harris administration, Trump probably wins. Style and symbolism favor Harris, while substance favors Trump. Will this election be framed as one about the personal traits of the candidates, or will it be framed as a choice of policy visions?
Running a disciplined campaign has never come easily for Trump. He often dwells on things that fail to resonate among voters who aren’t glued to Fox News. In contrast, Harris can remind Americans why they never fully supported Trump. Trump is never as popular with the electorate as he claims to be, and now he has felony convictions. Americans already have strong feelings about Trump, but they seem to be willing to update their impressions of Harris. Harris can lay claim on the majority of voters who are ready to move on from Trump and Biden. She’s the not-Trump, not-Biden alternative. Harris may ironically pull off being the candidate of change.
There are a few wild cards in the race. The first is whether Trump will perform better among certain demographic groups than he did in 2020. Hispanic voters have steadily moved in his direction since 2016. Will this trend continue? Can Trump win close to 20% of the Black vote this time? Some polls indicate that this is a possibility. Is this the election where the Republican finally breaks through among Jewish voters? In the past, a Democratic candidate could count on the Jewish, Muslim and Black vote
regardless of the positions he or she took on the Middle East. With Israel at war, can Harris hold this coalition together? Can Trump manage to keep things close among the white, college-educated voters who deserted him in 2020, or have affluent voters completely tuned him out at this point?
The second wild card is voter turnout. Today’s elections are about the mobilization of alreadysupportive voters, not the persuasion of undecided voters. Democrats took advantage of pandemic-related changes to election rules to boost their 2020 turnout. Will Democrats out mobilize Republicans for a second straight election, or have Republicans brought their “get out to vote” efforts up to date? Will Republicans continue to over-rely on Election Day voters, or will they harvest as many ballots as they can during early voting periods? A small percentage increase in turnout can be decisive in a swing state. Female voters, as usual, will be over half the electorate. Harris hopes to dominate among women with the issue of abortion.
The last wild card must be the ultimate reassurance to the Harris campaign: the media. Will the media continue to facilitate Harris’s strategy of avoiding press conferences and firm positions on issues? Or will it demand more? The early indications are that the media would rather focus on day-to-day controversies surrounding Trump and Vance than the policy records of Harris and Walz. The media will likely frame the race in ways that help Harris. The media can generate another “October surprise” that hurts Trump, and/or suppress a story that would harm Harris.
Despite the noise, if Trump can win male voters by double-digits, draw support from 40% of Latino voters and win 15% of Black voters, he will very likely win. Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s recent endorsement of Trump might help bring more men into Trump’s fold. Trump will need to avoid a major deficit in the suburbs of the swing states—suburbs from which his support among males must partly be drawn. Of course, over 90% of Republicans are going to have to vote for Trump as well. Republicans will need a mobilization of voters that was lacking in 2020, and a resolve to monitor vote counting in large cities. Whichever side works the hardest in voter mobilization will probably win.
Harris wins by following what has become the Democratic playbook: Win by double digits among female voters, win a majority of college educated white voters, and mobilize and win a substantial majority of voters 18 to 29 years old. If she does that, she can win the Electoral College despite whatever defections she may have with nonwhite voters.
Whoever the winner, he or she will take office in a very divided nation, and a closely-divided Congress. The losing side will be in no mood to compromise. It will be back to what has become the norm in American politics.
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