We are one day away from what is undoubtedly the most consequential election of my lifetime.
The choices could not be more stark.
People often complain that it does matter who they vote for. They say it makes no difference.
That could not be further from the truth in this election.
On almost every important issue the policy differences are almost 180 degrees apart.
On tax policy.
On foreign policy.
On the First and Second Amendment.
On energy security.
On border security and immigration.
On whether abortion is a state issue or federal issue.
The list is long.
In my mind, Donald Trump is the only choice when I examine those issues and his policies.
Others may disagree
Every voter needs to make up their own mind.
My objective in BeeLine is to provide data, facts and contextual analysis to assist others in critically thinking about the major issues surrounding us.
The same is true for my election analysis.
I may want Trump to win but my analysis is always going to be based on data and facts rather than on my wishes or emotions.
Four years ago I also voted for Trump but I wrote this after analyzing all of the data two days before the election.
You would like to be Joe Biden right now if you look at the polls. He is running ahead. Even better, he is looking better than Hillary did on the eve of the last election.
According to the RealClearPolitics.com poll average, Trump is running 4.5 points worse today than he was against Hillary Clinton in nationwide popular vote polling four years ago.
The President is doing better in the battleground states but he is still worse off by 2.5 points than he was when he beat Hillary Clinton in these states.
Those numbers suggest that Joe Biden will win.
Some of those polls showed Trump down by double digits nationally on the eve of the election.
The Real Clear Politics average showed Biden +7.2%
Several of the top election model gurus had Biden with odds of winning in the 90% range.
My final conclusion was that Biden had the advantage but that Trump would make it much closer than the polls and pundits were suggesting.
That proved to be true.
In 2016, although most of the polls and oddsmakers were predicting a win for Hillary I pointed out that there were a couple of outlier polls that suggested Trump would prevail.
In addition, almost every important swing state was polling within the margin of error. I suggested that if Hillary did not get the turnout with traditional Democrat groups like young voters and African Americans that Obama did, she would lose.
I had Democrat friends saying to me. "You don't really think that Trump can win, do you?"
The rest is history.
The 2024 election feels a lot more like 2016 to me than 2020.
The polling in 2024 is much tighter than it was four years ago. It is much like 2016 when almost every poll seems to be within the margin of error. That means anything can happen.
Based on the current polling data, early voting and the betting markets, I would handicap the state of the race this way on the day before election day.
20% chance that Trump wins with more than 300 electoral votes.
40% chance that Trump wins by a small margin with less than 300 electoral votes.
40% chance that Harris wins with slim margin of less than 300 electoral votes.
If you want me to put overall odds on the race I give Trump a 60/40 advantage.
How do I arrive at that conclusion?
I will provide you the data and factual information that led me to that assessment.
What I find most amazing in all of this is that there are many Republican and Democrats partisans who are looking at the same data and facts below as I am and concluding that their candidate has a 90% chance to win.
Same data. Same facts. 180 degree different conclusions. I have never seen anything like it before.
Let's look at the polls first.
Trump is in a better position in the polls in 2024 than he was when he won in 2016 with 304 electoral votes
He is polling about 3 points better nationally than in 2016 and 7 points better than 2020.
Trump is polling even better in the key Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan than in either 2016 or 2020.
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| Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris |
More significantly, the early vote totals we are seeing in some of the key battleground states appear to be favoring Republicans.
Republican turnout in most states is much better than that of Democrats in relative terms.
Rural turnout is up. Urban turnout is down.
Democrats vastly outperformed Republicans in early voting in 2020.
It was expected that the overall early vote would be down this year compared to the Covid year of 2020.
That is proving to be the case.
Both Republican and Democrat early votes are generally down from 2020. However, early mail voters for Democrats are down significantly while Republicans are only down slightly because more are voting early.
For example, consider this summary of early voting in the key battleground states as of October 31 that was shared by Elon Musk on X. I assume this is data that he got from the Trump campaign,
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| Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1852608489941553567 |
Republicans have reduced the Democrat early vote advantage by almost 600,000 votes in Pennsylvania, 440,000 votes in Georgia, 300,000 votes in North Carolina and 200,000 votes in Arizona.
To put those numbers in context, consider that in 2020 Trump lost Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes, Georgia by 11,000 votes, Arizona by 10,000 votes and won North Carolina by 75,000 votes.
It is hard to argue that Trump is not in a much better position going into election day in 2024 than he was in 2020 with early voting and polling.
Yes, it is possible that these early votes are cannibalizing Republican election day votes and we will not see the nearly 2:1 margin in voting tomorow that saw for the GOP in 2020.
However, let's put all of this in a larger context.
In 2020, Biden got 81 million total votes. Trump received 74 million and other candidates got the rest.
73% of the 158 million votes that were cast in 2020 were early votes.
46% of total votes were mail ballots---73 million in total.
Another 27% of total votes were cast through early in-person votes---42.5 million.
An additional 42.5 million votes were cast on election day,
In total, there were 115 million early votes cast in 2020---73% of all votes were cast before election day.
By comparison, there have only been 77 million early votes in total this year (as of 900pm EST on 11/3/24).
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| Source: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/ |
Early in-person voting looks like it will be just slightly higher than the 2020 number of 42.5 million when we get all the final numbers.
Most in-person early voting has been completed.
That effectively means that we are looking at a total shortage of 38.5 million early votes compared to 2020 and that entire difference is almost fully explained with 38 million fewer mail ballots.
There will still be mail ballots coming in through election day and for a few days after in some states.
Notice in the data above that 67 million mail ballots have been requested but only 35 million have been returned two days before election day. Will we see a massive surge in returned mail ballots in the last couple of days ?
Whatever the final number of mail ballots is, it is an enormous shortfall compared to four years ago.
It also suggests that the total election day turnout may be much closer to 40%-50% of the total vote compared to the mere 27% it was last time.
The overall drop in mail votes appears to largely be due to lower Democrat turnout. This is particularly true for low propensity voters who might have only voted in zero or one of the last several elections.
For example, below is an analysis of those low propensity voters in the early mail vote in Pennsylvania by Patrick Ruffini who is a pollster with Echelon Insights.
In just a few key areas in the city of Philadelphia, the Democrats have seen a drop-off of almost 50% in low propensity voters between 2020 and 2024 so far.
In looking at the national vote in 2020, Democrats had a 65%-35% advantage in mail ballots.
If these voters are not voting by mail, and the vote has not been made up in early in-person voting, it means that the Democrats need a huge turnout on election day to make up the shortfall.
The Democrat machine has proven in the past that they can turnout their votes when needed. You can be assured that dedicated busses will be running in Philadelphia tomorrow to take their voters to the polls.
The other hope for Democrats is that the Republicans don't have enough voters left in the tank to turnout in large numbers on election day.
That is possible.
It is also possible that Independents break heavily for Harris.
That might be crucial because Democrat registrations are way down since 2020 across the country.
There are 3.5 million fewer registered Democrats than four years ago.
The number of registered Republicans has increased by 400,000 but Independents have grown by 1.8 million.
How those Independents vote this year will undoubtedly be critical in an election that appears this close.
One final thought on turnout.
In 2020, an incredible 94% of all registered voters cast a ballot in the Presidential race.
For context, here is a chart that shows voter turnout for the years 2000-2020.
Notice that the only other time that voter turnout hit 90% was in the fervor for Barack Obama in 2008.
The 94% turnout in 2024 simply would not have been possible but for the mailing of unsolicited ballots to all registered voters on the rolls in many states and the lax verification rules regarding those mail-in ballots.
However, many states have cleaned up the voter registration rolls since "the most secure election" in American history.
In 2022 there were 7 million fewer registered voters than in 2020.
The number of registered voters decreased from 168 million to 161 million.
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| Number of Registered Voters in the United States 1996-2022 Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registered-voters-in-the-united-states/ |
I could find no source on the number of registered voters nationally for this election. One of the reasons is that some states allow same-day registration.
However, let's be generous and assume that there will be 165 million registered voters when all is said and done.
If we are to see another 158 million votes in this election that would require a 96% turnout factor.
There is no way I can see that occurring.
My guess is that it is more likely we will see closer to 150 million votes in this election (91% turnout). Even then, that would still be a larger voter percentage turnout than in the Obama election of 2008.
However, what I see missing in this election is any strong motivating force to drive turnout for the Democrats.
It was present in 2008 in Obama's first election. However, the Democrats were not able to sustain that turnout in 2012.
Turnout surged in 2016 driven by a lot of enthusiasm for Trump on the Republican side and anti-Trump sentiment from Democrats. However, it is hard to say that Hillary Clinton motivated a lot of turnout on her own.
2020 turnout for Biden can almost all be ascribed to anti-Trump sentiment and anger about Covid. There were few voters motivated to turnout and vote based on Biden's basement campaign.
Similarly, I don't see Kamala Harris energizing voters to turnout in large numbers in this election to vote for HER.
That is why most of her campaign has been focused on demonizing Trump rather than talking about anything she would do.
The Harris campaign is working more to energize voters to vote against Trump than for Kamala.
However, I do not see the same level of anti-Trump sentiment we saw in either 2016 or 2020 in polling data or anecdotally.
Showing support for Trump has become much more socially acceptable than it was in either of the two previous Trump elections.
The 25% of voters with Trump Derangement Syndrome still have a high level of animus towards the man. On the other side, the Ultra MAGA Trump voters that comprise another 25% still love him unconditionally.
However, I don't see the same level of dislike from the middle 50% of the electorate that was apparent in previous elections.
I believe a good share of those in the middle have come to this conclusion.
"I don't like a lot of what he says or how he acts. However, Trump was good for the economy. I felt safer and the world had relative peace when he was in office compared to Biden/Harris. There is also no doubt that Trump loves this country. I am just not sure about Kamala."
All of the above adds up to why I see the state of the race right now providing a small advantage to Trump with a possibility it could become a decisive win based on the relative turnout numbers on election day.
I could be wrong.
However, I am almost certain I will not be as wrong as one of the pollsters cited below who both released polls in Iowa in the last 24 hours.
Trump won Iowa by 8 points in 2020 and 9.5 points in 2016.
Emerson has Trump leading Harris by 10 points in Iowa---53%-43%.
O the other hand, a Des Moines Register poll conducted by Ann Selzer has Kamala Harris up by 3 points---47%-44%.
Both Emerson and Selzer are respected pollsters that have good track records in predicting final results in Iowa.
At least, that can be said to be true today.
It will not be true on Wednesday.
One of them is going to be very, very wrong.
That is why predicting political outcomes is a perilous pursuit.
The fact is that no one really knows until we all know after the votes are counted.
VOTE and sit back and see who was right and wrong in all of this political prognostication on Tuesday night, Wednesday morning or whenever the votes get counted.
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