The 2024 Presidential Election As Of Mid-July

Four Years Ago

Four years ago today, these were the 2020 election predictions:

• Inside Elections: Biden 319 Trump 187 Tossup 32
• Cook Political Report: Biden 279 Trump 187 Tossup 72
• Sabato's Crystal Ball/U of Virginia: Biden 268 Trump 204 Tossup 66
• The Economist: Biden 334 Trump 164 Tossup 40
• Electoral Map Based on Polls: Biden 301 Trump 102 Tossup 135
• PredictIt Market: Biden 334 Trump 204 Tossup 0
• Niskanen Center: Biden 289 Trump 163 Tossup 86
• CNN: Biden 232 Trump 205 Tossup 101
• Politico: Biden 268 Trump 203 Tossup 67
• NPR: Biden 238 Trump 186 Tossup 114
• Princeton Election Consortium: Biden 403 Trump 135 Tossup 0
• U.S. News & World Report: Biden 278 Trump 186 Tossup 74
• JHK Forecasts: Biden 334 Trump 163 Tossup 41

In short, it was absolutely clear that Biden was leading Trump. Nine out of thirteen pundits said that Biden had it tied up, two said that Trump could only win with every single toss up race of a great many going his way, and two said that Biden was leading but that there were a great many toss up races.

Ultimately, the result was Biden 306, Trump 232.

This Year

The current Five Thirty Eight election forecast is that 501 times out of 1000 Trump wins, 496 times out of a 1000 Biden wins, and 3 times out of a 1000 there is no electoral college winner (which probably means a Trump win in an contingent election in Congress). Their median forecast outcome is Trump 270, Biden 268. 

The Hill thinks Trump has a 56% chance of winning the Presidency with a 280 to 258 electoral vote prediction.

FiveThirtyEight polling puts only five states as toss ups: Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. All of them backed Biden by thin margins in 2020. (The Hill also rates Arizona as a toss up.)

Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida lean Trump but could flip. North Carolina and Florida backed Trump in 2020, but Arizona backed Biden by the narrowest of margins.

Minnesota an Virginia lean Biden and supported him in 2020 but could flip although they aren't that close.

The polling in the closest states is as follows:

Mostly, this race is about whether Biden can hold onto support in rust belt areas of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and whether blue trending Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia will continue to support him.

It doesn't help Biden that the electoral college is still biased against him and that Trump could win with as much as a 4 percentage point deficit in the popular vote. In contrast, there is basically no way that Biden can win the election while losing the popular vote.

In the marginal scenario for a Biden win, he leads the popular vote by more than two percentage points. This is roughly a 13% chance that Biden will win the popular vote but lose the electoral college vote.

What's Going On

Of course, there is a lot going on right now. 

Trump just survived an assassination attempt, named J.D. Vance (U.S. Senator from Ohio) as his running mate, had a Trump appointed judge toss out his classified documents criminal case on that ground (contradicted by a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court case that is controlling law) that the Special Prosecutor's appointment was unconstitutional, has had the U.S. Supreme Court toss out a Colorado Supreme Court holding that he was ineligible to hold public office under the insurrection clause on legally dubious grounds, has had the U.S. Supreme Court accord him unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecutions, and is in the midst of being named the nominee at the GOP national convention. 

All this despite the fact that he a convicted felon, that he has two more criminal cases pending against him (neither of which will go to trial before the election), was found civilly liable for rape, was found civilly liable for hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud, has had many of his supporters convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 effort to overturn the election and other schemes to undermine the 2020 election result, and has many lawyers that supported his schemes to under the 2020 election result sanctioned or disbarred as a result. This despite the fact that he speeches are frequently incoherent word salad, that he is widely known to be a pathological liar, despite the fact that he and his family engaged in massive self-benefiting corruption when he was last in office, and despite the fact that he grossly mishandled COVID when he was last in office causing hundreds of thousands of people to die unnecessarily, took steps that resulted in a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and defeat shortly after he left office, he was impeached (but not convicted by the Senate) twice, and had the weakest economic performance in office of any President since Herbert Hoover. This is despite the fact that judges he appointed have made highly unpopular decisions including ending Roe v. Wade that have plunged the U.S. Supreme Court to the lowest legitimacy rating in public polling in modern history. This is despite the fact that his record of immorality and bad character in his personal life is widely known.

Lower key, Trump is seeing a modest uptick in support among black and Hispanic voters, despite being one of the most racist Presidential candidates in modern times.

Biden meanwhile did horribly in the first Presidential debate to the point where many leading Democrats are calling for him to drop of the Presidential race before the Democratic National Convention and Biden is seriously considering the possibility himself. Biden got COVID-19 this week as well. Trump is 78, Biden is 81, and both men show serious signs of the deterioration of old age, but it only seems to matter politically for Biden whose mental well being and functioning is much better than Trump's. And, Biden's son Hunter, was convicted of a federal firearms felony for using a firearm while having a drug problem.

This is despite the fact that the economy under Biden has been one of the strongest of all time (despite one brief spike of high inflation that was swiftly ended and rising interest rates that make housing unaffordable for young people), despite the fact that crime is at record lows, despite the fact that the nation is not directly a part to any major wars, despite the fact that Biden has taken decisive action to prevent Ukraine from falling to a Russian invasion and has thwarted Yemeni attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and despite the fact that none of Biden's close advisors have been immersed in corruption or crimes. Unemployment hasn't been lower than 4% for more months than it has been in the Biden administration for more than fifty years, and the strong labor market has strengthened private sector unionization and substantial increases in state and local minimum wages.

Biden is underperforming what the "fundamentals" suggest he should be at this point in the campaign by almost five percentage points due to his horrible campaigning skills:

Third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is polling at 4%-11% in many Presidential election polls and could influence the election outcome despite the fact that he has no realistic chance of winning a single electoral vote, his brain was partially eaten by worm, he has admitted to raping a woman in a case for which he was prosecuted, and his policy positions are generally of the crackpot variety.

Biden was never a very good campaigner and has been dismal at promoting his agenda or developing a connection with the general public while in office, and has never been popular with the progressive wing of the Democratic party despite making all sorts of positive policy changes (like trying to reschedule marijuana) possible in a nation with divided control in Congress. The left wing in the Democratic party has been particularly critical of his support of Israel (even though it has been mixed at most) for its overkill retaliatory actions in Gaza in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and its holding of hundred of Israeli hostages after that.

Biden has struggled with the thinnest of possible majorities in the U.S. Senate with a couple of Democratic Senators who have only intermittently supported him (one of whom left the Democratic party even though she still caucuses with them) denying him even a majority on some key issues, and a thin Republican majority in the House (which has been hopelessly internally divided and fought repeatedly over who should be their speaker). He has been thwarted by a radical 6-3 conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court and very conservative federal court judges in some lower courts. So Biden has had very little ability to pass legislation and the courts have undermined his ability to take non-legislative action.

Biden has no charisma and has lukewarm support in the Democratic party despite Democrats clearly seeing Trump as worst case scenario that threatens the very future of democratic government in the United States. Trump supporters, for reasons that remain mysterious to me, meanwhile, remain stalwart and die hard in backing him.

The election is not lost yet. Biden only needs about a one or two percentage point shift in popular opinion in his favor to win the race, and he has three and a half months to make that happen.

Lots of people who poll for Kennedy will break for one of the major political party candidates in the end. Biden may drop out, mostly like in favor of his Vice President Kamala Harris (who is herself not terribly popular but is young and a more effective campaigner even if she has been low profile as a Vice President). Trump could take a hit if he receives a harsh sentence on his criminal convictions (which would at a minimum create yet another constitutional crisis and would probably deny him a right to vote for himself in the next election as a convicted felon). The strength of the economy could come to be more widely appreciated and the deep flaws of Trump could sink in as it all becomes very real.

Still, the situation looks very bleak in this 2024 do over compared to 2020 contrary to all objective rational indicators that say that this shouldn't be happening.