One Week Out
The Economist prediction model gives Donald Trump a 54% chance of victory. Nate Silver (previously of fivethirtyeight.com) contends that the election is too close to call, but his “gut” says Trump. Silver’s original claim to fame was of course being one of the few pollsters who gave Trump a real chance of victory back in 2016, which gives his gut somewhat more credibility than that of the average joe. FiveThirtyEight.com (now owned by ABC) has its own model and it predicts a Trump victory in 54 out of 100 simulations. The crypto betting site Polymarket puts Trump’s odds at almost 67% and more than a $100 million dollars worth of bets have already been placed on this election. Elon Musk thinks that the Polymarket estimate is more trustworthy because “actual money is at stake.” If the polls misfire in the same way they did in both 2016 and 2020, when they underestimated Trump’s support by several percentage points, then Trump could well sweep all seven battleground states (as some insiders in the Trump campaign have been claiming). Democrats in Michigan have all but given up on regaining the support lost from the Arab-Americans in the wake of the war in Gaza. Black men are preemptively being blamed for throwing the election to Trump while the big guns — the Obamas, Beyonce — are making impassioned appeals to the same demographic to see the light and come back into the fold. At least two of the leading stalwarts of the liberal media — the LA Times and the Washington Post have declined to make an endorsement even though they endorsed Kamala Harris in every other race that she has run in and it would have changed exactly zero minds if they had done the same this time also. In both cases, the directive came down from their super smart billionaire owners (Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong for the LA Times and Jeff Bezos for the Post) who must believe that Trump is likely to win and fear the promised reprisals from a vengeful Trump. It seems all over bar the shouting. Cue the day drinking, depression, and descent into existential crisis amongst the liberals. Not to mention, the dangers posed by an unchecked Trump in the White House.
And yet…
Maybe it is the fatigue from dealing with the constant doomsday scenarios, or maybe it is the wishful reading of an accretion of divergent, albeit small, patterns. Or maybe there are just enough differences this time that hope for a Kamala Harris victory is not completely misplaced.
Even with the slight edge that both the Economist and FiveThirtyEight models give Trump, they both emphasize that the election is still even. Even as he shared his gut feel, Nate Silver quickly added, “and you should not trust anybody’s gut, including mine.” Simulations are just that — simulations. They are not the real thing and a model, no matter how detailed, cannot capture the full complexity of an electorate. Let alone one in which pollsters have been making many adjustments to (try and) account for the mishaps of 2016 and 2020. A number of theories have been advanced to explain those misses, but none of them have really won universal acceptance. The “shy Trump” voter is probably the most prominent one. I suggest that there may be a “shy Harris” voter lurking amongst Republicans this time around. For one, the MAGA crowd has made disagreement with them extremely uncomfortable. Secondly, there are likely at least some folks (especially men) who are reluctant to admit that they plan to vote for a woman.
The Polymarket estimates are more easily dealt with. For one, it is mostly made up of bettors from outside the US (since they are prohibited from operating in the US) and outside the US, Trump is the politician that gets most of the attention and his strength is overestimated. Secondly, a big chunk of the bets in favor of Trump — over $30 million- came from one single person, who is outside the US (and likely of French origin). As even casual market observers will tell you, a small number of heavy hitters can cause big jumps in a market, especially when there is low trading volume. While $100 million may sound like a big number, it is a drop in the ocean for an election in which well north of $2 billion have already been spent by the two major party candidates.
The Arab-American vote in Michigan could be a key differentiator — they account for nearly 3% of the total voter base. Some of them will no doubt want to express their anger towards the Biden-Harris administration for its unwavering support of Israel, but I find it very hard to believe that they will defect in large numbers to a candidate who has publicly praised Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war (which indeed neither Biden nor Harris has done) and encouraged him to “finish it quickly.” Not to mention, the call for “a complete and total ban on people from Muslim countries.”
The erosion of Black men’s support is actually a bit more nuanced than the Democrats (or indeed, the Republicans) would make it out to be. As Jelani Cobb writes on the Newyorker.com, Harris is actually doing better with Black male voters than Biden was earlier this year. As per a recent Pew survey, 73% of Black male voters plan to vote for Harris. The numbers in the swing states are even more strong. The perception that Black men are reluctant to vote for a woman — Obama himself took to issuing a public scolding to Black men during his first campaign appearance for Harris — is also a bit shaky. Hillary Clinton’s share of the Black male vote was 36% greater than her share of the White female vote. It is undeniable that Democrats have had an erosion in the Black male vote, but that has been happening for a while — ever since Obama, in fact. So, it may have very little, if anything, to do with the fact that Kamala Harris is a woman. Harris also been responding directly to the concerns of Black men and has a whole section of her campaign website devoted to her plans and proposals for them.
I also contend that a reduction in support among male voters — especially the younger ones — is less significant than a similar reduction would be among female voters. For one, their support for Trump is not predicated on any strong feelings but simply because “he is more fun.” How many of these voters are actually going to show up to vote? One of the reasons Hillary underperformed her polls was that many would-be Democratic voters simply did not show up to vote. Could the same thing happen with some of Trump’s new-found support among young Black men?
The case of the pusillanimous billionaires is perhaps the easiest to understand. They may have fashioned themselves as benevolent guardians of the public trust as owners of (previously) illustrious news organizations, but protecting their empire of wealth is what really animates them. The LA Times owner had given his own lame excuse and after three days of turmoil at the Post, Bezos came out today with his own credulity-straining explanation. Apparently withholding endorsements is the first step in making news organizations “trustworthy” again. What nonsense! Neither of these guys (nor the bunch of other Wall Street and Silicon Valley Bros who had capitulated even earlier) wants to risk offending Trump, knowing full well that even if Harris were to pull off a surprise (at this point) win, they would really not suffer any consequences. Like all smart investors, they are simply hedging their bets and have no inside knowledge about a likely Trump win.
It is also worth noting that Trump is doing very little to widen his base even at this late stage of the campaign. In any “normal” year, the candidates would have converged almost to identical positions by this point in the race, but Trump seems to be going out of his way to offend and push away any of the people not already in his MAGA tent. And indulging in personal vanities like the Madison Square Garden rally, in deep blue NY City.
The ground game — volunteers and paid staffers walking the neighborhoods and knocking on doors on behalf of their candidate — has been credited with having the greatest impact when it comes to getting out the actual vote. And in this regard, the Harris campaign has a huge edge — not just in numbers and enthusiasm, but also in the war chest to finance the effort. Trump has mostly thrown in the towel on this effort and is depending mostly on inexperienced outside groups (financed almost single-handedly by Elon Musk in some states) to do this for him. Hillary Clinton mostly ignored the “Blue Wall”, taking them for granted and well, we know how that turned out.
The midnight hour is approaching and in a few minutes we will be six days out. In an election year that has already had more drama in its runup than any of us could have ever imagined, there is hardly anything that could happen in the next few days that is going to fundamentally shift the race. We will continue to parse and dissect, but as of now, waiting is all we can really do. It’s not going to be easy.
