If there is one thing I’ve learned in my time writing this column, it’s that readers, especially those who read regularly, would rather I be direct, precise and dead wrong, than prevaricating, wishy-washy and possibly correct.
So here goes.
Donald Trump is going to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election. On election night. Decisively.
He’ll do so for three key reasons.
Reason one: neck-and-neck national polling means advantage Trump.
In a polemic on the inaccuracy of polling, political scientist Lindsay Rogers took its proverbial grandfather, George Gallup, to task, stating, “Instead of feeling the pulse of democracy, Dr. Gallup listens to its baby talk.” Yes. No. Don’t know.
Ever since pollsters failed to predict Trump’s 2016 victory, many gleefully echoed this sentiment — proclaiming the death of polling. The fact that, this time out, the majority of the national polls find Trump and Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala Harris in a virtual dead-heat hasn’t helped. Declaring the race is within one per cent has unsurprisingly only contributed to the impression that pollsters have utterly failed — yet again — to locate that pulse.
But that impression is flawed.
Pollsters have gone to great pains to make good on their previous errors — ensuring, for example, more noncollege educated Americans are represented in their sample populations. But the one thing you can never fully account for is nonresponse bias, those voters who like Trump’s policies — tax cuts, mass deportations, etc. — yet are embarrassed to admit as much outside of the privacy of the polling booth.
So, while I believe the polls are more accurate than they were in 2016, I still suspect they understate the former president’s support.
In the end, for Trump, winning the popular vote may be a tough test given the Democrats have won the popular vote the last seven times out. But only the electoral college matters and here Republicans enjoy a structural advantage. That means Harris needs to be ahead in the national polls by at least a healthy margin to take the presidency. She’s not there and, at this point, she won’t get there.
Reason two: Pennsylvania.
It’s nicknamed the Keystone State for a reason and in my view, the race comes down to this commonwealth.
With 19 electoral votes, Pennsylvania was part of the “Blue Wall” until Trump flipped it red in 2016.
In 2020, the Democrats’ answer was to run a native son, “Scranton Joe.” It worked.
While Harris is doing everything she can to correct Hillary Clinton’s neglect of the Blue Wall states in 2016, the vice-president failed to pick the state’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate.
A strategic mistake I believe will cost her this election.
Third, the Trump formula has worked.
The pundit class loves to say that Trump has rewritten the campaign playbook. They’re wrong. He’s following it to the letter. If we judge a campaign on the basic metric of whether it has effectively appealed to people’s priorities, Trump has been successful this time out, just as he has been before.
Trump and his campaign see what many cannot see: the genuine views of a significant portion of the American electorate.
Accordingly, his most concrete campaign promise is his most ludicrous and fascistic — the mass deportation of newcomers to America. To many Americans, illegal immigration sounds like a major and, in listening to Trump, a deeply frightening problem. Mass deportation sounds like a primary solution. Its appalling inhumanity is secondary.
What those voters have not heard enough from Kamala Harris is a) an admission this is a problem and b) an appealing answer to address it. While this is just one example, it is representative of a campaign that needed to focus more on articulating how a Harris administration would address the real priorities of the American people and less on her opponent.
The fact is commentators who have assumed that the stain and chaos of Trump’s first term would disqualify him from the Oval Office a second time are fundamentally mistaken. The damage he has wrought upon American institutions and the electoral process has only lowered the bar.
And in the democratic landscape he has salted, Donald Trump will claim victory, regardless of the objective outcome.
