So, Donald Trump just announced he is going to run in 2024. I'm going to be honest, everyone saw this coming, he was going to do this regardless of the mid term results, and he was very quickly posturing to do so. If you asked me before the mid terms if Trump had a chance, I'd probably say, yeah he really does. We were staring down the biggest red wave in over a decade and it looked like Trump had crazy popularity. But, it seemed clear that the voters rejected Trump. Trumper candidates lost, and often lost badly, and it seemed clear that America didn't accept his big lie BS. And many of the polls on RCP's website, much like everything else from before the election, pointed to a 2024 landslide for Trump.
But honestly? Let's think about this now. First of all, the primary. I know most polls prior to the 2022 mid terms had trump leading, but there have been major swings since, with DeSantis leading Trump in new data. I know it's early, but the lower end of the distribution of polls cited in the above articles was 7 points, and potentially as high as 11 points. It's still early, this can change a lot. It HAS just changed a lot. But based on my normal 4 point MOE based model for calculating probabilities, if this does not change, we're talking a 96-99.7% chance of DeSantis beating Trump. Now, again, take that number with a grain of salt. Polling is a snapshot in time, and a lot can change in the 1+ year between now and the primaries in early 2024. But, yeah, it's not looking good.
As for Trump vs Biden, RCP's polls from before the election have a Trump blowout. But, we just saw that during the mid terms, the results followed the 2020 election closely, with the democrats often expanding their leads over the republicans relative to 2020 in most states, and most wins being in the same states that Biden won in 2020. Wisconsin admittedly flipped to the GOP here, and Georgia is kind of in the iffy 50/50 territory, but if I had to come up with an electoral college map based off of the 2022 midterms, it would look like this. Basically, 293-245 democrat. I gave georgia a SLIGHT democratic edge, but kept wisconsin red to reflect the results there. I aint expecting any oddball shifts like washington, oregon, or kansas to actually be in play here.To give an idea of the color legion:
Solid red/blue: 98%+ confidence in outcome, not considered "in play."
Darker pink/blue: 85-97% chance, implying polling in the 4-8% range. Expected to go to the party the color represents, but you never know, there's a small chance it may not.
Lighter pink/blue: 60-84% chance, implying polling in the 1-4% range. Expected to lean toward that party, but depending on whatever "wave" year this is, it COULD go the other way.
Pale pink/blue: 50-60% chance, implying polling in the <1% range. These are the real hard ones to guess and are the true toss ups.
Now, given this, what would it take the GOP to win? Well. They'd need to keep Wisconsin red, and take Georgia back for starters. Those are the two states I think will be most hotly contested. Taking Georgia would bring it down to 277-261 for the democrats. From there, I'm guessing Arizona and Nevada would be the next weakest states probably polling maybe 2 points ahead for dems. If Nevada goes red but Arizona stays blue, we could expect a democratic win still, although a narrow one. If AZ goes red but NV blue, or both go red, then you are talking a GOP win. As for PA and MI, I would put them more in the R+3-R+4 category vs my baseline projections, and believe the GOP would have a harder time winning those. Wisconsin I put in the red column because it's been more unreliably blue in recent years, and has gone red for both governor and senator this year. Whereas MI and PA both went more blue. Still, they are in play and worst case scenario within a 1 standard deviation of the my baseline (4 point red wave), and we're talking a pretty red map, not much different than Trump's win in 2016. This I see as the best realistic case for Trump. NH would probably be next, I'd estimate that around D+5-6. Minnesota is probably D+6-7, and NM, CO, and VA, eh...I really dont see them going red and they MIGHT be safe, but they're not as reliable as the other blue states so I put them near the D+7-8 area for the purposes of this discussion. So yeah.
As for democrats overperforming, well, I don't think Wisconsin is a foregone conclusion by any means. Dems could easily win that. I'm just less confident in it than other states. If we get that, we basically get the Biden 2020 map. But then I think it gets exponentially harder for democrats. The next state I would assume to go blue would be North Carolina...and...I wouldn't count on it. They haven't been blue since the Obama years. I'd start them off with around a R+3-4 rating here, but even then they arguably should be in the next category. Say they win that, okay, 319-219 D. Next up? Probably ME2, which is one electoral vote. And then I'd say Iowa and Ohio. But they're getting closer and closer to being a foregone conclusion for the dems. Florida....yeah, I think its safe to say after 2022 and the near 20 point leads the Rs got, its a lost cause. I just included it here for the sake of argument.
Honestly, this is another factor we got to discuss post 2016. Like....Ohio, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, all used to be in play for the democrats. Obama won some of these in 2008. And Ohio and Florida were the swingiest of swing back in 2000-2004. But...since 2016, we've been realigning. And we can discuss young people and blah blah blah, sure, young people like dems a lot more. But....honestly? This country is still realigning around the Trump-Clinton battle lines. And that's not really the best outcome for the left. Keep in mind what motivates the dems. Identity politics and centrism. POC and suburbanites. And the democrats had this dream of trading the rust belt for the south, and we're seeing it happen here. Ohio and Iowa have gone hard red. Wisconsin and Michigan are getting a lot less reliable for democrats. Pennsylvania is too, although I do think Fetterman shows a working class progressive can win the state. Keep in mind, Fetterman had Bernie politics, and he kind of proved what I've been saying about PA, that if you start whittling down the margins in the middle of the state and in areas around cities like Allentown, Scranton, Reading, Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, etc, you can actually motivate people with a Bernie style candidate. But...outside of PA, that strategy doesn't seem as reliable. The rest of the rust belt is going toward Trump. Even Minnesota is getting more purple.Meanwhile Arizona? Georgia? Yeah, just a few years ago, I considered those foregone conclusions for the democrats. Why appeal to yeehaw territory? They hadnt gone blue in decades. But the POC+suburbanite strategy works there. But it's also turning off the more white working class states in the North. And then you have florida, which is showing that latinos dont automatically go democrat just because you use the term Latinx and start speaking spanish in an obnoxious pandery way.
I really don't like this. The fact that the north is going red and the south is going blue kind of scares me. Because it represents that right wing populism is here to stay, and so is the snooty high brow neoliberal/social justice obsessed left. And that aint really good. because while yeah, people went blue for now, I'm not sure that the democrats will ever really gain enough popularity to have a mandate to push a left wing agenda. Meanwhile the right will remain powerful in its current form, and given that form has fascist tendencies, that aint good.
To be fair, it's also possible, at this point, that if the republicans dump trump, all of those states in play will flip red, as democratic ideas arent popular and republican ones are. But it really is hard to say. What is the future of America? Is it really more right wing populism vs left wing elitism? Or does that just represent old peoples' politics? Keep in mind, most people under 45 or so hate the GOP, and while not big on the democrats, they think more like me. So maybe our time will still come. It's hard to say what way American politics will go in the next few years. I couldnt even predict 2022 right.
As for 2024, my predictions are subject to a lot of change. Again, we JUST had the mid terms a week ago. And this is my first idea of what a Trump vs Biden matchup might be. BUT, we might not even have Trump win the primary. Biden is expected to run at this point, but if he doesn't, the dems will be scrambling for someone else, and I'm not sure what will happen there. We might see a left wing challenge like another Bernie run. We might also have a third party challenge like Forward, although who the hell knows what THAT would look like given Forward doesn't even believe in platforms apparently.
I mean, idk.
And as for how I plan to vote, if it's Trump on the republican side, I'm just likely gonna go democrat. If DeSantis or someone else, I will be more open to a third party challenger. But I'm going to be honest. I'm not really very happy with the third party alternatives. Greens are too extreme and socialist and my only reason for supporting them was to push the dems left. I dont actually like their platform. Sure it hits all the right chords on paper, but given their obsession with the GND (while I prefer Biden's framework), and their UBI and healthcare plans seem to just be for show, well, yeah. Again, I can't treat them as a serious candidate this time I don't think. And then you have forward. I like Yang, I like UBI< but Forward doesn't seem to represent that. I know a lot of people are wondering if people like say, Kyle Kulinski are becoming more centrist as they're more aligned with Biden these days, and I am kind of in the same direction as that, but for me, the answer is, eh, maybe a tiny bit, but I still believe in what I always have (at least since 2014 or so...). It's just that the political landscape is changing, and I'm shifting my alliances around based on what I think is in my best interest to advance my agenda. And currently, given the failure of the left and third party movements, and the dems trying to do some good things, I'm kind of going dem by default. But that's the thing. I'm really just dem by default. I'm a little warmer toward them than I've been in recent years, but only because they've made some good faith efforts to make some progress on some things I like, and because I realize the alternatives kind of suck. That and I really do believe Trump is a threat to democracy itself. Post January 6th? Yeah no, F that guy.
So yeah. Anyway, that's where I stand on 2024 right now. I cautiously project that Trump will lose the primary, and if he runs in the general, I expect a relatively narrow dem victory only slightly more in Trump's favor than 2020 was. Still, it's not a foregone conclusion and we're really talking like 70-30 here if I had to put a percentage on it. 2/3 outcomes would be a Biden win, 1/3 would be a Trump win. So while I would project a Biden win, I'm not exactly certain.
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