These 2 Indicators Predict A 2024 Winner, They Disagree
Democrats will try for Florida and Texas
Hooray, we won’t have a shutdown!
No one knows what will happen this November. That will not stop us from trying.
Amongst the polls, the averages of polls, the models that use polling averages and add in other factors like incumbency and economic sentiment we have a lot of indicators that could be right or wrong but are fun to follow along with.
Here are a few that I am keeping my eye on.
National Environment
In any poll you need to adjust for what you think the national environment of voters will be. That’s a fancy way of saying what the final popular vote is nationally and then how that filters through state by state. One good predictor of this has been the Washington State primary. Here is how NPR explains that:
Here's how to do it: add up the total votes for Democrats and Republicans in Washington’s 10 House district primaries to find the share of the primary vote for each party. Then, take the difference between them and subtract 12% to get a rough estimate of the predicted House margin in November.
An NPR analysis of the Washington primary using this framework estimates that Democrats could win the national popular vote by about 4 points, which is slightly more than the 2020 presidential election that saw them narrowly win the White House and control of both chambers of Congress.
In other words, it will likely be yet another close race.
This year, Democrats won about 57.3% of the Congressional primary vote to Republicans’ 41.3%, or a margin of 16%. Subtract 12 percentage points, and you get that estimate of a 4% popular vote victory for Democrats later this year.
Is it going to be D+4? Maybe. If it’s not, get ready for plenty of “bUt THe WAshIngTOn pRImAry?!?!” memes.
The big question is does that mean we won’t get polling errors in the Rust Belt like we did in 2016 and 2020? Those two elections yielded polling errors of 6-9 points in WI, 3-5 in MI and 3-5 in PA all in Trump’s favor. Of course, polling errors don’t always go one way. Friend of the podcast Ettingermentum says the Washington Primary and special elections suggest we are not going to see radical poll movement.
Notably unlike 2016, these results make perfect sense in light of both local and national trends. All three states are the whitest states on the swing state map. This may have looked like a bad sign before, but it’s a positive sign now, when recent demographic shifts have shown Democrats improving with whites and Republicans improving with nonwhites. On top of this, all three states are strongly socially liberal on issues like abortion, and, as mentioned previously, have had incredibly strong down ballot results for Democrats since 2016. In the end, none of the polls that show her doing well in this region of the country are telling us anything we haven’t already known for a long time.
As Ettingermentum suggests, if the small but durable leads for Harris hold up in the Rust Belt (and Nevada!) then she is the next president.
But that is under the assumption of a D+4 environment. Which leads us to our next indicator….
Party Affiliation
Gallup suggests that this the most favorable environment for Republicans in modern history. The last time voters favored the Republican Party this much was in 2004 when they last won the popular vote. The reason? Simple, more people surveyed align with the GOP.
Add that to Republican advantages in the most significant historical signifiers.
Of course, what this ignores is the Trump of it all. Do Republican leaning voters believe in Big Chungus? Or are they swayed by the Dispatch-reading Liz Cheneys of the world?
Furthermore, if this was really to be believed why are GOP Senate candidates underperforming?
No one knows what will happen this November. That will not stop us from trying.
Dems Look To Expand the Senate Map to Texas and Florida
This is a bad idea. But what’s the point of raising the money if you can’t enjoy spending it.
Archie:
If you eliminate the filibuster is it gone for everything, or is it on a vote by vote basis?
All of this is a rolling agreement by the party in control. Harry Reid moved the filibuster goal posts on judges to alleviate a Republican blockade and Mitch McConnell answered by moving them again for Supreme Court justices. If someone moves them for abortion, at the very least you’d assume the GOP would repeal whatever the Democrats do when they get back in power.