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Obligatory Election post!
The US election is finalized tomorrow. Who do you think will win, Trump or Harris? Polymarket currently has Trump at about 58% and Harris at 42%, but these things can change on a dime!
Relatedly, do you think there will be issues certifying the election results? Which side do you think will struggle more if they lose?
And of course - do you think we'll see outright political violence? I certainly hope not, but it's good to be prepared.
Overall, how was your experience of this election? Did it seem noticeably different from any recent elections in any particular way?
Trump, not because of the polls (too much herding means they are likely wrong in some way) or because of the match up, but because of the fundamentals which I think outweigh most other things. Inflation has hit pretty hard (even if that was likely to have been similar had Trump won in 2020, that doesn't matter to voters), the Democrats do not have the benefit of an incumbent, and the Senate races up for grabs heavily favor Republicans. Therefore like 2016 regardless of who the candidates are, the Republican should be favored to win.
The only headwinds are abortion, which seem to have driven turnout for Democrats in mid-terms and special elections and the like, and that Trump while popular with his base is also unpopular with others, even sometimes those not out and out Democrats. However I don't think those are enough to prevail over "It's the economy stupid", but they will probably make it closer than it would otherwise be.
Elseworlds prediction: A generic Republican would out-perform Trump. The fundamentals favor the Republican candidate enough and Trump is polarizing enough that any random Republican carries almost everyone Trump would have in this circumstance plus picks up some of the wishy-washy Democrats and Independents who are unhappy with the economy but also really dislike Trump. Sure his base would be less enthusiastic about Jeb 3.0 or non-Mormon Romney or whoever but they are still being hit by inflation and economic circumstance, so it is extremely unlikely they are a loss overall, and picking up even a few thousand votes in purple states is likely more valuable.
Is there a single generic Republican running for any other office who is ahead of Trump? If there is even one, I would be surprised. If that's the case or even if this isn't a long list, it should be very difficult to make this argument. Would you vote for a generic Republican over empty-suit generic Democrat?
Is this some pure counterfactual which requires the generic Republican to run only for President?
People do not like the GOP brand. Substantial portions of Trump's voter base do not like the GOP brand. He gets them to go to the polls and then they mostly vote for downticket GOP. Absent Trump being on the ballot, they don't show up and the GOP loses. It is seemingly only in these spaces among people who are mostly disaffected blue tribers, if even that, who claim these sorts of things.
Trump's base wouldn't bother to show up to the polls and vote at all because they're not GOP voters which is why the GOP managed an anemic majority despite a R+6 general ballot in the 2022 midterms
They don't have to be GOP voters with the current economic woes. But even without Trump the GOP has a realignment which will last beyond Trump (see DeSantis et al). The GOP post Trump is not the same as the GOP pre-Trump.
So you don't know of a single generic Republican who is currently ahead of Trump?
Oh yes, we got the primaries to see what the GOP would default to without Trump and that "generic Republican" would be far behind Trump. It would look a lot like the Senate, where despite Trump still in politics and having heavy effect (and threat), the Senate votes to fund wars, pass awful immigration bills, pass awful funding bills, etc.
DeSantis, perhaps with the best chance among them, would be trailing far behind Trump's numbers because he's uncharismatic and is unappealing in the battleground states. His stated chances on abortion in his train wreck in Iowa would be hard for him to outrun. If we can guess what a Trump-less DeSantis campaign would look like, we have that train wreck for guidance.
The GOP has a near zero GOTV operation despite spending a billion dollars on a system to do it. Without Trump, voters do not show up to the polls and a generic Republican would rely on groundgame to do that, but there is none.
Would you vote for this generic Republican like Nikki Haley over generic Democrat? How many generic Republicans have you voted for?
I've never voted for a generic anybody, because they don't exist. They're a theoretical comparator. I have voted for both left and right wing actual candidates though, both at local and national levels.
Being behind Trump in a primary against Trump does not mean that you would run behind a Democrat in the general.
Most people vote for parties not candidates, the impact of charisma is not zero, but it is massively overrated in my opinion. Fundamentals and political coalitions are the building blocks of political success. Charisma is at best a tie breaker when fundamentals are balanced. Trump won in 2016 largely because he was a Republican following two Democratic terms with a not great economy. A generic Republican probably would have won, though with a different voter spread.
GOTV is also overrated in my opinion (and I say that as someone who has organized such things in the past). Even our best internal measures showed it had very little impact. But politicians and political consultants like myself (albeit retired now) are reluctant to stop them, because what if this is the one time it does make a difference. No-one wants to be the one who broke from tradition and got hammered because of it. Plus of course consultants and strategists can rake in big bucks for organizing them.
As an example Rishi Sunak's Tories got beaten by Kier Starmer's Labour, and would have if they were running a re-animated Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair converted to the Tories or an Angelic Winston Churchill descended from Heaven (ok well maybe not the last one!) Because the economy was shot and the Tories were in charge at the time.
"It's the economy stupid" is the dominating factor. Candidates, GOTV, scandals, and the like are very secondary. In a bad economy (defined by how people feel, not actual measures) the incumbent party will be punished regardless of almost anything else. And inflation and living costs have been feeling very bad for large chunks of America right now.
Not-Democrat is going to be enough to get a lot of votes this electoral season, regardless of the candidates in question I think.
I don’t think this is true at all. Rishi Sunak lost because he was a useless man in a suit who talked tough while doing very little and firing everyone who tried to follow through on the rhetoric. He alienated centrists who split to Labour and right-wingers who split to Reform.
We’re talking about a man who thought that resurrecting David Cameron from corrupt ignominy and extending compulsory maths were political triumphs.
Kier Starmer was and remains an incredibly weak candidate: a proven liar who literally couldn’t open his mouth on policy without either scandalising his party or the nation.
Even dragged down by a decade of mismanagement, almost anyone could have followed the Johnson strategy of pushing for change, getting foiled, and using that to push for a bigger mandate. To put it frankly, Sunak didn’t have the guts and he spent two years fiddling, losing not only his chance to accomplish anything but his ability to credibly promise to do something next time round.
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