The case for each candidate

There's a plausible case for a comfortable victory by Trump *or* Harris; here's what they look like

The polling going into this election is absurdly close. And given the margins of error built into each poll and the fact that polls are historically off by a couple of points in either direction (and usually the same direction), the current polls are consistent with either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump winning pretty comfortable Electoral College victories. I’d like to go through the plausible case for each outcome.

The Case for Trump

Honestly, the best case for Donald Trump doing well is that he has exceeded his polling margin by several points each time he has run for president, and he just might do that again. There have been different explanations for this each time, including a “shy Trump voter” phenomenon, the fact that pollsters underestimated the voting behavior differences between whites with a college degree and whites without one, the fact that Republicans, and Trump supporters specifically, may be less interested in talking to a pollster than Democrats are, the fact that Trump supporters may be less likely to complete a survey once they start one, etc. As noted in this Power & Flour podcast, lots of these things no longer apply this year, and a number of pollsters have worked hard to correct for this problem in 2024, and we won’t know whether they’ve under- or over-corrected until it’s all over.

We also know that, despite the substantial economic recovery and historically low unemployment and modest inflation, this is not how voters generally view the economy today. They think it’s pretty crappy. And one thing a lot of economic indicators don’t generally pick up is the higher interest rates and the much higher housing prices in recent years. People are also convinced crime rates are high despite them not being so. People tend to blame such conditions on the party currently in the White House. If Trump were somewhat less toxic, there’s a decent chance we’d be looking at a Republican blowout this year in response to economic and crime beliefs.

On top of that, while many (conservative) Americans have wildly inflated fears about the negative impacts of immigration on the United States, immigration, and the percent of foreign-born Americans, is substantially up in recent years. For those prone to seeing a problem with this, there’s a lot for them to be agitated by, and that’s an issue that drives a lot of support for Donald Trump.

Additionally, while Trump’s own campaigning style is highly erratic, and he’s been significantly outspent by the Harris team, his campaign is better organized and more disciplined than it was in earlier contests. It’s difficult to know how influential the massive cash infusions by Elon Musk will be on the Trump turnout game, but they’ll probably help to some extent.

And finally, we know that Trump is a strong closer, and that pretty much any Republican that has a real problem with him left the party years ago. He reliably gets his 47% of the vote — the question is where it’s distributed.

The Case for Harris