My Election Predictions
Sunny, with a chance of showers overnight...
Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books including “The Tunnels” “Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady” and “The Campaign of the Century” and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre” (up for an Emmy). You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.
First, a re-visit with Leslie Odom, Jr. from 2020 with his “Wait for It” from “Hamilton” applied to Election Day.
Well, everyone else is guessing, so…..And I have written several notable books on notable American elections (with, ahem, “The Campaign of the Century” named by the Wall St. Journal as one of the five best ever)….Also, I have been a campaign “activist” over the years going back to:
—1952: when, as tyke, I wheeled around on my tricycle yelling “Vote for Eisenhower” (I am told), this sparked by my parents’ Republicanism.
—1960: taking the side of Nixon (see above) in junior high debate with pro-JFK kid, which was followed by classroom vote of 25-3 against me (I blamed it on the large Catholic majority). Am I still scarred by this? Do they show? When I wrote my “Nixon book” decades later it covered the 1950, not 1960, race.
—1968: founded Gene McCarthy for President chapter on my campus, later went to Chicago for the infamous convention and protests.
—1972: cast first-ever vote, for McGovern, in Greenwich Village.
and so on…
Lately, I have more or less correctly predicted the popular vote margin for the Democratic candidates for president in the past several elections. Admittedly, electoral vote estimates—in our stupid current system—have always been more difficult. But here are my semi-informed opinions on 2024 as of 3:30 p.m. ET on election day:
Harris by 4% in popular vote, and the electoral vote, when the dust settles in a day or five, about the same as Biden’s.
Trump will claim victory by 1 a.m.
Dems take the House by exceedingly narrow margin.
GOP as expected takes the Senate, as we’ve known since Manchin dropped out, and they also win one upset (maybe our beloved Sherrod Brown goes down), while Dems also get one upset.
Don’t take it to the bank or even the crypto parlor….Your prediction via here:
This is why predictions are probably not a good idea. In the final several weeks, left leaning commentators seemed almost giddy about how Harris was surging and Trump was flailing. It was all just noise based on nothing but people's hopes. The key issue was the economy, and Harris had a difficult mountain to climb to detach herself from Biden, who should have never run again in the first place. We're in for a really, really difficult time now...especially the most vulnerable among us.
I trust your long-standing expertise in this field, but I’ll be an outlier and think/hope Kamala will win the college with north of 300 points. Dobbs and Harris being embraced by so many trusted career GOP folks, plus echoes of Jan. 6…I would propose that she mat be on track to get more GOP support than any Dem in history, event more than Bill Clinton and Obama. Then we need to hope the GOP refactors itself in a non crazy way for our two party system to persist. I see the story of Trump holding half the country at his will as more of a modern marketing story — a smoke and mirrors scam like the rest of the Trump enterprise. Plus people who were once entertained by Trump are getting tired of him. Seeking out a new entertainer is what we should watch out for.