Real Clear
Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst addresses relevant political and social issues of our times in a straightforward and honest manner. Taking on anti-logic factions that are growing in society. News and opinions that you can rely on for integrity and depth!
Real Clear
Final Election Analysis
BECOME REAL CLEAR
Is the 2024 presidential election poised to be one of the most contentious in American history? Join me, Lucas Klein, on the Real Clear Podcast as we unravel the intricate dynamics between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump with just hours to go before the nation heads to the polls. With Trump holding an edge in the latest Vegas odds and statistical predictions, the battle for Pennsylvania emerges as both candidates' ultimate litmus test. Through in-depth analysis, we scrutinize possible electoral outcomes, including the prospect of a 269-269 electoral tie, and ponder how key swing states like Wisconsin and Michigan could tip the scale. As the nation stands polarized, the stakes have never been higher, and Pennsylvania's role as a potential kingmaker is undeniable.
Our episode also takes a critical look at the contrasting strategies employed by both campaigns. Harris’s team grapples with maintaining momentum amid Biden's controversial remarks and the weight of her vice-presidential legacy, while Trump navigates the fallout from his inflammatory statements that often spark media controversy. Despite these challenges, Trump's immigration-focused strategy continues to galvanize his base, particularly in border states. As Harris attempts to soften her stance on hot-button issues like taxation, we evaluate the strategic missteps and calculated moves that could define the election's outcome. With a nation on edge, we ponder the implications for the political landscape, knowing that regardless of the victor, a significant portion of the country may feel alienated. Tune in for this crucial conversation as we dissect what could be a turning point in American politics.
And welcome back everybody to Real Clear Podcast with Lucas Klein. We're going to talk about the election unfolding tomorrow. I'm coming to you on Monday, november 4th, one day before the 2024 presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I'm not going to evangelize to you I can't stand when people do that and tell you what you should think. I'm simply going to try to add to your arsenal as to data and variables to help you imagine for yourself what's going to unfold tomorrow, because it's fun to do that. I'm very sick of people telling the American public what they should think in moral terms. We're going to talk about election mapping, as well as some news coverage, and I'll add some commentary at the end. Again, not meant to sway your thinking one way or the other, but just to provide some analysis. As I see it, if we're looking at the Vegas betting odds, we have Trump at 57.2, according to the site Election Betting Odds to Harris' 42.4%. Some people think this is the most meaningful metric as to who's going to win the election, because people are actually putting their money down rather than answering a pollster's call. I don't know. I don't have any data on how accurate the Vegas betting odds are. Interestingly, when you move to a crypto betting market, trump widens his lead to 60.3% to Harris's 39.6%. And of course everyone pays attention to 538, nate Silver's brainchild that he has since disembarked from, but still they're giving Trump a 52% chance of winning to 48% Harris. That's pretty darn close.
Speaker 1:And if we're turning over to swing state and battleground states and election mapping, this is where some interesting things start to unfold. Here's the rub. The Harris campaign must win Pennsylvania, in my opinion. If they do not, their path to the White House is all but impossible. And there's some different things that can unfold for Trump. If he doesn't win Pennsylvania, the road becomes much more difficult. So if Trump were to lose Pennsylvania and win Michigan, he'd have 277. If he carried Nevada, arizona, georgia, north Carolina, as we assume he will, 277 to Harris' 261.
Speaker 1:Nevada I really don't care about. It's gone Republican, I'm sorry. It's gone Democrat since 2004. It's likely going to go to Trump this year. But we could take it out of the matrix entirely and you'd have a 271 to 261. And you could even give that to the Democrats and you'd still have a 271 and 267. So Nevada to me doesn't really bear out in importance unless you really change the rubric.
Speaker 1:Now there are some interesting things with Trump's inside polling. If he thinks that he's going to win Virginia which is odd because if he doesn't remember if the blue wall holds the blue wall, wisconsin, michigan and Pennsylvania and historically Wisconsin and Michigan vote together. If you win one, you win them both. They vote in unison. Essentially, if Harris holds the blue wall, she gets 282 to Trump vans 256. Trump goes packing. But Trump thinks that he might have a chance of winning over Virginia. I don't see signs of that, but he's had some pretty good internal polls in the last several years and say they lean Republican. Now we've got a weird situation here, because in this formula I'm giving Nevada to Harris. Because in this formula I'm giving Nevada to Harris. So if she holds the blue wall, loses Virginia and wins Nevada, you've got 269 to 269. Okay, I think at that point you're looking at a runoff election. I haven't actually found the details on that, but I think that's what happens. If any of you would like to comment at realclairpodcastcom and tell me what you know to be the case, if we have a 269 split, that'd be helpful. But, as I'd mentioned, in this weird formula, then Nevada does become relevant if you really change the calculus and it's likely going to go to Donald Trump, which would give him a 275 win over 263 Harris and he's in the White House.
Speaker 1:What is the most likely path for Trump to go to Pennsylvania Avenue? It is with Pennsylvania as a state itself. If he wins Pennsylvania and sweeps the other swing states, he's got 281 to 257. And, as I'd mentioned, nevada becomes irrelevant. He could even lose Arizona and he'd still have 270 to 268. There's no signs he's going to lose Arizona, but let's say that just goes toss up and leans Democrat. So the most likely outcome here for tomorrow in terms of the polling is a Trump win with Pennsylvania and sweeping the other swing states, plus or minus Nevada or even Arizona. He could lose a number of things and still win. If he wins Pennsylvania, harris must win Pennsylvania. That is her campaign's golden goose.
Speaker 1:If they lose Pennsylvania, like I said, they're going to have to do some really interesting things elsewhere and it's not going to matter if they flip Iowa, which the Seltzer analysis says that they're going to do or they could do. It stands in contrast to all the other polls leading up. I don't think that's valid in any way. I think they probably did not do enough scoping as to who they were calling and got a convenient sample I don't mean intentionally convenient, not a sample that randomly represents the Iowan population. So we could call Iowa a toss-up. And you'd still be looking at, under this formula, a Trump Vance 281 to Harris Walsh 251, and Trump would win the White House. If she flips it, it's 257, nowhere close to the White House.
Speaker 1:And however, let me remind you, all of these different outcomes rest on Pennsylvania. As far as I see it, the swing states, to remind you what they are, they're Wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, north Carolina, georgia, arizona and Nevada swing states, reliably, except for Wisconsin, michigan and Pennsylvania. He has some very interesting polling going on in Pennsylvania and it's possible that he could flip Michigan. I think less likely Wisconsin, but he could flip Michigan, especially because of his entree into the autoworkers. They've since turned away from him, or at least their administration has, but I'm not so sure that their actual voting ranks have. So if one of those states is going to flip and they're going to disunify wisconsin and michigan, it's likely it's going to come from michigan. So if we see that happening and that goes for trump, then all of a sudden you've got a very interesting change as well. Then you've got pennsylvania becoming as well. Then you've got Pennsylvania becoming irrelevant for Trump. If he flips Michigan, he changes the entire calculus for his campaign. Then you're looking at 277 to 261 Harris.
Speaker 1:If she wins Pennsylvania as well, like I'd mentioned, there's a number of routes for Trump to get to the White House. It's not clear how likely they are, but there's a number of routes. Harris has fewer routes, but you might call them more reliable. It's likely that she's going to win Wisconsin and Michigan, leaving her battleground her true state that she must win as Pennsylvania. If she does that, like I'd mentioned, she's in the White House.
Speaker 1:And there is one more weird scenario where, if you flip Nebraska's second electoral region, the one vote that is not anchored to the state's electoral votes if you flip that, there's some weird things you can do. Where it can be 269, draw again. I see that as highly unlikely. Maine is the only other state that has a dislodged second district vote. It's called ME2, and they each have one electoral count. Right now the NE2, the Nebraska second district is going for Harris and the Maine second district is likely going for Trump, and those are. I see no signs that Arizona is going to be leaning Democrat. And Nevada, like I'd mentioned, is interesting because not due to its numerical value, but because a Republican hasn't won it since 2004. And I think Trump probably is going to win Nevada. He courted them with the no tax on tips campaign message. Harris closely followed up on his coattails there and promised the same thing, so they both wanted Nevada Arizona.
Speaker 1:Looking at the spread, it's been going for Trump since at least the end of October. There's not been a Harris spread since then and I think spreads are important because they show you momentum and if you look at places like Pennsylvania, you've seen a Trump momentum in the spread since early November yeah, just a week ago, but it's opened up a bit and it's been plus one, plus two, plus one, et cetera. He's up 0.3 in Pennsylvania. That's meaningless, so they are essentially tied. But just to give you a reference, this has been an interesting state in terms of polling data leading right up to the election, whereas in other states there's been a huge spread and, especially across the battleground states, you've had a large spread between Biden-Trump and also Clinton-Trump in 2016. The reason that's relevant is because everyone's saying hey, trump under polls.
Speaker 1:Look back then, when he was down by six, seven, eight, nine points and he's neck and neck. That might mean that he's heading for a landslide victory. That changes with Pennsylvania. If you look at the day before the election in 2020, biden was up 2.6 and Clinton was up 2.1, again within the margin of error but they were up by two points and so it's always been a very close state. It's possibly the most accurate swing state that there is in terms of where the election's headed. Pennsylvania may be one of these states where, as long as a poll has it within the margin of error, it's accurate, meaning we all know it's going to go one way or the other, and it all hinges on the Keystone State tomorrow.
Speaker 1:The Trump campaign has an idea that they might flip Virginia, as I think I'd mentioned at the top of the hour. I don't see that happening, but again, they may have some internal polls that prove brighter than I am. If you look at the spread there, it's plus 5.8 for Harris. Overall, that's not really a very accurate spread, because they had one weird poll from Christopher Newport University that gave a plus 11. And, in contrast, all the others plus two. There's some plus eight, plus six, plus two, but plus 11 seems to me to be an inaccurate poll and, for historical reference, trump had some very odd polls heading into 2016, and he ended up flipping them entirely. Some polls had him in battleground states down by 17 points. He ended up winning them. That was a very strange year.
Speaker 1:My own opinion here is that Trump had a sort of glitter around him in 16. He was new and exotic as a political candidate and people like that in crucial areas. I think that glitter's worn off and while he has a dedicated base, a lot of people are no longer impressed with the types of comments he makes or the political posture he takes. I'm not saying that Harris is a better candidate in that way. I'm simply saying that his capacity to defy polls on election day may not be as profound as it once was Now heading over into the news circuits and things like that. We've had some weird things unfolding. We've had, just this past weekend, saturday Night Live through NBC provided a cameo, for Kamala Harris did not send out an invitation to Trump, and this may have been a violation of the FCC, where they're supposed to give candidates equal airtime on public airwaves, and as soon as that was brought up by the FCC chairman, they then offered Trump the option of having a minute or two of his own advertisements during the weekend for football games and so forth, which he did put up. I think most people see that as clear election affecting, let's put it that way. I'm not so sure how effective it is. It might be, probably, with younger voters who might still tune into SNL. It's clearly an attempt to sway the election momentum and we've seen this across the different news stations over the last couple days.
Speaker 1:There was a hiccup in the Trump campaign where that stupid comedian I really never liked him Tony Hinchcliffe. I always had a reaction to him in my gut, which was that this man can't be trusted. That's my own opinion. I never cared for him and this was a good example, perhaps, as to what my instincts were indicating. He had mentioned in the Trump-Madison Square Garden rally that he said there's a floating pile of garbage in the ocean. Oh, it's Puerto Rico. There was no context as far as I could see. It was a stupid joke and I imagine the Trump campaign is really quite pissed at him. Trump did distance himself from Hinchcliffe, saying he never knew him, didn't want to know him, all that whatever. But he doesn't come out historically and make statements of apology and so on, because I think he views that as an admission of wrongdoing, which tends to portray guilt and weakness in his mind. So he never does that and he didn't in this case. Nevertheless, it really. It was grabbed onto by the media, and there's 300 to 400,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania who are of Puerto Rican descent. I don't know how effective that moment was. If it was effective at reaching those communities and if they were in any way ambivalent about who to vote for, then it could have an impact, and in which case this stupid comedian would have affected the presidential election. Funny things like that do happen, especially in a state where the spread is so darn close about it.
Speaker 1:The Harris campaign did not have much momentum to coast on after that, however, because what did Biden do? He came out and said the only garbage I see are Trump supporters, something to that effect, understandably, and tried to have a public, subtle divorce from Biden because he's a wrecking ball at this time. He also came out and said at a news conference that Trump is the kind of guy you'd like to take out back and smack in the ass. It's just the ass. That's what he said, and it was the most awkward thing. I've seen Biden say he really has been a train wreck for the Harris campaign. They've not wanted him out on the campaign trail. He's offered to come out and they've said thank you very much, joe, but gee, we'll get back to you. And he's been allegedly hurt by that and I think at this point there's been some maybe unconscious or just internal intention on his end to damage their campaign. That's my own speculation. I don't know if that's true, but it puts on a Trump hat here and there. Remember that a couple months ago he put on a Trump hat. It made the rounds. Then he comes out and says what he says there.
Speaker 1:I can't say either campaign is doing very well in terms of political strategy right now. As you've heard me often say, we have managed over the past several years to choose the only candidates who could possibly lose to one another from either party. It's been a race toward the bottom. Now people have obvious allegiances to policies and these candidates are very different in terms of policies. The American public is focusing heavily on immigration and Trump, I think, capitalizes there and has a stronger message.
Speaker 1:Harris has been in a very difficult position, not only with immigration, but in a number of ways, because she's trying to portray herself as the president of the future, of turning the page, but she has been the vice president for the last four years and when asked about that in various interviews she stammered and provided an evasive answer and looked terrified. So how exactly do you disavow the former president without looking as though you are untrustworthy, but also portray yourself as new and vigorous, a candidate of the future, while maintaining a latch to that horse? Not very easy and she's not been doing a great job. But she really she should have been doing a great job and her campaign should have been helping her devise strategies to answer questions like that, which were just obvious ones. These are not surprise questions.
Speaker 1:The Trump campaign makes blunders in obvious ways. He comes out and says really off the rails, things like he's going to be a dictator on day one. He does things like that was a while back, but he says these moments that are just made for television cameo there, and he may have said these things in certain contexts like it's going to be a blood bath. Well, he said that in terms of the auto industry, competition with China, not in terms of political violence. The media went in a wayward direction there. I've always said this about Trump If you're such a political genius or such a great candidate, why do you say things that can be taken so far out of context? I actually think that's politically unwise and it's probably why he chose JD Vance was because Vance is so articulate and he can polish the Trump message and has been doing so very well so well that I think a lot of the legacy stations have stopped interviewing him because he's so effective.
Speaker 1:And I spoke to a lot of people after the Vance-Walsh debate and what the resounding reaction was for people across the aisle both sides was. Reaction was for people across the aisle both sides was oh, two people who can speak. That's where we're at this time in American politics. We just want two people who can speak together. We'll take it. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. If it's a Trump win, there's going to be half the country unhappy, and if there's a Harris win, half the country unhappy. It's a bit of an illusion that we're going to have some national mending either side. Whoever wins, we have a 50-50 country. It's quite a problem.
Speaker 1:Now, if Trump wins as I was getting back to policy he's going to do his best to close the border, of course, and we've had 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants who have come in during the Biden administration. People on the right think that's an election strategy. I happen to think that there's credibility to that idea In fact I have brought that up in previous episodes and I don't think that's political conspiracy. If you have 15, 20 million people coming in and then they have children, well, their children are then US citizens, and then you've got a problem if you're the Republican Party, because your position is to deport the parents At least that's your public position and then you've got a problem because you've got several million registered voters at some point who are citizens who have a dilemma in front of them Vote for the party who wants to deport their parents or the party who doesn't. Pretty obvious political calculus there, and I don't think it's conspiratorial to say that it is. So. Those are the options in terms of the border at this time.
Speaker 1:Trump went down to New Mexico. I think, not because he sees internal polling, that he could flip that state that's entirely unlikely as far as what I'm seeing here but because he wanted to make a show of visiting every border state and I don't think he wanted to provide Harris campaign allies or surrogates the ability to say Trump has not even visited all the border states. It's probably the whole reason he went down. There was some hubbub about him going down and people speculating that he could flip New Mexico. I don't see that as credible in any way.
Speaker 1:And then we've got taxation policies the Harris campaign has had. They've dialed back their rhetoric on taxation and tried to moderate themselves and become more centrist. But Harris has obviously been quoted in the past as saying that she would like to have a surcharge for Medicare for all, 4% of your income and so forth. She's been quoted as saying she would like to tax unrealized capital gains. And whatever side of the aisle you're on here, you can be a supporter of that position or not. You have to recognize that would grind the economy down to a halt instantaneously were it passed. I don't know if she meant that in earnest when she promoted that idea or whether she was pandering to left-wing supporters. It's not clear to me. But she certainly is a progressive tax policymaker and she would like to go as high as she can.
Speaker 1:Trump's tax policies are going to expire soon and we're going to have some changes in the country. He has been promoting the idea of tariffs over a federal income tax. I see that as a seduction tactic to voters. It's entirely unlikely that could happen. You take us back to late 1800s tax policy and, ironically, who's the other American president who promoted tariffs over taxation? Woodrow Wilson, the socialist. And what did that do? That helped barrel us toward a Great Depression. That's right. So it's a very ironic thing for Trump to be promoting. I don't see that as a likely thing that he would implement, but it's out there in the rhetoric, much like Harris's tax rhetoric as well. So the likelihood is we've got a difference on who will appoint Supreme Court justices if Sotomayor retires. That will have an impact for sure. We've got a difference on border policy. That certainly has a domestic impact. I think we have quite a difference on foreign policy.
Speaker 1:Trump promotes the great man picture, which is that, due to his suave and deal-making capacity, that's the way there will be no wars. But he's scant on details. Harris simply waffles and says one thing in one camp and one thing in another. If she's in Dearborn, she says one thing. If she's in Pennsylvania, speaking to a more moderate base, she says another. And so it's with foreign policy, much like the other issues. It's not clear how to know Harris, and I think that's probably one of the most striking issues for her campaign. How is it that she brings her personality to the public? I actually suspect that's what SNL was trying to remedy with bringing her on as a cameo was to present herself in some sort of favorable or at least relatable light and give people a sense of this. Is Kamala Mamala, was their, was their phrasing. It was a chance to warm her up.
Speaker 1:Say what you will about Trump, he does endear himself in some way to the American public. For instance, after Biden's garbage comments regarding his base and his voters, trump went in a garbage truck and drove to a rally and made a whole to do about it. You might think that's ineffective, it doesn't really affect you, and so forth. My own take is that it actually has some sort of subtle media endearing effect for voters to Trump and I think he knows that it's a very classical barnstorming political tactic and that's what he does. Trump's position is that if he goes to as many rallies and presents himself in as voluminous a way as possible, that somehow swells momentum for him. I don't know how accurate that is, I'd have to look more at political data, but that's his tactic. So I said I would not evangelize to you, but I want to end on a term that I think is really important.
Speaker 1:Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens between Election Day and, let's say, a few days later, if that's as late as we know, look upon your fellow voter, your fellow American, with human eyes. This is just an election. Sure, it's important and there are vast differences between these candidates, but we've got to find a way to embrace each other once again. Okay, have fun tomorrow. Grab some popcorn, grab whatever you want, and take a seat on the couch and watch the election mapping unfold on your favorite network, or surf around the channels with your spouse, your friend, your girlfriend, boyfriend, your children. This is an American time. Election cycles should be fun. In my view, whichever way it splits, it's going to be an interesting evening. Okay, everyone Again. Comment at realclearpodcastcom. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening, take care.