Barring the kind of electoral meltdown that was forming just before Joe Biden was forced by his own party to abandon his candidacy for re-election, the 2024 presidential race was not supposed to end up as a landslide for either party’s ticket.
That is because, in terms of the popular vote, the Democrats currently outnumber Republicans in the race for president due to heavy majorities in California, New York, and Illinois. In the all-important Electoral College, Democrats have a solid base of 190-210 electoral votes, and the Republicans a base of 200-220.
That said, the establishment media and the pollsters they support have been suggesting for weeks that the Democrats have a small lead in the popular vote, and that taking into account the 6-8 battleground states where neither party has a near-certain majority, the electoral count is close to a tie.
There have even been a number of establishment media articles suggesting that the final result could be 269-269 or 270-268.
That might actually come true, but there are many reasons to suspect that the purported “tie” is fake news.
The usual suspects are involved, i.e., the establishment media and the pollsters whose data they pay for and publish. As they learned so starkly in the period before Joe Biden withdrew from his 2024 re-election bid, the Democratic electorate, faced with increasingly negative polls, became depressed and pessimistic, and this clearly would have depressed Democrat turnout. Not only would Biden have lost, but low Democratic turnout would have cost their party a number of House and Senate seats they would otherwise not lose — thus ensuring Republican control of Congress.
When Biden did withdraw, there was a genuine sigh of relief, and a return of some optimism. A brief surge for Kamala Harris as the putative nominee did occur, but with Trump and the Republicans drawing away significant numbers of Hispanic, black, Jewish, Catholic, and working-class voters who previously voted for Democrats, a return by liberal voters to feelings of imminent defeat was simply not allowable.
After Harris chose Tim Walz as her running mate and he turned out to be a poorly-vetted selection, proving to be more of an embarrassment than a political asset, it became an urgent task for the establishment media, long committed to promoting the Democratic ticket, to redouble its efforts to shield the public from bad news about the Harris-Walz ticket.
One aspect of campaign coverage, the public opinion polls, was crucial to the success of maintaining liberal voter enthusiasm, and a number of pollsters, but not all, began reporting the Harris-Walz ticket was now several points ahead of the Trump-Vance ticket. In the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia, the common narrative of the establishment media was that Harris-Walz was slightly ahead or tied.
The problem was, however, that the Harris-Walz duo as campaigners are a disaster. As Election Day approaches, it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain the fiction that the race is close, especially with non-establishment media and pollsters publishing their starkly different numbers.
The establishment media, of course, is able to prop up its narrative to the bitter end, but the pollsters cannot afford to be so far off the actual result that they lose their credibility. Therefore, beginning about now, the pollsters begin to gradually “adjust” their numbers to be much closer to what voters are actually thinking, and by Election Day the polling will likely much more resemble what the non-establishment pollsters are reporting.
A few caveats: Some journalists report from their sources’ “internal polls” (meaning those conducted by the campaigns themselves) which are presumed to be more accurate than the public polls. In many cases, this might be true, but it is important to remember that internal polls are meant to be private, and when they are “leaked,” they might well also be fake news. These “internal poll” leaks are not accountable and almost never come with key details of sample size, party and gender breakdowns, and other details which might affect their credibility.
Another caveat is that all polls are only estimates of the period during which they are taken. Their “raw” numbers are adjusted by demographic categories which are subjectively estimated by the pollster. Sample size, method of obtaining results, and language of the questions asked are also vital elements, and can easily distort the final reported result.
Partisan strategists on all sides of an election know that voter enthusiasm, or lack of it, is very importantly tied to voter turnout. It would be hopelessly naive to think that campaigns and their professional partisans are not doing everything they can to create and maintain a sense of hope and optimism among their supporters who, if they lack these, might not turn out to vote. If only a relatively small number of these voters fail to cast their votes, the results can be catastrophic.
After four years of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration, Republican voters are energized to vote in 2024. With an obviously declining President Biden off the ticket in November, liberal and progressive voters experienced a brief revival of their hopes to win this cycle. Their candidates, however, have proven to be disappointing, and no hype, polls, or celebrity endorsements can fix this key political impediment.
There might be a few surprises yet to happen in this cycle, and it is always important to remember that nothing in politics is absolutely certain. But if the reported public polls, already in their countdown mode, continue to reveal a widening gap between the parties, this year’s election will not be that close.
Barry Casselman is a contributor for AMAC Newsline.
