Trump Vs Harris: Will White People Determine Outcome?

The 2024 US election will be decided by white men and white women.

Hear me out.

1. There are six battleground states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia.

2. In 2020, Joe Biden won these states, but the margin of victory in all of them was less than a combined 250,000 votes.

3. In 2020, exit polls from these states showed that the number one issue for the majority of voters was COVID-19. They wanted a president who could handle the pandemic, and according to the exit polls, the economy did not matter as much.

4. So, given the above, if there had been no COVID-19, would the election results have remained the same? No one knows. In 2024, according to almost all polls, the economy is the number one issue among voters.

5. Now, let us talk about the white vote.

6. In 2016, 33% of the voters were white men. Donald Trump won this group by 30 points.

7. In 2016, white women comprised 41% of the electorate. Donald Trump won this group by 2 points against Hillary Clinton.

8. In 2020, Trump won the white male vote by 17 points against Joe Biden.

9. In 2020, Trump won the white women vote by 7 points against Biden.

10. Now it gets interesting when you focus on the swing states. Remember the tyranny of numbers?

11. In Wisconsin, 43% of the voters are white men and 43% are white women. According to 2020 exit polls, Trump won the white male vote by 17 points. Biden did well with white women and won by 5 points. If Trump beat Hillary Clinton, a white woman, by 17 points, do you think Kamala Harris will do better? If Trump matches his 2016 national average with white men (30 points), he will win Wisconsin.

12. In Michigan, 37% of the voters are white men, and 43% are white women. In 2020, Trump won the white men vote by 21 points and the white women vote by 2 points. Again, if he returns to 2016 margins, he will win Michigan.

13. In Pennsylvania, 38% of the voters are white men and 43% are white women. Trump won the white men vote by 15 points in 2020 and the white women vote by 5 points. Now you know what could happen…again, the margins will determine the winner.

14. In Georgia, white men and the black vote cancel each other out (29% white men and 29% black). Then you are left with white women and Hispanic voters (7%). Trump won white women by 35 points in 2020. See where this is likely to go again?

15. From the above, COVID-19 slowed down Trump’s margins in 2020. Will the assassination attempt in 2024 motivate the white voters, especially white men?

16. If Trump wins Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin (assuming he keeps all the other states he won in 2020), he will have 272 electoral votes. Kamala Harris will win if she defends the swing states Biden won in 2020.

17. There is renewed enthusiasm towards Kamala Harris. However, if you look at polls in swing states, the direction of the race has not changed. According to swing states poll of polls by Decision Desk and RealClear Politics, Kamala Harris is still running behind in those battleground states.

18. At a similar time in 2020, Joe Biden was ahead by 8 points in national polls. Clinton was also ahead in 2016. In both contests, the final result showed that Trump’s numbers in the polls had been understated by ~3.1 points. In addition, if Trump is statistically tied with Harris in national polls, that should tell you he will win the Electoral College vote (you have to factor in states like California and New York which are highly populated and vote blue in large numbers). There is a good article on Five Thirty Eight explaining how this works.

19. Does the Vice Presidential nominee alter the race? No one knows, but we can look to history. In 2012, Mitt Romney selected Paul Ryan, a then-popular Republican, to be his running mate. Ryan is from Wisconsin, and when the results were tallied, Romney did not win in Ryan’s congressional district. In Kenya, Jeremiah Kioni was Musalia Mudavadi’s running mate. You know the number of votes Mudavadi received in Kioni’s polling station.

20. There are 99 days to go to Election Day. In states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, early voting starts in September