What’s Really Going on with the Presidential Election?

Spoiler alert: It’s close

That’s the big question everyone wants to know.

Debates about polls, (un)popularity, and every other hot election topic is ultimately about who is ahead.

The short answer is: it’s too early to know and all signs point to a close election. I know that’s not super insightful or satisfying, but it’s the truth.

Electoral College Landscape 

Ultimately the Presidential election is a race to get 270 electoral votes out of 538. Barring a major shift in one direction, 445 electoral votes are pretty safe either red or blue, Biden with 226 and Trump at 219.

That means just 93 electoral votes will decide the election. Whoever wins the right combination of roughly half of these seven battleground states will win the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Biden and Trump arguably each have slight edges in particular states, with others being true tossups.

If I had to make an educated guess, Biden has an edge right now in Pennsylvania and Michigan, while Trump is ahead in North Carolina and Georgia. That would get Biden to 260 and Trump to 251.

The remaining too close to call states would be Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin with 27 electoral votes. Biden would only need to win one of either Arizona or Wisconsin, while Trump would need to win both. Nevada wouldn’t necessarily decide things in this scenario.

Given the electoral math, it is easy to see why things are close. Biden may have the ever so slight edge in terms of needing to win fewer battlegrounds, but only by a hair.

Polling 

Much of today’s election analysis is driven by an obsessive focus on the minutia of polling. Polls are important, but they are only one metric.

To begin with, the popular vote won’t decide the election, as we saw in 2016, so national polls are of limited value. State polling is scarce at this point, particularly from high quality pollsters.

Polling has famously had a mixed record in recent years tending to overestimate Biden’s support in 2020 and underestimating Democratic support in 2022.

With all that said, just going off the polls points to Trump having a narrow edge right now. Take that for what it’s worth, especially given polls are a snap shot in time.

Resources

The Biden campaign has trumpeted both their financial advantage and their superior ground game. This will allow Biden to air more ads and hit more doors in the crucial battleground states.

These things are of course important and can give the edge in a close election. At the same time, they are not everything and does not mean the candidate with more resources always wins.

After all, Clinton also enjoyed these advantages in 2016 and we all know how that ended. At the same time, big resource advantages helped rocket Obama to victory in 2008 and 2012.

Ultimately, the edge on resources goes to Biden, but it alone is not decisive.

Vibes

Much of the punditry is also driven by vibes about Biden and Trump with questionable evidence to support assertions.

Surely Trump will lose support at his legal troubles play out and the election gets closer, right?

Of course Biden will lose substantial support from young voters given his age and their general dissatisfaction with politics?

Maybe, but the polling is all over the place on some of these issues. The use of “cross-tabs” or vaguely worded questions often leads to big claims based on limited polling data.

Be wary of grandiose assertion without a strong basis in anything other than vibes. Often these are attempts drive a narrative or act as if the outcome is already clear when it isn’t.

Known Uknowns

Perhaps the biggest thing we know is there is a lot that we don’t know yet.

What is going to happen with Trump’s legal issues? What is going to happen in Gaza and the broader Middle East? Is there going to be another surprise we aren’t even aware of?

There is really no way to predict all these things and then factor it into the ultimate analysis.

In 2008, the bottom did not really fall out of the economy until a few weeks before the election, leading to Obama’s landslide victory. In 2016, the infamous Comey letter dropped only days before the election, shifting focus from the Access Hollywood tape to Clinton’s emails.

That’s why I mainly say it is too early to know at this point and we will only get more clarity closer to the election.

The Status Quo

But assuming things are broadly the way they are right now, the election will be close. That is what the data and fundamentals are pointing to and there is really no way of knowing what will happen in November until the campaign plays out.

If you are reading this, you are likely an outlier in that you are highly interested in politics. Many more Americans prefer to tune it out and focus on other things.

Most voters start to pay attention typically around when the party conventions happen in late summer. So by all means, try to figure out what’s going on in the presidential election, but it might be too early to really know.