The 2024 Election Will Probably Come Down to the Wire
Bubba
18 Sep
It’s not your imagination — presidential contests really are getting tighter. (The Liberal Patriot)
Chart: The Liberal Patriot
The numbers: The 2024 presidential election polls are the closest on record, with Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by only 2-3 points nationally.
No candidate has held a lead larger than 5 points since polling began for this cycle, a first since Gallup started tracking presidential polls in 1936.
Trump won the 2016 election by just 77,744 votes across three key swing states, while President Biden’s 2020 victory came down to 42,918 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.
The trend: From 1900-1996, 12 out of 25 presidential elections saw a popular vote margin greater than 10 points, while five of the six elections since 2000 have been decided by less than 5 points.
The number of competitive Electoral College states has dwindled: just eight are considered battlegrounds in 2024, down from an average of 28 competitive states in the late 20th century.
In 1992, 32 states were decided by fewer than 10 points, but that figure dropped to just 14 in 2020.
Political analyst Michael Baharaeen on a big reason this is happening:
It wasn’t that long ago that voters were still willing to split their tickets to back candidates of both parties for different offices on the same ballot. This kept the map of presidential battlegrounds much larger and more competitive for both parties. …
But a decades-long realignment between the two parties around education level and geographic place hit full stride following Obama’s first election and has ossified in subsequent years. Suddenly, states like Kentucky and Tennessee, whose voters are more working-class, culturally conservative, and rural-dwelling, began voting less Democratic. Meanwhile, states like Colorado and Virginia—both of which voted for George W. Bush twice and are home to growing shares of bachelor degree-holders and higher levels of urbanization—moved away from Republicans and are today considered fairly reliable for Democrats.
Bubba’s Two Cents
All this reflects the growing partisan split and a deeper divide — social, cultural, educational — between red and blue America.
I’m not saying America’s going to fall apart anytime soon or we’re bound for civil war. But I do wonder what happens to a country when each side is so profoundly entrenched in its own corner, and there seem to be fewer and fewer areas of common agreement.