Election 2024: My 50-State Predictions

Will this be the fourth presidential election in a row for which I accurately predict the outcome in 48 (or more) states?

I'm never extremely confident this far out, and this time I'm less confident than usual. But I have standards, and two of them are:

• No waiting until the very last minute and just going with whatever the polls say; and
• No reservations with "toss-ups," etc. This is a "how I predict it will come out" statement, not a "how I think that maybe it might come out" statement. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong and I won't be able to come back and say "well, as you can see, I threw in a bunch of caveats so really I wasn't wrong."

Why I'm less confident and why I very well could be wrong on several "swing" states:

A lot can happen in 44 days. Harris could commit some exceptionally horrendous blunder that up-ends things. Trump could get his shit together and start running a credible ground game. One of the candidates could suffer a severe (or event the ultimate) negative health event, naturally or otherwise.

But let's get to the state by state map, which I drew up using 270 To Win's handy dandy tool:

As you can see, I predict that Kamala Harris will win all of the swing states: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. I'm least confident about Georgia, but that's my pick.

Why?

Harris the momentum. She has an enthused base that will turn out. She's raising tons of money to advertise to, and deploy a well-organized ground effort to reach, the theoretically "undecideds." I don't really believe true "undecideds" exist at this point, but that's irrelevant: The ads and ground game will enthuse those "leaning" her way to actually vote, while depressing those who "lean" toward Trump and making them wonder if it's worth the bother.

She's in the driver's seat. Yes, she could wreck the car, but she has the wheel.

Trump doesn't. He's not out there convincing anyone who hasn't been convinced for years already, and he's lost a lot of those who were previously convinced in 2016 and/or 2020. It doesn't seem likely that he's about to become newly persuasive, and he's apparently handed his Get Out The Vote effort off to novices with neither the motivation to e.g. walk precincts and knock on doors nor the institutional connections to get others to do that for them.

Mean tweets and increasingly deranged public rants won't lose Trump's remaining base for him -- but that base is smaller than it used to be, and mean tweets and increasingly deranged public rants won't re-grow it.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is having to pull out all stops just to hold lower offices in "Trump-safe" states like Florida (where US Senator Rick Scott is ahead of, but flirting with margin of error versus, Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and there are ballot issues likely to increase Democratic turnout) and Texas (where US Senator Ted Cruz is neck and neck with Democratic challenger Colin Allred). That's money and effort that can't be used in those swing states.

Yeah, I may be wrong on a state or two. But I doubt it. And I don't expect to be wrong by the 51 electoral votes it would take to put Trump rather than Harris in the Oval Office.