If the US presidential election were held today–Look at what the Young Spectator will do

  The US presidential election remains inconclusively close.  But it still favors Donald Trump.

However, as political scientist E.E. Schattschneider  once declared, look at role of the audience or the undecided voter when it comes to political fights or elections. In this election, it may come down to the youth voters who decide the election and who are notoriously difficult to poll. 

As has been the case for well over a year, the 2024 presidential election has come down to six swing states where 150,000 to 200,000 voters will decide the electoral college outcome.  The electorate is polarized and there are few voters to persuade or move.  Polls suggest a close race. As of September 30, Harris is leading in three of the swing states. Trump is leading in three of the swing states. But the margins of their leads ranges from one-tenth of a point for Harris in Pennsylvania to a two point lead for Trump in Arizona.  Most of the polls being done have margins of error ranging from two to four points, while  indicating approximately two percent of the voters described as likely to cast a ballot  who are undecided. 

What we know is that polls indicate a that Trump is favored in terms of his handling of the economy and immigration, both of which are listed as important, if not the most important, issues in 2024.  His supporters have been loyal and enthusiastic for him from the start, and there is no question they will show up to vote for him. 

Additionally, among those few voters who list themselves as undecided, generally 60% vote against the incumbent.  That is, if they vote. In 2024 Harris is viewed as the incumbent.  A majority of Americans also do not like the direction the country is headed. Put all this together, these numbers and trends favor Donald Trump. 

Conversely, Harris has many things operating in her favor.  She has largely, but not completely, overcome the enthusiasm gap that stymied Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. She has an incredible amount of money and a cash advantage over Donald Trump to be able to  get out the vote, advertising, and other electoral matters. She has the abortion issue on her side, which is tremendously important to many college educated suburban women, as well as many other voters, Harris has picked up increasing support among Latinos and African Americans.  All of this suggests movement in the right direction for her, and some polls suggest that she would squeak out a narrow electoral college victory.

But the real challenge in this election is with younger voters, those under the age of 30.  They are much less likely to vote than those over the age of 30.  While Joe Biden's was in the race, they were unenthusiastic to vote for him. With Taylor Swift's endorsement of Vice President Harris, we've seen some evidence of increased voter registration among younger voters.  Most evidence suggests that celebrity endorsements have at best marginal impact on voters but Taylor Swift could very well be different in terms of her impact.  Additionally, this could be an election where reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, and perhaps other matters of concern to voters under the age of 30 might drive them yet again to the ballot in ways pollster do not see.

But it is difficult for pollsters to capture this group of voters in polling.  Survey research wants to determine who a likely voter is. If you have not voted before or just turned 18, for example, polling you or assessing you as a likely voter is problematic and it is possible that the polls are not capturing these younger voters. They are the audience or the bystanders in a political fight.

EE Schattschneider once stated that what the audience or what the bystander does, determines the outcome of political fights, in this case, an election.  What we don't know is whether these younger voters will go from being audience or bystanders who are currently not reflected in the polls to participants and voters in the 2024 election in the critical swing states that will decide the outcome.

Profit-Driven Polling and the 2024 Election

 

Yet again this election cycle, polling and the polls are a major controversy. The issue is that the polls are all over the map, or again, will be simply wrong, as allegedly, they were both in 2016 2020 and even in 2022 during the midterm elections. The real problem with the polls is not their accuracy. Instead, it is a misunderstanding of the purpose of polls and the problem of profit-driven polling.

Recent polls,  as reported  on sites such as Real Clear Politics, especially those after the September 10 Trump Harris debate, seem to be all over the place. Some national polls have Trump up by three, some have Harris up by four, with others offering different margins. This has led some to conclude that this year will again be a mess for polling.

The problem with polling lies both in misunderstanding what polls are meant to do and in the motives for the polling. First, remember that polls are snapshots in time. They are not predictors. Polling is not some type of model that inexorably declares or states what will happen on November 5 this year. Polls merely tell us on any given day what some individuals think about some subject, such as, who they likely to vote for President.

Many black swans, October surprises, or unknown unknowns have already happened in the 2024 race, and many more could still occur, thereby impacting the final voting decisions of  voters regarding whether they will vote and for who,  Ascertaining who is likely to vote, which is critical to polling, is not easily predictable and subject to some guesses and some polls and pollsters are better or worse at doing that.

That is the second point to remember. There are some polls that are more accurate, and some with more biases or inaccuracies over time. Casting all polls as of equal value is inappropriate, and one needs to think about good versus bad.

A third issue is interpreting the margin of error. Most polls indicate a specific number in terms of polling results, such as the recent ABC/IPSOs poll indicating among likely voters Harris has a 52% to 46% lead over Trump, with a margin of error of plus or minus two precent. This is a small margin of error. But for many polls these margins seem to range from three to four to five points. In part the margins of error reflect many polls using small samples to reach their conclusions. But to say that somebody has a one- or two-point lead, according to a poll, with a margin of error of three to four points tells us very little. It could be that one candidate has a larger lead or a smaller lead than thought, or that with such a margin of error, the other person could be winning,

Deciding about who is ahead or who is behind, based on one poll is insufficient. It fails to provide evidence of trends. Even if more than one poll is used but if the results in them are both within margins of error, it still may not be enough to establish a trend.

Polls also have confidence levels. Confidence levels refer to the issue of accuracy and sampling certainty. These are questions regarding from a mathematical or statistical perspective, how likely a sample of respondents might mirror a larger population. Most standard polls have a confidence level of .05, or 95% certainty. This means that even on the best days, there is a one in twenty chance that the poll will just be wrong. But sometimes polls, to save money, reduce the sample size of those surveyed, thereby reducing the confidence level.

There is then another problem where some websites or aggregators average out the different polls and to give some type of composite number with the belief that their average is more accurate. Statistically, this is not sound practice. Such composites average good and bad polls together, with different methodologies, dates, and questions. One cannot really average them together.

Finally, when it comes to polling, especially national polls for the presidency, ignore them all. We do not elect presidents by national popular vote, and national polls do not tell us anything about what' is going to happen in the six or seven swing states that will decide the election. Here it is 150,000 to 200,000 voters that would be decisive, and polling cannot be done easily at this level of granularity.

But beyond all these methodological misinterpretations of polling, there is a bigger problem, and that is profit driven polling. It is the habit of some organizations to do repeated polling to make their polls the new stories of the day, as opposed to covering the campaigns or examining the public policy issues that the candidates are espousing. Profit-driven polling is meant to create a horse race and to focus on who is ahead or who is behind.

Profit-driven polling is not about providing accurate reporting of public opinion, but about making money, or in some cases, organizations releasing polls to confuse or impact public opinion. It is possible that the misunderstandings among many journalists or websites regarding polls is simply a consequence of what polling can and cannot do. But it is also possible that all this misunderstanding is more intentional in terms of seeking to maximize profits from polling.

Tim Walz, JD Vance, and the Myth of the Midwest

 What is the Midwest of the United States? 

When presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala

Harris selected JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Walz of Minnesota as their vice president candidates they did so in part because the Midwest, specifically Wisconsin and Michigan, is a strategic battleground for the presidency. The belief was that a Midwesterner from one state would appeal to voters across all the Midwest.  Arguably, Midwest values and appeals will be on display October 1, during the vice-presidential debate which, oddly, will be held in New York City and not Detroit or Milwaukee.

Somewhere along the way someone needs to explain to the east coast that there is not one Midwest. Instead, it is twelve separate states, and placing a debate in NYC is perhaps not the smartest way to demonstrate empathy for the Midwest voter.

There is a classic New Yorker Magazine cover depicting everything west of the Hudson River as flyover territory. We in the Midwest are one land of corn and soybeans, or at one point, cars, steel, iron, and manufacturing. The myth of the Midwest in part, is crafted by American folklore. Maybe it is Willa Cather’s O’Pioneers, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, Philipp Meyer’s American Rust, or even Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer or Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. These books evoke a literary Midwest ethos that for many geographically merges my part of the world together. Some might even place JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy within this literary genus. Yet a more than cursory review reveals broad diversity across among these states and people these books depict. George Babbitt is not the same person as Tom Sawyer.

The US Census Bureau defines the Midwest as that geographic area west of the Appalachians, east of the Rockies, and bordered by the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers. It is twelve separate states broken into two regions. But even this definition is not fixed. Pennsylvania, by Census Bureau standards, is not the Midwest. Yet in appointing Walz or Vance, both Harris and Trump seem to have forgotten that. Parts of Pennsylvania west of the Appalachians seem Midwest to some. But certainly, the eastern part of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are on the East Coast. Many in Minnesota view Michigan as back east because it is in a different time zone, and few in South or North Dakota consider Appalachia Midwest.

The Midwest is more than geography. It is politics and political values, and each state is different. Minnesota is as liberal as Ohio has become conservative. Some may see no difference between Minnesota and Wisconsin. For years I taught a class comparing Minnesota and Wisconsin politics and drew contrasts. Since the 1970s the two states have moved politically and economically in different directions and have adopted different perspectives on a variety of issues ranging anywhere from abortion, welfare reform, social welfare policy, and education. We are different not just because we cheer for the Vikings or the Packers.

Each state in the Midwest is a blend of immigration patterns colliding with its geography and economy to produce a unique political culture. But even within each state, there is diversity. Rural Minnesota is to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul as Detroit is to the Upper Peninsula. Or Madison, Wisconsin is to the northern part of that state. Franklin County Ohio votes far differently than Hamilton County Ohio. In 2022 Tim Walz won only twelve of Minnesota's 87 counties when he was reelected as governor. The counties he won were urban, the counties he lost were mostly rural. To think that Walz would appeal to other Midwesterners is naive. He does not even appeal to all Minnesotans—only 52% voted for him.

 

There is no one undivided Midwest. It is a myth. Each state has its own politics, and there is a need to appreciate that politically and geographically, and not campaign in a cookie cutter fashion. As the 2024 Presidential election reaches fever pitch, and Trump and Harris concentrate on a few swing states in the Midwest. They need to remember that there is not one single Midwest and there is not one atypical Midwest voter.

As Scranton goes, so goes the American presidential election yet again

  

In 2024 Lackawanna County will again be the decisive bellwether county that determines whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be president.

The media and the presidential campaigns are focused this year on the six or seven swing states that will decide the presidential election. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris each have their respective safe states that will vote for them, but neither of them has wrapped up enough electoral votes to win the election.

 In the past Maine, Missouri, and Ohio have been the critical swing or bellwether states that decided presidential elections. Within those states powerful swing counties stood out. Whichever candidate won a county in that state would go on to win that state in the presidential election.

For years, Hamilton County, Ohio was the bellwether. Win Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, meant that one would win Ohio. Were one to win Ohio, one would win the presidency. But demographics and politics have changed. Lackawanna County has replaced Hamilton County as the most important battleground in the country.

Historically, Lackawanna County voted for Democrats for president. It was working class, union, and manufacturing. As late as 2012 Barack Obama won the county over Mitt Romney, 63%, to 36%. But then the economy changed. The factories closed down. Union jobs exited and mining ended. The political base of the Democratic Party eroded, and workers did not see them helping enough.

The Democratic party moved to the left on many social issues alienating those unemployed workers who used to vote for them. Today, Lackawanna County sits to the political right of where the Democrats are, and to the political left of where the Republicans are. It is a true swing county that is a bellwether of Pennsylvania and national politics.

Eight years ago, in August of 2016 I argued that Lackawanna County was key to that presidential election. If Trump were to win the county or to get close, he would go on to win Pennsylvania. Were he to win Pennsylvania, he would go on to win the presidency

In 2016 Hilary Clinton—whose family roots were in the county—won the county, but with barely 50% of the vote; down 13% from Obama's 2012 victory. Trump won 47% of the vote. He got close in Lackawanna County, went on to win Pennsylvania, and went on to win the presidency. All this as predicted.

Joe Biden, a native also of Scranton, in 2020 went on to win Lackawanna with 54% of the vote, while Trump dropped to a little over 45% of the vote. Biden then went on to win Pennsylvania, and eventually the presidency.

In 2024, it is not clear by how much Kamala Harris must win Lackawanna County to repeat the performance of Biden and avoid the loss by Clinton. She certainly needs to win decisively more than 50% and hope that Trump does not improve upon his 2020 numbers. It is doubtful that Tim Walz or JD Vance, two Midwesterners, resonate with undecided voters in Scranton.

Were I advising Harris or Trump, I would tell them to frame your issues and your campaign pitches in such a way to win over the disaffected, undecided voters in Scranton. In a polarized political America, they are at the center and torn between two parties that do not speak to them. The voters there will again this year decide who wins Pennsylvania and who wins the presidency.