We’re hearing a lot of buzz these days about how this coming presidential election is like none we’ve ever seen before. For the first time ever, a sitting president suffers a disastrous debate performance and drops out of the race just weeks before his party’s convention. For the first time in more than a half-century, a major-party candidate wins the nomination without entering, let alone winning, a single state primary. For the first time in more than a century, a defeated former president wins the nomination for the third successive time. One candidate is a biracial woman, the other is a rapist, convicted felon, and repeatedly indicted perpetrator of a failed coup. We’ve seen a couple of assassination attempts, various sordid schemes to sabotage state and local election certification processes, and a hospice-bound centenarian former president aspiring to live long enough to cast a final vote.
And to boot, this promises to be a really close election. Even numbers guru Nate Silver says he’s never seen a race this close.
However, the Toteboard has (of course) an alternative perspective. The upcoming election is not really unique, or even new. In fact, we’ve all been here before. Twice. That is to say, for all of the bizarre circumstances framing this contest and occurring in its wake, the 2024 election is actually replicating the patterns, both narrative and numerical, that were already established in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Don’t believe it? Well, here are the details:
The Players:
The Republicans. This is not a hard one. This is the third straight election where the republicans have nominated Donald Trump. Yes, he has grown increasingly more delusional, more predatory, and more sociopathic, but he is still the same blustering crybaby, running on the same volatile mix of white grievance, xenophobia, and unsophisticated economic populism that he did twice before. Side note: After the last eight years, any people still voting for such a deranged motherfucker just to get a few more bucks in their wallets, or to prevent a few poor or under-educated women from getting abortions, or to drive a few immigrant families out of their communities – well, the Toteboard is totally comfortable labeling such people “deplorable.”
The Democrats. This one is more interesting. Though the 2016, 2020, and 2024 nominees check different demographic boxes, and took completely different routes to their respective nominations, they share a noteworthy trio of specific top-lines on their respective resumes:
They are all former senators.
They all represented deep-blue coastal states.
They all have or had top positions in previous democratic administrations.
These may seem like pretty common qualifications for a presidential nominee to possess, but in fact, no other democratic presidential candidate could boast all three of these qualifications: Not Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 (not 2 or 3), not John Kerry in 2004 (not 3), not Al Gore in 2000 (not 2), not Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 (none), not Mike Dukakis in 1988 (not 1 or 3), not Walter Mondale in 1984 (not 1 or 2), not Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980 (none), not George McGovern in 1972 (not 2 or 3), not Hubert Humphrey in 1968 (not 2), not Lyndon Johnson in 1964 (not 2), not John Kennedy in 1960 (not 3), not Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 (not 1 or 2), not Harry Truman in 1948 (not 2), not Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944 (not 1 or 3). We could go back further, though there really were no “deep-blue coastal states” even a half-century ago, so it would be kind of a pointless exercise. Nevertheless, this illustrates that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris all present/presented remarkably similar political vitae. They all have/had a combination of upper-chamber legislative experience and upper-level federal presidential administrative experience, which of course comes with both political gravitas and political baggage. And for better or worse, they all are/were firmly entrenched in the “coastal elite” wing that now dominates the democratic party.
What’s more, again for all their differences, Clinton, Biden, and Harris all ultimately appeal/appealed to what is more or less the same contemporary democratic coalition, i.e., the sometimes uneasy melting pot of urban professionals and intellectuals, African-Americans and other POC’s, women and young people, moderate suburbanites, and what’s left of the more traditional connections to organized labor. In the long run, the three only differ from one another at the margins.
And so in terms of the narrative, we have the same candidates, or at least the same types of candidates, from both parties. And so it should come as no surprise that they basically have the same voters as they did the last two times around.
The Numbers:
While the number-crunchers anticipate that the upcoming election will be uniquely close, they all seem to have forgotten that the 2016 election was already outrageously close – it’s just that the pollsters fucked up so badly, that no one (except maybe Silver) knew it at the time. They also seem to have forgotten that because of more polling misses and the severe electoral college bias, Biden’s 2020 victory actually had to wait for excruciating nail-biting late counts in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In other words, we have already been through two really close races; we just weren’t expecting them, and then got blindsided when they hit.
In retrospect, how close were those two races to each other? Well, Clinton’s national popular vote margin in 2016 was 2.1%, while Biden’s in 2020 was 4.5%. That’s not a whole lot, really, but that slim margin made the difference in five key states – the five states that gave the 2016 election to Trump and the 2020 election to Biden. And there’s no reason to think that things will line up differently this time around. A democratic popular vote margin close to 2% will probably turn the electoral tide to Trump; a margin closer to 4.5% will probably turn it to Harris. And where are the national polls right now? Pretty much smack-dab in the middle (of course). In their analyses of multiple polls, the Silver Bulletin (as of this writing) shows Harris by 3.1% (with a predicted final margin of 2.5%), Race to the WH also shows Harris by 3.1% (but with a predicted final margin of 3.3%), and the NYT’s Nate Cohn (who doesn’t show fractional points) shows Harris by 3%. If things keep going at this rate – and there’s no indication that they won’t – we’re looking at an election that can best be understood as a combination (if not exactly a replication) of the previous two. To that, the Toteboard has only two words. Oy vey.
We can see this dynamic even more vividly when we look at the seven key swing states. The following chart identifies the state-by-state margins in 2016 and 2020, the average of those margins, and the margins currently predicted by the Silver Bulletin (SB) and Race to the WH (R2WH), based on their analyses of polls, voting history, the economy, and other regional “fundamentals.” Nate Cohn’s numbers are not included because they currently include only polls, not more complex analyses.
| 2016 | 2020 | Average | SB | R2WH |
Arizona | R 3.50 | D 0.30 | R 1.60 | R 1.80 | R 0.67 |
Georgia | R 5.13 | D 0.23 | R 2.45 | R 1.20 | R 0.60 |
Michigan | R 0.23 | D 2.78 | D 1.28 | D 1.50 | D 1.76 |
Nevada | D 2.42 | D 2.39 | D 2.41 | D 1.30 | D 1.66 |
N. Carolina | R 3.66 | R 1.38 | R 2.52 | R 1.10 | R 0.97 |
Pennsylvania | R 0.72 | D 1.16 | D 0.22 | D 0.90 | D 1.24 |
Wisconsin | R 0.77 | D 0.73 | R 0.02 | D 1.20 | D 1.47 |
What this indicates is that taken collectively, the pollsters and analysts currently show all seven key states as tracking very, very closely to the averages of the previous two elections. Tracking very closely, and tracking with very narrow margins. In fact, most of them are tracking within a single point of the previous two elections, and all are projecting margins of victory within two percentage points.
Again, this looks to be very familiar, and very tight. And very crazy-making.
In the interest of due diligence, and to keep purveyors of Xanax and other benzodiazepines in business, the Toteboard is obligated to ask if it’s possible that the pollsters will be off by as much next month as they were in 2016 and 2020? Let’s not forget that they seriously underestimated the republican vote in the “blue firewall” states by similar margins in the last two cycles: in Michigan by 4.5% in 2016 and 5.2% in 2020, in Wisconsin by 6.3% in 2016 and 7.7% in 2020, in Pennsylvania by 3.9% in 2016 and 3.5% in 2020. So of course, it's certainly possible, and it's a possibility that is no doubt keeping pollsters and democrats awake at night. Needles to say, if that’s the case again, we are all seriously fucked. Still, the Toteboard thinks it’s more likely that they’ve gotten their shit together since then and learned how to analyze their samples more comprehensively – or at least, the Toteboard is holding on to that hope in order to preserve its own sanity. Either way, that’s our story, and we’re sticking with it.
The Bottom Line:
So where does this leave us with the election less than a month away? Well, if you’re hoping for a sign from this post that the election is moving steadily toward a happy resolution, the Toteboard can offer no such words of reassurance. All indicators are that we are locked in an astonishingly close race, echoing the dynamics of the previous two races, with few signs of day-to-day movement. That is, as of today, it really could go either way, and it probably won’t go either way by very much. Let’s just hope that enough of this bitterly divided electorate – enough late-deciders, fence-sitters, politically disengaged citizens, and even sane republicans (what few there are left) – eventually come to their senses and collectively proclaim that they won’t get fooled again.
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