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Trails of Trouble, Roads of Battle: Kamala's Paths of Victory

We are now two weeks away from the 2024 presidential election, and not a whole lot has changed since the previous Toteboard. Although things may have moved just a tick in Trump's direction, we still basically have seven very close states that will decide it all, with no clear favorite yet emerging in any one of them. It really is quite extraordinary, and quite extraordinarily tense.

 

More concretely, Harris is leading, more or less comfortably, in nineteen states plus DC and that funky single Nebraska district, for a total of 226 electoral votes. Trump has the lead in 24 states and that oddball Maine district, for a total of 219 electoral votes. Somehow, Kamala has to nudge her numbers up to 270, which is a slightly more difficult task since the reallocation of EV’s after the 2020 census. And so the question is, how can she do it? What are her most likely paths to victory?

 

An evening dust was rolling

I was walking down the track

There was a one-way wind a-blowing

It was blowing at my back

 

Plan A: The Traditional Route. Kamala's best shot is still the old stand-by, i.e., the so-called Blue Firewall triad of Michigan (15), Pennsylvania (19), and Wisconsin (10), which would bring things up to 270 EV's exactly. History is on her side here, sort of, as the democrats have won these three states in seven of the last eight presidential elections, thanks to longstanding party coalitions and a good ground game. But the big exception was when Trump flipped all three in 2016 – and while the polls have favored Harris ever so slightly by perhaps a point or two during most of this cycle, those numbers have been slowly trickling away from her to the point that they really do look dead even now.

 

The problem is that there are some significant kinks in Kamala’s armor – some of her own doing, more of them out of her control – and these are proving to be very difficult to smooth out. For instance, the sizeable Arab-American and Muslim-American populations of Michigan, who actually once had a republican historical lean, seem pretty intent on abandoning the democrats (including Jewish senate candidate Elissa Slotkin) this time around. Of course, it’s truly delusional if they imagine that Palestinians are somehow going to get a better shake from Trump, but it’s probably too late in the game to reverse that perception. Also troubling is evidence of continuing erosion of democratic support in Pennsylvania among some key groups, like Latino and working-class white males. Still, Harris is banking on strong turnout among her core constituencies and continuing inroads in the burbs. For better or worse, these three are still her best shot.

 

I walked down by the river

I turned my head up high

I saw the silver lining

It was hanging in the sky

 

Plan B: The Alternative Route. One modest advantage that Kamala seems to have over Trump (though this may be withering a bit) is that she actually does have a viable Plan B. If she happens to lose one state, or even two states, from the Blue Firewall, she could still theoretically make it up with a combination of southern and southwestern states, all of which are also polling very, very close: Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Arizona (11), and Nevada (6). In terms of the math alone, she could lose, say Wisconsin, and make it up with just one of these four (excluding Nevada). If she loses Michigan or Pennsylvania, she could make it up with Georgia or North Carolina, or both Arizona and Nevada (the latter of which seems to be tilting a bit blue). And though it’s a heavier lift, it’s not unthinkable that she could even compensate for a loss of two from the Firewall. For instance, she could lose Wisconsin and either Michigan or Pennsylvania, and still win if she can knock off two of the AZ/GA/NC triad. There are actually still quite a few more combinations to consider, but the Toteboard has probably taxed those with math (and election) anxiety enough already.

 

Of course, Harris has her work cut out in the southern and southwestern states as well, again for some initially unanticipated reasons. In particular, it’s utterly mind-boggling that many Black male voters are considering casting their lots with a racist demagogue who consorts with white supremacists, rather than risk feeling emasculated by a successful Black woman giving the orders, but that’s the reality in which we dwell. Actually, it’s not just a “Black thing” or a “guy thing” – in a recent survey, an astonishing 20% of Georgia voters of both genders acknowledged feeling uneasy about the prospect of a woman president, while more than a third of republicans think a woman president would be a bad thing for the country (yes, you heard right). And it doesn’t help that Trump is making inroads among disaffected minimum-wage male Gen Z-ers, many of whom feel liberated by the rebranding of toxic masculinity as a good thing. Anyway, these battles are indeed afoot.

 

An evening train was rolling

The humming of the wheels

My eyes they saw better days

I looked across the fields

 

The Best Laid Plans. The funny thing about all this is that it’s possible – perhaps even likely – that neither of these orchestrated paths will ultimately match up exactly with the final state-by-state results. According to Nate Silver’s latest daily simulations, Harris’s chance of carrying the Blue Firewall but losing the other four battleground states is only around 2%. Her chance of carrying the Firewall plus Nevada is marginally higher at around 3%. In other words, just because the polls and analyses of the polls show the race to be astonishingly close, it doesn’t mean that the results will actually be that close. It just means that the results will be unpredictable. All it takes is a slight (or larger) systematic polling error, or a late national movement toward the democrats, and Harris wins all seven states (currently a decent 16% possibility), but a slight error or movement in the other direction means Trump wins all seven states (a horrifying 25% possibility). Yes, the baseline will almost certainly change minute by minute as new polls appear over the next two weeks, but the point is an important one. The specific plans/paths articulated above definitely help us understand the electoral math in real time, and tell us when we can start celebrating (or freaking out), but they are not necessarily templates for the final tally. And yes, the Toteboard does realize that this sort of challenges the thesis of the previous post. But hey, welcome to the world of statistics.

 

One of the big mysteries is always how the swing states will or will not correlate with one another, and that’s pretty much what keeps election analysts on their respective payrolls. If the undecideds in Wisconsin start breaking late in one direction, is there any reason to think those in Arizona will do the same? Maybe, but maybe not. It’s certainly easier to make predictions when we’re talking about similar demographics, e.g., the educated and professional classes in the big southern college metros of North Carolina and Georgia, or the white rural voters in mid-western Pennsylvania and Michigan. But then we also have to be on the lookout for a fair share of surprises, like a spike in turnout in one area, or a local ballot measure influencing the vote in another, or simply a specific constituency – ethnic, religious, generational, etc. – unexpectedly breaking from its previous voting patterns. In any event, the swing states really are seven completely separate contests, at least in terms of the electoral math, but they may be seven separate contests that ultimately track closely with one another. Or maybe only some will track closely with one another. Is your head exploding yet?

 

So however we slice the potatoes, we are in for an intense two weeks, and (probably) an even more intense election night. In the meantime, get out and vote, and goose your friends and relatives to do the same. And make phone calls, and write postcards, and call in every last favor, recite every last prayer, send out every last wave of psychic energy. Our country, and the world, depend on it.

 

The trail is dusty

My road it might be rough

But the better road’s awaiting

And boys it ain’t far off

 

Trails of trouble

Roads of battle

We share the walk.

 

 

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