The Briefing, Vol. XII, Issue 45
Nov. 4, 2024
This week:
- Tomorrow is election day!
- Our final predictions
- Trump favored; Republican trifecta possible
Outlook
What follows is our election guide for following the results tomorrow. There will obviously be surprises and wrinkles that we have overlooked — in fact, we could be dramatically wrong about everything.
But what follows is a guide of what we expect and which outcomes to look for. You can follow along by the time each state’s polls close and adjust your expectations accordingly.
- We believe Donald Trump will secure approximately 297 electoral votes once the votes are counted, enough to return him to the White House. The following map sums up our expectations:
- In the Senate, we expect Republicans to win a majority of 53 seats, losing zero of their currently held seats and gaining Democratic seats in West Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Montana.
- In the House, we expect a net gain of approximately two seats for Republicans and the consequent retention of their small majority.
We will proceed chronologically, starting with states where the last polls close at…
7:00 pm EST
Georgia (16 electoral votes): Georgia voters do not register by party, so it is hard to read the tea leaves based on the early vote unless you possess massive amounts of information about the voters. The best that most people can do is judge based on where people are turning out and what racial information they give. For the most part, they are turning out much more heavily in Republican and rural areas, which is probably good news for Trump. Also, early voters are just ever so slightly more white than they were in 2022, when Gov. Brian Kemp (R) easily won re-election.
This is consistent with the large-scale effort that Republicans have put into regaining their edge in Georgia since the humiliating 2020 loss of Georgia’s electoral votes and both of its Senate seats.
Even so, the Trump and Harris campaigns know exactly who their voters are, even in states like Georgia (and Michigan, and Wisconsin), where there is no party registration. They pay a great deal of money and expend great effort to get information about those voters, then they push the ones to the polls that they know are on their team — first the least likely, then the most likely who haven’t already voted.
Elon Musk recently leaked what appears to be internal numbers about early turnout in several states as of Oct. 31. The numbers for some of those states are publicly available, but the Georgia numbers (if real) would have to be proprietary. If there is anything to them, then Republicans had shifted Georgia’s early electorate from a 121,000 deficit in 2020 to a 320,000 vote advantage as of Saturday. If that is even remotely true, then it’s game over for Harris in Georgia.
Then again, it could have been just any old spreadsheet with no basis in reality that Musk leaked. We are not going to make predictions based on such a thing.
But either way, we view Biden’s extremely narrow 2020 win in Georgia as an aberration, something he barely pulled off in a uniquely favorable environment. We do not think Harris is capable of replicating it. We believe that the state’s voters will correct their error this time, although the call will be made later in the evening.
On the other hand, if Harris wins here, it’s an early sign that she is probably on her way to a win.
There are no important statewide races.
Expected House tally: 9R, 5D (no change)
Indiana (11 electoral votes): Donald Trump will win here easily.
Mike Braun (R) will win for governor.
Jim Banks (R) will keep Braun’s U.S. Senate seat in Republican hands.
Expected House tally: 7R-2D (no change)
Remarks: The historically Democratic but potentially Trumpy First District in Northwestern Indiana is the most competitive House district. With 44.8 percent, Trump received more of the vote in this district in 2020 than any Republican in modern memory. Rep. Frank Mrvan (D) should still survive against Randy Niemeyer (R).
Kentucky (8 electoral votes): Trump will win the Bluegrass State going away. No important statewide or House races.
Expected House tally: 5R-1D (no change).
South Carolina (9 electoral votes): Easy win for Trump. No important statewide races.
Expected House tally: 6R-1D (no change)
Vermont (3 electoral votes): Kamala Harris all the way, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) will have no problems getting re-elected.
Gov. Phil Scott (R), however, is also on a glide-path to re-election.
Expected House tally: 1D (no change)
Virginia (13 electoral votes): It is no accident that Trump was in Salem, Va. on the Saturday before the election. His campaign believes (as does Harris’s) that he will finish within a couple of points in the Old Dominion. He could even win narrowly if Democratic turnout lags.
Republican regulars have been complaining that they don’t see Trump’s campaign knocking on doors in their neighborhoods, but that’s because it has instead been turning out 0-out-of-4 and one-out-of-4 voters through early voting in rural areas of states like Virginia, and doing so at much higher rates than in past elections. We don’t expect this to put Trump over the top tomorrow, but it could be part of a party-building process that makes Virginia competitive again within the next ten years.
A win for Trump in Virginia would almost guarantee him victory, since it would open up several additional pathways to the White House that don’t involve winning any of the so-called “Blue Wall” states.
We still expect Harris to win once the vote in Northern Virginia comes in, but it’s going to be close.
Senator (and sketch comedian) Tim Kaine (D) should win re-election against veteran Hung Cao (R).
Expected House tally: 6D-5R (no change)
7:30 pm EST
North Carolina (16 electoral votes): The polls here have been very close for weeks, but they almost uniformly give Trump a small edge. And there are three good reasons to think Trump will carry the state.
Harris, however, has spent a lot of time in North Carolina, even though she trails there in the polls by more than she does in Pennsylvania. There is some speculation that Harris’s campaign may have calculated at some point that she had better chances in North Carolina than Pennsylvania, but then she was set to spend Monday, Nov. 4 doing multiple rallies in Pennsylvania, so that may not be accurate.
We still expect Trump to carry North Carolina. Republicans, who carried the state for him twice, have swung the early vote modestly in their favor by about one point — which is unprecedented for Republicans, by the way — building an early turnout advantage of about 41,000 ballots. In contrast, they were far behind on this metric in 2022. And among the early voters, Republicans are turning out low propensity (both 0/2 and 0/4) voters early at rates comparable to the Democrats. So although their early-vote gains have not been as massive as they are in Pennsylvania or Nevada, Republicans in the Tar Heel State accomplished more than just cannibalizing their Election Day voters.
Finally, Trump has a history of outperforming his polls in this state by more than one percentage point. Why should we start believing the pollsters now?
Previously, Trump won North Carolina by 3.66 percentage points in 2016 and by 1.34 percentage points in 2020. The state was close in both instances, but in both instances, he outperformed the polls of the state, more in 2020 than in 2016. Republicans will also have the freedom to chase down and turn out more of their lowest-propensity voters on Election Day thanks to the uptick in their early voting program.
Down-ballot, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein (D) will easily defeat Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R), the self-described “Black Nazi,” for governor. Democrats, who attempted to force a judicial gerrymander on the state, will lose seats in the U.S. House this time around.
Expected House tally: 10R-4D (change of R+3)
Redistricting from a partisan Democratic court-ordered gerrymander will change the face of North Carolina’s congressional delegation from its current 7-7 tie.
Ohio (17 electoral votes): Twenty years ago, Ohio was the swing state par excellence. Even 12 years ago, it was still winnable for Democrats. Trump changed all that by changing the Republican Party into something with greater appeal to working-class Midwesterners with conservative cultural values.
The state GOP also happens to be a merciless turnout machine and one of America’s best state parties on either side.
Trump will win big, and we also expect businessman Bernie Moreno (R) to defeat incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D).
Expected House tally: 10R, 5D (No change)
West Virginia (4 electoral votes): Trump will win “bigly,” and Gov. Jim Justice (R) will take over the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D).
Expected House tally: 2R (no change)
8:00 pm EST
Alabama (9 electoral votes): Trump wins easily. No competitive statewide races.
Expected House tally: 2D, 5R (change of D+1)
Remarks: Democrats are favored to gain a seat in a new court-ordered black-majority district.
Connecticut (7 electoral votes): Harris will win and Sen. Chris Murphy (D) will be re-elected.
Expected House tally: 5D (no change)
Delaware (3 electoral votes): Harris wins, no competitive races.
Expected House tally
1D (no change)
Florida (30 electoral votes): As with Ohio, here’s another state that helps illustrate how much the world has changed since 2000. It also helps illustrate how not all states have drifted leftward — in fact, more of them have probably drifted rightward.
The 2000 Bush-Gore race in Florida came down to a margin of less than 550 votes. As a consequence of the recount debacle that followed, the state reformed and modernized its voting system to eliminate such absurd problems as hanging chads and to produce lightning-fast results on Election Night.
Simultaneously, the Republican Party of Florida (at the time led by Jeb Bush) began the process of building a party machine as powerful as any the nation has ever seen — a party that has repeatedly overperformed, winning nearly every close election since and relegating the state’s hapless Democrats to a state of persistent irrelevance.
Eventually, Republicans overtook Democrats in voter registration. Today, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 1 million. Today’s Florida is one of the reddest states in America, at least by some metrics. Since 2000, Democrats have won only three out of dozens of statewide elections. And it may come as little surprise, but their Hillary Clinton rallies for Harris in the final days are almost empty.
As of Monday morning, Republicans had banked an advantage of about 844,000 votes. This included an improvement of their lead in early balloting from 2016 in 66 out of the state’s 67 counties and, as in their blockbuster 2022 performance, led in Miami-Dade County.
Sen. Rick Scott (R) should handily defeat his challenger, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D), perhaps by more than the customary heart-attack margins of his previous three victorious statewide elections.
Keep an eye out for how the state’s abortion amendment performs — it needs 60 percent to pass, and it may not get it.
Expected House tally: 20R, 8D (no change)
Illinois (19 electoral votes): Harris wins big, no competitive statewide races.
Expected House tally: 3R-14D (no change)
Maine (2 statewide electoral votes plus 2 split by district): Trump will win the second congressional district and Harris the first. The statewide contest may be closer than people expect. Harris will still win, although it could take weeks to find out thanks to the state’s ranked-choice system, which will apply to the presidential race this year for the first time.
Sen. Angus King (Independent, Democrat in all but name) will be easily re-elected.
Expected House tally: 2D (no change)
Maryland (10 electoral votes): Harris wins easily. Angela Alsobrooks should handily defeat former Gov. Larry Hogan (R), keeping Ben Cardin’s senate seat in Democratic hands. Expected House tally: 1R-7D (no change)
Massachusetts (11 electoral votes): Harris wins, and so does Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D), whose unrealized gains tax Harris adopted for her campaign. Expected House tally: 9D (no change)
Mississippi (6 electoral votes): Trump wins. So does Sen. Roger Wicker (R).
Expected House tally: 3R-1D (no change)
Missouri (10 electoral votes): Here’s another formerly competitive state as of 2000 that just isn’t anymore. Expect Trump to win it by double digits, probably outperforming Sen. Josh Hawley (R), who will also win.
Expected House tally: 6R-2D (no change)
New Hampshire (4 electoral votes): Why is J.D. Vance scheduled to make an appearance in New Hampshire on election eve? It is because a new poll released last week confirmed what Trump’s camp already believed based on its internal polls — that New Hampshire is winnable. We are skeptical, but a Trump win here would serve as an early sign that a landslide is in the works.
This is one of the few states with a genuinely competitive governor’s race this year. Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) is slightly favored over Joyce Craig (D).
Expected House tally: 2D (no change)
New Jersey (14 electoral votes): Don’t expect Trump to win the Garden State, but an underwhelming margin of victory for Harris could reflect the overall drop in Democratic turnout and discontent with the nominee already evident in most states’ early voting.
Andy Kim (D) will easily win the race to keep in Democratic hands the seat vacated recently by Sen. Bob Menendez (D).
Expected House tally 3R-9D: (no change)
Oklahoma (7 electoral votes): Trump will win the Sooner State easily. No competitive statewide races.
Expected House tally: 5R (no change)
Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes): The polls are tied, but Donald Trump is the favorite here. Why? Because the final early vote margin has swung in Republicans’ favor by an astounding 18 percentage points from 2020 levels.
For context, Democrats’ early mail-voter turnout has plummeted by 35 percent from 2020 levels (admittedly, it was a pandemic year). In contrast, the Republican early vote turnout is modestly ahead (by about 5 percent) of where it was four years ago. This has been done largely by getting low-propensity voters to cast mail ballots early. Voter registration and ballot-chasing efforts have helped increase the registered Republican early vote in many of the red “Alabama in the Middle” counties of Pennsylvania to 120 percent, 150 percent, and even 200 percent of what it was in the pandemic year of 2020. They have improved their margins against the Democrats in every single county in the state.
Despite Republicans trailing in the early vote by staggering numbers in 2020, Trump lost Pennsylvania to Biden by only about 80,000 votes. Thus, although they trail by just over 400,000 early voters in absolute numbers this time around, Republicans are in a much better position to win the Commonwealth, since Republican voters typically do and are expected once again to dominate Election Day turnout.
In the meantime, and as in many other states as diverse as Nevada and New York, Democrats have a serious early voter turnout problem in Pennsylvania. The lack of genuine enthusiasm for Harris is reflected in sluggish Democratic early-vote totals, and it will likely carry over as well to the Election Day vote.
Trump just needs all of the regular Republican Election Day voters to turn out as they normally would, in substantially greater numbers than the Democrats.
Sen. Bob Casey (D) is in serious trouble, even trailing in some late polls — never a good sign for an incumbent. He will probably pull it out, but it’s not hard to imagine him losing to retired Army Ranger Dave McCormick (R).
Expected House tally: 8R, 9D (no change)
Rhode Island (4 electoral votes): Harris will win easily, as will Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D).
Expected House tally: 2D (No change)
Tennessee (11 electoral votes): It is hard to believe that Tennessee was also a genuinely competitive state in 2000. Not any more. Trump will win a double-digit victory, as will conservative Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R).
Expected House tally: 8R-1D (no change)
8:30 pm EST
Arkansas (6 electoral votes): The last Southern state to fully realign will go for Trump without hesitation or apology. No competitive races.
Expected House tally: 4R (no change)
9:00 pm EST
Arizona (11 electoral votes): Joe Biden just barely won Arizona in 2020 after Democrats banked a significant advantage over Republicans before Election Day. This year, Republicans have banked an advantage that is several times larger (about 190,000 as of Monday morning). Republicans lead in registered voters, and they are also turning out at a higher rate so far.
As long as voters show up tomorrow, it should be enough for Donald Trump to win. It probably won’t be enough for Kari Lake (R) to defeat Ruben Gallego (D) for the state’s open Senate seat, though.
Expected House tally: 5R-4D (no change)
Colorado (10 electoral votes): As with Virginia, here is another formerly Republican state where we think Trump could finish much closer behind Harris than anyone expects. There could even be down-ballot consequences in state legislative races.
Expected House tally: 4R-4D (no change)
Iowa (6 electoral votes): Don’t believe the hype surrounding the last-minute Seltzer polll. The Harris campaign would be very active in Iowa if she had any chance of winning it. So would the gamblers in the futures markets. As it is, Harris has no presence in Iowa at all and her campaigners know better than to waste precious time and resources there, because Trump will win easily.
The only noteworthy development in the Hawkeye State is that the Republican early vote has finally caught up with that of the Democrats — another sign of Republicans in many states embracing the idea of early voting.
Expected House tally: 4R (no change)
Kansas (6 electoral votes): Trump wins, nothing else changes.
Expected House tally: 3R-1D (no change)
Louisiana (8 electoral votes): The second-to-last Southern state to go fully Republican (they finally got the legislature in 2011 and the last U.S. Senate seat in 2015) will easily go Trump.
Expected House tally: 4R-2D (change of D+1)
Democrats should win the state’s new majority-black House seat, which Republicans created (amid some party infighting and controversy) under pressure from the federal judiciary.
Michigan (15 electoral votes): It doesn’t get much closer than the race is going to be in Michigan. This was Harris’s best “Blue Wall” state as the weekend began, and if we had to guess, we would say she will eke it out. But it’s close enough that it could go to Trump instead.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) should narrowly eke out a win in the U.S. Senate race to replace the retiring Debbie Stabenow (D). Democrats will probably lose her Lansing-area House seat, however.
Expected House tally: 7R, 6D (change of R+1)
Minnesota (10 electoral votes): Maybe Tim Walz (D) is governor, but the outcome for president here will be close. No Republican has won Minnesota since 1972, but Trump might come as close this year as he did in 2016, when he came within 1.5 points — or better.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D), however, won’t have any problems with her re-election.
Expected House tally: 4R-4D (no change)
Nebraska (2 electoral votes statewide, 3 divided by district): Trump will win statewide but lose one of Nebraska’s four electoral votes from the second congressional District. Deb Fischer (R) will only narrowly survive her challenge by independent but Democrat-backed Dan Osborn (no relation fo the former football coach and congressman). Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) will easily win.
Expected House tally: 2R, 1D (change of D+1)
Remarks: Rep. Don Bacon (R) is in a tight race in his Omaha-basd district, trailing his challenger.
New Mexico (5 electoral votes): Trump made a late feint in this direction and held a rally in Albuquerque because his internal polls showed him within striking distance. Republican early-vote data also suggest Republicans will do better than usual. Don’t bet on Trump winning here, he might finish within five.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D) will win re-election.
Expected House tally: 1R-2D (no change)
New York (28 electoral votes): There won’t be any surprises here on the presidential level, but unusually strong GOP turnout in the early vote may help Republicans keep some of the seats here that build their House majority in 2022.
Questions hang over Proposition One, which would put into the state constitution not only a right to abortion but also “gender identity” at all ages, possibly overriding parental rights when it comes to transgender treatments and surgeries on children.
Expected House tally: 18D, 8R (D+2)
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R), under fire for hiring his mistress, probably won’t survive. Rep. Brandon Williams (R), on the other hand, will be the only true GOP victim of New York legislators’ attempts to throw out their own non-partisan redistricting rules.
North Dakota (3 electoral votes): No competitive races. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R) will be re-elected and Kelly Armstrong (R) will win for governor.
Expected House tally: 1R (no change)
South Dakota (3 electoral votes): Trump wins, No competitive races.
Expected House tally: 1R (no change)
Texas: Trump will win comfortably, Sen. Ted Cruz (R) narrowly.
Expected House tally: 26R-12D (change R+1)
Remarks: Republicans hope to make history in South Texas by flipping one majority-Hispanic House seats or even possibly two (which is probably too much to ask).
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes): It will be close in both the presidential and Senate races. Given his vast overperfomance of Wisconsin polls in the past, we believe Trump will win. We also believe that businessman Eric Hovde (R) will surprise everyone by sending incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) to look for a career in the private sector.
Expected House tally: 6R-2D (no change)
Wyoming (3 electoral votes): Liz who? Trump will win big. Sen. John Barrasso (R) will also win re-election going away.
Expected House tally: 1R (no change)
10:00 pm EST
Montana: Montana will easily go for Trump. Voters will also retire Sen. Jon Tester (D) after three terms in favor of Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy (R).
Expected House tally: 2R (no change)
Nevada (6 electoral votes): Republican voters have banked a large early-vote lead in a presidential year — something that has apparently never happened before.
Reading between the lines of the early vote blog of seasoned Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, one can conclude that Democrats are basically praying for a miracle. They keep telling him they still have a chance because unaffiliated voters, who in Nevada usually lean Republican, could go for Harris by double digits because they are younger or more female…or something. It’s a red flag.
Trump will become the first Republican since George W. Bush in 2004 to carry Nevada.
It probably still won’t be enough for Sam Brown (R) to unseat Sen. Jacky Rosen (D), but there is at least a small chance that Democrats will lose one of the state’s urban-rural overlapping House seats.
Expected House tally: 1R, 3D (no change)
Utah (6 electoral votes): Trump will cruise to victory. Rep. John Curtis (R) will easily win the race to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney (R). Gov. Spencer Cox (R) will win re-election.
Expected House tally: 4R (no change)
11:00 pm EST
California (54 electoral votes): Harris will win easily, and Democrats will retain the Senate seat. But stay up to see reactions to Proposition 36, which undoes Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) criminal justice reform legacy. Should be fun!
Expected House tally: 12R-40D (no change)
Remarks: Republicans will be fighting to hold several House seats they won in 2022, especially in Orange County.
Idaho (4 electoral votes): Nobody is “Californicating” the Gem State — Idaho’s population influx is about 65 percent Republican, by some estimates, mostly refugees from the West Coast. Not only will Trump win, but Harris may not break 30 percent.
Proposition One would adopt the same kind of ranked-choice voting scheme that Alaskans are probably about to abolish.
Expected House tally: 2R (no change)
Oregon (8 electoral votes): Here is a former swing state that went sharply in Democrats’ direction after 2000. Harris will win easily.
Expected House tally: 2R-4D (no change)
Washington (12 electoral votes): Harris will win Washington easily, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) will win re-election to a fifth term. Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) will handily defeat former Rep. Dave Reichert (R), who was probably the strongest candidate Republicans had available to run. Since 2000, Washington has become a permanent one-party state — like California but without a personal income tax.
Expected House tally: 2R-8D (no change)
12:00 am EST
Alaska (3 electoral votes): Trump will pick up his last electors of the night.
Expected House tally: 1R (change R+1)
Remarks: They won’t call it right away, but Republican Nick Begich (R) will defeat Rep. Mary Peltola (D) in what will likely be Alaska’s final ranked-choice statewide election.
Hawaii (4 electoral votes): Harris all the way. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D) will be re-elected. Expected House tally: 2D (no change)
