Close presidential elections are no longer the exception in the United States. They're the norm. Since 2000, there's only been one that was won by more than five percent (Barack Obama in 2008) and five of the seven elections (including this year's) were declared "too close to call" by the pollsters and pundits. Twice, we've seen the popular vote and electoral vote split, which had not happened since 1888 and was considered unthinkable in modern times, until Bush vs. Gore in 2000. And it could happen again this year.
Politically, our country is split right down the middle—but ideologically, it's not. Most Americans actually share the same views on many major policy questions. Surveys of public sentiment consistently show supermajority support for abortion rights, gun control, LGBTQ rights, improving police accountability, preserving democracy, lowering taxes, reducing the flow of drugs into the country, and so on. Voters overwhelmingly prefer the policies put forth by the Democratic Party and its candidates—yet many, sometimes more than half, vote for Republican candidates who disagree with them. That's because our politicians—not our voters—are split ideologically. Extremist politicians and the partisan media figures who support them demonize their opponents to such an extent that half the electorate is taught to hate and mock one side while the rest vilify the other. I suspect many voters would be surprised to learn how much common ground they share with the "other" side. Instead, they stew in a toxic soup of vitriol, misinformation and, increasingly and alarmingly, political violence. This is how we find ourselves with almost half the electorate supporting a man who's a convicted felon, admitted sexual predator and proven liar (many times over) for president, while the other half recoils in incredulous shock and horror.
The consensus on issues is one of the reasons it's so difficult for a Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote. In the last 36 years it's only been done once, by George W. Bush in 2004 (and then, by a bare two percent). It doesn't seem likely this year, either. Of ten final polls by major firms, only one shows Donald Trump in the lead, by two points. Four of the other nine declare the race a flat-footed tie. The other five give the edge to Kamala Harris, by between one and four points.
So who's going to win? (That's why you're here, right?)
I have never had a harder time answering that question, and I've been asked it a lot in recent days. I've been predicting election outcomes for almost 50 years and I've rarely gone back and forth as much as I have on this one. This has been an election unlike any in our history. The Democrats swapped out their candidate just before their nominating convention. The Republicans nominated a former president who tried to prevent his successor from taking office. The Democrats nominated a woman who's half Black, half Indian American. The Republicans nominated a man with 34 felony convictions and three more criminal cases pending against him. The Democrats nominated a Californian! The Republican candidate survived one very close call assassination attempt, and another thwarted one.
None of those things has ever happened before, and they complicate prognostication. Donald Trump's presence on a ballot confounds pundits, as does that of the first woman of color. Is there still a hidden reservoir of Trumpism, undetectable by modern polling even after eight years of tweaks? Or did the pollsters overcorrect after 2020, resulting in their underestimation of Democratic support in 2022 and '23? The narrow bunching of this year's polls suggests the race is indeed thisclose. The polling averages aren't as much help as some think, since they're inherently flawed, and have an uneven track record. Last time around, the Real Clear Politics average was off by almost three percent, and the 538 one missed by four. At this writing, RCP has Harris up by a mere 0.1%, while 538 has her ahead by a whopping 1.2% (ooh, a landslide!).
So how can we know what will happen? We can't, of course. We will have to wait for the voters to have their say and the ballots to be counted. But I'm ready to make my best informed guess. I've been engaging in this exercise since the 1970s, predicting the Democratic and Republican nominees before the first primaries and caucuses, and then picking the winner on Election Eve in November, relying on a completely subjective mix of data analysis and gut feelings. I've never been wrong about the GOP nominee, going 13 for 13, despite going out on some significant limbs. When everyone thought Bob Dole would be the nominee in 1988, I went with George Bush. People thought I was crazy when I tabbed John McCain in 2008 when the punditocracy had already anointed Rudy Giuliani. I seemed even nuttier when I declared in 2016 that Donald Trump, not Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, would win the Republican nomination. I have missed a couple of times on the Democratic side. I boldly, and correctly, went with Michael Dukakis in 1988 when the conventional wisdom was on Dick Gephardt's side. But I stuck with Screamin' Howard Dean in 2004, when John Kerry came all the way back from an asterisk in the polls to capture the nomination. And I blew it in 2008, believing that Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, would be that year's Democratic nominee.
In the main event, I'm only 9 for 12 (75% ain't bad, but my aggregate accuracy rate of 87% for all my predictions is better). In 2020, I was only off by one electoral vote in my correct prediction that Joe Biden would beat Trump, and I was much closer than all the polling averages, and most major pollsters, on the popular vote. But I do have a blind spot: picking close elections when the Republican wins. The three elections I've gotten wrong were 2000, 2004 and 2016, all historically close races won narrowly by the GOP nominee. I deserve partial credit for 2000, when I sensed the weirdness in the air and predicted a popular/electoral split, something I'd never done before. I just got it backwards.
So my confidence in picking this one is not exactly rock solid. It is certainly possible that Trump's support is being under-measured by the polls again, and even if it isn't, that an Election Day surge of enthusiastic MAGA bros, coupled with a historically huge early Republican vote and just enough erosion of Latino and Black votes for the Democrats, carries Trump to a sweep of the seven swing states and returns him to the presidency. His edge among less educated white men trumps the Harris advantage among women, and anxiety over the economy sways the voters who decide they just don't know or trust Harris enough to let her make history. If that happens—and it could—Trump could even win the popular vote, although I really don't think he will. But he could turn enough states red again to win what amounts to an Electoral College landslide in these polarized times, with 325 electoral votes.
But that's not what I sense happening. Kamala Harris injected extraordinary energy into the Democratic base, and she's sustained it through most of her truncated sprint to November. There is an extremely high level of engagement among women, in particular. The polling data shows a senior surge among older women, and even men. She's focused her final weeks on the trail on courting Latino and Black voters, especially men, to bring enough of them back into the fold to put her over the top. Even where Republicans have returned more ballots early than Democrats, women have a 10-12 point edge, suggesting many of those GOP women are actually voting for Harris (whether they're keeping it a secret from their husbands or not!). There's a small number of progressives who simply will not vote for her out of principled opposition to the administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza, and that could make a nominal difference in Michigan, but I think it's offset by the similar number of never-Trumper Haley Republicans who will either sit this one out or defect to Harris. While abortion is no longer the white hot issue it was in '22 and '23, it's still a motivating one for many, many women, and measures protecting abortion rights are on the ballot in ten states, including the battleground states Arizona and Nevada. I think there are enough Americans who are tired of Trump and simply can't stomach his shenanigans for four more years. We've seen that on the campaign trail in the election's closing days, too. Trump drew smaller and smaller crowds as he stumped desperately across North Carolina. There are clear signs of panic from his campaign: playing all-out defense in the must-win Tar Heel State, ground game surrogate Charlie Kirk literally begging men to vote on X, Elon Musk bribing voters with a possibly illegal (and fraudulent) million-dollar "lottery." The wind seems to have finally sagged out of Trump's sails.
Kamala Harris made the jump from San Francisco District Attorney to California Attorney General in 2010 by winning a close election over a very conservative Republican opponent, Steve Cooley. She won that race by fewer than 75,000 votes, shattering the 162-year hold that white men had on that job. If she'd been a white man, it wouldn't have been close. Then she became the state's first Black (and Asian) U.S. Senator, and the first woman vice president. At every turn, she's had to overcome both racism and sexism to win elections, with those prejudices turning what should be cakewalks into nail-biters. She's about to do it again.
Here's the bottom line: Kamala Harris wins the popular vote, the electoral vote, and makes history as our first woman president, as well as the first California Democrat to win the White House. My official prediction:
POPULAR VOTE:
Kamala Harris 50.4%
Donald Trump 47.1%
That popular vote margin will carry her to close victories in her must-win Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. She'll hold closely contested New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico and Minnesota, and pick up one critical electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd District (Nebraska and Maine each award one EV per Congressional district, and two to the statewide winner, and that system has never been more important than in this election). I do believe Trump is going to wrest Arizona from the Democrats. And Nevada is just oh-so-tough to call. But the abortion ballot measure there may draw just enough women, and independents, who make up an increasingly large share of the state's electorate, to squeak Harris over the top.
The only remaining wild cards are North Carolina and Georgia. Those two are really tough to call this time. Every four years I predict the Democrats will finally win the Tar Heel State, and the Republicans hang onto it by their fingernails. This time, the liability of unelectable Mark Robinson as the GOP candidate for governor drags Trump down, and the surge of Black women voters turns the state blue. And if Harris can do that in Carolina, I think she will in Georgia too.
That would give Harris six of the seven battleground states, which frankly may be too many. Nevada and/or Georgia could swing the other way.
But that's my call, so here we go:
ELECTORAL VOTE:
Kamala Harris 308
Donald Trump 230
A solidly respectable margin of victory for Harris, improving slightly on what Joe Biden got four years ago, and a lot more comfortable spread than the polls suggest.
I could easily be wrong. About all of it. Trump could win Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. 2024 could end up looking just like 2012. Harris could lose Nevada and Georgia and wind up below 300, but still with enough to win.
Don't bet any substantial sums of money based on my midnight analysis (yes, I've stayed up way too late finishing this). But there ya have it.
I also predict that Congressional control will flip: the Republicans will reclaim the Senate but thanks in part to that large turnout for Harris, the Democrats will retake the House, which will mean more history: the first Black Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries.
Tune in Tuesday night (and Wednesday, and Thursday...) to KCBS Radio when we will bring you all the returns and dissect them and figure out how and where I went wrong.
