Final General Election Prediction
Because accountability matters for analysts, here's what I see as most likely
One of the most frustrating parts over my career in politics has been to see pundits declare as obvious what a week before they were concluding was impossible.
Accountability matters when your job is, in part, a forecaster. It’s important to be able to present to people an honest account of what you got right and wrong. It’s equally important for yourself, to question your own mental models and update your thoughts of how the political world really works.
With that in mind, here is my own forecast for the 2024 general elections so that I can practice what I preach.
President: Kamala Harris
Harris may be trailing in the prediction markets, but for a variety of reasons, I think those are inaccurate this year.
My prediction is based on a few things:
Harris is leading in polling averages in enough states to get to 270 electoral votes. While those polls could be wrong in Trump’s favor, they could also be wrong in Harris’ favor.
Early vote totals are not that predictive, but Democratic leads allow the campaign to bank votes and focus campaign resources on a smaller target audience.
The Republican Party doesn’t seem to have any real get-out-the-vote operations, having outsourced it to SuperPACs. This could provide a couple more percentage points to Harris.
My confidence in this is medium. The problem with this race as a forecaster is that we simply don’t know if polling has been irreparably broken by declining response rates and two presidential cycles of misses. It is very possible that Trump will overperform his polling as before. It is also possible that pollsters have overcorrected from 2020 and aren’t factoring in how enthusiastic Democratic voters are to go to the polls.
Senate: Republicans 51-49
Right off the bat, my confidence in this forecast is low. Polling helps in Senate races, but individual personality matters a lot and the turnout in states that are not competitive presidentially is unpredictable.
My baseline is that the polling is correct, and Republicans pick up two seats. But I would also not be surprised if Sen. Jon Tester of Montana holds on and the Independent Dan Osborne of Nebraksa pulls off an upset.
House: Democrats by 6 seats
I think that Democrats pick up seats in California and New York that they lost in 2022 to recapture the majority. That cycle was a bit of an anomaly. New York, for example, saw the best Republican gubernatorial performance in decades, and both states had protections in place for abortion already, so the issue that propelled Democratic wins in the rest of the country was not as salient.
With a presidential year, the possibility that Republicans could win the White House and Senate motivating Democratic voters in safe states, and the fact that House races tend to follow the national party, I think that the next Speaker of the House is Hakeem Jeffries.
My confidence for this prediction is medium-high.