Editors’ Blog

From TPM Reader JG …

Usually I agree with your takes, but not with what seems to be your acceptance of the idea that the Trump victory was part of the global rejection of incumbents because of post-pandemic misery.  The failures were two:  first, Biden’s signal failure to educate the American public about the post-pandemic situation and what his policies were doing to get us through this period.  We see the trade off: a few more points of unemployment means suffering for a relatively small group but reduces inflationary pressures that would lead to price increases for the population as a whole.  Inflation — precisely because it expresses itself across the general population is politically riskier than protecting the well-being of the otherwide unemployed, a fraction of the population.  You can defend the policy choice for more stimulus on grounds of compassion and the common enterprise, but do recall any such case?  I don’t.  You know Bill Clinton would have been making that case.  And more generally to explain and defend success in navigating the post-pandemic environment.  

TPM Reader JB:

Not sure I’ve ever written in before. I’m feeling crushed, and fearful, and grim—of course. But thanks to all your efforts, for better or for worse I’m not shocked and I’m not demoralized.

You see the same numbers I do. We don’t know the results of the presidential election yet. It all comes down to the Blue Wall states. But the margins in critical areas do not look promising. I heard from one source about an hour ago that Harris still had a shot in each state. I don’t know where that stands. It doesn’t look promising from the reports I see currently. There’s no point in my speculating. We’ll know soon enough.

If Harris loses, that is obviously a crushing result. There’s no way around that. It’s different from 2016 in that it’s not a shock. We all knew or should have known this was a very possible result. The polls and models were about as close to 50-50 as you can get. A number were literally 50-50. But there’s another dimension of the story, assuming Trump does win. And that’s this: everyone knows who Donald Trump is. He was already President once. We know what that was like. Paradoxically Kamala Harris and he both did a pretty good job reminding us who he was over the last month. So it’s not like 2016 when you could say people didn’t know what they were getting. We know who he is. If he wins, which now looks probable though not certain, that’s a very sobering reality.

Okay, we are clearly down to the Blue Wall and what seems to be Harris’s only path. We have to wait for the vote to come in. To set expectations, I don’t sense a lot of optimism from the people who I trust to be able to look at the nitty gritty results and see where things are going. But again, we wait to see the results. You have to count the votes. They can surprise you.

Apart from those critical contests we see movement to the right in many states, in non-swing states. I don’t have the full picture but it seems like we have movement to the right in rural areas and relative stasis in the suburbs. Again, I don’t have a full enough panoramic view to be able to say that part definitively. But I think that’s the general picture. We also see Democratic Senate and House candidates running ahead of Harris. So that feature of the 2024 polls was not a mirage or a delta that was destined to close by the election day.

Regardless of who wins the presidency, I think the overall verdict has to be that the polls were pretty accurate, both in the swing states and nationwide.

We’re going to need to wait for the dust to settle. But it’s clear there’s a major wave of hoax bomb threats today into this evening into swing states, seemingly in most and likely all cases targeting areas of heavy Democratic voting. Officials say they appear to be emanating from Russia. Key points are these. a) They’re not real. There are no bombs. There’s no danger. b) This is a focused efforts to disrupt voting and/or vote counting in Democratic areas. c) We know what’s going on here.

Okay, pretty bumpy ride for Democrats so far tonight. Florida was a bloodbath. In the parts of the country where we have results there’s a clear Trump trend in rural America. North Carolina and Georgia look touch and go for Harris. But we still mostly haven’t heard from the Midwest and the Blue Wall states. Those look encouraging based on turnout numbers in key cities and stuff like that. But we don’t have results. Same applies to Nevada. We need to see those numbers. That’s where we are.

Also important to remember. You win the Blue Wall states or you don’t. You can win or lose Nevada and it still comes down to those three states and the one electoral vote in Nebraska.

The only clear trend we’re seeing tonight, early but seems widespread, is Trump outperforming his numbers in rural counties compared to 2020. What Dems will need is a counter-trend in suburban counties. We would expect that counter-trend. But we haven’t seen it yet or haven’t seen it clearly yet because we have very few suburban counties that are done counting. A lot of these rural counties just count much faster. It seems like we’re likely to see red areas getting redder, blue areas bluer, etc.

We already seem to have pretty good evidence this is a high turnout election. We knew it would be high by recent historical standards. The question was whether it might top 2020 or whether it would be between 2016 and 2020. My sense is that it might end up being higher than 2020, which was the highest turnout in over a century. As to whom that helps, that’s less clear. My gut tells me that’s good for Harris. But that’s no certainty. Remember that Trump’s strategy is relying on low propensity voters. By definition, the higher the turnout the higher the percentage of occasional (low-propensity) voters. So there’s definitely a very reasonable theory that it might help him. We don’t know. For now I think we can just say there are lots of signs of high turnout. So we could have another presidential election that is the highest in modern history. Who it helps I don’t think we can say yet.

Today I’m very interested in your reports from the field: turnout, slices of life, anything and everyone. I want to see and hear about what you’re seeing.