The Magic is in the Margins
The days of the mandate, of Electoral College blowouts, are long gone. We live squarely in an almost-intolerable era of hyper-partisanship and media bubbles. The major parties could run a golden retriever against a half-eaten Whopper and they would both get at least 45% of the vote. It is both tragedy and farce, now entering a new bizarre stage with an actual, convicted felon running for president while promising to… (checks notes) end democracy after he is elected, and he is still expected to be the GOP nominee.
Now, there are more Democrats than Republicans in this country, but Republicans are more intense, and stupid. No offense intended. I simply mean that Republicans generally believe many things which are factually incorrect, are easily misled, and tend to be motivated by fear and disgust. The end result is that both major parties are going to get 90% and up of their base no matter what and, factoring in turnout and base size, end up with 40% of the popular vote.
The only three questions that matter to the campaigns then are: will our base turn out? Will their base turn out? Will independents have a significant break one way or the other?
People make a lot of noise about not liking their options, and polls are all over the place. The media report on past elections, fundraising totals, and campaign-trail gaffes like they matter, but unless ALL of the voting machines are hacked by an alien supercomputer we are not going to get a Putin/Hussein 99% victory by either side in five months.
No, it’s all in the margins. My best estimate, largely unchanged now in two years, is that Biden will see a 8–9% loss in the Democratic base, from pockets in the Muslim community, students, and Hispanic men. But turnout will be strong buoyed by abortion, gains with white voters and older voters, and, you know, Trump being a crazy piece of shit.
Trump meanwhile, will see a 11–12% loss in the base from Republicans who see criminality, open racism, and authoritarian *plans* as just too much. It is unclear where any offsetting gains would come from especially as disaffected moderate Republicans can fairly easily vote for centrist Joe Biden whereas it is extremely unlikely that campus protestors are going to embrace Trump. Promising to have them round up or shot probably didn’t help.
That leaves of course, the chewy nougat of the American body politic, the true independent. They broke for Trump in 2016 after Comey said she was corrupt at the last second. They broke for Biden in 2020 after seeing what kind of a human being Trump was. They are generally not highly-engaged and tend to be somewhat fluid and late-deciding voters, but unless there is some further catastrophic shake up of the campaigns, there is a small pull from incumbency and not being in a recession. There is also a small push from being viewed as corrupt. If I had to stick a pin in it, I would say Biden takes independents with 56% with 10% going third parties.
The end result is nearly-identical popular vote totals as 2020, with only NV and GA possibly flipping (without effecting the winner). Unfortunately, this result almost guarantees another round of “rigged election” lies, fraudulent schemes, lawsuits, and January 6th violence. I would, however, argue that that is reason to vote against Trump rather than for him. You don’t beat terrorists and criminals by giving them what they want.
