Election predictions for the 2024 presidential election of Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump are neck-and-neck, with no clear winner in sight. Until election night comes to a close on Tuesday, Nov. 5, there is no guaranteed victory for either side.
Spencer Goidel, an assistant professor of political science at Auburn University who specializes in American political behavior, explained that before reliable polling, political scientists had to rely on past election outcomes and fundamentals like economic conditions for election forecasts. While it is difficult to use past elections because of the lack of comparable elections, economic conditions like growth in the GDP are a stronger indicator of who will win, especially for the incumbent.
Goidel pointed to the political analysis website 538 for information on modern polling methodology and 2024 presidential predictions. 538’s methodology is based upon a combination of weighted polling and the fundamentals, which include economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency. As of Oct 1, 538 predicted an incredibly close race, with a 56% chance of Harris winning.
According to Goidel, although the polls favor Harris because of 3% economic growth and leveled inflation, the electoral college favors Republicans. However, polls that used the usual economic factors were wrong in the 2020 and 2016 election predictions, underestimating Trump's support.
Goidel shared that his hesitancy to take a stance on who will win also comes from potential skews in polling. Since the 2000s, response rates to telephone surveys have dipped from 36% to 3%, so pollsters have shifted to online panels that rely on professional survey takers.
"That's why our polling can be so skewed. If they're at all not representative of the broader public, they're getting a very skewed picture of what America thinks about the presidential race,” said Goidel.
Goidel defined “very skewed” as 3-5%. He explained that this margin of error is actually fair, but when polling for a 50-50 presidential election, a 5% margin of error can mean that a poll predicting one candidate’s win over the other is inaccurate.
This margin closes as election day approaches, though, according to 538’s graph of expected change in the vote margin for a candidate, there is an expected change of 5% at 41 days prior to the election. However, by three days before Nov. 5, 538 expects this change to drop below 1%.
When asked how young voters could impact the election, Goidel explained that they will have a limited influence. The generation’s low voter turnout, lack of participation in polling and small size as a voting block when compared to Baby Boomers means that they will most likely not sway the election in either direction.
If Gen Z does hold any electoral power in this election, they may be defying typical expectations that they are liberal, left-leaning voters.
“There have been outstanding polls that show Gen Z is perhaps more conservative than the millennial generation. If that held, that would be bad for Democrats in swing states, or Kamala Harris in swing states specifically,” Goidel said. “College students don't really participate in surveys. So, you know, maybe we're getting a skewed sample of Gen Z.”
No matter what, Goidel thought it was vital that people understand uncertainty when it comes to forecasts and polling. He explained that if the probability of Harris winning the election is 70%, it doesn’t guarantee her victory. It means that in a scenario where the election could be replayed ten times, she would lose three of them.
When asked who he predicts will be the next president, Goidel said, “I don't know. I think if you made me pick, I'd say Kamala, but I wouldn't sleep well at night.”
Dr. Mitchell Brown, Curtis O Liles III endowed professor of political science and an expert in election administration, does not predict a particular winner, but she highlighted that the unexpected Harris campaign has been well received among Democratic voters following concerns of President Joe Biden’s health.
“There was a lot of trepidation, even among Democratic supporters, about a Biden presidency. And the way the Harris nomination happened was unusual, and it was exciting and it was energizing,” Brown said. “And so there's been this, like, sort of a collective celebration among Democrats, I think, that they didn't have to vote for Biden.”
Brown explained that current national polls may show that Harris is the projected victor, but quality polling in swing states, like North Carolina and Arizona, provide a better forecast.
"Who matters right now are people in states where there are real electoral colleges up for grabs, who aren't party loyalists and who are eligible to vote. And the question is, can either of the parties convince those people that they should spend their time voting?" Brown said.
People can be prone to bandwagon on the prediction’s “winning” side. When voting, individuals should carefully evaluate their options and vote for the candidate they genuinely believe is best.
“Your vote should be on policies and values and principles, and that's what students should pay attention to when they're trying to decide who to vote for,” Brown’s said.
Dr. Joseph Aistrup, professor of political science, identified that state polling describes trends about voters’ interests, but it can fail to uncover what voter turnout, the key to winning close races, looks like. Aistrup said he goes to the founder of 538 Nate Silver’s website for insights into election predictions.
Aistrup shared he does not yet know who will win this election, but on election night, he will be consulting a map of the average outcome of elections in swing states, like North Carolina, since 2008 to see if at the county level, a particular party can maintain level support and turnout.
“For me, those bellwether counties are kind of key, because oftentimes you'll see that this is kind of a uniform shift of one, two, three percent that just doesn't happen in North Carolina, but it's happening across the entire country,” Aistrup said.
Whichever candidate is trending upward by the election would be in the favorable position, and if the election happened today, the trends are positive for Harris.
Aistrup explained that since recent economic data shows the economy is good, positive shifts in polls for Harris could stem from people questioning Trump’s failed campaign strategy to attack the Biden-Harris administration’s economy.
Aistrup questioned the impact of early voting in the two weeks preceding the election because if Harris cannot maintain her upward momentum, she could lose to Trump.
“Trump is looking to use these other social wedge issues to try to bring more conservative working class voters back into his line, particularly those who are religiously leading and very conservative, some in a state like Georgia with a very large evangelical population,” Aistrup said about Trump in response to Harris.
Similar to Brown and Goidel, Aistrup did not believe that young voters will have a large influence on this election because of lack of participation and small size.
“I don't really view them [Gen Z] as a monolithic group, I think that here in the south. Gen Z is a pretty conservative group, depending upon, you know, just depending upon, kind of which major you're talking about,” Aistrup noted. “But I think by and large, Gen Z's across the country tend to be more lean, more towards liberal issues.”
Since overall Gen Z is left-leaning, Aistrup said Biden and Obama’s ability to get masses of young voters out to vote, especially in large urban centers, did actually have an impact on their electoral success. If Harris can replicate this success in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, the election could turn towards Democrats.
“I just don't know who's gonna win,” said Aistrup. “I think it is just so darn close.”
Believing that Americans on both sides will be questioning the legitimacy of every vote post-election, Aistrup admitted, “I wish this election would be a landslide for one candidate or another, simply so we could get out of this morass.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
Jennifer Santiago is a freshman in exploratory studies from Enterprise, AL. Santiago has been with The Auburn Plainsman since Fall 2024.
