Election 2024 Electoral College Predictions
First, the easy calls that should not spark too much if any dispute or debate (number of electoral votes in parentheses).
SOUTH:
TRUMP wins Alabama (9), Arkansas (6), Mississippi (6), Louisiana (8), Texas (40), Florida (30), South Carolina (9) and Tennessee (11) for a total of 119 electoral votes.
HARRIS is guaranteed to win nothing in this region. This is Trump country. She may win 0 here.
PACIFIC:
TRUMP is only assured of Alaska (3). He may win nothing else. This is mainly Harris Country.
HARRIS will win California (54), Oregon (8), Washington (12), Hawaii (4) for a total of 78 electoral votes.
NEW ENGLAND:
TRUMP may get swept here as well, but there could be a couple of surprises. This is mainly Harris country.
HARRIS will win Rhode Island (4), Massachusetts (11), Vermont (3), Connecticut (7) for a total of 25 electoral votes.
MID-ATLANTIC:
TRUMP is only guaranteed to easily win West Virginia (4). Again, this is Harris country for the most part.
HARRIS will win New York (28), New Jersey (14), Delaware (3), Maryland (10), DC (3) for a total of 58 electoral votes. The Trump team insists that they can pull off an upset in New York or New Jersey. I highly doubt it.
INDUSTRIAL MIDWEST:
TRUMP will win Indiana (11), Kentucky (8) and Ohio (17) easily for a total of 36 electoral votes.
HARRIS will win Illinois (19) easily. That is her only guaranteed win in this region.
SOUTHWEST:
TRUMP will win Utah (6). That is his only guaranteed win in this region.
HARRIS will win New Mexico (5) and Colorado (10) for a total of 15 electoral votes. Trump’s campaign rally in New Mexico was a head fake. I do not see him winning there.
MIDWEST:
TRUMP will win Iowa (6), Nebraska (5), Kansas (6), Missouri (10) and Oklahoma (7) for a total of 34 electoral votes.
HARRIS is only guaranteed to win Minnesota (10). The Midwest is largely Trump country. Trump’s campaign has talked about Minnesota being in play, but that is a head fake. Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz is the Governor of Minnesota. Walter Mondale lost 49 states but won Minnesota. On the flip side, Harris’s team is talking about picking up one electoral vote from Nebraska’s district containing Omaha. That happened in 2020, but conditions this time lean toward Trump winning the whole state.
MOUNTAIN WEST:
TRUMP will win Montana (4), Idaho (4), Wyoming (3), South Dakota (3) and North Dakota (3) for a total of 17 electoral votes.
HARRIS will win nothing in this region. This is Trump country.
TOTALS SO FAR: TRUMP 219, HARRIS 205, up for grabs, 114.
NOW FOR THE SWING STATES:
SOUTH:
Georgia (16): Brian Kemp is a popular Republican Governor who won reelection easily by nearly 10 points. The only thing really keeping Trump from winning this state was his feud with Governor Kemp. That feud has been settled. Kemp has endorsed Trump and actively campaigned for him. With the intraparty warfare over for now, a united GOP should win. Kemp is going to pull out all the stops and use his political machine to get Trump over the top so he can avoid the wrath of the many Trump voters in his state. Outside of Atlanta, Democrats benefitted in 2020 from lower turnout in rural GOP strongholds. Lightning will not strike twice.
TRUMP WINS GEORGIA.
North Carolina (16): This used to be solid Republican but with a habit of flipping Governor and Senator seats between the parties. Many conservatives have moved to solid Republican South Carolina and made that state more conservative. The biggest headache for Trump is that the GOP candidate for Governor Mark Robinson is a potential liability. Robinson is beloved by social conservatives and reviled by moderate Republicans. Democrat Josh Stein is expected to win the governorship. The outgoing Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is liked. While North Carolina’s black population is smaller than that of Georgia, it is still significant.
Harris will not get the benefit of rural voters in Western North Carolina being disenfranchised. Despite the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the Trump team has a strong get out the vote effort there. Both campaigns did Saturday rallies in North Carolina.
A decent number of voters are ticket splitting. Plenty of people willing to vote for Trump will not vote for Robinson. Trump may not get Robinson over the hump, but Robinson will not drag Trump down either. Trump defies conventional Republicanism. People are hurting, and Trump has worked the state hard.
TRUMP WINS NORTH CAROLINA.
PACIFIC:
NEVADA (6): Republicans control the Governor’s mansion. Harry Reid is no longer around to whip up his machine, but the culinary workers’ union still knows how to run a ground game. 40% of the state lives in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. If Trump can avoid getting shellacked in Las Vegas, he wins the state. In this state he benefits from a very strong candidate for Mayor of Las Vegas. Republican Victoria Seaman (full disclosure: She is a personal friend who I have enthusiastically endorsed) has a real chance of becoming the first Republican Las Vegas Mayor in nearly 50 years. That alone should help Trump in terms of reverse coattails. Also, the border is a big issue here and that favors Trump.
TRUMP WINS NEVADA.
SOUTHWEST:
ARIZONA (11): Democrats won by a razor thin margin in 2020. The state still has a strong John McCain Republican influence, which is not the same as a Trump influence. This is another state where Republicans are stuck with a lackluster candidate. Kari Lake lost the governor’s race in 2020 and spent four years insisting she won. Whether she was cheated or not, voters by and large believe in gracious concessions. Now Lake is trailing her senate opponent Reuben Gallego badly.
If the McCain Republicans and Trump Republicans make peace, Trump wins. This seems to be a case of ticket splitting where Trump wins but so does Gallego. Plenty of voters who stayed home in 2020 because of Covid will vote for Trump this time. Harris does not poll as well here as President Joe Biden did. Lastly, the border is a major issue here and that favors Trump.
TRUMP WINS ARIZONA.
THE BLUE WALL:
WISCONSIN (10), MICHIGAN (15) and PENNSYLVANIA (19):
If Harris loses Georgia North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, then she needs all three Blue Wall States to have a shot at winning.
WISCONSIN: Madison and Milwaukee are solid Harris and often outweigh the rest of the state. Madison is the birthplace of progressivism. Democrats have the Governor’s mansion. His machine may not be nearly as influential as that of other states, but it should be enough. Senator Tammy Baldwin is fighting for her political life. This helps Harris, as women should put her over the top.
HARRIS WINS WISCONSIN.
MICHIGAN: Yes, there are rumblings that Arabs are going to vote for Trump, but given his pro-Israel record, that sounds hard to believe. They would be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Michigan is the heart of the unions, and they supported Biden in 2020. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is going to pull out all the stops for Harris to boost her own national prospects. Whitmer will do everything to keep Michigan in the win column. Whitmer has a machine.
HARRIS WINS MICHIGAN.
THIS LEAVES THE BIGGIE: PENNSYLVANIA:
Harris may live to regret picking Tim Walz over the very popular Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who has strong national ambitions of his own. Worse, the conventional wisdom is that Shapiro was rejected solely because he is Jewish. Trump is exploiting that and fighting hard for Jewish Pennsylvania Democrats. As one well-known Pennsylvania expert has told me, the two big constituencies in the state are the Catholics and the coal miners. Harris has angered both of those groups. Even Catholic Senator Bob Casey is fighting for his political survival against Dave McCormack. The Republicans messed up in 2022 by not going with McCormack. They did not make the same mistake twice. If Casey goes down, Harris is toast. The Catholic pro-life vote is powerful in this state, and the coal miners know who wants to put them out of business. Biden won in 2020 in part because he is a Catholic, and it was very close. Harris is not, and she was foolish to skip the Catholic Al Smith Dinner.
Catholics and Coal Miners: TRUMP WINS PENNSYLVANIA.
This puts Trump over the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
THREE PREDICTED UPSETS TO PAD THE LEAD:
NEW HAMPSHIRE (4), MAINE (4), VIRGINIA (13).
New Hampshire used to be conservative, but plenty of Massachusetts liberals flooded to New Hampshire to escape high taxes. They have a strong independent streak. Heck, Pat Buchanan won the state and their are plenty of his supporters backing Trump because of economic anxiety.
Maine is as independent as it gets. Ross Perot won 30% of the vote here. Paul LePage was a two-term Governor in the Trump Republican mold. Yet his comeback attempt against Janet Mills fell short. Northern Maine is rural Trump Country. Southern Maine can go either way. Yet with economic anxiety on the rise, the Trump voters are far more certain to come out. Harris does well among minority voters nationwide, but Maine is a fairly white state.
Virginia went from solid red to solid blue, but Glenn Youngkin shocked the political world by defeating Democrat heavyweight Terry McAuliffe to become Governor. Youngkin is well liked and has a great political machine. Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears is superwoman, a black woman who inspires whites and blacks alike. Southern Virginia is solid Trump country. Northern Virginia favors Democrats because of all the transplants escaping Maryland and the largesse it receives from D.C. Polls show Harris in the lead, but Virginia has a populist streak going back to the Founding Fathers.
I’m calling for Trump to pull off upsets in all three states, starting with New Hampshire and Maine with Virginia the toughest of the three.
FINAL TOTALS:
TRUMP: 32 states
HARRIS: 18 states + DC
TRUMP: 308 ELECTORAL VOTES
HARRIS: 230 ELECTORAL VOTES
SENATE:I see Republicans picking up the Senate by winning races in West Virginian and Montana to start. Jim Justice will cruise with Joe Manchin retiring. Jon Tester is gone.
HOUSE: Democrats could retake the House if they run up gigantic margins in California and reverse their New York losses.
eric