2024 is not 2016 I know this sounds obvious on the face but I think it needs to be reiterated because people are making too many comparisons without consideration. In part this is because recent elections are the most viable point of comparison. However, it is flawed to do so. Every election cycle has a different set of circumstances. They happen every four years so the samples are small and a lot can happen in four years. The economy changes, population metrics will change, as will the voting records of those involved. So, it is natural to compare to 2016 because Trump versus woman mainstream Democratic candidate on its face is enough of a comparison. This is deeply flawed but it makes a certain sense. We don’t compare to 2020 because there was a massive plague at the time and the consensus is that skewed things because more people were at home watching the news and engaged with events (yet polling companies changed their models after 2020 anyway due to the perceived large miss).

There is also a segment of very online people who want to see it as narratively similar.

To be clear the Harris/Walz campaign has rightly framed itself as the underdog. There is every opportunity for Harris to lose the election. The current disconnect is that the fundamentals (ground game, enthusiasm, money) do not agree with the polls and this means different people and experts are casting around for explanations for the lack of agreement and relying on prior assumptions and thus return to the 2016 Election as a data point.

I think it important to point out that 2016 gets a lot of conversation but there is no unanimity for how to interpret the results. In part it is because the election was so recent and in part because a lot of people have built a personal mythology to explain it. I certainly do not lack bias here. I am not interested in trying to litigate other’s opinions rather I am simply going to compare data points

In 2016 we saw for the first time in decades a race between two deeply unfavorable candidates. Clinton and Trump were both unpopular, both had underwater favorability, and low trust. We had not seen a race like that at any time since popularity and favorability became a measured trait in polls. There are plenty of reasons for these historically bad numbers, I certainly think political factionalism doesn’t help. Both candidates had those numbers drop even further as the election progressed. This is also why 2016 had a historically much larger portion of undecideds unlike now. Both saw their numbers improve afterwards. However, the fact is while Trump’s unfavourability has been constant in 2024 Harris actually has a strong favorability, and she was always more popular then Biden. Her numbers aren’t good per se but they’re stronger and higher then Trump or Clinton in 2016 and have improved as people got to know her. Does this assure a win? No, but it is a stark difference from 2016.

There is much to criticize the Clinton campaign on for their handling of the 2016 race. I think some of it is post-election naddering but the fact is that the Clinton campaign ignored some fairly big issues. At the time I was willing to over look the troublingly close polling in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those three had been reliable for the Democratic electoral map since 1992 (Wisconsin since 1988), it wasn’t unreasonable to argue they would remain stably Democratic. This turned out to be incorrect. However, I will agree that even at the time I thought Clinton needed to visit those three states more often and pulling commercials from their media markets was a bad choice. She had no commercials in Wisconsin since the primaries, and only surrogates campaigned in all three states. The campaign argument was that she was trying to aggressively expand the map in North Carolina, secure Virginia, and work for Arizona, Georgia, and Florida. By contrast in 2024 Harris has not taken PA, WI, or MI for granted. She has visited all three extensively and has poured money into advertisements and campaign offices. That is a huge difference and while she can still lose any of those states or all three it wont be from lack of trying. (also in 2016 Michigan and Wisconsin both had popular Republican governors. In 2024 all three states have wildly popular Democratic Governors who won their reelections/elections handily)

In 2016 Trump was the first Republican since 1984 to exceed Democrats in small-dollar fundraising. The Democrats had been a major player in small donations for a while and in the Obama campaign’s case they turned it into a major funding stream that won the 2008 and 2012 election. The Clinton campaign had more money in the end from large donors and PAC contributions but the Trump campaign clearly had a groundswell in small donations. Trump also out did Biden in that regard in 2020 in this regard. This meant Clinton was doing more fund raising events late into the campaign. This is no longer the case in 2024. Harris has returned the Democrats to the clear and massive winner in small-donations while Trump has seen his small- donations dry up and is doing a lot more fundraiser events. https://apnews.com/article/trump-ca.....260e4c86d2c552

Money is not everything and the impacts are debated in an election. I still want a lot more regulation of campaign donations, PACs, and more knowledge on who is giving what to whom. That said Haris has substantially more money, does not have to spend time on campaign donation drives, and is spending more time cutting ads and meeting voters. Those are big differences from 2024.

Compared to 2016 and even 2020 there has been extensive improvements on the infrastructure for early voting and early turn out. The Harris campaign is exceeding the Biden campaign of 2020 there and they have strong numbers in all the states that can be tracked https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-.....-early-voting/ again not indicative of a win but a huge different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 Clinton’s turn out operations were frankly terrible compared to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 she did a bad job in urban turn out, rural African American turn out, and other places. I maintain a good turn out operation is important and Harris is using Biden’s extensive infrastructure well.

I also think that in 2016 there was great complacency in general. A lot of people assumed Clinton would win, which is why the results surprised so many (including myself to be fair). At the same time anecdotally I got into several arguments with people who insisted that there was no way Trump could win (which I did disagreed with as he had the chance). Several studies after the 2016 found that a portion of people assumed Clinton would win and voted (or skipped voting) with that in mind. Voting to send a message to the “winner” Clinton. Anecdotally I knew fifteen different people some in those swing states who had supported Senator Bernie Sanders in the primary who voted for Trump in the general election. I know some of those same people did the same in 2020. Some did it because they believed Biden would win and they wanted to send a message. Others did it because they’re apple cart tippers. Others just liked Trump as much as they liked Senator Sanders. I knew others who just didn’t vote or voted write-ins because they felt sure Trump would lose. If people had believed Trump could win would that have changed some votes in 2016? Perhaps, but that is harder to measure or say. It is also hard to say how impactful this group is, I can easily argue that my personal experiences and these studied groups were small enough they did not impact the race but there is an argument they did. I do think in 2024 the entire conversation is very different and there is at least an agreement that Trump has the potential to win if not considered favored to win. That is very different and clearly impacts how some people will vote. Again a rather sizeable difference.

Biden 2020 did worse then Clinton in 2016 with Hispanic voters, losing over 40%. Harris appears to be on track for a similar result. So, in that case you’d want her to be closer to Clinton and 2016. On the issues the fact is the Abortion issue remains vastly different form 2016 where Roe remained in place. I’ve discussed this before so I won’t repeat myself there. I will say poll after poll finds abortion to be a major top line issue. The economy issue is vastly different between 2016 and 2024. In 2016 the economy was considered fairly stable and positive. In 2024 while the general measurements show it in a positive state most people consider the economy less then ideal.

Harris has similar to Biden levels of support among African American voters (which is good because Biden did much better then Clinton in 2016), but there is real concern that the old Souls to the Polls pipeline of black voting pools is no longer working. Consistently for African Americans under 40 Black pastors now rank lower in trust then black politician and black business leaders. That’s a big cultural shift that changes an old trusted dynamic for voter turn out. To be fair older black voters continue to rely on their local churches and church turn out operations and they’re more reliable voters. However, the Harris campaign and Democrats in general have not been complacent here and have been for months trying to drive up turn out operations in this group https://www.notus.org/harris-2024/d.....-kamala-harris there are real questions if they will succeed but at least they see the problem and are trying. That is informing a lot of recent think pieces on the topic but I am skeptical anyone fully understand what this means for the election or in the future. Again, a large difference from 2016.

Finally, we have Hurricanes Helene and Milton. It is crass to bring up two natural disasters that have in quick succession ruined so many lives, wrecked towns, and decimated communities. However, like Hurricane Sandy it is part of the conversation because the election is so near. At this point any poll out of Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina need to be treated with deep skepticism as all three states have serious interruptions in basic infrastructure. It is hard to care about an election when your home is gone, your pets are gone, or you have lost loved ones. I don’t know how the conspiracies swirling around the two will impact thing either.

In summation: Harris can lose. So can Trump. However, they will lose for very different reasons then 2016 or 2020. I think Harris has tried to run a competent campaign with a very short window of activity. I think, though I can not prove, that Trump has a fatigue problem. We will see what happens in November.