A quote by novelist and screenwriter William Goldman about Hollywood is applicable to presidential elections.
“Nobody knows anything…Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one,” he said.
Predicting with certainty the winner of an American presidential election is difficult because the absurd anomaly of the Electoral College determines who wins, not the collective popular vote.
The only subgroup that out-votes Black men in support of Democrats is Black women.
However, you can make an informed assessment of the most critical factors in determining an outcome. The candidate and their campaign is an obvious one. Since July 21, when she entered the race, Vice President Kamala Harris and the Harris-Waltz Campaign have not been good, they’ve been perfect. If she isn’t the winner on November 5 it will not be because there’s something she or the campaign did or didn’t do.
You can think of a presidential election like the Super Bowl. The best team doesn’t always win.
To win the Super Bowl you don’t have to be the best team; you have to play well enough on that Sunday to prevail.
A football team has three components, offense, defense and special teams. A Democratic presidential campaign has three components as well, Black voters, Asian and Hispanic voters and white women voters.
White male voters are on the practice squad, they dress for the game, but we have no expectation they’ll play.
For a Democratic candidate to win a presidential election the three components must contribute. Let’s look at the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections to examine how the team comes together.
America is less diverse on Election Day because America’s white population is older, has higher turnout rate and votes with more frequency than America’s non-white population.
In 2016 and 2020, white Americans made up 73% of the turnout, with 71% of eligible white voters voting in 2020.
In 2016 and 2020 Black and Hispanic voters were 20% of the turnout (10% each) with 58% of eligible nonwhite voters participating in 2020 election. How did Democrats do in those two contests?
Hilary Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the Electoral College vote and the election.
Clinton got 91% of the Black vote (Black women gave Clinton 98%), Hispanics gave Clinton 60%, Asians 65%, but she got only 39% of the white vote.
She received the most votes from women but only 45% of white women. That’s not unusual. A Democrat hasn’t won a majority of white voters since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
The 2020 election trended much like 2016. Biden also won the popular vote, including 93% of the Black vote, 60% of the Hispanic and 65% of the Asian, but only 41% of the white vote (46% white women).
But he won the Electoral College, and the election, because he won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined 211,000 and Clinton had lost them by a combined total of 80,000 votes.
Kamala Harris is the political equivalent of Patrick Mahomes. She’s done everything, and then some, to put Democrats in a position to win. The question is about the rest of the team.
The only subgroup that out-votes Black men in support of Democrats is Black women.
On Nov. 5, Harris will get 90-plus percent of the Black vote, including 85-90% of the Black male vote.
She will also do better than Clinton and Biden with Hispanics and Asians. The question is will that be enough to prevail. The answer is “maybe.”
You would always like greater turnout from Black, Hispanic and Asian voters because of the margins they produce, but an incremental increase of a smaller number is a small number, an incremental increase of a bigger number is a big number.
This race will not be decided by Harris or nonwhite voters but by white women.
In 2020, 67 million white women voted in the presidential election; 58% voted for Trump (39 million). A 4-5% switch from Trump is 1.5 to 2 million votes. This would doom him in the election.
If LBJ and Civil Rights made most white women Republicans, the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs v Jackson could have again changed the equation.