11 things I believe about this election

Reflections on the final day.

Happy Election Day.

As we wait for results — and I would advise not turning on your TV or signing on to social media until 6 pm eastern (and maybe later!) — I wanted to put together a list of statements I believe to be true.

These are not predictions about the outcome. Honestly, I believe the polling that shows the race is very, very close. And this stat from

Nate Silver

blew my mind:

Predicting, in any definitive way, who’s going to win then is a fool’s errand. Which won’t stop thousands of people from doing so on TV and social media — and everywhere else! — today and tonight.

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But, I am steering away from predictions. Instead I wanted to go through a series of observations about the candidates, the campaigns they’ve run and the electorate they are trying to persuade.

These are in no particular order — other than how they came to me as I was writing. Enjoy!

1. A Republican should win this election

An unpopular incumbent Democratic president. An untested Democratic nominee, who happens to be his vice president. Voters who trust Republicans more than Democrats on key issues like the economy and immigration. Polls that show three quarters of Americans think the country is headed off on the wrong track.

Add these factors up and, in a vacuum, this is the Republican nominee’s race to lose. And, if that nominee were Nikki Haley or, hell, even Ron “Pudding Fingers” DeSantis, I think the GOP would be going into this election day up 3 to 5 points nationally.

But the Republican nominee isn’t either of them. Which leads me to…

2. Donald Trump is the worst possible Republican general election candidate

Start here: Trump was (and is) unbeatable in a Republican presidential primary. That much was clear from the very early days of the 2024 GOP race. The base loves him. They have zero interest in moving on from him — even if it’s for someone promising Trump 2.0. They like the original recipe.

The problem is that Trump is a candidate uniquely unsuited to a general electorate. I can count on one hand the number of times he made even a slight attempt to appeal to voters outside the Republican base over the course of the general election. Knowing that Republican women who voted for Haley were a major problem for him, he actively spurned Haley — and repeatedly made comments seemingly designed to offend these women.

Trump made the entire campaign about himself rather than focusing like a laser on the Biden administration’s handling of immigration and the economy — the two most important issues for lots of swing an undecided voters.

By allowing this race to be a referendum on his personality — rather than on the four years of Harris as VP —Trump made it a race that Democrats could win.

3. Kamala Harris is a so-so candidate who ran a great campaign

In the first few weeks after it became clear that Harris would be the Democratic replacement nominee for Joe Biden, the party was obsessed with pushing the idea that she was an amazing candidate — the second coming of Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

Which I never really bought. There’s no question Harris was a better candidate this time around than she was when she ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019. But, better than really bad isn’t good.

Harris never really got the hang of media interviews — she was, even when she started to do more of them, awkward and overly wordy. Many of her answers wound up as a word salads.

What she did do well was campaign rallies. Harris’ early decision to embrace the twin ideas of joy and optimism was smart — and she showed that she knew how to keep a big crowd engaged throughout a speech.

But, overall, I would give her a 5 out of 10 as a candidate. She was, well, fine. And fine might be enough!

(Sidebar: I would give Trump a 9 out of 10 as a primary candidate and 3 out of 10 as a general election candidate.)

Then there is the campaign she ran. And that was very, very good. I was skeptical of the decision to bring in some Obama old hands (like David Plouffe) and to keep much of the Biden senior leadership (including campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon) but it worked.

To pivot a presidential campaign and swap nominees in late July is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and the Harris senior leadership did it. And, to their credit, you heard very little about personal (and personnel) disagreements during the final months of the campaign. A very impressive effort beginning to end.

4. Joe Biden was going to lose even before the debate

In retrospect, the best thing that could have happened to Democrats is the June 27 debate between Biden and Trump.

Because it was becoming increasingly clear in the two months leading up to the debate that Biden had two problems he wasn’t going to fix: 1) The Democratic base was not excited enough about his candidacy and 2) the general electorate thought he was too old to be president for another four years.

Without the debate, I think Biden would have stayed in the race. And he would have lost to Trump.

The debate was a moment — a BIG moment — that allowed Democratic leaders to force Biden’s hand. And get him out in plenty of time to elevate Harris, get her nominated at the convention and put in place a credible general election campaign apparatus around here.

We may look back on June 27 as the night Biden — by being so bad in the debate — saved Democrats from a 2nd Trump term.

5. Donald Trump’s last 10 days were disastrous

Starting with the ill-advised rally at Madison Square Garden two Sundays ago — like, why? — and going all the way through JD Vance’s assertion on Monday night that Kamala Harris was “trash,” it’s hard for me to imagine a presidential campaign closing any worse than Trump’s did.

In the space of those 10 days, the national conversation around the race was focused on: a) “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe’s comments about Puerto Rico b) Trump telling women in Green Bay that he would protect them whether they liked it or not c) Trump, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, saying that Liz Cheney might feel differently about sending troops into war if she had rifles pointed at her and d) the Vance “trash” comments about Harris.

Like, if women and Hispanic men are two of your target/swing audiences, what the hell are you doing?

How campaigns close matters because the final week or so is when people who don’t pay much attention are actually paying attention. If Trump loses, one of the big reasons will be his utterly terrible last 10 days of the campaign.

6. Donald Trump will not go away

Obviously if he wins, Trump will spend the next four years in the White House. But, if he loses, I don’t expect him to disappear as a force in Republican politics — and politics more generally.

Trump will, of course, never concede. He has already said hundreds of times on the campaign trail this year that the only way he can lose is if the election is stolen from him. If he does lose, I expect a repeat of 2020 when he made all sorts of spurious claims about election fraud and many of his acolytes believed him.

Given that, Trump will operate as a sort of shadow president — not dissimilar to what he did during the Biden years. And, yes, if he is healthy, I could absolutely see Trump running (and winning) the 2028 Republican nomination.

I truly believe that Trump doesn’t recede in political life until he dies.

7. Harris won’t be a candidate again if she loses

If Kamala Harris comes up short today and, in so doing, ushers in another four years of Donald Trump as president, I don’t think she will be in the mix to be the nominee again in four years time.

If she does lose, my strong sense will be that Democrats will ascribe that loss to her being tied too closely to Biden and the “old way” of politics. Candidly, I’m not sure that’s fair but, well, politics isn’t always fair.

I think Harris will be shunted to the side as a loser as Democrats look to fresher faces like Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg (among others) in 2028.

It’s a tough business. But, remember: Most politicians never get as close to the presidency as Kamala Harris is right now. And most would do anything for the shot she’s had.

8 . Republicans will win the Senate

I am uncertain about almost everything in today’s election. But one thing where I feel some degree of certitude is that Republicans will retake the Senate majority.

West Virginia is already over. I know there have been rumors that Montana is close than people think but I just don’t see how Jon Tester overcome a 15+ point loss by Harris at the top of the ticket. I lean (slightly) toward Bernie Moreno in Ohio. Wisconsin and Michigan feel like true toss ups that depend heavily on who wins those states at the top of the ticket.

I think the Ted Cruz race will be close but I think it’s more likely he pulls it out (again) narrowly. Florida feels like a win for Rick Scott. I think Deb Fischer woke up just in time in Nebraska and will probably beat Independent Dan Osborn.

Add it all up and I am guessing Republicans are at 52 or 53 seats in the next Senate. And that is a VERY big deal — no matter what happens at the presidential level. If Harris win, the GOP Senate will be a check on her agenda. If Trump wins, the Republican Senate will likely work hand in glove with him to push his more controversial policies to passage.

9. The media did a better job of covering Trump

Donald Trump is, as I have said many times, a massive challenge to the media.

Cover him too much (as many media outlets did in 2016) and be accused of selling out the country for TV ratings and clicks. Cover him too little (as many liberals have said the media did in this race) and be accused of “sane-washing” him — making him sound more normal than he actually is.

It’s very, very hard to find the right balance when it comes to Trump. But I do believe media outlets did a better job in this race than in 2016 or 2020. Headlines said Trump lied when he did. (And he lied a lot.) His insinuations of violence were covered as the provocations they quite clearly are. His slippage on the campaign trail — and his refusal to turn over any medical records — were repeatedly a point of conversation in the coverage.

None of that is to say the media was perfect in covering Trump. There were still too many times when he was allowed to just, well, say stuff. And the amount of false things he says made it hard to cover all of them.

And, yes, occasionally, the media assumed a narrative — Trump called for Liz Cheney to face a firing squad — when his actual words didn’t say that.

But, overall, the media made sure that people knew what they were voting for when they chose Trump. And that’s doing the job right.

10. If Harris wins it’s because of this chart

11. If Trump wins it’s because of this chart

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