In just on three months time the United States goes to the polls for its presidential election, so this is a good time to take stock of the race. I didn’t get around to doing a six-month preview, and it’s just as well, because since then things have been upended by the withdrawal of president Joe Biden and the elevation of vice-president Kamala Harris as the Democrat standard-bearer.
But it would be useful to start with my six-month preview from 2020, since that explains how to think about the electoral system. As I put it then:
To residents of other presidential states [the electoral college] is highly mysterious, but it should be familiar to those from countries, like Australia, with parliamentary systems. Trump’s achievement three and a half years ago of winning despite being outvoted was no different to John Howard’s in 1998: each managed to collect his smaller number of votes in just the right places to translate into a majority of seats.
As in Australia, votes gained in places that are already safe for one or other party are useless: it does the Democrats no good to pile up bigger majorities in California or New York, nor the Republicans in Kansas or Wyoming. Only the marginals – seats in Australia, states in the US – really matter.
So the presidential election can be modelled with a pendulum, just like an Australian election, but with the added refinement that the electorates (mostly states, but two states vote by congressional district as well as at large) have varying numbers of seats. A given swing, therefore, will move electoral college seats in blocks, not just one at a time.
This time the pendulum is close to a mirror image of how it looked four years ago. In 2020, Biden won 52.3% of the two-party vote and carried 25 states, plus the District of Columbia and the second district of Nebraska, for a total of 306 seats in the electoral college. His opponent, Donald Trump, won the other 25 states plus the second district of Maine, totalling 232 seats in the electoral college.
Since then, however, the 2020 census has led to a reallocation of seats among states, which slightly favors the Republicans: the states won by the Democrats are now worth only 303 electoral college seats, as against a notional 235 for the Republicans. So to win a majority, Trump needs to pick up 35 seats (although he could probably win the election with 34, because a tie in the electoral college throws the election to the House of Representatives).
Just as in 2020, most of the marginal states are on the incumbent’s side of the pendulum. Here are those with margins below 4%, showing the required swing with the number of electoral college seats in each in brackets.
New Hampshire (4) 3.7%
Minnesota (10) 3.6%
Nebraska 2nd district (1) 3.3%
Michigan (15) 1.4%
Nevada (6) 1.2%
Pennsylvania (19) 0.5%
Wisconsin (10) 0.3%
Arizona (11) 0.3%
Georgia (16) 0.1%
And these are the Republican-held marginals:
Maine 2nd district (1) 3.8%
Texas (40) 2.9%
Florida (30) 1.7%
North Carolina (16) 0.7%
Wisconsin is the median state: on a uniform swing of 0.3%, Trump would win it plus Georgia and Arizona, giving him a narrow 272-266 victory (even though he would only have 48% of the vote). Swings are never uniform; deviations from uniformity tend to roughly cancel out, but in a close election those deviations can be critical.
For the last two elections the electoral college has given the Republicans an advantage, and that will most probably be the case this time as well. But there’s no law about that; the college is ultimately a randomising factor, and no doubt it will one day benefit the Democrats again. Even on the current pendulum, the very large blocks of seats in Florida and Texas present a tempting target.
That said, recent voting patterns have been extremely stable, with very small and relatively uniform swings. More than ever it makes sense to concentrate on the marginal states. Anyone living outside the 11 states listed above is unlikely to see much election action at all, and most of the attention will be on just six: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
A candidate who wins the majority of those six will almost certainly win the election. If they split three-all it could go either way; Harris would have the edge in that event, but could still be beaten (for example, if Trump wins Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania; or Georgia, North Carolina and Michigan plus Nevada as well).
At present it’s much too close to call. The general consensus of the polls and expert forecasts is that Trump has a slight lead; the map at RealClearPolitics, for example, puts five of the six key marginals (all except Michigan) in his column. But the momentum since Biden pulled out has been very much with Harris, and there is plenty of time for her to reel in Trump’s lead if she is up to it.
Here the contrast with four years ago is quite vivid. At this point Biden had a clear and very stable lead in the polls; it was not possible to write off his opponent (and in the end he came very close), but there was no doubt that it was Biden’s to lose. This year is much more of a toss-up. That’s no guarantee that it will end up being close – a lot can happen in three months – but for now at least, the world will hold its breath.
The World is Not Enough 
I wonder what the mood is at the headquarters of the International Democracy Union.
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That’s a very good question. At some point the IDU may have to decide whether or not it’s serious about the “democracy” part.
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What’s the likely makeup of the next Congress?
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It will very likely be a Republican Senate. Republicans only need to pick up two seats (or one if they win the presidency). All the competitive Senate seats are Dem held, with West Virginia a certain loss. So the Democrats will have to win the presidency along with the roughly half a dozen competitive races.
The House of Reps is more of toss up. The result of the presidential election might be the determining factor given the slow death of ticket splitting.
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A broad analogy for the landed magnates and the other reactionaries in Tsarist Russia is Justice Alito recently – and those behind him – forcing abortion or whatever else back to the old ways will work for a while.
But it also means that so much pressure will build up that “the dam will burst” and the old ways will be swept away completely. Even parts of them that might otherwise have survived.
In both cases, we see powerful entities (landed magnates in Tsarist Russia, conservative justices in the US) pushing back against social changes.
Both represent attempts to maintain or revert to traditional power structures and social norms.
These reactionary moves may succeed in the short term, but often lead to more dramatic change in the long run.
In Russia, the resistance to reform contributed to the eventual collapse of the Tsarist system and the Bolshevik Revolution.
That something similar could happen in the US context is thought-provoking.
The “dam bursting” metaphor is particularly apt for me.
It illustrates how suppressing social change doesn’t eliminate the underlying pressures, but often intensifies them.
In both cases, the refusal to accommodate moderate reforms can lead to more radical outcomes.
My point about even potentially salvageable aspects of the old system being swept away is important. It highlights how reactionary overreach can lead to more comprehensive rejection of traditional systems.
In both cases, there’s a sense of decision-makers being out of touch with changing social norms and expectations.
Both situations involve actions that risk undermining public faith in key institutions (the monarchy in Russia, the Supreme Court in the US).
Reactionary moves often serve to galvanize opposition, potentially leading to stronger and more unified resistance movements.
My analogy provides a valuable framework for understanding potential long-term consequences of current political and legal decisions and it serves as a reminder that attempts to reverse social progress or ignore changing societal values can often backfire, leading to more dramatic and sweeping changes than might have occurred through gradual reform.
However, it’s also important to note that historical analogies, while instructive, are not perfect predictors. The US has different institutional structures and safeguards compared to Tsarist Russia, and the global context is vastly different.
Nonetheless, my comparison offers a thought-provoking perspective on the potential risks of reactionary politics and the importance of responsive, gradual reform in maintaining social and political stability. It underscores the delicate balance between preserving traditions and adapting to changing social realities – a challenge that remains relevant across different historical contexts.
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