Maybe Not a Red Wave Election, But A GOP El Nino Is Forming

<![CDATA[Wherever I go in my personal life these days, whether it's to mid-week Bible study, Church on Sunday, the e-bike shop, or even taking the trash cans out to the curb, people who know me are peppering me for the latest info on what's going to happen in November. As Amos said in Chapter 7, I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But what I can tell you is what I think is the most likely scenario as of right now, based upon both current metrics within a whole host of polling, and recent historical track records of these same polls. I think Donald Trump is going to win, even with Kamala Harris up 2 points in the Real Clear Politics national average, and up 0.2% in the battleground averages. Gallup has been tracking the entire electorate in the United States by party identification for decades. They updated their survey for this cycle, comparing it to previous cycles going back to Bill Clinton's first presidential run in 1992. It serves as a background for which way the tide may be moving when the votes start coming in via early mail, and whether that will translate to a wave, large or small, on Election Day. In 1992, the country was far more Democratic by party identification than before Ronald Reagan's era. 52% of the country were registered Democrats, while only 40% were Republicans. With Ross Perot siphoning away millions of votes from George H.W. Bush as an independent, Clinton won. In 1996, the party registration advantage for Democrats was still pretty lopsided - 50-41. It wasn't until George W. Bush's reelection campaign of 2004 when the country achieved registration parity between the two parties, tied at 47%. Democrats opened up a lead again with the Barack Obama era, and continued holding that advantage in 2016 with Hillary Clinton, although the margin had narrowed significantly. Democrats led Republicans, 46-43 in party ID, which translated to a 2.1% popular vote victory by Hillary over Donald Trump. She got thumped in the Electoral College. In 2020, Joe Biden's party ID advantage swelled to 48-43. He won the popular vote by 4.5%, and eked out a very narrow Electoral College victory. The bottom line? Democrats have never led Republicans on party ID in front of a presidential election by less than 3 points going back to 2004. It's the end of September, 2024, and Republicans currently hold a three-point advantage of their own over Democrats in party registration, a net 6-point shift in four years. That's the macro. The micro is just as telling. In Arizona a couple days ago, New York Times/Siena released a series of Battleground results, and showed Donald Trump opening up a 5-point lead in the Grand Canyon State, outside of the margin of error. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued amongst the left, trying to poke holes in the methodology of the poll. They complained because they believe it oversampled Republicans. Nate Cohn has the details both from 2020 and now. ]]>