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8 days until election day.
Monday, October 28, 2024
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Sunday, September 15, 2024
State of the Race: Iowa -- Is the race for the Hawkeye state's 6 electoral votes really that close?
State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus. It is home to the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection. Much more there. Subscribe below.
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Let's talk about this Iowa Poll from the Des Moines Register that was released this morning. It is one of those surveys that has the potential to grab attention heading into the week ahead. And sure, some folks are bound to take it and run with it. First thing's first...
Yes, the Selzer and Co. poll of the Hawkeye state finds former President Donald Trump up only four points on Vice President Harris, 47-43. And yes, that is a marked departure from where things ended up four years ago in the Hawkeye state when the then-president took the state's six electoral votes with a 53-45 percent victory. Both 2024 candidates, then, are running behind the 2020 nominees in the state with Trump lagging further behind his own pace than Harris is Biden's.
But the newly released poll also differs from the previous Iowa Poll released in June before the Atlanta debate between Biden and Trump. Before even factoring in that debate -- the event that ultimately led to Biden's exit -- the president was trailing Trump 50-32 in the Hawkeye state. Harris, then, has cut more than three-quarters into that deficit in the environment immediately following her own debate this last week with Trump.
Comparing this poll to both the 2020 results in Iowa and the most recent poll -- a bit of an apples to oranges comparison -- would by extension give one the impression that the race for the six electoral votes in 2024 is quite close. It is certainly closer than those two benchmarks!
But here is the thing: 2024 has not exactly offered a bumper crop of polling data out of the Hawkeye state. In fact, this Selzer poll is the first such survey from Iowa since Biden stepped aside and Harris was formally nominated by the Democratic National Convention. Let me repeat that: this is the only public data on the Harris-Trump race in Iowa right now. Counting the September Selzer poll of Iowa in 2020, there had been 18 surveys of the state by this point in the initial Biden-Trump race. By election day there had been 46 surveys of the state.
The data, then, is woefully lacking in 2024 at least by comparison. And couple that also with the fact that the 2020 polling missed pretty badly in Iowa. It was close with respect to Biden's share of support, overstating it by around two points. However, the Iowa polling in 2020 understated Trump support by nearly six points.
Look, the 2024 race is not destined to have a polling miss or even have one that looks like (or about like) the error in 2020. It is much too early to come to that conclusion. So I don't want to go too far down that road. However, I do want to raise that in the context of this latest survey. But at this point, the more important factor is that there just is not that much to go in Iowa right now.
Does this poll present a race that may be closer than expected? Sure, but what is the expectation? That is where the lack of polling data comes into play. Based on the regression-based prediction for under-polled states that FHQ has been running this cycle, regressing the 2020 presidential results on the available state-level survey data, this Iowa Poll from the Register is a couple of points closer than the projected margin between Harris and Trump in the state.
That is to say that the poll is closer, but not as much as some of the other comparisons above might suggest. It would be more in line with the normal sort of variability one would see from poll to poll. And following last week's debate performance, one might expect a race that maybe contracted by a couple of points, drawing the vice president closer.
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Friday, August 23, 2024
State of the Race: New Mexico -- Still leaning but trending which way?
State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.
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Note that in the first few iterations of this State of the Race series that FHQ has not exactly run to where the action is: the seven battlegrounds on which the Harris and Trump campaigns are focusing the majority of their efforts. As in the national polls, the most competitive states have seen a shift in the Democrats' direction since President Biden stepped back from the race in late July.
However, our sights have initially been set on states that had formerly looked newly competitive after the June 27 debate or the ones that might become more competitive in the event that the pendulum swung back further in the other direction since Vice President Harris was elevated to Democratic nominee. Early evidence out of Virginia -- one of New Mexico's peer states in 2020 -- is that the newly constituted Harris-Trump race may be closer than was the case four years ago. In other words, the Old Dominion has not exactly snapped back into a position in the polling that one might expect given a post-exit uniform swing across the country. On the other hand, Texas did, coming in more in line with where the Lone Star state ended up on election day in 2020.
Of the two, New Mexico -- at least in this latest look at the Harris-Trump race -- more closely resembles Texas. The Emerson survey of the Land of Enchantment for The Hill -- 51-40, Harris -- finds the vice president behind where Biden wound up four years ago: just above 50 percent (in the results to the multi-candidate question). Meanwhile, Trump also lags the pace he set in 2020 (44 percent) by about the same margin. [Neither are big enough departures from the 2020 results to be considered outside of the margin of error really.]
But there are a couple of broader points to make in the context of this New Mexico survey. First, sure, this is more evidence of a regression to the mean since Harris entered the race. And the thing is that the polling was actually pretty good in New Mexico four years ago. It undershot both candidates by about the same amount and more or less projected the final margin on election day. Additionally, it is noteworthy that Harris and Trump are already in range of where Biden and Trump were in the state at the end in 2020. But second, one should exercise some caution in drawing too many strong parallels in any state to the 2020 race -- at least at this point in 2024. At this juncture, the connection is something that could be considered more coincidental or the mark of a race in a state that has not just not changed that much.
It is, however, important to kind of get our bearings here in 2024; to establish that in the case of New Mexico, things look like a steady state.
...pending more data.
For now, news that New Mexico is flirting with pushing into the Strong Harris category is all one really needs to know about whether the state may be drawn into a more competitive position.
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Thursday, August 22, 2024
State of the Race: Texas -- A repeat of 2020?
State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.
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Texas was one of those states that looked closer in the averages than it ended up being on election day in 2020. Sure, the Lone Star state still tilted in Donald Trump's direction, but as in a number of other states, Biden ultimately settled into a position in the averages that was close to where he landed in the voting while Trump's share was underestimated to some degree.
In Texas, that discrepancy was a little more than four points. And when that was added into the mix in November 2020, it meant a state that looked like it may be a toss up (less than five points) in the projections as election day approached wound up more firmly planted in leaning (five to ten points) territory when the final tally came in.
So, it was in that context in which FHQ first observed the latest data on the 2024 presidential race in the Lone Star state from the University of Houston/YouGov: Trump -- 49.5, Harris -- 44.6 (multi-candidate question). First, it is worth noting that the outlet previously had a survey in the field in Texas during a late June/early July window that straddled the Biden-Trump debate. While Trump basically held steady between the two, Harris improved upon Biden's position, roughly cutting the Republican's advantage in half.
That lens is helpful, but at this point in a race that is still settling in following Biden's exit, the context from 2020 is just as important. No, past is not necessarily prelude, but note that 1) the margin in the UH survey is similar to where the 2020 Biden-Trump race ended up in Texas and that 2) both 2024 candidates are in the range of but behind where Biden and Trump found themselves in the state on election day four years ago.
However, the most important thing, and something FHQ will increasingly discuss as November 5 approaches, is that Donald Trump is more consistently at or above 50 percent in Texas polls now. [Yes, it is still early days in this race and one should use some caution in generalizing from the scant Texas data available at this time.] But that was not a given in 2020.
Things can change. After all, presidential races have the capacity to be dynamic. Yet, there is a reason the focus is on seven battleground states (not including Texas) and that map expansion from the Democratic perspective is solely focused on North Carolina and not, say, Florida and/or Texas as well.
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Tuesday, August 20, 2024
State of the Race: Virginia -- Is the presidential contest close in the commonwealth?
State of the Race offers quick hit reactions to state or national poll releases in the 2024 race for the White House. For a broader overview of the battle for electoral college votes, check out FHQ Plus in the coming days. It will be where the 2024 FHQ electoral college projection resides.
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Back in the spring the polls of the presidential race in the Old Dominion showed President Biden ahead of Donald Trump. In and of itself, that was not surprising. After all, the president did win the commonwealth by a hair more than ten points in 2020. But noticeably, Biden's advantage there was smaller than four years ago.
The June 27 debate had the effect of contracting the margin further. Suddenly, a state that had ceased being purple and was just plan old blue in cycles featuring Trump at the top of the Republican ticket looked more competitive. And in some cases, the polling in Virginia in the aftermath of the Atlanta debate found the former president ahead.
Virginia, then, looked a lot like a number of other states that have been out of reach for Republicans on the other side of the toss ups in the leans category (a 5-10 point advantage) of late. Only, post-debate, states of that ilk -- Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia among them -- seemed to be within the margin of error. In other words, the balance had shifted in the order of states. Trump was at that time in position to claim all of the battlegrounds and push into more reliably Democratic states, nudging his projected electoral vote total well north of 300.
Yet, now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee, Virginia is one of states where one might expect at least some regression to the mean. That is, with Biden out of the equation, the drag he presented should be expected to abate some.
However, the first survey of the state after the debate did not follow that expectation. If anything, the latest poll in the series from Roanoke College continues to make Virginia look more competitive. The vice president leads 45-42 based on the results of the multi-candidate question, closer than 2020 and even closer than Clinton-Trump in 2016.
So, what gives? Is Virginia not snapping back into line like the race seems to be in some similar states or in national polls? A few thoughts:
First, the usual caveat: This is just one poll. It is a snapshot of Harris-Trump in mid-August.
However, compounding matters is the fact that this is not just one poll. It is the only poll conducted in Virginia since Biden withdrew from the race on July 21. As such, there is not a whole lot out there to compare the numbers to other than a handful of surveys that were in the field in the Old Dominion during the snow globe-shaking period in the presidential race between the first presidential debate and Biden's exit.
That is why the comparison to other similar states is of importance. Actually, that is the only thing left to tether this to. This Roanoke poll of Virginia seems "off" not because there is no preceding poll in the series -- there is, but it was conducted in May and of the Biden-Trump race -- or other recent polls of the state from other firms. Rather, it seems "off" because it shows Virginia diverging from the polling shift/reversion in those other states -- Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The data there all point to races that are roughly in line -- the margins, anyway -- with the results from November 2020.
The bottom line?
Wait for more polling from Virginia. This survey may be right on the nose, but it will take some more data to confirm that.
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Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Uncommitted delegates are not necessarily Listen to Michigan delegates
Leading the day at FHQ...
The Michigan presidential primary is now in the rearview mirror, and while others will move on to the next contests or focus on the perceived threats the results in the Great Lakes state have on both likely nominees, FHQ will do what it does. And namely, that means digging into the delegates.
For those who are interested in such things, there are a pair of delegate stories out of Michigan -- one on each side -- worth fleshing out some.
Democrats
The story of the night in Michigan -- well, it seemed like it had already been flagged as the story well in advance of last night -- was how Listen to Michigan's push for Michiganders to vote uncommitted in protest of President Biden's Gaza policy would fare. Lowball estimates from the group and its allies aside, the group did pretty well. And by pretty well, FHQ means that they were probably wildly successful in capturing the attention of media folks and political junkies desperate for something other than "Biden and Trump win again."
Well, Biden and Trump won again and Listen to Michigan certainly grabbed some attention. Some will try to read the tea leaves on what that portends for the general election in a battleground state -- a fool's errand -- but there are other ways of looking at how uncommitted did in the Michigan primary.
Some of this FHQ contextualized yesterday over at FHQ Plus. Uncommitted 2024 did about as well as Uncommitted 2012 would have done had the Michigan Democratic presidential primary actually counted and not been a beauty contest that cycle. And that is to say that Uncommitted 2024 failed to hit 15 percent statewide to qualify for any PLEO or at-large delegates. Despite that, Uncommitted 2024, just like Uncommitted 2012 would have, managed to qualify in a couple of congressional districts. Then, it was the sixth and tenth districts. Last night saw Uncommitted 2024 qualify in the sixth and 12th districts, receiving just north of 17 percent in each.
And what does that get Uncommitted 2024 in the delegate count?
Two delegates.
One delegate in each of those districts.
[As of this writing, the Michigan secretary of state has all 83 counties reporting, but the tally may not be complete.]
However, just because there are two uncommitted delegates does not mean that those are two Listen to Michigan delegates. Again, they are uncommitted delegate slots. Uncommitted. Any national convention delegate candidate that files as uncommitted in the sixth and 12th districts can run for one of those two slots. It will be the uncommitted delegates to the congressional district conventions in May who will decide who gets those positions.
Listen to Michigan may organize its supporters in Michigan to run for and win spots to the congressional district conventions -- more on that process here -- but the group does not have a lock on those delegate slots. Nor does it have the ability to vet potential national convention delegates in the same way that an actual candidate and their campaign can. The group will not have that check.
In other words, Listen to Michigan is vulnerable to a knowledgable and organized delegate operation, one that could run or overrun the uncommitted delegate pool in those congressional districts and take those uncommitted slots for their own.
Yes, FHQ is suggesting that the Biden campaign could swoop in and win those uncommitted delegate slots in Michigan's sixth and 12th districts.
But they likely will not. That would likely end up being far more trouble than it is worth. Why stir up an angry hornets' nest any more than it is already riled up over two delegates? There really is no need to. Had uncommitted fared better last night, reaching, say, a third of the vote, then maybe there could have been a more concerted effort to contest the selection of delegate candidates to those allocated slots. But as it is -- at two delegates -- why attempt that particular flex?
Republicans
FHQ is not really sure what the deal with the AP delegate count in Michigan on the Republican side was, but it had been stuck on Trump 9, Haley 2 for the longest time. The Michigan Republican delegate selection plan is weird, but this is not that hard (even with an incomplete tally at this point).
Here is the number one needs to know: 25 percent.
If Nikki Haley slips under 25 percent in the Michigan primary results then she will claim three (3) delegates. As it stands now, she is over that mark and would be allocated four (4) delegates.
Trump will get the rest regardless of whether his total climbs some or falls. Why?
Well, as of now, Trump is sitting on 68.2 percent of the vote in the Michigan primary. That would qualify him for 11 delegates. If the former president's total rose above 68.75 percent, then he would grab the last delegate, his would-be twelfth. But he would claim that delegate no matter what. Even if Trump stayed right where he is -- under 68.75 percent -- he would still win the last delegate. It would be unallocated based on the results, but all unallocated delegates go to the winner of the primary.
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FHQ has started rolling out the state-by-state series on Democratic delegate allocation rules over at FHQ Plus. So far there have been looks at rules in...
What's the difference between Democratic and Republican delegate selection rules? FHQ Plus has it covered.
Looking for more on delegates and delegate allocation? Continue here at the central hub for Republican delegate allocation rules on the state level at FHQ. That includes the latest from...
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Monday, February 5, 2024
Trump and Titanic Tuesday 2008
Leading the day at FHQ...
Last night as FHQ was preparing for the week ahead, I looked up and saw that today was going to be February 5. Big deal, right?
Actually, for those who follow the presidential primary calendar and its many iterations, it is a date with some significance in the post-reform era. February 5, 2008 was Super Tuesday. It was so super -- so chock full of delegates, in fact -- that some took to calling it Titanic Tuesday. Indeed, both parties allocated more than 45 percent of all of their delegates that cycle on that one day! For comparison, neither party will have allocated any more than 41 percent of the their delegates in all the contests through Super Tuesday in 2024 combined.
In other words, when folks look up frontloading in the dictionary -- if they are lucky enough to find it -- then they will see a picture of the 2008 map.
What is more, the allocation rules were different than they are today. Okay, they were different on the Republican side. Democrats had and continue to have the same standard proportional rules with 15 percent qualifying threshold that they have had in place going back into the 20th century.
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| In 2008, the GOP rules were different. |
But in a lot of ways the Republican calendar was not only frontloaded but the rules were sort of inverted. There was no prohibition on winner-take-all rules early in the calendar as there is in 2024 (and has been in some form or another since 2012). And it showed. The map was peppered with plurality winner-take-all states in the 2008 Republican process and all of them save one -- Vermont -- were in contests held in or before February that year. And many of the other states on Titanic Tuesday and throughout February 2008 that were not truly winner-take-all had winner-take-all elements. Most of those, including California, were winner-take-all by congressional district.
John McCain rode success in those early states to a gigantic delegate lead that crested above the majority mark, clinching the nomination for him, during the first week in March.
The interesting thing to me is that for all the talk of the Trump campaign working the state-level delegate rules for 2024 -- and, ahem, Team Trump did the bulk of that work in 2019 -- they would have killed to have had that 2008 calendar with its particular patchwork of delegate rules for 2024. With that combination, we would be talking about Trump clinching today rather sometime during the first three weeks in March.
Team Trump definitely would have traded for that if they could have. But the RNC carried over the same basic set of guidelines for 2024 that the national party had in place in 2016. Which is to say that there remained a super penalty in place to prevent most states from going earlier than March and another penalty to nix plurality winner-take-all rules in states with contests before March 15.
Anyway, it is a fun thought experiment. Changing to 2008 rules would probably not change the outcome in 2024, but it certainly would have changed the pace of how nomination season resolved itself. Happy Titanic Tuesday Remembrance Day.
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Last week a bow was finally tied on the delegate allocation from the New Hampshire Republican primary during the prior week on January 23. Only it was not exactly a nice and neat bow. Instead, as the AP reported it, the New Hampshire secretary of state allocated the one remaining delegate in limbo to Donald Trump, raising his total in the Granite state to 13 delegates.
How Secretary Scanlan arrived at that was a little, well, weird. And the method used was not consistent with how the secretary's office under previous longtime Secretary Bill Gardner handled the delegate count during the last competitive Republican presidential nomination race in 2016.
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FHQ has started rolling out the state-by-state series on Democratic delegate allocation rules over at FHQ Plus. So far there have been looks at rules in...
What's the difference between Democratic and Republican delegate selection rules? FHQ Plus has it covered.
Looking for more on delegates and delegate allocation? Continue here at the central hub for Republican delegate allocation rules on the state level at FHQ.
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Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Haley's Path Forward ...and more in response to New Hampshire
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| Nikki Haley's path to the the 2024 Republican presidential nomination may have more obstacles. |
Leading the day at FHQ...
...for now.
A day after an expectations-beating performance in New Hampshire, the former South Carolina governor faces a daunting task ahead in her one-on-one duel with Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Mired in the teens in the Granite state as recently as the holiday season, Haley rose as other candidates fell by the wayside. That cleared a path to a head-to-head with Trump, but the results in the New Hampshire primary did little to grease the skids for the former UN ambassador to rise much further.
In fact, New Hampshire was a good state for Haley on paper: more college educated and fewer evangelical voters (than in Iowa), independents could participate, etc. And she still came up short. Still, the final polls made things looked bleaker than they turned out to be and that is not nothing. But exactly how much that something is worth remains to be seen.
It buys Haley some time, but not much. And it is tough to chart out a viable path forward to the nomination, much less South Carolina on February 24. Viable path. There is a path, but it entails stringing together what little Haley's campaign can muster in the meantime. She is the headliner on the Trump-less primary ballot in Nevada. Yes, it is a beauty contest primary, and while a win promises no delegates, it may carry the distinction of garnering her more votes than Trump will receive in the Silver state caucuses two days later. Again, that is not nothing, but how much that particular something is worth is hard to gauge. A vote-rich "win" in the Nevada primary coupled with a win the caucuses in the Virgin Islands on February 8 probably does not hurt.
But what does that buy Haley in two weeks' time?
Maybe it grants her a bit more time, but it grants her time to consider that she is even further behind in the delegate count and that her home of South Carolina still does not offer much relief. Perhaps the polls in the Palmetto state will have moved by then. Maybe Nevada, the Virgin Islands and/or the campaign will spur such a change. But if the polls do not move, then, as FHQ noted yesterday, the cacophony of winnowing pressures from Republicans in the broader party network are only going to grow louder and the prospect of not just a loss at home, but a big loss, will loom large.
Again, there is a path forward for Nikki Haley. Only, it is not a particularly good path. And it certainly gets her no closer to the nomination.
But hey, if she can manage to bankroll it, then why not play it out, grab what delegates she can, cross her fingers that Trump's legal troubles catch up with him and head into the convention in good standing? Yeah, that is a path, too. In theory. It just is not a sustainable path. Whatever incentives the former president's courtroom drama provide to stay in the race, the winnowing pressures will more than offset. And that would affect any "good" standing she may have as the candidate with the second most delegates at the convention.
The convention is way off. Haley's concerns are more immediate. And her path? Filled with obstacles.
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All the New Hampshire results are not in, but it looks like the delegate count out of the Granite state is going to end at...
Trump -- 12 delegates
Haley -- 10
But currently Haley is clinging to her tenth delegate. If she drops below 43.2 percent, then she will fall below the rounding threshold and that tenth delegate will become unallocated. Trump is not in a position to round up unless he approaches 57 percent of the vote. However, he would claim that unallocated delegate formerly in Haley's column because all unallocated delegates go to the winner of the primary. That would push Trump's total to 13 delegates in the state.
UPDATE:
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