Use Logic, not Polls, to Expect a Decisive Harris Victory

Some basic realities will dictate how the election goes. We shouldn't ignore them over the short-term fix of polls and forecasts.

I’d like to start this post off with a disclaimer: the fact that I think that Kamala Harris is going to decisively win the election is NOT a reason to take our feet off the gas, or cancel the campaign activity you have scheduled sometime in the upcoming days. These activities, and the energy driving them, are baked into my analysis. If everyone suddenly loses this energy and alters their behavior, then my analysis would also have to be altered accordingly.

So don’t think that this should be taken as a reason to get complacent. By no means should we all not be fearful of a Trump presidency and motivated to do something—anything—to help Harris win.

That said, let’s move on to the main point.

In this article I’ll be ignoring polls and election forecasts, which serve very little purpose for the average person. If the polls were highly decisive, like showing a double-digit lead for a candidate, then I’d consider them. But anything less than that is just showing what we already know, which is that either candidate can possibly win. And since the forecasts are just based on the polls, peppered with the authors’ subjectively determined adjustments and manipulations, they are not useful in any way to anyone that already pays general attention to the news.

Read my previous post regarding polls below. It explains why they are pretty much worthless most of the time. My article uses an analysis from Nate Silver’s own 538 (before he was fired) as the main reference point. Aside from a deceptive headline, the 538 article I rely on does a great job explaining why you shouldn’t take polls too seriously.

I’m confident about my predictions and have been for a while. Here’s a link to an article I wrote in January, and this was back when Biden was still the candidate. I was confident for the same reasons then. I’ve been consistent all this time because the basic logic is the same.

Okay, all that said, here’s my reasons for why I think Harris is going to win and win big.

Republicans will be voting for Harris (or not voting)

How often does one of the major political parties have actual organized efforts to get out the vote for the other major party’s candidate?

Never? That’s probably about right. It’s likely more accurate to say “almost never”, but essentially, if these efforts ever existed, they were invisible and insignificant.

In this election cycle there are prominent organizations that are publicizing extensively and making themselves known to the general electorate in unprecedented ways.

Republican Voters Against Trump is one. Haley Voters for Harris is another. They are holding townhalls with prominent former Republicans like Liz Cheney and others making the case for Harris and the case against Trump. Let’s remember that even though Cheney lost her bid in the Republican primary for the U.S. House in 2022, she got 30% of the Republican vote. Not a bad showing for someone so outwardly anti-Trump.

We all saw the potential for this unique voting bloc during the national Republican primaries, when Nikki Haley was consistently getting 15-25% of the Republican votes in the states, which stayed consistent even after she dropped out of the race. In any other primary in history, the non-incumbent party getting a split like that would be boring news.

But this is not your typical election, and the non-incumbent party had essentially an “incumbent” candidate. He was the party’s most recent former president after all, and has a stranglehold on his party like no politician in our history, save maybe George Washington, who had the whole nation under his spell and could have ruled as long as he wanted.

Because of this, the size of this contingent of voters is significant. Then when the exit polls were released, they suggested that roughly 25-50% of those Haley voters would vote for the Democrat. At the time, the Democrat was Biden, but it can be assumed they’d vote for Harris, as the motivation was more of an anti-Trump protest vote than a pro-Democrat vote.

Think about what is happening. There is a legitimate coalition of disparate political groups that has formed in a unifying cause. The Democratic Party and traditional conservative Republicans are meshing together. This doesn’t happen very often in America. It must mean something.

Any votes that this coalition casts from traditional conservates that would have normally voted for the Republican candidate is going to make Harris’ victory that much more likely.

If as few as 1% of them defect, that’s pretty much the election right there, as 1% in the battleground states will be enough to tip the election to Harris.

But since we can expect 25-50% of Haley voters to vote for Harris, 1% is going to be on the extreme low end. Using conservative numbers, if we take Haley’s 15% of Republicans, and then take 25% of those, we have about 3.25% of Republicans. This is game over for Trump. And this was a conservative number, using the lowest ends of the spectrum of the polling numbers of these folks.

Ah, but I said I wouldn’t use polls, I would only use logic. First, these are polls from actual voters in actual elections. They are not public polls of random people processed and weighted to expected proportions.

But even then, let’s ignore the last few paragraphs, and focus on the fact that Haley Voters for Harris and Republican Voters Against Trump exist at all. That should tell you there is at least a mini-movement, if not a full-fledged political movement developing. This suggests a significant shift in the electoral landscape that favors Harris and Democrats.

Keep in mind that any Republican vote that goes from Trump to Harris is a net 2-vote gain for Harris. It’s one less vote for Trump and one more vote for Harris, which equals a difference of 2 votes. This is a very powerful effect, and is likely the reason that Harris is spending a lot of time and energy courting traditional Republicans to cross over for this election.

But there will also be a contingent of Republicans that can’t stomach voting for Trump or Harris. They just won’t be able to vote for a Democrat, no matter who it is. Maybe they won’t be motivated to vote, or maybe they’ll vote, but they’ll write in or leave the presidential portion of the ballot unmarked. This is still a major win for Harris. Basically, any voter that changes their expected Republican vote behavior to any other action is a gain for Harris.

But let’s not stop there. Given the baggage of Trump, and the peer pressure that he and his MAGA minions apply to anyone in their sphere, it’s reasonable to think there’s going to be a non-insignificant number of Republicans that are going to vote for Harris, but you’d never know it. They’ll talk and act like they love Trump and the MAGA cause. Perhaps it will be the wives and daughters of domineering husbands and fathers. Or perhaps it will be bros that want to keep hanging with their buddies drinking beers while listening to Kid Rock hits. Whoever they are, they’re out there.

One thing that fascism does is intimidate in order to encourage conformist behavior. As long as we are still able to cast private ballots, uneasy people can vote their conscience despite this intimidation. In this case, MAGA is the fascist movement, and anyone involved in it that has part of their thinking brain left will be facing a choice. But due to the privacy of the polls, it will be a safe choice to make, as long as they keep up with the social facade of their regular life.

Depending on how this election goes, it may not be a safe choice in 2028 and beyond, but for now it is, and many people will take advantage of it.

Jan. 6 and Dobbs have not had their day of reckoning yet

It’s hard to believe, but there still has not been a presidential election since Jan. 6, 2021. There has also not been one since the overturning of Roe v Wade with the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. This means that the country hasn’t weighed in at the national level to register their reactions to these events.

In the 2022 midterms, it was pretty clear that voters were out to punish the perceived instigators of these events, Trump-backed and MAGA-aligned candidates. These people lost in the most high-stakes Gubernatorial, Senate, and Congressional elections that year.

All indications so far this election cycle is that people are still motivated by Dobbs. Harris’ campaign has raked in over $1 Billion in donations. Registrations among younger women is happening at higher-than-normal rates. More news keeps trickling out about how women in states with draconian abortion restrictions are risking their lives, or about rising infant mortality rates.

“Dobbs Dads” are men that may have voted Republican or been pro-life prior to Dobbs, but can’t stomach the idea of their daughters having to flee the state to get honest, necessary health care.

Trump was the mastermind behind the Dobbs decision, no matter how much he wants to walk it back now. He appointed enough like-minded judges to make it possible. And now he has the gall to suggest he’s not anti-abortion, just pro-states-rights.

But he even went a step further and implemented The Big Lie 2.0: that “everyone wanted it [abortion] to be returned to the states”. This is a very ambitious lie, as so many people that lived through the last 50 years and know that’s not true. The right to an abortion had been embedded into our nation’s consciousness so much we took it for granted. Every time a judge was being vetted by the Senate, they were asked about their view on Roe v Wade and it was always a contentious affair. This gaslighting attempt will not be nearly as effective as he thinks, and it will create anger and further motivate people to vote against him.

Contrast that with his original Big Lie, which is that the 2020 election was stolen from him. This was based on a one-time event; with no history or template associated with it, it was more able to be molded and processed into a product that was accepted and consumed by a large portion of the population.

Even so, this Big Lie and the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 that resulted has disgusted the most of the population, which is likely a supermajority in the neighborhood of at least 55-60% of the country. To these people, Jan. 6 was on par with 9/11, and possibly worse when you consider the fracture to the psyche of America.

These people have not been able to directly express their anger, frustration, and electoral vengeance towards Trump yet. This year’s election is their first shot at it. And it stands to reason they will be motivated to get the polls and relish the opportunity.

Trump is a demoralizing figure

There’s been tons of press about how Trump “energizes” his base. This is constantly the analysis of his campaign strategy, despite expectations that he’s going to alter his strategy to attract new voters. To the extent that he even has a strategy, he never changes this strategy, nor tries to attract new voters. He just doubles down on the ugliness; therefore, the media assumes that he’s just continuously trying to rile up his base and get them to the polls. This assumes there is a bottomless supply of angry, racist white men that will keep pouring into the voting booths like an endless march of clowns out of a clown car.

The reality is that this is a very limited voting base. He should get some credit for motivating these people, who were otherwise not engaged in politics. But this was largely done back in 2016. The people that get riled up by xenophobia, crudeness, and cruelty have already been riled up. You can only rile these people up so much; they are as riled up as they can be. And there are only so many to rile up.

But what is the effect of Trump’s style on the rest of us? Obviously, the coalition for freedom and democracy are scared out of their minds and highly motivated to vote for Harris.

But there’s a segment of the population, largely residing on the Republican/MAGA side of things, that are going to be demoralized by Trump. This is due to his accusations of a rigged election, which are going to make people feel like there is no point to voting.

Why do I say this? Am I just making this up based on my own “feels”?

No, we just need to look at the elections that have occurred since his original Big Lie in the Nov 2020-Jan 2021 time period.

The most obvious example are the Georgia Senate run-off elections in Jan 2021. These races were in the Republicans favor. They were very high-stakes, as they literally determined the control of the Senate; they would have been an opportunity to counteract a Biden administration that Republicans may have been fearful of; they were held in what has been a southern Republican stronghold state for decades (the last year there was a Democratic Senator from Georgia was 2005); and the Republicans were running incumbents for both seats.

It should have been relatively open and shut. Both of the Republicans should have won. But the better analysis is that both of them could have won. And they probably would have won, if not for Trump.

Georgia was ground zero at the time for Trump’s election shenanigans. And it created heavy awkwardness for the candidates. Trump kept denouncing the election and questioning its validity just before these run-offs began. The candidates were at the same time trying to get their voters to turn out to vote. But it’s hard to get them motivated to vote when they think their vote doesn’t matter due to the election process being rigged and corrupt.

This resulted in a wildly unexpected result: both Democratic candidates won. The Senate flipped from Republican control to Democratic control. Trump suppressed his own voters.

Then in 2022, every major Trump-backed candidate in the all-important battleground states lost. These losing candidates spewed the typical MAGA stew of conspiracy and rigged elections. This doesn’t suggest a highly motivated or growing movement. It suggests a movement that has run out of steam.

Has anything changed since then? Not really. Trump is already laying the groundwork for another round of whining about the election being rigged. There are already false “reports” of voting machined flipping the votes. Trump has already been attacking early voting and mail-in voting. Why would anyone that believes these things want to vote in the first place?

Some will, but some won’t. Add the some that won’t into the column with the others I mentioned above, and you get a decisive Harris victory.

It’s okay to feel good about Harris’ chances

I know it’s not as acceptable to feel good and confident these days. It suggests complacency or delusion. We don’t want to be overconfident again.

I don’t want anyone to walk away from reading this article to think they shouldn’t vote or donate their time or money to their candidate of choice. Like I said, this mass energy and motivation is baked into my thinking. If it goes away, my thinking changes. So far, I have seen nothing that suggests that it’s going away or will go away.

But just understand that it’s okay to feel good. It’s okay to be confident. Let these feelings support you when you are waking up in the morning and put a spring in your step on the way to the polls. Let them push you to make those calls to get others to the polls.

Embrace the joy that Harris and Tim Walz have been exuding.

The energy is there. Might as well use it and enjoy it.