Well, unless you live under a rock, everyone has come to the realization that Trump is going to run it back a second time and we’re due for four more years of listening to the human megaphone again. I wasn’t planning on writing a post this soon, since a lot of election data is still preliminary (or, in the West Coast states, not even finished counting), but I had a few people request an explanation of how things went right for Trump, how things went wrong for Harris, why I got certain calls right/wrong, and why Democrats needs to realize that it’s not the end of the world for them. Remember, data is not final yet, so as of right now, I’m giving the reported results as of 3PM EST Thursday, and will use a small range of what the results could be for accuracy sake.

Result: Trump will win 312 Electoral Votes, Harris 226. Popular vote: Trump +1.4%ish Republicans will likely win 53 seats in the Senate, and Republicans will pick up 0-3 seats to give them a 4-7 seat majority in the House.

My prediction: Trump would win 280 Electoral Votes, Harris 258. Popular vote: Harris +0.6% Republicans would win 52 seats, and Democrats would pick up 6 seats to give them a 3 seat majority in the House.

Let’s start with what I got wrong:

My election prediction was based off the underlying assumption that the polls would have a regionalization effect (i.e, they would underestimate Trump in some states and underestimate Harris in others). But overall, I thought that the national environment would shift towards Trump in comparison to 2020. I’m not wrong in the sense that there were regional effects in the election, the reason I was off was because the size of the shifts in some areas were underestimated, to the point where a couple of calls were just incorrect, even though the reasoning for the shifts were correct.

The most obvious examples of this were in the Southwest. I went too far out on a limb for Arizona, and the logic of my reasoning was too heavy against the gravity of the electoral environment, so my argument quickly broke down and my prediction suffered an embarrassing fall. Arizona was going to swing to the right, and because it was so close in 2020, I should have reasonably anticipated it would have gone to the right at least enough for Trump to win. I missed that call by almost 5%. But that’s the way some of the guesses go and I didn’t guess correctly in this instance. I’m more mad at myself at Nevada, though, and to be honest, I cheated. I looked at and relied on the early voting data and changed my call from Trump +2 to Harris +0.2. It was a dumb mistake. And one that won’t be made again. Regardless though, I was even surprised that it’s going for Trump by about 4 points, maybe 5. I underestimated him there specifically.

My Georgia and North Carolina predictions were spot on. I knew they’d go for Trump and I was within 0.5 points in each. Out of all the swing states, they’re the easiest to call because the demographics are easier to pinpoint and predict when they shift and the polls are generally pretty close, only off by about a point or so. I’m very proud of those calls.

I’m the most pleased with myself in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which I got dead on. Considering that Wisconsin is EASILY one of the hardest states to predict, I’m very proud for aiming correctly and getting the reasoning almost flawlessly. Dane County was only of the only places in the country that swung left (barely though) for Harris and she did better amongst women, but it just wasn’t enough. Pennsylvania was the same way and I knew Harris wasn’t going to perform the way she needed to in Philly & in the western part of the state. The Butler shooting was very significant and it paid off for the Trump campaign (as scary and probably civil war causing as it almost was).

Michigan was the other call that I got wrong and it’s a call that, mathematically, makes the least sense why I am wrong in comparison to the calls that I got right. The longstanding assumption out of the “Blue Wall” States (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) was that Michigan was the one that was “farthest” to the left and represented the best chance for Harris to win out of the swing states. Given that it went for Biden by 3.2 pts in 2020, and I had Pennsylvania swinging to the right in comparison to 2020 by 3ish pts & Wisconsin by 2, I felt pretty confident than in an election where Trump would do better than in 2020, it should’ve gone to Harris anywhere from 0 to 1 points based off of that math, and decided to go with a 2 point swing and Harris would win by 1.3. Instead, it went to Trump by 1.5. So, why did I get the math wrong? I was confounded here initially but then I remembered. In my initial prediction post, I said that Arab American turnout was going to be depressed and swing to Trump, and that black turnout in Detroit would do the same. The problem was is that I forgot to factor that into my prediction. Those demographics alone (doing some rough math here) are why Michigan is swung to the right by almost FIVE points in comparison to 2020 whereas the two other states, whose demographics are whiter, swung by two-three. A lot of analysts LOVE to lump the three blue wall states together, but they’re not exactly the same, and those key demographic differences have to be taken into account when you’re trying to win an election.

Finally, I stated that I thought that Harris was going to win the popular vote by less than a million votes but the country as a whole would swing to the right by four points in comparison to 2020. Instead, it swung by six. I’m going to be honest, this guess was little more than intuition. You can’t call these things until they happen, and sometimes polling data can be a red herring instead of a helping hand.

The Senate and the House were also liable to this small underestimation. Another math error I made was in the Senate. From a data standpoint, Democratic Senate candidates were going to outperform Harris by 2ishpoints in the Midwest because of incumbency (which I did say), and by 5-7 in the Southwest (because of Republican candidate quality). Despite the large miss, I’m on track to be right in the southwest and the senate dems will overperform by that margin, enough that they should hopefully win. While I said the same thing in the Midwest, I again forgot to adjust my Senate numbers. The Democrats won in Michigan and Wisconsin, but just barely, but because of my math error, I had them + Pennsylvania winning by 3 points. I never revised my numbers down and I didn’t double check. I would’ve gotten Pennsylvania wrong though regardless, which is looking on track for a Dem loss by 0.4 points. But still that was just under a 2 point overperformance in comparison to Trump. And in the House, I don’t ever call margins, because the local candidate quality does matter and isn’t totally susceptible to the national environment, but that 2 point underestimation is going to just be enough for Republicans to win the closest races and keep most of their incumbents alive, as well as beat a few Democrats in Pennsylvania. The Republican advantage in the Electoral College is almost completely gone, though, which is good. No longer can they rely on the assumption that they can win elections without getting the most votes. For democracy’s sake, that’s good. If Trump was going to win, actually winning the popular vote gives his presidency legitimacy in a way that squeaking out an electoral college win does not. Now, is electing the guy who incited an insurrection four years ago healthy for our democracy in the long term? No. But that’s not an argument that I want to make nor the purpose of this post.

The last major point that I want to bring up in this post is that although it wasn’t a good night for Democrats, it is not game over, and they need to stop acting like it’s in the end of the world. Trump winning the popular vote is a big deal. A Republican hasn’t done it since 2004. But he won it by a point and a half and everyone is having a meltdown like it was a landslide. It was a healthy margin of victory, yes, but Biden won nearly the same electoral college victory four years ago and won the popular vote by seven million votes. It, frankly, could have been a lot worse. The majorities Republicans have are not large. They are going to have a hard time getting their act together and getting stuff passed. And secondly, a lot of people want Trump back, and the people have spoken. That’s the reality of democracy. But that won’t be reality forever, though. Give it like, a year, and the mood of the country will begin to shift away from Trump, and Democrats will have momentum again. I’m not saying that as some Trump hater, but just stating reality to how politics works globally at this point. We’ve reached this point where being an incumbent now puts you at a disadvantage, whereas it used to be the other way around. After late 2017, Democrats began building momentum that would result in a 2018 midterm wave year, and this was after Trump won the first time. In late 2009, Republicans began the Tea Party movement and absolutely destroyed the Democrats in the 2010 midterms, two years after everyone thought Republicans were never going to build a winning coalition after getting demolished in the 2008 election. My point being is that pundits are dramatic, and you shouldn’t put too much stock into a news story. Right now is the stage where, instead of pointing figures at each other which all of the Democrats are about to do, is to admit we lost fair and square, and try to find common ground to solve the very real issues we face as a country. Then, start talking to people and build a popular, comprehensible policy platform that is more centrist-based. Economic policies that balance fiscal responsibility and tax-and-spend liberalism are good places to start. It’s the economy, stupid. While social issues are very important, and they should always be discussed and advocated for. But statistically speaking, making them top priority does not win you elections and therefore give you positions of power to change it that way. It might not be fair, but the economy is always going to be voter’s #1 issue. There are times when the country is in a progressive mood to enact progressive policies, but now is not that time, so a shift to the center is badly needed for the Democrats. As of the last four years in reaction to Biden, the country has shifted to the right. But it will shift back to the left as a backlash to another Trump administration, no matter what policies he implements. The pendulum will keep swinging back and forth. It will work out.

This is the last politics-related post from me for a while. Hope you enjoyed my take on the election. I’ll be back to writing about more normal stuff next week, so follow along through my Instagram link!

-Colby