Analysis of the US elections and expected outcomes

Part 1: Analysis

In a previous article on the situation in Israel-Palestine I noted that despite Kamala Harris’s weaknesses as a candidate, I expected her to win because she is the candidate of the establishment. There has been much excitement (among Republican supporters) and consternation (among Democrats) about major betting and prediction odds on site like Polymarket - which at its recent peak was suggesting that Trump had over a 65% chance of winning the election.

Meanwhile, various polls and and aggregates of polls were suggesting a much closer race with Harris winning the popular vote and Trump winning the electoral college. But the margins of error were large enough for the differences between the two candidates to be statistically insignificant.

Here’s an overview of what I think has been happening and will happen over the next few days. I should emphasise that I think both candidates, as is usually the case, would be bad for democracy, human development, peace and sovereignty of non-US countries - especially African and South American countries. Harris will likely be better for the expansion and maintenance of the US empire and for the majority of US residents, Trump is a wildcard and it is hard to say who the clear beneficiaries of his second term might be. Trump is clearly a terrible human being, but in my analysis I try to stay relatively dispassionate and focus on apparent facts - this requires also recognising apparent misinformation, propaganda and sabotage against Trump and his campaign.

Note: I have made a bet on the election result but since there’s no chance this post will have any affect on that I don’t consider it a conflict of interest but rather an indication of my belief in the correctness of this analysis (what has become popularly referred to as ‘having skin in the game’). This should not be taken as financial advice.

Analysis of pre-election dynamics

1. Kamala Harris is the clear establishment candidate. She is publicly backed by all major leaders of the Democratic Party and by a number of notable former leaders in the Republican Party. She has also been endorsed by high profile figures from the military and intelligence communities, hundreds of the highest profile economists, and received vastly more funding from billionaires than Donald Trump (even when accounting for Elon Musk’s late entry to the Trump campaign). This is the major reason I expect her to win.

2. My assessment of the media and social media coverage and content indicates a clear slant in favour of Harris over Trump. In other words, both formal propaganda channels and more sophisticated propaganda channels (Instagram, TikTok and even Twitter/X) slant strongly towards Harris. From this we can infer not just a likely effect on voting behaviour but also that the relatively powerful institutions and individuals behind the various propaganda mechanisms are in favour of Harris. This also consistent with point 1.

3. The extent of the propaganda against Trump is such that if he were to win it would seriously undermine the United States’ influence and credibility worldwide. The extent of the propaganda is such that Trump’s rally at Madison Square Gardens was widely compared to a pro-Nazi rally there in 1939 - before and after Trump’s event took place - despite the fact that the Democratic Party National Convention that was won by Bill Clinton happened at the same venue, and no particularly fascist sentiments on display. [Various forms of racism and xenophobia have been part of the Republican Party for decades, Trump is not that exceptional]. Having suggested that he may be ‘America’s Hitler’, the only logical inference if he wins is that the majority of US voters are basically fascists and the US, as a result, cannot be given any special status in terms of promoting or defending democracy. This would be a major setback to the US intelligence establishment in many ways. This is a major reason to doubt Trump could be allowed to win.

4. The failed assassination attempt against Trump has all the marks of a deliberate intelligence failure. If that is the case it strongly reinforces the view that Trump is opposed by the majority of the establishment, which will go to quite extreme lengths to get him to lose. [Note: someone can be anti-establishment and bad, saying this is not an endorsement or a condemnation but a description of their positioning relative to dominant power]. The way that the assassination rapidly disappeared from media coverage, and was turned into implausible conspiracy theories that it had been faked (despite two confirmed deaths), further supports the view that various power brokers are opposed to Trump’s candidacy.

5. Much has been made of Elon Musk’s late involvement in the Trump campaign. My view, perhaps the most controversial in this piece, is that Musk is actually a Trojan Horse sent into the Trump campaign to undermine it while simultaneously distracting from the fact that Harris has the backing of most billionaries, media and social media outlets, and has vastly more funding.

   One useful piece of evidence is that the campaign Musk has been heading up has conveniently been beset by widescale fraud rendering it far less effective than expected. It is also worth remembering that Musk criticised Trump’s character back in 2016, was appointed to an advisory board but resigned shortly thereafter, has received massive Pentagon support under Biden (not Trump), and I recall a clip (now impossible to find) in which Trump depicted Musk as a whiny sycophant who begged him for money - not the kind of thing Musk is likely to have forgotten.

6. My view on the betting odds has also been expressed by high profile commentator Rory Stewart, an apparent British intelligence (MI6) operative who also sits on the board of the Brenthurst Foundation. Such a strong, counter-narrative prediction from someone with such high-level intelligence and political links is potentially a strong piece of evidence in favour of this view. After all, if establishment players are pushing for a Harris win, someone like Stewart is likely to hear about that.

7. One reason the betting markets and polls could have been manipulated to make the race look closer than it is, is to encourage anti-Trump voters to come out in larger numbers. It is a widely-held hypothesis in the behavioural study of voting that marginal elections can generate higher turnouts. In that regard, the betting markets are likely correct that this election could have a record turnout.

8. Early ballot statistics seems to favour Trump but this is misleading. These statistics are not based on actual votes cast, but on the historical party registration of these voters. One possibility is that various differences (such as demographic ones) are leading to higher Republican turnout this time. But I think a more important issue is that some Republican-registered voters could actually be voting for Harris. And it is clear from Harris’s remarks about ‘working across the aisle’, her gun ownership, her vacillation on Israel-Palestine, and her collaboration with high profile Republicans that a pillar of her campaign is winning Republican-registered voters.

9. Despite the belief in some quarters that her implicit backing of the genocide in Gaza harms her electoral chances, polls on the beliefs of US voters on this issue suggest the magnitude of her likely vote losses - to third candidates such as Jill Stein - will be less than votes she might lose to the ‘centre’ and ‘right-of-centre’ voters. Furthermore, the likes of Bernie Sanders and others who are supposedly ‘progressive’ [aspects of Sanders’ record indicate otherwise but that’s a topic for another time] have been doing a lot of canvassing and social media work to emphasise that despite their supposed disagreement with Harris on this, she is still the least-bad choice.

10. US intelligence agencies and many others have claimed that Russian interference in the 2016 election was what secured Trump’s victory. This has also been a way of justifying the ‘this is not really representative of who we are’ narrative that the likes of Obama, Harris and Biden have expounded. If Trump were to win this election, with US agencies having had every opportunity to block interference, that would disprove the notion that he only won because of external interference. Again, that would be highly inconvenient for the intelligence agencies and many others within what I refer to as the establishment.

In short: I suggest that many crucial aspects of pre-election analysis and narrative are wrong, the cost to powerful actors in the US of Trump winning is likely to be very high, careful analysis of the evidence suggests Trump’s strengths and support are overstated, moreover he very likely has Trojan Horses within his campaign (of which Elon Musk is the most important). I could provide more than 10 reasons and hypotheses but these should be enough.

In Part 2 I will provide my prediction/expectation of the result, with of course some discussion of the possibility of being wrong. A couple of days ago I suggested Harris had a 70%+ chance of winning and I will elaborate on that.