Analysis of the US elections and expected outcomes

Part 2: Prediction and expectations

In Part 1 of my US election analysis I provided ten reasons why I expect Kamala Harris to win. These are a combination of actual causes of her getting a higher vote count, along with ways in which the election is being manipulated in her favour, and reasons why the election could even be rigged by domestic actors (rather than the foreign ones about which there has been so much drama). In this Part 2, I am going to state what I think the most likely outcome is and why. Then discuss the post-election narrative the results could setup. And finally end with some discussion of why I could be wrong.

Expected outcomes

1. Harris wins the popular vote and the electoral college

2. In some traditionally ‘Red’ (Republican) or Republican-leaning states Harris performs significantly better than expected

3. Exit polls show large support for Harris from younger voters, Black and Hispanic voters, and women, but vote numbers suggest Harris managed to draw a significant number of white Republican voters too

4. There are divergences between presidential votes and Senate/Congressional representative votes, which can be/are interpreted as a specific rejection of Trump (more than the Republican Party itself).

While there is much speculation and debate about particular state-level results, I don’t feel I know enough about those and moreover no individual state is particulrly interesting (even taking into account the issue of pivotal/‘swing’ states).

The post-election narrative

Even more important than the election result itself is the post-election narrative that those results generate, and are intended to generate. Based on the above predictions of the outcomes, here are some expectations of what the narrative might look and sound like:

• ‘Division is not who we really are as Americans’ (citing Republican-registered voters voting for Harris)

• ‘the United States has rejected fascism and thereby shown it is still the de facto leader of the free world’ (all that is bad is associated with Trump - or Russia, see below - and others are thereby cleansed of badness)

• ‘working across the aisle’ (a phrase Harris started using even during her campaign)

• ‘Women voted against Trump and for equal rights, even to the extent of concealing their true political preferences from those close to them’ (explaining Harris performing much better than poll predictions and outperforming in Republican-leaning states and strongholds)

• ‘young people think differently and were energised by Kamala and the celebrities who endorsed her’ (ex post rationale for the effects of TikTok, Instagram propaganda efforts)

• ‘The 2016 election did not really reflect the will and nature of the American people’ (Russia is still the bogeyman behind all that’s bad in the USA)

• Harris will make some notable breaks from Biden’s approach - including on Israel - and thereby do significant medium-term damage to left-wing arguments against strategic voting, claims about the insignificance of her being a black woman, and arguments that people should vote on principle.

The famous author Margaret Atwood posted a cartoon on Twitter/X which gives a great visual representation of some of these narratives:¹

In this kind of scenario, Trump will be soundly defeated, the ‘Trumpist’ component of the Republican Party will be marginalised and a new generation of more establishment Republican leaders will come into play. It will also be important that some of Trump’s apparent backers, or others who sought to remain ‘neutral’, concur with the election results that show a potentially resounding defeat for him.

How might this be wrong?

With these kinds of matters, certainty of any kind is elusive. It would be foolish to proceed as if one could not be wrong. As I mentioned in Part 1, I think Harris has a 70%+ chance of winning, which is high but far from certain. So let me say a little more about the other 30%.

As indicated in Part 1, I think the damage Trump will do to the USA’s geopolitical positioning and strategy is such that it is very unlikely he will be allowed to win. There are two reasons he may nevertheless do so.

First, maybe the US really is a democracy after all and Harris’s unlikeability somehow manages to exceed Trump’s. Perhaps Elon Musk isn’t a Trojan Horse and really has boosted Trump’s support. I really think this is very unlikely: I would assign perhaps a 10% chance at most to this outcome/scenario.

In Part 1 I mentioned that the ‘ground campaign’ Elon Musk has been running for Trump has conveniently been beset by fraud that will undermine its efficacy. More suggestive evidence of Musk being a Trojan Horse emerged today: the day before in-person voting begins Musk’s lawyer has revealed that the winners of his much-publicised lottery are not randomly chosen but selected to be spokespeople for the ‘PAC’ (political action committee) Musk is running. That is almost guaranteed to make the Trump campaign look bad and annoy many of those who signed the pledge hoping to win a million dollars. Another great way to reduce Trump’s vote numbers.

Second, and a more likely reason he would be allowed to win, Trump could enable the US to take some actions that would otherwise be difficult to justify. Most of these are on the foreign policy front: ending the war in Ukraine; more directly exerting power over Netanyahu in Israel to agree to a ceasefire; and potentially starting a war with Iran. Trump has, unexpectedly for such a right-wing candidate, been more pro-peace than the Democrats. However, he appears to hold a long-standing dislike of Iran and that might make him useful if the intelligence and military establishment want to complete the plan for a series of invasions in the Middle East dreamt up by the ‘hawks’ in the Republican Party. I would give this scenario about 20% likelihood.

Putting these together, I give Trump at most a 30% chance of winning - way below the 50% being assigned by pollsters and almost 60% by betting markets.

In either case, I still think that the damage Trump would do to existing covert and overt positioning would be too much for the proverbial establishment. If Trump does win for the second reason, I would expect him to be impeached (or perhaps assassinated) after he takes such decisions and before he goes on to interfere in matters besides those described.

If there is a decisive victory for either candidate, it will only be a couple of days before we know. If not, there could be months of legal and political wrangling ahead. This will certainly be one of the most important and controversial elections of the 21st century.

1. The cartoon is based on Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. (I found this highly celebrated book rather dull and disappointing when I read it, but its clear political intent was interesting).