Will Kamala Harris Win The U.S. Presidential Election
Will Kamala Harris Win The U.S. Presidential Election
Turnout of women and independent voters in swing states will likely determine if Kamala Harris is elected America's first woman president
(Photo: Kamala Harris, front right, with her mother and grandparents during a visit to India.)
October 18, 2024
On the eve of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, most polls predicted that Hilary Clinton would win. Michael Moore, a documentary filmmaker and Clinton supporter, said that Donald Trump would win. He based his forecast on the crowds and enthusiasm he saw at Trump’s rallies, especially in his home state of Michigan and the other swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Early this month, in a post on Substack, Moore agreed with an aggregate of top polls which show that, on November 5, “Harris will defeat Trump in the Electoral College count by 270 to 268.”
Stan Druckenmiller, one of the most successful hedge fund managers, has a different view. The recent rise in bank and other stocks, whose businesses will benefit from deregulation, the rise in gold and bitcoin prices and other indicators show that U.S. financial markets are “very convinced” that Trump will win, Druckenmiller said in a Bloomberg interview last week. He added that financial markets are a more accurate indicator of election outcomes than polls, as was the case with Ronald Reagen’s first presidential win in 1980. Based in New York, Druckenmiller said he was not going to vote for either Harris, because of her economic policies, or Trump, because of his character.
About two thirds of the more than 161 million registered voters align with one of the parties - 33% Democrats and 32% Republicans - while 35% are independents, according to the Pew Research Center.
About a third of Republicans have a college or post graduate degree compared to half of Democrats. Among Republicans, 62% have a high school education or less or some college education while half of Democrats have a similar education level. About half of Republicans reportedly believe everything Trump says, including conspiracy theories such as illegal migrants are stealing and eating pet dogs and cats.
The rest of the Republicans, especially white men with college degrees, support Trump for a variety of reasons, including: cutting income and other taxes; freezing U.S. work visas for Indian and other foreign professionals; banning minority quotas in college admissions, jobs and business contracts; and not forgiving college student debt.
In addition, Trump is trying to attract a wide range of voters, especially independents and Democrats, by making numerous promises including: boosting jobs in the U.S. by imposing 20% to 200% tariffs on imports; tax deduction on car purchases; no income tax on tips, in an appeal to hotel and restaurant workers in Las Vegas, Nevada, a swing electoral state; lifting regulations on cryptocurrencies, even though law enforcement agencies have found they are being used by criminals and terrorists to illegally transfer money; and curbing Internal Revenue Service investigations of income tax evasion, which Republicans view as a harassment of “middle-class taxpayers and small business owners”, by cutting the agency’s funding.
The Financial Times reports that “Donald Trump is using the final stretch of the White House race to sell everything from crypto tokens to watches, books and jewelry to millions of fans, boosting his family’s finances on the back of his political appeal.”
In turn, Harris has promised numerous policies including a $6,000 tax credit to parents of new born children; $50,000 tax credit to entrepreneurs; $25,000 grant to first-time homeowners; as well as no income tax on tips.
Harris’s plan will have a lesser impact on the U.S. budget deficit and debt according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group based in Washington DC. Her plan would increase the U.S. federal debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion. But such economic issues will have little, if any, impact on the outcome of this year’s presidential election.
While predicting a Harris win, filmmaker Michael Moore is nervous about the election results. In a Substack post last week, he asked Harris “Please stand with Arabs, Jews, African Americans and young adults in Dearborn, Flint and Detroit, (in Michigan,) and say that you will bring this war in Gaza to an end once you are president.”
Moore stated that, “Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza a year ago, the Arab vote in Michigan for Joe Biden — and now you — has tanked. That 70% support number in the (2020) polls has dropped to as low as 12%...the loss of any of the 140,000 (Arab and Muslim) votes you received in 2020 could be catastrophic.”
Indeed, as in 2016 and 2020, the 2024 presidential election will likely be determined by a few hundred thousand votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Losing any of those states will make it tough for Harris to win.
A big plus for Harris is her lead among women, which exceeds 10%. This is in part due to the Republicans stance on abortions, denying a woman’s right to choose. In the 2020 election, more women voted than men: 52% of the 131 million voters were women, 45% men. This partly reflects the demographics of the population with more women, especially among the elderly, as a Brookings study notes.
Turnout of women and independent voters for Harris in the swing states will be key as to whether she loses or wins next month.
Trump is seeking to win over more women voters by saying he will be their protector. Also, in his campaign speeches and advertisements, Trump mainly focuses on crimes, especially crimes by illegal immigrants against women. He says that, after Harris became vice president in 2020, she opened up the U.S. Mexican border enabling more than 10 million illegal immigrants to enter the U.S., many of them criminals. Such attacks on Harris are eagerly applauded by Trump’s supporters. In addition, Trump is apparently trying to instill fear over illegal criminals in white educated suburban women, who dislike him and lean towards Harris, so they will not vote for either candidate.
“Election Subversion 2024” is the title of the latest episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. On this TV show on HBO, Oliver discusses “the attempts made by Donald Trump and his supporters to undermine the upcoming election, and what we can expect after election night…”
Trump has said he will be a dictator; use the military against the “the enemy from within”; launch retaliatory criminal prosecutions against his opponents; and punish Stephen Colbert and other TV comedians who poke fun at him. Some college educated Republicans who support Trump say that his threats are mere boasts and, if elected, he will not follow through.
James Carville, political strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential election win, says one unknown, which can impact the race, is some unexpected event. Perhaps a major violent incident in the U.S. by extremist groups?
Carville, a Democrat and Harris supporter, told MSNBC that Trump is organizing a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, which is reminiscent of a “Pro American Rally” organized on the site by Nazis in the U.S. on February, 20, 1939.
The 1939 rally, which attracted more than 20,000 wearing Nazi uniforms, was organized by the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization for Americans of German descent. The Bund “demonized Jews…and dreamed of a fascist America,” notes a post on the site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
“I’m very, very concerned and very scared” Carville told MSNBC this week. Harris’s team, he added, needs “to be sharp. They need to be aggressive. They need to stop answering questions and start asking questions.”
(Story updated 10.20.2024)