In the run-up to the US election, it was expected that the count could take days, possibly a week. Now, it looks like the 2024 election will be decided in a matter of hours. Swing states North Carolina and Georgia have been called for Donald Trump. Fox News reports that the most crucial swing state in this election – Pennsylvania – has been won by Trump. The surprise Selzer poll from over the weekend, showing Kamala Harris three points ahead in Iowa, proved badly wrong: Trump has won the state. The Republican candidate is now only a few electoral votes away from clinching the presidency. The prediction market Polymarket at 6am GMT gives the former president a 98 per cent chance of winning the election, and a 74 per cent change of winning the popular vote (this is up from 76 per cent at 3.40am GMT).
It’s not just the betting markets that are moving in Trump’s favour. The New York Times’s live ’needle’ has swung dramatically towards the former president, from ‘tossup’ at the start of the evening to a ‘very likely’ Trump win now (at time of publishing, they report a 95 per cent chance of winning). ‘Trump is favoured in each of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin,’ writes Nate Cohn, the paper’s chief political analyst. ‘We’ll just have to wait longer to see whether maybe, just maybe, Harris will do better than expected in key Democratic areas.’ The paper’s current models give Trump the edge is every swing state.
The numbers keep moving – and they are shifting in the wrong direction for Kamala Harris
The numbers keep moving – and they are shifting in the wrong direction for Kamala Harris. Does that mean the night is over? There’s a good reason the broadcasters – who are in competition to call this election first – won’t do so yet. It remains too early to say who has won the Rust Belt states. As of an hour ago, Harris’s team was still sounding optimistic. A memo, addressed from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, let staff know they ‘feel good’ about the prospect of holding the Blue Wall. Were Harris to surprise in Michigan and Wisconsin, she’s got a possible pathway to victory.
But markets suggest that prospect is slipping away from the Harris camp by the minute. Not everyone is optimistic. The Times reports Harris’s party at Howard University in Washington DC just wrapped up. ‘You won’t hear from the vice president tonight, but you will hear from her tomorrow,’ said the co-chair of the Harris campaign. A much more ominous tone.
How did we get here? Early reports suggest that demographic trends are shifting once again: NBC’s Michigan’s exit poll reports a four-point lead for Trump with voters under the age of 30: a sign that his efforts to turn out younger men (who are less likely to vote) may have proved successful. There is also early indication that Harris may have underperformed with the female vote: the bloc she is counting on to get her over the Electoral College finish line.
But it may well come down to ‘the economy, stupid’. Doesn’t it always? Exit polls show that the overwhelming issue in this election was the economy, with 39 per cent of respondents telling Fox News it was the ‘most important issue facing the country’, followed by immigration at 20 per cent (abortion only landed at 11 per cent). It’s not just Fox with these figures: CNN also found the economy ranked the ‘most important issue’, at 31 per cent (abortion slightly outranks immigration in their poll, 14 per cent to 11 per cent).
If the economy – particularly inflation – determines this election, that will neatly fit into the trend across the West, which has seen incumbent governments, regardless of party, face a reckoning at the polling booth, as voters make clear what they think of the cost-of-living crisis.
Nothing is certain. America can always surprise. But as Freddy Gray reports on the latest Americano podcast, the mood is shifting in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump is hosting his election night party – from cautious optimism to bullish victory. This may be premature. But it doesn’t look that way.
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