My humble prediction of the 2024 Presidential Election
How the polls might (not) call the election outcomes?
When I began writing down these words, the election night had drawn very close as you might imagine. We are three days running up to the event. All eyes on the ups and downs of the polls, and scrolling down through every piece of the analysis. But we know in a heavily polarised political climate, the election results might have been decided way before the debate, election campaigns, speeches, scandals, and unfolding of dramas, the voters' minds might have been determined as if setting in stone despite the polling fluctuations.
In the art of election prediction, anything perhaps comes down to surveys, sampling, and mathematic analysis on how a presidential candidate gets on the path to the 270 electoral votes. In a winner-takes-it-all voting system, the race has narrowed down to only 7 swing states, grouped into Northeast unionist Rust Belt states (Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania), the formal heartland of American manufacturing; and Sun Belt states (including Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia). A combination of electoral college's grabs in these two groups will provide a path to victory for either candidate (44 votes needed for Harris, and 51 for Trump). Pennsylvania with 19 electoral votes is the most vying battleground with an even chance as the polls suggest. We knew that the frayed relationship between the Democrats and the working class paved the way for Trump's inroads into the Rust Belt states in 2016, and these states were then flipped by Biden narrowly in the 2020 race. We know Arizona turned blue with the support of John McCain's Republicans, though the polls point to Trump leading with a wide margin in this state. Biden also took Georgia, while Trump grabbed North Carolina. But as things stand, no one seems to predictably win in these states. All the past events had little to make a verdict of how the voters are going to vote this year 2024.
With the facts presented, the 2024 race is still notoriously known as the most unpredictable in American election history as we know it. None of the polling data and analysis holds a crystal ball. It is a bit of back story to 2016 when Donald Trump came out of nowhere and held a blowout victory, even though the polls pointed to Hillary's potential win. The pollsters were blamed for being skewered towards the left. While the polling data read out a reliably solid path to victory for Joe Biden, it again came under criticism for underestimating Trump as he managed to garner 11 million more votes compared to 2016 (from less than 63 million to 74 million). Therefore, the analysts doubt that the tied race as the pollsters portray has little to do with the sentiments of the voters, but rather than a step back from risky decision-making to grant anybody a wide lead. The fluctuations might be reflective of an attempt to correct (sometimes overcorrect) potential "biased leaning" rather than swiftly changing opinions.
I'm not an expert in technical aspects of the American elections, and with my little understanding of such context-specific, timebound demographics, and new dynamics it will be introduced to the election outcomes. As a matter of fact, though, the election polling will normatively rely on the demographical and social context in the past five years (in 2020), and it fails to account for the pulls and pushes of new dynamics as time flies. We fail to account for the participation of women in politics. Don't get me wrong, I would not attribute the high turnout of women votes for Harris (if this happens to be true) to Harris's status as a female candidate. But the high turnout of women votes (if this happens to be true) will reflect a successful outcome of a long-fought process of women's liberation, women will vote to reject any pushback from (or overthrow of) this momentum. Women's liberation might be just a case in point, as I would not dive in other dynamics which could tip the balance. The same goes for my reading that black voters desert the democratic camp (lower black voters are expected to vote for Harris in 2024 than Biden in 2020), because of Harris herself, but rather than a cut-crossing trend that is discussed later in this article, which is the deepening line of education. Non-educated black voters might finally enter Trump's fanbase, while some certain educated white voters might desert the Republican Party.
When I was jotting down these lines, the over-the-air news came just in about Harris's 3% lead over Trump in Iowa. Iowa has ceased to be a swing state for a long time (it was reliably Republican stronghold in 2016 and 2020), and the poll of 1000 samplings (typically) and marginal errors might not reliably predict Harris' grabs of this state. What it might tell us are the introduction in new dimensions from shifts in demographics towards urbanisation, attributes of women's voters, or generational shifts as it could be. And the survey sampling grabs in a 3.1 million Iowa (only 6 electoral votes), might be something more conclusive of the trends (although it might not accurately predictive of the final outcome) than a larger state of 13 million citizens like Pennsylvania (19 votes). Harris's leading momentum fueled by these new dimensions, although not solidly certain, might not be bound to Iowa, as it could be replicated throughout the states and country land of America, which the polls might not account for. Trump could reliably rely on an anti-immigration stance in his 2016 campaign, though it ceased to be a reliable rhetoric for him. Things have changed, and what we are not certain of is the multitudes of the changes that take place in American society given the absence of comprehensive demographical data and sociologist analysis (which I might be able to access).
I'm cautiously confident about the victory of Kamala Harris despite how uncertain it could turn out to be. Yet, my confidence was drawn from the successful women's liberation, generational and demographical shifts over time, which come to materialise this year, not on any positive notes I could find in Harris' campaign.
Polarisation or fragmentation is temporary. What is the only "line to divide" that matters?
I'm a non-American citizen, so my readings of American elections are not heavily inclined towards the analysis of certain identity groups in American elections. I've heard how Harris underperformed in black votes and the defections of Muslims from the democratic camps following Biden's handling of the regional crisis created by Israel. These are all factored in. Nonetheless, the divisive political climate keeps the Americans from seeing a basic truth about what is divisive among them. The identity, cultural, demographical, and geographical lines are temporarily and fragilely posted fences between us, as these factors shift all the time. Even voting patterns based on wealth and income might not make much sense. The only obvious line to divide how people vote is education. American literacy is astonishingly low (standing at only 79%) (with literacy defined as the capabilities to complete the tasks of comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, and making low-level inferences. This definition is inarguably stringent, and might not be cited to infer that American literacy is lower than developing nations or China (where literacy simply means the ability to read and write simple words and sentences). It is on the other hand disappointingly lower than their counterparts in the developed world.
(Source: New York Times)
Despite all the odds, Americans still prioritise colleges with approximately 37.5% completing higher education. Higher education in America is prohibitively costly with 10 years averagely needed for an American adult to pay off their college tuition debt. Any voice to cancel the student tuition debts and free public colleges such as Elizabeth Warren's campaign will be labelled as "socialist" by the Republicans, and "pro-urban" by some Democrats. Education is key to guiding the voters to make the right choices, and essential to sustain the substances and spirits of democracy. Nonetheless, the American ruling elite fails to tackle the problems with their education system institutionally, leaving it afloat on the market and being profiteered as if it were a way of doing business rather than it is about nurturing, and enlightenment of the people; and endowment of a American dream by the power of knowledge. Democratic institutions are somehow exacerbated by the spreading of multimedia, social networks, and digitisation, which reshape how people consume information. These trends will increase access to information, whilst leaving information accuracy and quality unfiltered. There's substantiated evidence that the Russian, Chinese states; and other lobby groups use manipulated news to target certain groups of votes, thus influencing the election results. While free information access is how a democracy is how democracy should function, it is sustained by efforts to improve literacy, education, and critical thinking among the population.
The ruins of American presidential systems
The strength of democracy dwells on the vigours of a democratic political culture which enables political discourse on a healthy and civil spirit, and the adoption of inclusivity and pluralism. Building political culture is attributed to improving access to education and literacy. But one factor might be missed out from the context, the healthy functions of political parties, which are essentially the carriers of political values and knowledge, the interpretation of patriotism, and national duty in practical policy and law designs to the wider public. American presidential system leads to the presidential election becoming a two-candidate race. Long visions are distorted into the populistic argument "If I become president-elect, then everything". Theoretically, everyone would be able to run for president if qualified, however, it ties down to a two-person race in practice with voters putting their stakes at two candidates with the best chances of winning, essentially keeping "another option" from having any representation in politics. The winner-takes-it-all rule certainly makes things even worse.
Any candidate who wins the election will be elected by half of the population who lend support to them, with the other half opposing; coming out of nowhere with promises and leaving office with oftentimes low approval ratings. There would be many cases where the president uses his executive power to put forth policies deviating from his party's stances or going against the party's lines, for better or worse, it would strip the political party of functioning as a deliverer of policies and long-term visions for the country. It began with the Republican Party losing the immunity to filter out the authoritarian roots and populism and allowed Donald Trump to easily take the whole party hostage.
Lack of political consensus and normalising the vilification of the opponents lead to a situation where a new president-elect will on behalf of "the people" who voted for them try to overthrow the positive legacies and policies under the previous administration, exemplified in Trump's attempt to overthrow Obama Care.
In the Parliamentary System, the policies, legacies, and long-term visions are proposed by a political party and legislated through the negotiations and debate in the parliament/legislative body which is made of different political parties, and inclinations, representing the voices, identities, and unity of the country. These will become national legacies once they are agreed upon by the majority.
The practice of executive power in politics is even seen in a negative light elsewhere. The abuses of executive power is often attributed to the backsliding of democracy as seen with Hungarian Victor Orban who deployed his executive power to suspend certain laws and impose the rule with the executive decree and sidestep the parliamentary process, in any situations he interpreted as "emergencies". Any American president-elect is inclined to deliver his promises by using his executive power to put forth the laws, and policies without proper "parliamentary process". Indeed, in present-day American political culture with increased polarisation, and a narrower common room; any passage of policies will come at the cost of more opposition and divisions and are more inclined towards executive power's overuse, thus creating a precedent for more authoritarian tendencies.
There will be a lot to make of the ruinous presidentialism that the American system currently features, but in my opinion, the decline of American political culture is majorly linked with the decline of political parties as the deliverer of political visions and policies, lacking inclusion, presence, and representation of minority votes and "third options", the alternations of political visions and ideas with personalistic promises which are hell-bent on courting more votes during the time of campaigning, and abuses (overuse) of executive power to push the deals through political impasse.
Neither policies nor any idea would win Harris the election, as her campaign focuses on abortion, and comparing Trump with a fascist, which is rather a political expediency to course more votes from undecided voters. Her campaign essentially lacks depth and substance, and it does not come anywhere close to the start of the revamping of American democratic institutions. Of course, in trying to make of a proper root-cause analysis, I would not deny that Trump's victory is a blowout of American democracy, international efforts to tackle climate change and human rights violations, and building the democratic alliance. It is a dark and dangerous scenario to avoid.
Democratisation and 2024 presidential election
Prior to the 2020 presidential election, there was a series of debates in the circles of think tanks and strategists about the showdown between America and China for global domination, which is provocative of the Cold War sentiments. The Cold War was characterised by the armed races with mass spending on the military, the introduction of new military technologies on both sides, and even the scenarios of a nuclear war Another twin competition is to surpass the other as the model which is more superior by economic growth and industrialisation. The Cold War was put to an end when the Soviets could no longer financially sustain the armed races, and breakouts of economic crisis due to the years of mismanagement and suppression.
However, this quasi- Cold War style showdown did not happen this time around. We start to talk of a quietly slow retreat of America as a benevolent hegemon that is capable of deploying military and economic domination to enforce international laws and order. American withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden's administration is disastrous, and leading to the Taliban's slaughters of journalists, women rights activists, female governors, and undoing the progress accomplished over 20 years under even an imperfect democratic government led by Ashraf Ghani.
Likewise, literature on Chinese politics fails to be aware of the internal self-conflicts and inwardly looking inclinations of an economy that could not escape that medium income trap with an ageing population, and such vulnerabilities and poverty were whitewashed from official data during the years of political cover-ups and suppression. China continues to uphold communism, but communism has long gone past its heyday since 1989. The switches to Confucianism to justify the centralised rule and monopoly of the communist party, and sometimes the adoration of Xi JinPing's personality are certainly less convincing for Chinese people, let alone for citizens around the world. Socialism with Chinese characters appears as a myth rather an idea that makes sense. China's current wealth derives from globalisation and business and technology exchanges with the world's economies and being allowed to operate within a world maintained by human rights as the laws and order. China would be poorer if it was left out of that. Human rights will remain our shared history, and the international order will be democratic, and it won't be able to be whitewashed by any dictators or anti-democratic forces.
Biden vowed to organise a global democracy summit to renew the spirit of global democracy within the first year of presidency in his article "Why America should lead again?". This promise has faded into oblivion 4 years onward from his inauguration. Perhaps, it reveals how America lacks democratic credits to galvanize support among the democratic allies. Its military and economic influence (which is shrinking actually) did not help to re-install America as leader of the free world after 4 years of Trump. So it begs a question what could re-unite the democratic countries in solidarity for a greater momentum of democratisation? We faced nearly a decade of democratic governments losing credibility from the accruing internal issues such as rising inequality, and populism to the lack of concerted efforts in tackling climate change, regional conflicts, and human rights violations. Yet, democracy as faith is right in the hearts and minds of citizens everywhere (despite the decrease in democratic government's credibility). The democratic movements in Hongkong, Myanmar, Thailand, Venezuela, Belarus, Bangladesh, and further afield are the calls to action for a better world where "a universal human" is respected and political and civil rights exercised as a norm. The Vietnamese coteries in the communist party launched a campaign against the peaceful evolution (or self-evolution of thoughts), revealing the acute perceptions among the Party's rulers that people's hearts and minds are shifting democratically and out of their handle to a certain point. "You could cut all the flowers, but you could not stop the Spring from coming" might hold true as neither the absence of American leadership nor Trump's election would secure any chances from the authoritarians around the world to bounce back stronger.
We would not downplay the level of interference of certain groups of billionaires and money in American elections as they always do of course, however, there is also awareness among most of the millionaires and billionaires who conscientiously call for higher wealth taxes to combat inequality and democracy, such as Tax Me Now Movement. The corporates embrace child rights, and human rights in business principles, and the bankers are more aware of sustainability practices, and environmental and social safeguards in the finances; democratic values have become established in the business norms. In a survey taken two years ago, 60% of Americans held that democracy works for interests of the rich, and corporations rather than those of the people. That's disturbing, but now there are the billionaires who join us to fix the issue.
And yet, this year was not boding well for democracy and human rights as the Human Rights Watch might suggest. Renewed hostilities between Israel and Human and in Sudan, prolonged conflicts in Ukraine, Myanmar, and Ethiopia, and the Sahel, rising economic inequality, LGBT and women's rights facing backlashes, exemplified by the Taliban's gender persecution in Afghanistan. 75 years from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights are still disregarded here and here, and lack of coordinated responses is leaving the international mechanisms toothless in holding human rights violators to account. But it only shows democratic resistance has been growing and increasingly recognised and is being met with suppressions from the anti-democratic forces if taking a larger picture.
America is not needed in the sense of holding ultimate significance in policing the world. But putting all that aside, we still love to see America as a contributor to the efforts of making this world more democratic and human rights respecting. And, the downfall of Trump will make us confident that the yearnings for democracy in America and elsewhere in this world will outweigh the grievances and resentment that people currently have for democratic governments. And Harris is not a convincing candidate who stands for global democracy. But surely, she will surely be supportive of the idea all the countries in this world should be democratic and uphold human rights, as opposed to Donald Trump, an idol of dictators around the world. I'm cautiously confident that Harris will win the election in our sighs of relief.
