So, What's Happening?

Yes, 2024 is looking awful for Democrats. But just how bad are things, really?

11:50 PM, 11/5/24.

Currently, Trump sits at 230 electoral votes, to Kamala Harris’ 200.

He will almost certainly win Georgia and North Carolina. He is the favorite in Arizona.

For Kamala to reach 270, she’d need to sweep the Rust Belt. That doesn’t look likely. Trump is the favorite to win in all three of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Coming into the election, the prime question of speculation was this: would 2024 look more like 2016 or 2020?

Option A: 2016

The origin of modern, modern politics. The election that introduced Donald Trump into the political arena, where he has steadfastly remained in the 8 years since. The drama was centered up north, in the Upper Midwest: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania each underwent massive rightward shifts (R+8, R+11, and R+6, respectively) amidst a tide of blue-collar resentment towards Democrats.

Option B: 2020.

The year when Joe Biden (partially) won back the Rust Belt by the knife’s edge. He failed to bring back onboard the millions of working-class voters who had abandoned the party in 2016 and even underperformed Hillary Clinton in major urban areas and among minority voters — but on the bright side, he continued Clinton’s upward trend in the suburbs enough so that he could win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in spite of other disappointments.

Here’s what nobody really expected, but what seems to be on the horizon.

Option C: 2016, but worse.

The Rural, White, Working-Class Abyss

The groups of voters that secured Hillary Clinton’s demise in 2016 (and very nearly toppled Biden in 2020) haven’t shown much love to Kamala Harris, either. In the vast majority of sparsely-populated, white, blue-collar counties across the Midwest and Southeast, Harris is coming up short compared to Biden’s 2020 numbers and is matching (or even underperforming) Hillary’s in 2016. While in hindsight, Harris’ lackluster showing hardly seems surprising, consider the pre-election circumstances.

Polls had consistently shown Kamala Harris matching — and even improving on — Joe Biden’s numbers with white, older, voters. Just days before the election, a Des Moines Register poll conducted by the (seemingly-) infallible J. Ann Selzer, showed Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa — which supported him by a 9% margin in 2020 — by 3%. The results seemed in line with polls done of other Midwestern, rural, white states — namely Kansas and Nebraska, where Harris posted impressive margins (coming within 4 points in Kansas, where Biden lost by 15%, and consistently winning NE-02 by double digits, compared to Biden’s 6% win).

Back to reality: currently, Trump is on track to win Iowa by double digits, and Kamala will likely underperform Biden in Kansas and Nebraska (with the exception of NE-02, largely because of Omaha’s explosive growth).

Today’s results decisively puncture any and all of these hopes.

Minority and Urban Drop-Offs

In 2020, two of Joe Biden’s major weak areas came in the form of urban and minority voters — which often come as a package.

It made sense, at the time.

Nowhere is this issue more prevalent than in New York City, where Democrats seem to be in for an absolute bloodbath. All five boroughs shifted to the right by over 10% — and in at least one, this figure might be closer to 20. In 2020, Biden won Queens County by 46 points. As of right now, it seems likely that Kamala Harris will come within 25 points of losing it.

In Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris is ahead in Philadelphia County (A.K.A. Philadelphia) by less than 60 points, compared to Biden’s 63% victory and Hillary’s 67% win. The fact that she is continuing a downward trend rather than simply stagnating suggests a bleak picture for Democrats. How much farther will they continue to fall?

Stagnant, Even Backsliding Suburbs

Now, between the 2016 and 2020 elections, Democrats are no stranger to landslide defeats with rural, working-class white voters and lackluster margins with urban minorities. But at the very least, they had the solace of one friendly demographic, and a powerful one at that: affluent, highly-educated suburban (mostly white) voters.

These voters prevented Clinton from losing the Rust Belt by a larger margin than she actually did in 2016. In 2020, they helped lift Biden to victory in this very region, along with the Sun Belt states of Georgia and Arizona.

In 2022, despite Biden’s poor favorability numbers and a generally Republican-friendly national environment (evidenced by the R+1.5 adjusted House vote), Democrats held up remarkably well in suburban America.

Most politicians, analysts, and election-watchers of all stripes went into 2024 with the assumption that, at the very least, Democrats would hold up in the suburbs — many of which had trended left in every presidential election since 2012. Unfortunately, this was far from the case.

Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Loudon County, VA. Located in NOVA, the D.C. suburb is a cornerstone of the historically-Republican, anti-Trump breed which fled from the Republican Party in the years since 2016. Biden’s 25% victory in Loudon cemented this transformation.

But in 2024, Harris won Loudon by a mere 16% — nearly 10 points to the right of 2020.

Now, you might be saying: Biden’s margins in Virginia were pretty inflated. No Democrat since (or before) then has come close to his 10% margin of victory.

To that I would offer:

Look at Atlanta’s collar counties.

Look at Oakland County and Macomb County, in Michigan.

Look at Dane County, DeKalb County, and Lackawanna County, in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, respectively.

They all tell the same story: the floor has truly given in, and the sky is falling for Democrats.

The Takeaway

2016 will always be remembered (by Democrats) for the gut-wrenching, nausea it instilled in the stomachs of millions.

2024 is nowhere near as surprising: pollsters adjusted their weighting, and they seem to have been pretty spot-on this year (with slight overestimations of Harris support across the board).

But looking at them side-by-side, on the whole, 2024 might actually be more awful. If 2016 was a supreme disappointment, 2024 is an all-out, flashing-red alarm bells disaster.

2024 doesn’t just put a wrench in a Kamala Harris presidency. It doesn’t just shatter Democratic hopes of a Trump-free Washington D.C. It arguably represents the worst (and most worrisome) result for the party in the 21st century thus far.

The only question Democrats can ask themselves is this:

Where do we go from here?

Now, this election isn’t over. The Rust Belt states are yet to be called, with nearly half of their votes remaining to be counted. It is entirely possible (albeit unlikely) that the 2024 presidential election results in a Kamala Harris victory — a happy ending — and my dejectedness is decidedly that: pessimism.

Please, prove me wrong.