Permutations and populations

The real voting is happening, and brings some surprises.

Oct 23, 2024

If this election were described in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it would drive Phaedrus past his obsession with Quality and into irretrievable madness. The possibilities and permutations of an election that is actually already in progress, as early voting has begun in every state except Oklahoma, are mind-numbing. But let’s settle on a few basic things, so we don’t lose our minds to this puzzle.

The only states that really matter are: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and—of all places—Nevada. Wisconsin sort of matters, but if Wisconsin is in play on November 5th, it’s probably fair to say that things are looking pretty morose for the Harris campaign. The permutations are fairly clear. Any candidate that takes the first four states, wins decisively. Even if Nevada goes for Trump, Kamala Harris would win 302-236 if she sweeps all four (and holds Wisconsin).

And if Trump sweeps, he wins 296-242, even if Wisconsin and Nevada stay blue. But it’s not the greatest likelihood that one candidate will sweep. Every day that passes, more voters go to the polls, and therefore the numbers go from potentials to populations—actual votes.

I must say that Trump appears to have the advantage here—although slight. For example, if Trump wins Georgia and North Carolina, he needs only win either Pennsylvania or Michigan to lock up the election. If he loses North Carolina and wins Pennsylvania, the election will come down to—Nevada. (Who ever thought this election would come down to Las Vegas, though that’s about the most appropriate third act I can imagine.)

To win, Harris has to beat Trump in Georgia, then North Carolina does not matter. In fact, if Harris wins Georgia, she only needs to take Pennsylvania alone, or Michigan plus Nevada to win. Substitute Georgia for North Carolina and the same math holds.

North Carolina is very tight. The latest polls are split between Harris + 1 and Trump +2. But polls are starting to matter less, and demographics are starting to matter more since voters are going to the polls. To date, more than 1.3 million voters have cast early ballots in North Carolina, which is 21 percent of the total voters. This falls far short of the 2020 total, but nobody expects to match the COVID numbers.

In Georgia, 1,690,699 voters have cast early ballots at the time I’m writing this, either in person or by mail, according to the New York Times. The tracker site Georgia Votes has it at 1,690,706, which is 108,002 ballots short of the 2020 number, or about 6 percent lower. Of these, 1,591,264 are in-person early votes. Digging deeper, 59 percent of early voters are white, and 27.2 percent are Black. That is a bit skewed from actual voter demographics: 29.3 percent of active voters are Black, according to the Secretary of State website (as of December 2021), and 53 percent are white.

With 24 percent of the total voter roll having cast ballots, statistically, this shows a lack of voting support in great numbers among Blacks in Georgia. Black voters are underperforming in showing up, you could say.

Jake Walker, a scholar and a friend of The Racket News™, posted on X that “Black turnout is cratering in Georgia because Black men just aren’t showing up.”

Keep in mind that these are actual numbers—real votes. Of course, we can’t correlate votes for Trump or Harris directly from these numbers, nor can we make a meaningful extrapolation based on just a few days’ trend (the statisticians in the thread refused to try). But it’s not a good sign, reading the tea leaves, especially coupled with the latest polls. It’s always possible that Black voter support will surge in the last week, or that a large number of voters will show up on Election Day. But much of that is very positively correlated with events.

In Fulton County, 41.1 percent of voters are Black, and 38.3 percent are white, according to the SOS website. To date, 36.2 percent of Fulton early votes are by Black voters, and 45.7 percent are white. Clearly, white voters are showing up, while Black voters are not voting in the numbers predicted by the demographics. Events are the key to moving these numbers, or not moving them.

In other words, something has to happen to motivate those voters to get up and vote. The talking, preening, campaigning, and staged events have not been enough to do it. The baked-in preferences are not enough to do it. There is likely not enough time or unpolluted airwaves and online slots for the Harris campaign to project a clear message. Political airwaves are already jammed to the point of bursting, and people can only tune in so much.

If the current events in the world, and the nation, continue, I believe my thoughts (echoed by others, including Nate Silver) that Harris peaked a bit early and her momentum is now waning while the polls are trending back to Trump, ever so slightly, are being proved out. This means the election (as all do) will come down to turnout. And in Georgia, at least, the turnout numbers are not favorable to the Harris campaign, which is why Harris is so hard over to get Republicans to cross over and support her. The traditional Democratic Party base is not giving enough early support to their candidate, so the task falls to disaffected Republicans. David Thornton did a deeper dive on this last week, regarding “Harris’s problem with Black voters.”

If these Republicans for Harris show up in sufficient numbers, they will sway the race. We know Republicans are showing up, but we simply don’t have enough data to know who they’re voting for, other than, of course, polling data. As I said up top, the permutations are enough to melt your mind. But one thing we might agree on is that there is no clear winner emerging in Georgia, or any other battleground state. We will know when we know, on Election Day, or perhaps a day or two later if there are enough uncounted mail-in votes.

Of the five top states with the highest percentage of early voters, two of them are critical battleground states: Georgia and North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, 13 percent—over a million—absentee ballots have been received so far; the number is 15 percent in Michigan. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told CBS “Face the Nation” on Sunday that she expects results to be certified Wednesday after Election Day. If one candidate wins Georgia and North Carolina, that may be somewhat moot.

Pennsylvania is another story: election officials are prohibited by law from opening mailed ballots until the morning of Election Day. And once started, the votes must be counted around the clock until finished. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said it’s unlikely we will know the winner the night of November 5th. If Georgia and North Carolina split, and we don’t know Michigan’s results, all eyes will be on Pennsylvania.

If Trump wins Georgia and North Carolina, and is in the lead based on in-person Election Day votes in either Michigan or Pennsylvania, I expect he will get up on stage and declare himself the victor. Then if he ends up losing both states the next day, even if Nevada breaks for Trump, Harris will win by a single electoral vote: 270-268. And Trump will say the election was stolen, just like it’s 2020 all over again. The opposite could happen, if North Carolina goes to Harris, and she wins Michigan, and is leading in Pennsylvania.

I don’t know if Harris will stand on stage and declare victory without knowing for sure. If she did this and was wrong, it would be the biggest endorsement of her opponent she could make: quite damning. Harris certainly won’t get a congratulations phone call from Donald Trump in any case. It’s possible that we can all go to bed two weeks from yesterday, Tuesday night believing Harris is going to win, and wake up Wednesday morning to a Trump victory: 271-267 (Trump wins Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada).

It’s probable that the campaigns have better data than what we can glean from public sites and sources. They would know the key places to watch, and especially early voting locations in Georgia and North Carolina. They would be keeping track of voter counts, and possibly even doing some kind of exit polling to see where things stand. Watching where the candidates and their surrogates go in the last week can yield some clue to where the campaigns believe more support is needed.

I’ll reiterate: it really doesn’t matter what either candidate says at this point, when they show up. It’s the showing up that really counts (“would you like fries with that?”). Can anyone believe that Trump could say anything that would hurt him more than what he’s been saying? (That whole Arnold Palmer thing comes to mind.) Harris commented that Trump is “becoming increasingly unstable and unhinged.” As if that’s some October surprise, or a new revelation.

As much as you—and me, dear reader—know that character is destiny, with Trump leading crowds of church-going citizens in a call-and-response where they yell an expletive back at him, this race is not the kind that will be decided by such displays of naked depravity. In fact, Speaker Mike Johnson is more right than wrong when he deflected on CNN’s “State of the Union,” saying “This shouldn't be about personalities, it should be about policies.” Should be, yeah.

The funny thing is that the actual policies we will likely end up with from either of these two bi-coastal elite wannabes will be almost indiscernible from the other no matter which one wins. Biden really didn’t change much from Trump; he kept tariffs, ended up doing the whole border thing (after a few years of pretending it wasn’t a problem), and doled out special interest perks like candy. Harris, when asked, said “nothing comes to mind” that she’d change on Biden’s policies, which are mostly Trump’s. If we’re to believe Harris, we will end up with more of what we have now.

If we believe Trump, well, shame on us. But I do believe that under his administration we will end up with a billionaire’s paradise, and the government will do the trickle down, as in urinate on the rest of us from orbit. It would be mildly amusing to see the Elon Musk, as the efficiency czar, walking through federal agencies yelling “delete, delete, delete.” Other than that, it’s going to be more of the same, with a different set of pigs at the trough.

The permutations of the population are more intricate than the plans of politicians. At least, in two weeks, we should know how it turns out.

NO SURPRISE. The media reporting from Gaza, or Lebanon, is not fair or unbiased. I know that might be a shock to you, but it’s no surprise to me. CBS producer Marwan Al Ghoul does not hide his anti-Israel bias. More from National Review.

GIULIANI STRIPPED OF ASSETS. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Federal Judge Lewis J. Liman ordered most of Rudy Guiliani’s assets to be placed into receivership to satisfy the jumbo judgement he lost to two Fulton County poll workers whose lives he overturned with his bombastic lies. He will lose his Manhattan flat, which was for sale, and most of his other possessions, and his cash. Honestly, this is sad, because Giuliani, who is 80 and mentally absent, was once someone respectable. He just fell in with the wrong crowd. More from the New York Times. (My wish: Now do Alex Jones.)

EWW. Groomers are where you’d expect to find them. Michael Jeffries, former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, ran an extensive sex trafficking operation, preying on male models who wanted to enhance their careers. He did this for years, federal prosecutors say. People in powerful positions, who can make or break others’ careers, when those careers are based on looks and charisma, many times are as bad—or worse—than you think human beings are capable of being. Hollywood is a nasty, sex-obsessed place. But the fashion world is probably just as awful. More from the New York Times.

Permutations and populations

The real voting is happening, and brings some surprises.

Discussion about this post