2024 Election Predictions

00:00

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Why Do I Care? I'm host Toby Favallora. And I'm Alex Gervais. And today we'll be discussing our 2024 election predictions. For the further ado, let's get right to it.

00:14

It appears Ronald Reagan is headed for an overwhelming victory over President Carter. It now appears President Reagan has won and has won big. The state of Michigan which handed Michael Dukakis his worst defeat in the primaries has just put George Bush over the top. Governor Clinton is now President-elect Bill Clinton. William Jefferson Clinton has a job for four more years. What you just heard was CNN calling races.

00:43

as they ended, presidential races, right? It's a tradition we're very used to, but one that went slightly awry in 2020 and waited for days and days for an electoral result, finally getting one when Pennsylvania was called just the beginning of the weekend. For the first time since really 2000, we were unsure about who the next president of the United States would be. We had our thoughts, we had our presumptions, but we didn't know until that fateful day. But now we have another chance at another election. It is time for America to yet again elect a new president.

01:13

Thank you, Toby. What were you doing when you found out that Biden won? I remember I was raking leaves. I was raking leaves outside. My mom was like, oh, we have to like rake these leaves. I was like, I don't want to. And then I saw that Biden had won and that was my excuse to go inside so I didn't have to rake leaves anymore. Yeah, Toby, in all honesty, I was in the bathroom when it happened. But I remember when they called Michigan, I was outside playing basketball and I like, you know, hit a little celly. Oh yeah, as you do. You know, as I did when I was a kid during COVID just playing basketball in my driveway.

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But you know, like these were moments that we remember, right, from this election. And it was something that we might not ever see again, an election called in that way. Yeah, no, yeah, I agree. So what we're gonna do this episode is we're gonna kind of run down some of the key elections to really keep an eye on. We have more in-depth episodes on YouTube.

02:07

about what we want for the house we want for the president we have one for the senate you know we're gonna just quick give y'all the rundown see what the most important ones are this is gonna be just like that the shortened version of those is gonna be less detail not as not not like visuals but yeah you get to hear our lovely voices yeah you do yes let's let's start with the house toby so in our predictions Toby and I came to a slight consensus that we would have a democratic house right at the end of the day we ended up picking

02:36

in 212 Republican seats. But you're saying, Toby, how many seats are in the House? 435, right? Missing three seats. Let's talk about those three seats. Toby and I cannot come to a consensus on. Yes, so the first seat that we cannot come to a consensus on was Michigan's seventh. We're not in the district. This is the district that has Lansing in it. This is an open seat because the incumbent, Slotkin, is running for the Senate. So we're gonna touch on that a little bit later, maybe. So in 2022,

03:04

The Democrats won the seat by 5.4 points, and this was a Democratic flip, in large part because there was abortion on the ballot. Currently, the polls have it as Tom Barrett, who's a Republican, as a four-point favorite currently. And Tom Barrett ran in 2022, but lost because abortion was on the ballot. So I thought that this is likely gonna go to Republican because if it was...

03:34

If it was like a loss against a very strong Democrat who was an incumbent and abortion was on the ballot, I mean, like, I don't think that that magic could be replicated again. I think that it's going to be a Republican flip. I think Republicans are going to be able to take the seat. Yeah, I mean, Toby, I see, I, you know, I understand your logic here. For me, right, slocking one, again, the seat by almost five and a half points. I don't see a world where you have a four or where you have a five or six point swing back to the Republican side. I think that that.

04:02

For me, I don't see happening. I think Alyssa Slotkin was a fantastic representative. I think that her incumbency obviously played a role in what she's done for the people of Michigan's seventh. But I still think that Curtis Hurdle is gonna pull it out over Tom Barrett, the Democrat here, is gonna win by just a little bit, you know, kind of reinforcing the Democratic House majority. Yeah, yeah, and this is one, we cannot come to a consensus on this. So like, I'm not gonna change your mind, you're not gonna change my mind, but it's just like.

04:29

there's not abortion on the ballot. And that was a really big key for how Democrats were able to win in 2022. And it's also a big key currently in how the Democrats are running this race. And I think without abortion on the ballot, there's not gonna be necessarily the same amount of drive to go get up the vote there. But I mean, it can go either way. Yeah, and yeah, that's fair. The next race we're gonna look at in the House is a race that is starkingly different.

04:56

From the one in Michigan's Michigan seventh. We're looking at California's 45th where you have Michelle steel Republican incumbent versus Derek Tran Democratic challenger for those who do not know California's 45th is comprised of Orange County a place where Democrats have historically Struggled but have tried to make inroads just because if the amount of money that is there and the amount of donor base that they Can pick up. Yeah, so who do you have winning this race?

05:21

In this race, I have Michelle Steele winning. Even though polls have shown Tran up, it was Tardy up on the race, all of it has been pretty partisan. I think that Steele has kind of a footing, especially in the Republican leadership, that's gonna help repel her. She's one of the few representatives running for Republican seat who is outspending the Democrats. She's outspending him actually 10 to five, which is a pretty large margin. And she's backed specifically by Steve Scalise.

05:51

Republican whip but everyone else has kind of categorized this as a toss-up. I have Michelle still winning by a couple points here Yeah, I disagree. I think that Derek Tran is gonna be able to take this. Mm-hmm. I think that there since June there has been this this four-point Swing in Democrats favor like yes, like we talked about Tran is ahead in the polls Yes in 2022 it was

06:16

strong year for the Republicans. They won this by 4.8 points, but like it was supposed to be a strong year anyways. Yeah. Right. Like you have an incumbent president who was a Democrat, Biden, and that's just like normally it's like the party who isn't in power wins. Yeah. And I think that we've seen this swing in the Democrats favor. I think that Harris's support is going to push

06:44

You know, I think that whoever wins this, I think is going to have won the house, frankly. Like, we talked about a whole bunch of stuff, but the fact of the matter is the house is really hard to predict because it's not dependent on these national issues as much. So that's why I kind of thought that whoever was going to win this district is likely going to have won the house because we had the predictions. I don't remember what the final count was, but it was close, really close. Like a couple districts, a couple voters.

07:12

When we talk about the house, the makeup of the house, it's like these things, it's so hard to predict because it's so small and there's no margin of error. Yeah, yeah, I mean the reality is that, you know, with races that are gonna be especially close, like this one, it's gonna be hard for either party to get, I think, a well-disciplined governing majority, right? I think that you could probably see each party cap out at around 220-ish seats. That's gonna be the ceiling for both of them, right? But like as we saw in the last Congress,

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that isn't really enough to govern with, right? You're always gonna have people who are gonna try to kinda mess around with whatever the agenda is at the time for their own personal power, Matt Gaetz. So, you know, I think that's gonna really be a factor in our next Congress, and you're gonna see another probably few years of disillusionment with our Congress and their performance. Yeah, and that's scary. That's just scary. Absolutely, it's a failure like our... The fact that we have to talk about...

08:05

Is our elected officials, is our form of government even going to be possible to govern remotely effectively? It's just like, oh my god, we're supposed to figure this out by then. But also, we're going to jump now to Iowa's third congressional district. But before we do that, just a reminder about why it's so important for Democrats to win the House is because if Democrats win the House, it's almost impossible for the Republicans to overturn the election. And that, like, their plan is if they lose the presidency but they win the House, is they're going to try to overturn the election via the certification process.

08:35

Yeah, and it's also that, you know, when we're looking at that kind of process of electoral certification, Democrats are going to be disciplined then, right? Like no matter how they disagree on policy, right, there is going to be no one Democrat who would ever come out and support the overturning of the election in favor of Donald Trump. That would be absolutely ludicrous and it wouldn't happen. Right? Whereas with the Republicans, you're going to see people be undisciplined there, where you could have people peeled away from their caucus.

09:03

Just like based on a variety of factors. Yeah So like I think like the real thing that's gonna come down to is Democrats are in the party of discipline in the house the Republicans are not yeah And that's something that we've seen that in the Senate Democrats haven't really been as unified But in the house Democrats have been pretty unified. Yeah, which is I think a large part because Nancy absolutely a testament to her leadership Yeah, oh my god, fantastic mister. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I was third congressional district. I think this is going blue

09:29

I think that the Democrats are going to be able to win because currently as Democrats, like the Democrats, they're up four in 2022. This race was decided by only 2000 votes. I think it's close. I think that it's a race that. Oh, Toby, we agree here then. Do we? Oh, we must call it differently in the video. But yeah, we probably did, did we? Yeah, I guess so. But yeah, we both have landed back. I'm winning here over Zach Nunn, the Republican incumbent. Okay. Yeah. But again, like I think this is just like one of those races that's again, is going to be really close.

09:58

And it's just kind of like a vibes type race. Like I'm just like, I'm getting the vibe that Backham's gonna win. Yeah, I don't know how we disagreed in the video. Who knows? We gotta watch or find out. We gotta watch it again to find out. But yeah, so, correct me if I'm wrong, what do we think the final House makeup was gonna be? Our final tally we ended up on, based on what we've just talked about right now, it'd be 221 Democrats, 212 Republicans, two toss-ups, which I think might be a little bit of a rosy prediction.

10:26

in terms of House Democrats, I don't know that they'll perform absolutely that well, but it could be indicative of a good performance by President Harris on the top of the ballot. Yeah, and this is just like the House, like we've said, it's so hard to predict. Something that's a little bit easier to predict is going to be the Senate. Smooth transition over there. Very smooth. So, yeah, what do we have? I think the Republicans 51, Democrats 49? Yeah, that's the consensus that we came to. We actually, if you'll go and watch our YouTube exclusive.

10:55

Toby and I agreed on every single seat here, which has not happened in the House. So I think that says something about how we think this election is gonna go. And the reality is that in all of our kind of more traditional swing states, we see Democratic candidates performing stronger, be it just in terms of polling and having advantages based on incumbency too. Yeah, and something that also is that, I think, yeah. So.

11:24

We see often that there are these Democrats who are doing better than the top of the ticket, which would be Harris, and I think a large part of that is also they've had the time to define themselves. Exactly. They had a whole campaign. They had a primary, they have a general election. Harris had half of a general, maybe. Like, this is not normal. Like, what Harris, the Harris campaign has done to not even have this be a blowout is phenomenal. Phenomenal. So hats off to her entire campaign there.

11:54

Yeah, but let's talk about these two seats that are really going to decide the context and the makeup of the Senate next. Right now, the two seats that we see as being the most in play or swingiest are Montana and Texas. In Montana, you have long time Democratic Senator John Tester running against Tim Schie. Now this is one that you and I both picked to go Republican. Let's talk a little bit about it, Toby. Yeah. So Trump won this Montana by 17 points at 2020.

12:24

Montana is not a democratic state. It used to be. It's not anymore. And this just goes to show that kind of the death of these Democrats in red states, because it's harder now. Because it's just like the national, how national everything has gone. It's harder now to be a Democrat in a Republican state or be a Republican in a Democrat state. It doesn't really happen like that.

12:48

Yeah, you know, exactly. We're so polarized. You know, kind of an inverse example of this is looking at a guy like Larry Hogan in Maryland, where I think in 2004, 2008, Larry Hogan would easily be walking away with the state, with the Senate seat, just because he was, you know, popular governor. Everyone in Maryland always loves Larry Hogan, but he's down about 20 points in the polls right now. It is a Democratic, it's a Democratic incumbent. So, like, you know, I just you kind of really see the effects of polarization in a race like Montana, where Tester has, you know, had a fantastic career in the Senate.

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has one of the strongest senatorial records out of really anyone, has been especially outspoken for the people of Montana, has always fought for them. And it's kind of heartbreaking to see him maybe go down in this fashion. Yeah, because he's been there for three terms. So what's that, 18 years? Yeah. So wow, first and foremost. That's like, what, since we were born? Yeah, that is, yeah. Wow. Yeah, but it's just, because currently the polls have it as R plus six. Yeah.

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which is first and foremost, John Tester being able to only be losing by six points in a state that Trump won by 17, like having an 11 point gap, wow. Hand to him, but it's just like, I don't think there's a chance. It's just like, I don't think, I think that this era of Democrats and blue states and Republicans and, or Democrats and red states and, yeah, I think it's gone. I think that it just can't really happen, which is unfortunate.

14:11

Because if like if Montana was a little bit swingier, I think that tests are not easily would have had yeah You know like if this was in a a Texas or if it was in like a Florida or you know Like in North Carolina. Yeah, or a state Minnesota even like a for a Republic. You know what I mean? Yeah, a state that isn't necessarily Swing me swing state but more of like a likely or a lean

14:37

Yeah, a place with a five or six point margin instead of a 17 point margin. Yeah, because yeah, it's just like you can't that you can't overcome that. Some things you just can't overcome. And this is one of the things you can't overcome. So we're going to jump out to Texas, which I think Ted Cruz is going to win. I agree. I think that this will likely was the best chance for a Democratic pickup. But. It's hard because everybody hates Ted Cruz. Yeah.

15:06

But nobody wants to out-Tetris. You know what I mean? Everyone hates him, nobody likes him. I think he's one of the least politicians in all of America. But there just isn't enough support to quite get him out. We saw this in 2018 with Beto, Beto Wurik, who, he came and he ran super close and everyone was like, oh my God, he's the next thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then he kind of fell off. Which is unfortunate, I really liked him. But it just goes to show that you can run and a head of lettuce against. Yeah.

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Ted Cruz no look like this genius, you know, it's just Cruz, I don't think he's gonna lose. Yeah, yeah, I don't think Cruz loses this race, but I will say that Colin Allred is almost the candidate you wanna build in a lab to beat Ted Cruz. Right, like he's a former Tennessee Titans NFL linebacker. Yeah, wasn't that good though? 32 games, 46 tackles, come on dude, come on. He was not a fantastic linebacker, but Toby, when you can do a political ad in an NFL uniform, that's always gonna play well. That's true.

16:03

If only they had found a way to get him into Oilers throwbacks I think that that would have maybe even swung this election speaking speaking of real quick speaking of the fact that the Democrats this election Become the party of football with Tim Waltz running this whole football coach and we have you know football But who would have thunk that in this whole like oh the national divorce Democrats would have gotten football Yeah, I mean great like was we have to remember that we're

16:26

only eight years removed from Colin Kaepernick being blackballed by the NFL for speaking out about his political opinions. And this is on topic, but you saw Nick Bosa. Oh my God. The other day on the NBC broadcast Sunday football, he walks up with a MAGA hat and kind of just derails Brock Pardee's whole interview. And you can tell that everyone on Twitter is like, Oh, see how like his teammates are laughing. They're clearly uncomfortable. They're like, dude, like get out of here. Like it's not, I don't know.

16:55

I mean, it's just, it's like, Toby, as you said that, like, the Democratic Party just every day looks saner and saner and saner. And that's, that's why we are getting these things that, like, football used to be about red blooded American men hitting one another for a sport, giving each other concussions. But now, you know, like, it's like the Democrats are somehow more aligned with that audience than they never have been before. And it's just, it's bizarre. I think it's great. I mean, Toby, I love it. Yeah. You know, is it a coincidence that the greatest-

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dynasty in all football came from New England, which is famously democratic. I don't think that's a coincidence. Let's just say. I think that if you're from a democratic state, you're going to be better at football. Toby, I love that analysis right there. I love it. So jumping back into it, yeah, this is a state that anybody could run against Ted Cruz and look great, but also in general Texas, we talked about in our presidential predictions a little bit, it's starting to go more and more democratic, we think.

17:53

Yeah, like if we look at the makeup of who was in that state would be like, oh, yeah, like this should be Democratic however Democrats and Biden specifically they they're like the support has been slipping with Latino is mm-hmm and Texas is on the border. Yeah, Trump has kind of championed the border In that's like It's gonna turn blue at some point. Yeah, it's a matter of when is this the election. I think I don't think so next election Next time you know next time Ted Cruz is up. So six years from now. So what was that be 2030?

18:23

Yeah, I think that it will be a little yeah, he's gonna get beat by Jasmine Crockett in 2030 and she's gonna beat him bad Call it right now. Uh-huh. Yeah, talk talk to me in six years. There we go JJ watt or George JJ watt runs for office Yeah, but I just think that Ted Cruz is not he's gonna be able to hold on to it Last last time he only won by two points. Mm-hmm. He's currently up by three. So that's right around that same spot But Democrats aren't really

18:51

too competitive in Texas this election, because they don't need to be. Exactly, yeah. And we talked about this in our presidential predictions, like Democrats really, they haven't been spending too much time in the states, they don't need to be spending time in, and this is not a year to be trying to build your bench, this is a year that you just need to do the bare minimum. Yeah, get a burn flow per capita, no win. You're not trying to get 300 electoral votes, you're trying to get to 270, and that's it. I'm surprised, that's all you gotta do. Yeah. Yeah. So, prediction was what? 51-49 Republican.

19:21

Hold the Senate. Yeah, and in saying that, there's one more race that I think we should touch on very quickly. Nebraska. Nebraska has never been talked about as somewhere that could flip on the national stage. Now, you and I both came to the consensus, we don't think that Deb Fischer is not gonna win re-election here, but right now we have Dan Osborne, an independent challenger running against Deb Fischer, Republican incumbent, and it's been such an interesting campaign because of the messaging that they've used.

19:50

Polling has found that it is excruciatingly close with a large portion of undecided voters who I just don't think really know who Deb Fischer or Dan Osborne really are. But the messaging Osborne has used, he's been almost, he's been using Trump's messaging. He's been talking about being strong on the border. He's been, I believe he even called Deb Fischer like Hillary Clinton in one of his ads.

20:13

And I'm just, it's been a confusing race, and one that might kind of be a blueprint for trying to unseat Republican senators in the future. It's confusing. Yeah. Because, yeah, because Osborne's running as an independent, but more of a Bernie Sanders type independent, who's likely gonna caucus with the Democrats, and very, something that's important to note is that uses this, the Democratic kind of system, right? To donate, you use ActBlue, which is how you donate to Democrats. This, like, this.

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system that Democrats have I'll be it's not too strong in Nebraska, but they Osborne is kind of is likely going to caucus with the Democrats But doesn't want to say that loud in Nebraska, which is a state that Trump won by 19 points in 2020. Mm-hmm Yeah, but that's just you know, it's another race. You got to keep your eye on. Yeah, and like who knows what's gonna happen there Yep, dude respectfully if Osborne wins Okay, imagine this you wake up the next day

21:08

You have no idea what happened. You didn't watch the election. You got hit on your head. You didn't watch any election. You wake up, I do Alex, Osborne won Nebraska. What did you think happened for the rest of the? I mean, my question would be what's the margin because if Osborne has won Nebraska by about a point. Three points. Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States. It's a 51-49 Senate and it's a 222 to 217 House. Yeah. The numbers are wrong, but you know. Close enough. Close enough, I agree. But.

21:36

Yeah, Toby, I think we should talk about our presidential election predictions. Yes, we should. So we both have Harris winning. We had a great YouTube video on it. It just recorded it. Fantastic YouTube video. Best YouTube video ever. So good. Huge numbers. Huge numbers. Big numbers on YouTube. Great ratings. Maybe we should stick to the podcast and not. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maybe SNL isn't it for us? Yeah, I think Harris is likely going to win. We talked about just getting to 270 in the states are the swingiest, which would be.

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the blue wall, which is gonna be Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and then we go down a little bit south, so it's gonna be North Carolina, Georgia, and then Arizona and Nevada. These are the swing states of selection. Notably, Nevada has replaced Florida. We think that Harris is gonna win the blue wall of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Michigan. Not Minnesota, Michigan. And that's also Nevada will be carried by Harris, but it doesn't need to be, because if you get those three states, that's the blue wall.

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you don't need to get anything else because you get to that magic 270 number. And we kind of see the Harris campaign agreeing with this logic. Yeah, I mean, like I think everybody who's in politics can count to 270, right? Well, not Trump. Everybody who is in democratic politics knows that I counted to 270. And again, yeah, it was an obvious strategy when you have three months to run a campaign, you say, okay, what is the most efficient way we can get there? And if you just look geographically, it doesn't make sense to be doing.

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campaign stop in Georgia, fly into Arizona and then to Wisconsin. You just have to stay in the Rust Belt, stay in the blue wall and if you win that you win the election right because again as we've said we're not worried about trying to run up the score this time. You know like as much as you know I would love 300 electoral votes it's probably not gonna happen. Let's get the F out of here. Let's just win this thing and move on. Yeah yeah. So we're gonna be we're gonna take a quick break after that we'll be back and we'll discuss why do you care about this election.

23:33

All right, welcome back from that quick break. So just, you know, why do you care about this? I, to put it simply, because this is who's gonna govern. Like, this is gonna make the laws. Abortion is very heavily on the ballot. That's why you really should care about the Senate and the presidency is because we see that this kind of like legislative deferral, this idea that the Supreme Court has been doing more governing on these issues than Congress has. Yeah. Which is

24:02

But that's why you should really care about those two races. And we talked about it a little bit in the, it might have been this, earlier, whatever, the House. You want to control the House if you're a Democrat for multiple reasons, first and foremost, because then it'll be almost impossible for Donald Trump and his allies to try to overthrow the election. Yeah, and you should care, because Democrats know how to govern. Say what you want about this party in the past, but they showed, from 2021 to 2023, when they had a trifecta.

24:30

that they could get stuff done. Even as you had Joe Manchin and Christian Sinema sitting in the way of major progressive reforms, things like removing the filibuster, trying to expand Obamacare, whatever, we still got stuff done. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed and it reduced inflation. We are back down to normal levels of inflation. We had a soft landing all because Democrats understand how to govern. And that is why you should care and that's why the Democrats must be re-elected back into the House, into the Senate.

25:00

and the presidency. And the reality is that if you see a Republican trifecta, it is likely the end of democracy in America. And I know it's a message that has been shouted over and over again, even before we thought Kamala Harris would be running for president, right? It's the same message that Joe Biden ran on, but it's one that's so uniquely true and true to this election. Yeah, no, I agree completely. It's...

25:26

We are at a point, and I feel like we've been saying this since 2016, like, oh, this is the most important election in our history, to be fair. We kind of thought that once Trump lost, it'd be done. But yeah, this I think is legitimately the most important because we've seen what could happen under Trump. Yeah. We saw, he was impeached twice. Don't talk about that enough. Yeah. He tried to overturn the government. He tried to destroy American democracy. There's talks about getting rid of...

25:56

this term limit, like all these things. It's just like, if you elect Donald Trump and you give him the Republican support that he needs in Congress, it's gonna be Project 2025, ultra-conservative. That's just gonna be the new normal. That's gonna be what happens. And we also, we have to remember that ultra-conservatism is not popular in the United States. Donald Trump, for some reason, is uniquely popular and charismatic among groups of voters.

26:25

But when we see conservatism without Donald Trump in it, it is not popular, right? We'll talk again about the New York City rally. He was not the one making the immensely disparaging comments. It was his surrogates, and that's why there was so much blowback, because there never is when Trump speaks. So a post-Trump Republican party is not gonna be powerful. It is not gonna be ultra conservative, and that is part of the reason in why Kamala Harris has to win this election. Yeah, post-Trump Republican party is gonna be, they're gonna have to read.

26:53

assess everything. It's going to be a completely new Republican Party and probably one that's a little bit more moderate, frankly. Let's hope so. Yeah, so that's it. That's our predictions. We're gonna see how we do. Hope it'd do pretty well. Thank you guys all so much for listening. Remember to vote if you haven't voted already. Go vote. Go to whydoicarepod.com. You can find everything that you might need. Why do I care related. You can find the YouTube channel link there if you can't find it anywhere else. Check out those three.

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prediction videos because we put a lot of work into it, we had a lot of fun doing it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you guys all so much for listening. Have a great rest of your day