2024 President

While the state of the economy was likely an important factor in the 2024 presidential election and other recent contests, discontent over economic conditions doesn’t really explain the movement of white working class voters to the Republican Party in the longer-term. Rather, cultural issues were probably a larger driver of white working class voters, once the base of the Democratic Party decades ago, into the Republican column.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Crystal Ball isolated a number of swing-state counties that seemed likely to be informative. Looking back at our selections in the Sun Belt states, Harris held up relatively well in several suburban counties but Trump's gains, particuarly in Latino-majority areas, made him formidable.

Before the 2024 election, the Crystal Ball flagged a number of key counties, which ended up telling us something about the overall election. This article focuses on those counties in the Industrial North states. Also in the region, Sen. Gary Peters's (D) retirement opens up a Senate seat in Michigan for 2026.

Pennsylvania changed in the Trump era from being a somewhat Democratic-leaning state to a top presidential battleground, voting for the winning candidate in all 3 of Donald Trump’s elections. One indicator of the GOP’s growth in the state is changing voter registration patterns, as Republicans have drastically reduced the Democrats’ voter registration edge in the state in the Trump era.

Analyzing a half-century of change in the allocation of electoral votes across the states

In improving his margin in the national popular vote by about 6 points from 2020, Donald Trump ran further ahead of his 2020 margin in the nation’s most vote-rich counties than he did in the rest of the country.

How the states have voted compared to the nation since the 2000 presidential election.

Of the 7 states that were considered Toss-ups during the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris fared best in Wisconsin, although Donald Trump still carried it. Though Trump gained votes throughout the state, Harris performed respectably in several areas.

A group of University of Iowa scholars dissect the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll, which ended up vastly underestimating Donald Trump's performance in Iowa.

In 2024, Kamala Harris held Virginia by about a 52%-46% margin, which was several points worse than Joe Biden's 2020 showing in the state. However, as Harris lost ground in Northern Virginia, she remained competitive in many swingy areas of the state.

We find ourselves having a couple of gut feelings about what’s going on in the presidential race. Unfortunately for predictive purposes, the two gut reactions are incompatible with one another.