The 2024 election was an electoral college sweep for Donald Trump, as he won all seven swing states. It turned out that the fear from Democrats on Republicans having a lot more of the early vote was justified. Since the Senate and House are determined to be in Republican control, it is time to look at what has happened. First, how did I do on predictions?

Presidential

I predicted 5 of the 7 swing states, and in that prediction was also a Donald Trump victory, which occurred. The states I thought would go Harris were Michigan and Wisconsin. I also regarded Michigan as the sick man of the swing states, but that was actually a designation that should have gone to Wisconsin, where Trump had his worst swing state performance. I certainly beat the Google AI prediction of a Harris win and her winning 4 of the 7 swing states (she didn’t get Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina per AI). I never doubted North Carolina would go to Trump, same for Georgia. Nevada was a very close call for me, but I’m glad that I went against the conventional wisdom of Jon Ralston. I pat myself on the head in particular for judging this based on his prediction bias. Some facts and figures that were predictive of this election were that Gallup found this year that there were more self-identified Republicans than Democrats for the first time since it started asking the question, that Republicans led in voter confidence on the top election issue (the economy) per Gallup, that most sitting vice presidents historically don’t succeed the president, and that prediction markets were predicting a Trump win. History has only defied the Gallup voter confidence metric once, and that was in 1948. Furthermore, the prediction markets since 1916 have only been wrong three times. Alan Lichtman’s keys to the presidency has broken whatever way you see it. This election certainly gives weight to Nate Silver’s criticism of a number of his keys as subjective. Another portend I saw for this election that turned out to be valid was that Democratic incumbent senators in swing states were highlighting what they had in common with Trump in their ads. Their internal polling must have indicated something that much of the public didn’t know. After all, if the numbers had been good for Harris, they would have connected themselves with Harris in their ads.

The Senate

I am proud to report that my prediction for the Senate was 100%. I again outperformed the Google AI prediction, which predicted that Republicans would get 51 seats. I predicted that Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Jon Tester of Montana would lose reelection to Republicans Bernie Moreno, Dave McCormick, and Tim Sheehy respectively and they did. The interesting thing about all three is that they had defeated Republican incumbents in 2006. It is a testament to the political skills of these men, especially in the case of Tester given the nature of his state, that they held on for three terms. For Brown, the state’s politics shifted from under his feet.

Although popular as governor in his state, Republican Larry Hogan couldn’t defeat Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. For Marylanders, the attitude towards Hogan for national office amounts to “nice guy, wrong party”.

Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan came very close, but didn’t quite make it as enough Trump voters split their tickets to put Democrat Elissa Slotkin over the top.

Republican Eric Hovde in Wisconsin came within a point, but Tammy Baldwin’s greater knowledge of farm issues likely put her over the top.

If Republican Sam Brown in Nevada had more buy-in earlier in his Senate race, perhaps he could have toppled Democrat Jacky Rosen, but then again, she did have some crossover appeal among Trump voters.

Republican Kari Lake of Arizona is a bad candidate and GOP primary voters should not choose to run her for a statewide office again; Trump won the state and all of the state’s Congressional Republicans won their reelections, in districts that were mapped out by an independent redistricting commission, but Lake couldn’t win hers.

Democrat Colin Allred, although certainly an appealing candidate, couldn’t cut into Texas’s Republicanism nearly enough to beat incumbent Ted Cruz.

The House

In the name of contrariness, I suppose I muffed this one by predicting Democratic control. However, the House has been close, and although Republicans gained or kept important ground in some places, they have lost in others.

Republican Flips

Gabe Evans toppled incumbent Yadira Caraveo in the truly swing 8^th district of Colorado.

Tom Barrett defeated Curtis Hertel to win Michigan’s 7^th district, held by outgoing Democrat Elissa Slotkin, now senator-elect.

Due to partisan redistricting, Republicans gained three seats in North Carolina. The new members are Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, and Tim Moore. This setup may change for the 2026 midterms.

Ryan Mckenzie defeated Susan Wild for reelection in Pennsylvania’s 7^th district.

Robert Bresnahan defeated Matt Cartwright for reelection in Pennsylvania’s 8^th district.

Democratic Flips

Court-ordered redistricting in Alabama resulted in the creation of a new 2^nd district, a second black-majority district. Shomari Figures was elected to this seat.

George Whitesides defeated Republican Mike Garcia for reelection in California’s 27^th district.

Court-ordered redistricting in Louisiana resulted in the creation of a new 6^th district, a second black-majority district. Cleo Fields, whose last term in Congress ended in 1997, made a comeback.

In New York, Democrats so far have made their most impressive showing, winning three seats. Their party organization was in a sorry state in 2022, but this is clearly no longer so.

In the 4^th district, Laura Gillen defeated Republican Anthony D’Esposito for reelection.

In the 19^th district, Josh Riley defeated Republican Marc Molinaro for reelection.

In the 22^nd district, John Mannion defeated Republican Brandon Williams for reelection.

In Oregon, the state’s Republican delegation can once again hold their party caucus in a phone booth, as in the 5^th district, Janelle Bynum defeated Lori Chavez-DeRemer for reelection.

Unresolved races include Alaka’s At-Large district, in which Republican Nick Begich is leading over Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola.

Republicans John Duarte and Michelle Steel of California’s 13^th district and 45^th district may lose reelection when counting ends.

Maine has a ranked-choice system, and Democrat Jared Golden of the 2^nd district will almost certainly win reelection.

Overall, I did pretty well this time in predicting the presidential winner and all of the Senate races. The House did stay Republican, but some vulnerable incumbents went down, and the GOP’s current numbers make a Democratic majority in the House quite obtainable from the 2026 midterm elections.  

There are overall several takeaways from this election.

1. President Biden should never have tried for reelection. The Democrats didn’t hold a proper primary, and simply anointing Vice President Harris given the lack of time is a mess the Democrats got themselves into. The seeds of the 2024 defeat were planted in 2020. This being said, dumping Biden was the best of their bad options at that point.
2. Although certain economic indicators on the surface were good, the purchasing power of many Americans went down under the Biden Administration, and certain policies did the opposite of helping with inflation, namely the American Rescue Plan. Furthermore, the measure that the Biden Administration put forth as combatting inflation, the Inflation Reduction Act, primarily consisted of spending more money on green energy.
3. The border was a major issue, and whatever measures taken by the Biden Administration to try and clamp down on the situation now, the American people remember that the Biden Administration enacted multiple policies undoing Trump Administration policies on the border, which in sum effectively meant an open border policy, prompting a surge.
4. Harris was to say the least not a good candidate. She had to consistently dodge based not only on being part of an unpopular administration but also had one of the most left-wing Senate records. The positions she staked out when running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 she also had to walk back, and I believe the 2024 walking back by Harris of her 2020 stances to be as genuine as Obama claiming he was against same-sex marriage when he ran for president in 2008.
5. Abortion was not the major issue that certain left-wing or left-leaning press outlets were pushing. The shock of the Dobbs decision seems to have worn off after two years and numerous state referendums on abortion policy, so many voters who may have otherwise been motivated on the subject were simply able to vote on the subject in their own state. Unless Republicans should foolishly push for a national abortion ban, this issue is off the federal table save for the matter of federal government funding of abortions.
6. This election was a referendum on the Biden-Harris Administration, and although Trump certainly figured in people’s minds the voters didn’t forget that he wasn’t the incumbent. The Democrats could run away from Biden, but they could not run away from the fact that they were the incumbent party. The Republicans should not, however, read this as Trump suddenly becoming very personally popular among the American public. Trump was picked by the voters despite having lower personal likability numbers than Harris.
7. Kamala Harris responding to Sunny Hostin’s question about what she’d do differently than Biden and having no difference of substance was damaging, and I didn’t think that this would be ignored during the election.
8. Donald Trump had an excellent campaign manager in Susie Wiles, who mostly was able to keep him on focus. Picking her as chief of staff is on point.
9. J.D. Vance was a far better VP pick than most people thought at the time, and his performance at the VP debate did much to combat portrayals of him as “weird”. Furthermore, he was better at arguing for Trump than Trump was.
10. Harris probably chose the worst of her options when she picked Tim Walz. By the way, both times Democrats have run women for president they have picked balding upper-middle aged men named Tim from light blue states!
11. This is the election of the podcast. Podcasts are proving more influential media than declining mainstream media outlets with their packaged thinking talk programs, and as demonstrated by Trump’s appearances on podcasts with young male audiences, most notably the Joe Rogan Experience.
12. Although this was a secondary factor, far left social issues figured against Democrats, such as “defund the police”, certain trans policies (trans women in women’s sports, state-subsidized sex-change operations, puberty blockers and sex change operations for minors), and racial identity politics.
13. Trump won the image war. His campaign PR stunts such as his serving food at the drive-thru of a McDonald’s and as a garbageman may be disregarded by some as disingenuous, not real, or unimportant, but everyone knew they were PR stunts, and they were good ones. Furthermore, his narrow brush with death produced a photo that is iconic in American history.
14. Give the pollsters a break. The outcomes of these elections were well within the RCP poll average margins of error. Some pollsters got it more wrong while others were more on the mark. This is why you look at poll averages to see about where the race is.
15. Trump’s win in this election changes the narratives about him as well as narratives about where our nation’s politics are at. Grover Cleveland no longer stands alone, to say the least.