Dear America,
The superficiality with which those who presume to inform us about our politics always surprises me. The most fundamental considerations for competent prognostication seem to fly by unnoticed. A jury in New York despised Donald Trump so much that they awarded an obscure writer over $83 million for defamation and slander. That was an augury. He won just over 50% of the vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. They were also auguries. And the pundits who propound the common opinion about this 2024 political season saw them as such, but they leapt upon them as omens for the triumph of evil rather than the prevailing of good.
There are approximately 210 million registered voters in this country. 39 million, or about 18.5% of them, are Republicans. There are approximately 49 million, or about 23%, Democrats in the mix. Thus, Trump's 50% + of the Republican vote comprises half of 18.5% of the 210 million total, or about 19 million votes if that percentage holds true for the rest of the general election. I assume that no Democrat will vote for Trump, so the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, can be confident of about 46 million votes in his favor. Then there are the balance of Republicans and all of the independents to consider. Let's assume that each candidate gets 50% of them, a total of 145 million voters, and give Trump 72.5 million of them while the Democrat gets the same percentage and number. The result, if everyone registered votes is that Trump loses by 27 million votes. Not only is that a logical conclusion; It is the same result that occurred last time the two met, but even worse for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
But let's assume that Trump gets all of the 39 million Republican votes and Biden gets all 49 million of the Democrats. What should we assume about the independent 122 million voters. It seems safe to me to assume that Trump will get no more than the same proportion of them as he got of his own party: about 50%. That's 62.5 million votes for him for a total of 101.5. The other 108.5 should go to Biden based on the same kind of calculus applied to the Democrats and our incumbent president, Joe Biden. The result? Biden wins by 7 million votes. Sound familiar? It seems to indicate that even if Trump wins all of the Republican votes that he hasn't been able to get so far, he still loses by the same kind of margin as he lost by in 2020. And if Trump wins fewer Republicans and Biden does the same with Democrats by approximately same proportions, the result doesn't change. In fact, the only way Trump can win is if Biden loses more Democrats than Trump does Republicans and/or Trump takes a majority of the independents. Given that so far he can barely manage a majority of the party of which he used to be able to claim 70%, that seems highly unlikely.
The bottom line is this. The likelihood of Trump winning with the minority he can reasonably expect distributed in such a way as to let the electoral college give the presidency to the loser of the election the way it did in 2016 seems pretty near 0%. In short, Trump's claim that he is dominating his party by winning just over 50% of it is nothing but fantastical thinking, which as we all know he is good at...in his self-serving, narcissistic way.
My point is that logic dictates that Biden will be reelected and Trump will be vanquished if the political world hasn't changed since 2020...and it hasn't. So I for one am going to stop believing the doom that the experts are predicting and assume that the past is precedent. There. I'm going to sleep much better tonight now that I've gotten that off my chest. (Insert in this space a huge sigh of relief.)
Your friend,
Mike
The superficiality with which those who presume to inform us about our politics always surprises me. The most fundamental considerations for competent prognostication seem to fly by unnoticed. A jury in New York despised Donald Trump so much that they awarded an obscure writer over $83 million for defamation and slander. That was an augury. He won just over 50% of the vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. They were also auguries. And the pundits who propound the common opinion about this 2024 political season saw them as such, but they leapt upon them as omens for the triumph of evil rather than the prevailing of good.
There are approximately 210 million registered voters in this country. 39 million, or about 18.5% of them, are Republicans. There are approximately 49 million, or about 23%, Democrats in the mix. Thus, Trump's 50% + of the Republican vote comprises half of 18.5% of the 210 million total, or about 19 million votes if that percentage holds true for the rest of the general election. I assume that no Democrat will vote for Trump, so the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, can be confident of about 46 million votes in his favor. Then there are the balance of Republicans and all of the independents to consider. Let's assume that each candidate gets 50% of them, a total of 145 million voters, and give Trump 72.5 million of them while the Democrat gets the same percentage and number. The result, if everyone registered votes is that Trump loses by 27 million votes. Not only is that a logical conclusion; It is the same result that occurred last time the two met, but even worse for Donald Trump and the Republicans.
But let's assume that Trump gets all of the 39 million Republican votes and Biden gets all 49 million of the Democrats. What should we assume about the independent 122 million voters. It seems safe to me to assume that Trump will get no more than the same proportion of them as he got of his own party: about 50%. That's 62.5 million votes for him for a total of 101.5. The other 108.5 should go to Biden based on the same kind of calculus applied to the Democrats and our incumbent president, Joe Biden. The result? Biden wins by 7 million votes. Sound familiar? It seems to indicate that even if Trump wins all of the Republican votes that he hasn't been able to get so far, he still loses by the same kind of margin as he lost by in 2020. And if Trump wins fewer Republicans and Biden does the same with Democrats by approximately same proportions, the result doesn't change. In fact, the only way Trump can win is if Biden loses more Democrats than Trump does Republicans and/or Trump takes a majority of the independents. Given that so far he can barely manage a majority of the party of which he used to be able to claim 70%, that seems highly unlikely.
The bottom line is this. The likelihood of Trump winning with the minority he can reasonably expect distributed in such a way as to let the electoral college give the presidency to the loser of the election the way it did in 2016 seems pretty near 0%. In short, Trump's claim that he is dominating his party by winning just over 50% of it is nothing but fantastical thinking, which as we all know he is good at...in his self-serving, narcissistic way.
My point is that logic dictates that Biden will be reelected and Trump will be vanquished if the political world hasn't changed since 2020...and it hasn't. So I for one am going to stop believing the doom that the experts are predicting and assume that the past is precedent. There. I'm going to sleep much better tonight now that I've gotten that off my chest. (Insert in this space a huge sigh of relief.)
Your friend,
Mike
