Photo-Illustration: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
By most conventional standards, the 2024 presidential contest has been wild and crazy. What began as a likely ho-hum rematch of the 2020 nominees went sideways pretty early on when Donald Trump, originally facing 12 primary opponents, started getting indicted for criminal offenses in multiple venues. Despite constant claims that he was finally losing his magic, he crushed his intraparty opposition almost effortlessly, and his legal problems — which included multiple reminders of what he was up to on January 6, 2021, and how he has treated women for many years — seemed to help him politically.
The day he clinched the GOP nomination (March 12), he led Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling averages by 2.1 percent. The day after Biden’s terrible debate performance on June 27, Trump’s lead was actually smaller, at 1.9 percent. His lead over Biden peaked at 3.4 percent on July 6 and ended at 3.1 percent on July 21 when the president dropped out of the race. That’s not a great deal of variation.
The midsummer replacement of Biden by Kamala Harris, an epochal event with no precedent in U.S. history (much like Trump’s criminal charges), at first didn’t shift the polls much at all; Trump maintained a lead in the RCP averages until August 4. Harris then built a modest lead that hasn’t changed in any significant way despite the novelty of her campaign, a clear debate victory on September 10, and two attempted Trump assassinations. She led Trump by 1.5 percent the day after the debate and leads him by 2 percent now. Yes, there are some shifts in support under the surface that have made the seven battleground states as close as or even closer than the national race, but all in all, the picture we have is of two big coalitions of equal size that neither grow nor shrink enough to change the equation. Even another historic development — the emergence and then the eclipse of the largest non-major-party presidential candidacy since 1992 — really didn’t change the balance of power between the two major-party candidates.
To get a sense of how impervious this race has been to the wild dynamics underlying it, let’s compare this year’s polling variation to that of other recent presidential cycles. In 2020, Biden led by 4.4 percent on May 11, by 10.2 percent on June 22, by 5.8 percent on September 16, by 10.3 percent on October 10, and by 7.2 percent in the final averages (he won the national popular vote by 4.5 percent). That’s a pretty good amount of bouncing around. But there was even more in 2016. Hillary Clinton led Trump by 11.2 percent on March 23, Trump led by 0.2 percent on May 23, Clinton rebuilt a 6.8 percent lead on June 26, but Trump regained the lead by 1.1 percent a month later. In the home stretch, Clinton led by 7.1 percent on October 17, but her lead dropped to 1.3 percent by November 2 and her final polling margin was 3.2 percent. She actually won the national popular vote by 2.1 percent. That’s a lot of volatility.
Going further back, we tend to remember the Obama-Romney contest of 2012 as a long, hard slog without that much movement. To some extent, that’s accurate, but Barack Obama led by 4.7 percent on August 11, the two candidates were tied on September 4, and Mitt Romney was up by 1.5 percent on October 9 and by 1 percent on October 26. Obama led in the final averages by 0.7 percent, and he actually won the national popular vote by 3.9 percent. In 2008, Obama led John McCain by 7.5 percent on June 23, McCain led Obama by 2.9 percent on September 7, but then Obama led by 7.6 percent in the final averages (very close to his actual 7.3 percent national popular-vote margin). And going all the way back to 2004, John Kerry led George W. Bush by 2.5 percent on August 11, but by September 8, Bush was up by 7.6 percent. In the final averages, Bush led by only 1.5 percent, a bit short of his actual margin of 2.4 percent. Election Night 2004 saw some bonus volatility as the exit polls were badly flawed and Team Kerry thought it had won.
So with all the volatility of the 2024 contest — its indictments, its candidate switch, its decisive debates, and whatever surprises lie ahead — the race has been a testament to fairly stable public sentiment and, most likely, partisan polarization. It’s so very close that it’s tempting to look ahead to the next development (e.g., next week’s vice-presidential debate) as a potential game changer, but we probably won’t know what most influenced the outcome until it’s all over. With luck, that will be long before the presidential electors meet on December 17.
