The only thing that can become truly new now is a return to the brilliant, delightful Middle Ages.
© Bob Dylan, 1966
Yes, the government can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.
I couldn't end this series about the American elections without injecting something of Bob Dylan into it. And that's his live album Before The Flood, the most sensational live album of all time bar King Crimson's USA. It was recorded on the 13th and 14th of February 1974 at the Los Angeles Forum in Inglewood, California, except "Knockin' on Heaven's Door", recorded on the 30th of January 1974 at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The album is actually credited to Bob Dylan and The Band, as they backed him and performed a set of their own songs in the middle of the show. I have kept only the Dylan tracks here, but you still get to hear The Band on all but three, performed by Dylan solo. If you think that Neil Peart was the greatest drummer in all of human history, listen carefully to Levon Helm's drumming here, and you may well reconsider. Just saying. And if you're ancient enough to still think that Eric Clapton Is God, listen to Robbie Robertson's leads and you will change your mind. Even Clapton himself admitted once that Robertson was better. No shit, mates, he did. He even admitted that listening to The Band was what prompted him to disband Cream, and move into another musical direction with Derek And The Dominos.
As usual. Images. Click. Bigger. You know the drill. And here is your starter for ten.
Just this once, as this is the last time, I will tell you how we would vote if we were the ones choosing the next Leader Of The Free World™, as revealed by YouGov. Unsurprisingly, Brits would elect Kamala Harris, even Conservative voters. Reform UK voters go against the trend and would vote for Trump. Which is not surprising when your party's leader is a devoted Trump-cocksucker, hell bent on destroying Europe, building a wall along the Channel to repeal boarders, and also funded by Russia. Otherwise, the support for Kamala is quite consensually spread across all crosstabs. It's just odd to see Scotland giving the Orange Baboon a bigger share of the vote than average, but that may be because of the golf courses.
Sadly, we are not the ones voting, those pesky isolationist Americans are, and it's no longer looking really good for Kamala Harris. After what looked like an unexpected honeymoon between Harris and America, her voting intentions took a nosedive in polls all along October. While she was once predicted to do as well as Joe Biden in 2020, it now looks more similar to Hillary Clinton in 2016, and that is definitely very alarming for the Democratic camp. But the abominably toxic climate of the campaign, and the amount of manipulation involved, begs the follow-up question. Is it really happening or is it just a fabricated narrative boosted by the pro-Trump infotainment shows, taking their cues from dubious polls? Or is there a more worrying explanation, that Kamala has indeed exhausted her campaign skills, is shit in adversity, and is losing ground among Arab-Americans? The latter sounds plausible when you look at state-level polls in Michigan, which has the highest Arab-American population of all states, at around 2%. But the long-awaited October Surprise ended up being a November Surprise, with a tiny but visible surge for Harris in the latest batch of polls.
Today's point of reference, and the last one too, is the weighted average of polls fielded between 11 September, the day after the Harris-Trump debate that Trump so obviously lost despite Elon Musk's claims to the contrary, and 6 October, the day before Hurricane Milton was upgraded to Category 5 and touched down in Florida. I have chosen this because it the dividing line between Trump and his Proxy Elon Musk spreading random fake news as usual, and Trump and Musk spreading specific fake news that hit straight at the heart of peoples' own lived experiences in several swing states, with totally fabricated stories about the Federal Government's handling of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, including a bigger than usual array of made-up 'testimonies' that put dog-eating Springfield to shame. Fortunately, YouGov have found that the Great American Public are more likely to believe the 'legacy media', as Elmo calls his pet hate, than anything that comes out of Trump's mouth, or arse. Even only half of prospective Trump voters would believe him, if they can make sense of what he is ranting about, that is.
The odd part is that there has been a significant surge of voting intentions for the minor candidates, those who have no chance whatsoever of being elected, but could make one of the two Top Dogs stumble and fall flat on their belly. I am inclined to believe that, as a recent non-partisan study has shown that American polls were more accurate than ever at the 2022 midterms, so there is no reason to believe they have gone the other way and become unreliable again this year. As it stands, Jill Stein and Cornel West could shave up to 2% off Harris, and Chase Oliver snatch 1% from Trump. Odder still, there is now evidence, intriguingly not reported by the British establishment media, that the MAGA mob are buying and spreading rigged polls to support the fabricated fake news that Trump is surging and will defeat Harris. Most of them conducted by newborn outfits that did not exist a month ago, in the wake of the hurricane-related fake news. And all of them very widely spread by Elon Musk and the swarm of Russian bots roaming free on social media. Another interesting subplot is that Jill Stein is a lifelong supporter of Russia and has refused to stand down, despite calls from Green parties from all over the civilised world, who fear her tiny vote share might be enough to make Trump the winner. Woke Putinism strikes again.
Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true.
(Homer Simpson)
© Bob Dylan, 1969
You’ve got a problem with moderate women. The people that think that the Earth is flat and we didn’t go to the Moon, you’ve got them. Let that go.
(Lindsey Graham to Donald Trump, 2024)
One of the remaining unknowns in swing states is how many people will still vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr, despite his official withdrawal from the race. One of the oddities of American federalism is that presidential candidacies are not registered nationally, but at state level. You have to apply separately in all states to appear on the ballot, but you also have to formally request to be taken off the ballot, with specific deadlines that differ from one state to the next. Quite mischievously, Kennedy did not request to be taken off the ballot in a number of states, most of them Democrat-leaning. He is obviously gambling on voters not paying enough attention, and not realising he is no longer running, and expects that it will shave off more votes from Harris than from Trump. Which may actually happen and be a real factor in a handful of states that are currently too close to call. Not in Arizona though, as Kennedy had already been taken off the ballot there, before he changed his strategy to inflict maximum damage on Harris. And now comes the return of the dreaded charts showing the full sequence of polls since late July. Arizona first.
Despite my caveat about Kennedy, Arizona is a textbook case of why I have serious doubts about all this polling, national or at state level. How can a state swing from marginally Democrat to almost sure Republican, and at the same time be ready to elect a Democratic Senator comfortably? Why are the most Trump-friendly polls, especially those that credit him with outright majorities in the popular vote, always from newborn operators nobody had heard of two months ago? There is clearly a narrative in the making here, that the election was rigged and stolen if the results do not match the polls. The Trump campaign is definitely conditioning the public to believe that, and Elon Musk is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, with his posts spreading the predictions of bookmakers, that are obviously shaped by polls that may be fake and fraudulent. Interestingly, we see the same pattern in neighbouring Nevada, where an incumbent Democratic Senator is also cruising to re-election. There were a lot of fluctuations, that may have something to do with rigged polls, and it is now predicted to go narrowly to Trump, despite Democrats entertaining hopes it might still remain with Harris.
Nevada is the only state that has 'None of the above' on the ballot. It has never won any election, but it has already won a couple of primaries, which was quite embarrassing for the party to which it happened. But this unique option could plausibly get more votes than any of the three minor candidates this year. In the meanwhile, the American punditariat and lead prognosticators are split about Nevada. But the last batch of polls says it will go to the Republicans, the opposite of what it has done at every presidential election since 2008. It could be a very tiny lead, that could possibly be reversed. The key point here is that, every time Nevada looked on the knife-edge, there was a last minute surge of the Democratic vote. It is cautious to assume this will not be the case again today, while hoping that it will. Now, if we shift from the West of Arizona to the East, we have New Mexico, the last state under surveillance in this South West corner.
New Mexico is not really a swing state, though it has been in the past, but it has been reliably Democratic at presidential elections since 2008. I have included it among my watched states only because Redfield & Wilton fleetingly included it in their own batch of swing states, and then discarded it when it became obvious that it wouldn't swing. American pollsters have let go of it even faster, and set foot there only very occasionally during the last six weeks, probably just as a pit stop on their way to Arizona. The consensus is clearly that there is no credible scenario where New Mexico would switch back to the Republicans. So it is definitely not going to be one of the states where Elon Musk will spend any of the $140m he has ringfenced for frivolous challenges against the democratic choice of the American people.
I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.
(Donald Trump)
© Bob Dylan, 1966
It’s not the truth that matters, but victory.
(Adolf Hitler)
My second trio of swing states is Florida, Georgia and North Carolina this time. Because they have one thing in common, two actually. First being the ones hit the hardest by the hurricanes, Helene and Milton. Then, and almost instantly, being the ones hit hardest by a massive tsunami of fake news, spawned by the Trump-Vance campaign and dutifully relayed by Elon Musk and the swarms of FSB bots on Twitter. It kind of backfired though, as if the good people of these states did compare their own 'lived experience' with Trump's allegations, and found out he was talking bollocks out of his arse. Florida has indeed swung a wee smitch in Trump's direction, but the DNC never seriously expected to gain it anyway, and the effect of the fake news seems to have worn out already, as the swing towards Trump is pretty much what you could expect from a pure statistical approach based on generic polls.
Georgia has also shown an unexpected display of pre-emptive panic and desperation among Trump's supporters, which is quite odd in a state that is predicted to shift from Blue to Red, and is unlikely to go back the other way. But the early November polls show that part of Harris's national surge comes from there, and the result will plausibly be excruciatingly close. Trump's lead jumped back to almost 2% in late October, and fell back down to around 1% in the last few days. It still counts as a Republican gain on 2020, but will undoubtedly be much closer than in 2016, when Trump carried it by 5%.
North Carolina, the only Trump state of 2020 that was ever predicted to shift to Harris, will also be nailbitingly close on Election Night. It remains in Trump's column for now, but his lead is not as large as you would think it should be from a purely statistical point of view. If the main American channels stick to their habit of announcing partial results all along the night, it is highly likely we will see North Carolina go to Trump first, when the rural areas declare, then to Harris when more votes come in from the urban areas, then in an unpredictable direction as the count gets closer to 100% of votes cast. Unless the channels choose to play it safe, and not risk accusations of spreading misinformation from either camp, and rate it as 'too close to call' all night long until they have the final count. Which is highly likely to not be final, as North Carolina law allows candidates to request a recount if the difference between the top two is less than 2%, which I'm ready to bet it will be.
What happened in these states is just more evidence of the toxicity and nastiness of the campaign. Something that is bound to happen when one side is actively preparing to overturn an unfavourable result by any means necessary, including riots and violent actions. We also can't rule out upsets coming from massive mobilisation efforts towards the 40% of registered voters who are voting on The Day itself. It has happened before, and more often than not favoured endangered Democratic candidates. It may depend on which buttons the two main candidates have chosen to push on the last day of the campaign, and possibly also on how many potential abstainers will pinch their nose and vote for Harris eventually, not out of conviction but because the alternative is so much more frightening.
If I have to create stories, so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.
(J.D Vance)
© Bob Dylan, 1973
Give me something so that I can not vote for the sane, serious person and instead vote for the town drunk.
(John Hodgman, Have I Got News For You? US, 15 October 2024)
Let's move Up North next, to the very sensitive Great Rust Lakes Belt states, which could decide the election if they all go in the same direction. These ultra-marginal states will probably be where we will see the biggest impact of Joe Biden's most recent bumbling remarks. Those that were so easily edited into Sloppy Joe calling Trump's supporters 'garbage', in response to Trump's wankfest at Madison Square Garden, where a Z-list Trump zealot actually called Puerto Rico 'an island of garbage'. One unhingedly racist 'joke' that came right after the Orange Baboon himself called the whole USA a 'garbage can' because of... just guess... aye... immigration. So let's move now from West to East, starting with Wisconsin. It has all the ingredients of a Purple State, the ones that are neither Red nor Blue, but an unappealing mash of both. You can definitely imagine an excruciating scene on Election Night, with one channel or the other calling Wisconsin for one candidate or the other, and then withdrawing it because the count's progress went the other way. Or it will stay too close to call for days and days, or until Trump unleashes his swarm of Elmo-funded lawyers, whichever happens first.
Common wisdom, or more accurately the common media narrative, is that Kamala Harris faces a really uphill battle in Michigan. That's one of the states that failed Hillary Clinton and got Donald Trump elected in 2016. You can trace that to Clinton's infamous speech about the 'deplorables', that was manna from Heaven for the MAGA mob in this post-globalisation industrial wasteland. This year, more than left-wing elitism, the situation in Gaza could spell disaster for the Democrats. The background story is that the state's significant Arab-American population is deserting the Democrats, and for once both the voting intentions polls and more specific polling totally support it. Michigan was the least close of the trio in 2020, but could easily become the closest this year. Mind you, it will not seal Harris's fate all by itself, but no single state can, can they? It will require a combination of at least two, and not just any two, because Trump needs 35 additional votes in the Electoral College. So a gain of three states is a surer and safer way for him to prevail, which explains his relentless targeting of the three Rust Belt states.
Finally Pennsylvania, Joe Biden's state of birth. Sloppy Joe was born in Scranton during the First World War, or summat. Scranton, or the American equivalent of Slough. If you know, you know. Or you can just look it up. There is definitely some weird stuff in plain sight in polls from Pennsylvania. Polls offering the full range of candidates, plus the uniquely American option of write-in, find Harris narrowly in the lead. Polls limited to the two-horse race at the top find Trump narrowly ahead. It is surely no coincidence that all these two-horse polls come from this magic herd of pollsters that appeared out of cosmic dust a long time after the campaign had started. But just in time to create an alternative reality where Trump is actually leading in the polls, and make it stick in the minds of half the electorate. And it's not some random conspiracy theory. All you need to do is check the name of the active pollsters on any Wokopedia page dedicated to statewide voting intentions polling, and see which pollsters were there six months ago and which weren't. Simples. But even the suspicious pollsters are unable to hide that a lot of Harris's national surge is also coming from Pennsylvania, where she has again taken the lead over the weekend, even if the various aggregators do not reflect it yet.
Pennsylvania is definitely the state where Elmo can put his blood money to good use. The irony is that he does not have to actually challenge the results, as it could be more efficient to throw enough cogs in the works to dramatically slow down the process. The doomsday scenario is having no final valid results on 11 December, the deadline for the states to choose their Electors, which they obviously can't do if they don't have the final tally of the popular vote. Then it would trigger a snowball effect. Electors wouldn't vote on 17 December, the day set by law, if they haven't been chosen, and Congress would not be able to certify the results on 6 January if some states are missing. If Elmo has carefully studied Engineers Of Chaos 101, that's what he will do. No need for a one-shot coup, or another seditious invasion of the Capitol, if you have already made the whole process crumble weeks before that. The Republicans are clearly preparing already for just that, so we can expect some interesting weeks, and get ourselves accustomed to the idea that we will not know the name of the President-elect as quickly as usual, and possibly not even this year.
Everybody knows, if you want to prove that you’re serious about running for President, you first must get charged with wire fraud. That’s America.
(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You? US, 15 October 2024)
© Bob Dylan, 1964
Then you have to go on Access Hollywood and tell people that you grab ‘em by the pussy. And that creates the kind of gravitas we’re looking for in a President.
(Michael Ian Black, Have I Got News For You? US, 15 October 2024)
Two months ago, Redfield & Wilton probed their extended panel of the swing states about abortion, the economy and inflation, to assess which side's positions they felt closer to, Democrats or Republicans. Back then, Democrats won hands down on abortion, which is probably why they made it a core campaign issue, but far less conclusively on the economic issues, which is why Trump hijacked them to weaponise them against Harris. Redfield & Wilton have continued to survey these issues all along the campaign, with three others added to the questionnaire. Healthcare, illegal immigration and the war in Palestine. This pretty much covers the whole spectrum of the most important issues facing the United States, which are also in many ways the most controversial and the most divisive. They also rephrased the question, to whom their panels trust most, Harris or Trump, on these issues. As expected, Harris against wins by a wide margin on abortion, which could plausibly be the issue that mobilises enough otherwise reluctant voters to get her past the finish line in key states. She is also the most trusted everywhere about healthcare in general, an issue that has barely been touched in the campaign. Probably because nobody has the miracle cure for the extravagant cost of healthcare in the USA, that is totally out of control and more than three times what we have in the UK, thanks to being devolved to private corporate interests.
The swing voters are still split on the economy and the cost of living, and neither candidate has a really conclusive advantage in any state. This is not for lack of trying on the Republican side, as they have relentlessly hammered their soundbites about the double-digit inflation on groceries. Because, ye ken, cheeseburgers up 20% is definitely all Kamala's fault. Don't mention Covid, Ukraine, the energy crisis, Trump lives in an alternative reality where all of this didn't happen. Or, more accurately, his own privileged protected reality is one where all of this doesn't really matter. And don't even think of mentioning that groceries have gone up more that that in the UK, because our inflation was worse, he would probably tell you it's fake news. So the Republican messaging worked, despite its gross exaggeration, because the economy is not a strong point for the average American. And most of them have no fucking clue how it fared in other countries, which is basically no better and often worse. They also don't have a fucking clue where these countries are, actually. Bless their wee cotton socks.
As you probably expected, Trump is getting better ratings than Harris on illegal immigration in all states. But the verdict on their stance on Israel and Palestine is more of a mixed bag, with more people than on any other issue thinking that both suck. Asking about these issues is pretty much tossing a live grenade into a minefield, as they are like the most controversial and divisive this time of year, with lots of people having very strong, and often baseless, views on them. In the USA, immigration is pretty much a defining issue of left vs right, which it is less and less in Europe, where even social-democratic parties tend to lean towards more restrictive policies. But Trump has always been keen on using it to stoke the fires, even if every reasonable person could tell him that none of his policies would ever work. The Wall won't, deporting 20 million won't, and it's fair to assume some part of his brain knows it and doesn't care so long as it make his most excitable supporters and J.D. Vance happy. And I won't even touch the Israel vs Palestine issue now, seeing how the activist woke middle-class campus-left has totally turned it upside down and back to front with their asinine endorsement of mass-murdering terrorists as 'freedom fighters'. Which pretty much makes all reasoned arguments against Israel's colonialist policies inaudible.
Finally, it says a lot about the level of absolute madness that has engulfed this shitshow of a campaign, that the most controversial and divisive issue over the last few days is none of the above. But the sad fate and the untimely death of Peanut The Squirrel and Fred The Raccoon. It has allowed Trump to rebrand himself as the Pet Protector In Chief, without anybody reminding him that he showed far less concern for humans when he advocated bringing more guns to schools. The Republicans have memed this atrocious event into scathing attacks on authoritarian Democrats, with massive help from Elon Musk again, as it happened in New York. But they conveniently forgot to mention it happened only on the basis of a complaint from someone who had never been near the two victims, and had seen them only on Instagram. A 'concerned citizen' living in Texas, a Republican state, and ratting on New Yorkers from a safe distance. But it was too good a story to not be outrageously weaponised by the MAGA mob, and that's how something that should never have gone past local news became another national hysterical culture war.
According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021.
(Bob Woodward, War, 2024)
© Bob Dylan, 1965
You know, I do a thing called the weave. And there are those, that are fair, that say, “This guy is so genius”. And then others would say, “Oh, he rambles”. I don’t ramble.
(Donald Trump)
Some, whom Donald Trump would surely call 'unfair', have voiced doubts about his health, mostly the mental component, especially after his forty minutes of clumsy dancing at a rally in Pennsylvania and falling asleep in the middle of an another campaign event a few days later. Now we have to wonder if he has been actually making up stuff off the muff all along, or if it was just warning signs that his brain is like mushed peas from Hartlepool, those who do not qualify as guacamole, and he is just telling us what emerges from it as genuine reality. He does look in a worse state than Biden the day before Chuck Schumer chucked him out of the window of the campaign bus. The Great American Public are more and more concerned about it, YouGov has revealed, but that does not impress the MAGA mob, and hasn't even helped Kamala in the swing states. That's what the polling aggregates say now about the four most competitive states outwith the Great Lakes area. All are now going to Trump, albeit by wee margins, but all that counts is finishing first, innit?
There is a big inconvenient truth for Kamala Harris in the current situation in the Great Rust Lakes Belt. Minnesota is in the bag by a similar margin to 2020, and always was. So what may cost Kamala the Presidency in not Biden insulting 'white trash', but her own choice of Veep. Tim Walz has brought jack shit to the ticket, except adding fuel to the accusations of extremist transgenderist wokeism. Sadly Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who would plausibly have delivered the extra voters needed to secure this ultra-marginal state, was too pro-Israel, or just 'too Jewish', to be approved by the pro-Hamas student-for-life fanatics whom Kamala needs to cuddle for votes. Will appeasing this extremist fringe prove to be her Nemesis? There is a possibility it could be, as Kamala's leads in the three really competitive Rust Belt states have become thinner than Lizzo after three years on Jane Plan.
The last four states are those you can call The Solids, a batch that were never actually in play, and have attracted little attention during the campaign. Except one, Virginia, that has oddly been pre-emptively selected by Trump's Elmo-funded goons as the testing ground for their asinine claims of massive voter fraud. They certainly found it worth a try, and the money spaffed on this frivolous legal action doesn't really matter, does it? So long as it allows Elmo's Russian bots to cry wolf about 'illegal aliens' being allowed to vote, even if that never happened, and there is no way it could ever happen. I guess the MAGA mob are also ready to try that in New Mexico, even it its equally impossible, and would never switch it their way. But the whole fabricated scandal is not about winning their cases, is it? It's just about creating a totally fabricated narrative about the state of American democracy, and seeding the sows of violent sedition. Which is the real and actual greatest threat to American democracy. But Elmo and the Orange Baboon are totally happy with that one.
Now, just a few hours away from the results, or the first approximate iteration of the results, is as good a moment as any to reflect on how we came where we are now. How a convicted felon and KGB asset has even odds of being sat in the Oval Office two months from now, and it is the confluence of two personal vendettas. First, Donald Trump's against Ukraine, because Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to help him fabricate a fake legal case against Hunter Biden before the 2020 presidential election. But this wouldn't have worked without the unexpected second one. Elon Musk's road rage against the 'woke mind virus' because of what a Californian judge did for, or to, depending on your perspective, his son in 2022. If you ever doubted that transgenderism can change the fate of nations, and not in a good way, here's your evidence. Or will the absolute shitshow of the Orange Baboon's rally at Madison Square Garden, the vile display of neanderthalian theocratic white male supremacism and racism, lift the scales off enough peoples' eyes to block his return?
You can trace Donald Trump’s hold over his supporters by looking at the people in the background. Like, three or four years ago, they were all cheering, now they look completely confused.
(Paul Merton, Have I Got News For You?, 17 May 2024)
© Bob Dylan, 1963
Donald Trump told his supporters the other day that they should all come out and vote on January the 5th. Which would be a good idea cause that’s two months after the actual date.
(Paul Merton, Have I Got News For You?, 18 October 2024)
Let's see now what the Electoral College is likely to look like, based on the most recent polls, including those that have been released just today. There is a lot of uncertainty in all this. The most obvious part is that the foundation for both candidates has not changed since I started tracking this. Only the 2nd District of Maine has shifted from 'weak Harris' to 'weak Trump' for whatever reasons. Otherwise, the two candidates can count on the same states that were already in their column two months ago. Even the big blob of tossups in the middle includes some that haven't changed sides since then. Arizona and Georgia are definitely switching back to Trump, after going to Biden in 2020. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all fleetingly gone red at some point, which you can probably blame on random sample variations, or an influx of rigged pro-Trump polls in some past weeks, but are now more likely than ever to stay blue, albeit by painfully small margins. This could pave the way to some desperate attempt by the Trump-Vance campaign to again try and overturn the results illegally, like they did in Georgia four years ago, as the BBC has timely reminded us. Before resorting to insurrection and an attempted coup, which we can't really rule out happening again this time, as they are already preparing for it in plain sight.
This is the big picture, with seven states and 93 Electoral College votes counted as tossups, which is pretty much the consensus among the American punditariat. But the to-and-froings of voting intentions in recent polls, and of states from one column to the other and back, say that it will boil down to just three states. Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. If we allocate the four other tossups to the most likely winner, we have 251 votes for Harris and 246 for Trump. If Harris wins Nevada and Pennsylvania and Trump wins North Carolina, which sounds like the least unlikely scenario, Harris wins the Presidency 276-262. If it goes completely the other way round, Trump wins 271-267. But what we have now is the third possible combination, and the worst one, as it is just one vote away from a tie, with Harris winning 270-268, and totally opening the doors to multiple recounts, court actions, and a fuckload of fake news about election fraud. That's what was definitely not happening in my previous projection four weeks ago, but could still be in the making as people are still voting as you read this. Harris is predicted to hold Pennsylvania by just a thread in the last batch of polls, so it could still easily go the other way. Imagine waking up tomorrow and finding out that the Quaker State has propelled the Orange Baboon back to 1600 of its eponymous avenue. Fucking nightmare. Unless the real November Surprise comes from a state neither candidate has visited over the last fortnight, because it was not on the obvious 'to do' list.
The great unknown is that millions of early votes have already been cast in all sorts of states. Thanks to American voter registration rules, it is possible to know how many registered Democrats, registered Republicans and registered Independents have voted early. But that does not predict the results in any credible way, so the suspense remains until all votes are counted. Which will probably take a significant number of days, and possibly weeks if mandatory automatic recounts are triggered, or if any candidate uses the legal options for requesting a recount that is not legally mandatory. 22 states have provisions for automatic recounts, and another 27 offer the possibility to request one by various more or less convoluted paths. Only Mississippi does not allow either. So the fun may last for a fucking long time. The only limit seems to be the fateful 6th of January, two months after the election, when a joint session of Congress certifies the final national results. Same date this time as it was at the previous election, as it must happen on the first Monday of January, except if it's New Year's Day and it's then pushed to the 8th. Have to wonder what kind of 'event' Trump's mob have in mind for the occasion this year.
We're gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you. Something's wrong here. Something's really wrong. Can't have happened. And we fight. We fight like hell.
(Donald Trump, March To Save America, 6 January 2021)
© Bob Dylan, 1966
The President specifically asked me, and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers, asked me to literally reject votes. They didn't just ask me to pause, they asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election. I rejected that out of hand, and I did my duty that day.
(Mike Pence, Fox News, 3 August 2023)
There is also a lot of uncertainty and volatility in generic national polls for the House of Representatives. The clear trend is that Democrats have suffered quite a noticeable slump and then gone up again until they regained a tiny lead. That's quite similar to the presidential polls, so there is no real surprise here. It confirms that there is a trickle-down effect of the presidential vote on the downballot races, which was not always the case in the past. But the increased polarisation of American politics means we can expect more and more bloc voting, something even Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush did not achieve, as both had to live with Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives throughout their presidencies. Ironically, both George W. Bush and Donald Trump inherited Republican majorities from their Democratic predecessors, but lost them eventually.
The snapshot of the most recent polls says that Democrats are slightly ahead in the generic national polling, but not by much, and by less than in 2020. The most important factor is that Democrats would nevertheless gain votes on their 2022 result, while Republicans would lose votes. The swing from 2022 is tiny, but nevertheless enough to grant more seats to the Democrats than in 2020 on a smaller share of the popular vote. This is bound to happen when you have a slight shift in voting intentions after an election that delivered a very tiny majority and a larger number of marginal seats than usual. This happened at the 2022 midterms, when Republicans gained a few seats in Democrat-leaning New York and California, quite serendipitously and on tiny margins. So we now have a small swingometer effect, on top of what pure math would deliver, and the usual few seats that go against the trend.
If you factor in only the statistical projection of generic polls, Democrats would gain thirteen seats and Republicans none. This would deliver 226 Democratic seats to 209 Republican seats. This is better for the Democrats than just a week ago, when the predicted result was 218-217; as close as you can get to a tie on an odd number of seats, and a situation that has not happened since the 1930 elections. If you add the few district-level polls to the broth, Democrats are now predicted to gain fifteen seats and Republicans to gain three. Then you have 225 Democratic seats to 210 Republican seats, still very little movement and still a perilously small majority for the Democrats. All in all, first-past-the-post works pretty well when you have a two-party system, and we should again have evidence of this with the actual results this year. Republicans will probably whine that Democrats stole the elections, if they get a few more seats from slightly fewer votes, but that's how it works, mates. And they weren't so easily outraged when they won the House on a minority of the popular vote in 2012. Or 1996. Or 1952. But Republicans are specialists of two-tier indignation, and we can expect them to whine profusely about anything this year, as long as it gives them excuses to clog the system with endless recounts and frivolous lawsuits for months.
Get out and vote! Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore.
(Donald Trump)
© Bob Dylan, 1965
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
(Philip K. Dick)
One of the oddest parts of these American elections is hearing Republicans call Democrats 'Marxists'. Trump first used it against Harris, and it has trickled down now to all sorts of downballot races. It's a pretty ridiculous thing to say as, if there's just one thing Democrats are definitely not, it's Marxist. But Trump obviously doesn't have the fuckiest scoobie what 'Marxist' actually means, and so do 99.9% of the American public. And it would be a complete waste of time and energy to even try and explain them, as one of the dominant traits in Post-Truth America is taking pride in illiteracy. That's the foundation of the MAGA Articles Of Faith, and has also partly polluted wokeism. Though the usual stance on that side is more summat like, "We know it's fucking bullshit, but we're sticking to it because it makes us feel good". And there are traces of that in several of the key Senate races, though not really convincingly in the only four that were first thought to offer some semblance of suspense, or the plausibility of change. Arizona, Montana, Nebraska and Nevada.
Arizona and Nevada are definitely the odd ones out here. Democrats are predicted to lose Arizona at presidential level, and Nevada is on a knife-edge. But both are predicted to elect Democrats to the Senate on similar margins to 2018. Montana tells another, and sadly predictable, story. Despite his obvious credentials as 'one of the boys', Jon Tester faces an uphill battle to hold his seat for a fourth term. Montana has only very slowly submitted to the MAGA fever, and there is still a significant 'young progressives' component in its larger cities, but polls says it won't be enough. Nebraska remains another variant of odd one out, that defies the state's political logic. But Independent Dan Osborn is now predicted to fail in his attempt to snatch it from veteran Republican Deb Fisher, still on a very tiny margin that would trigger an automatic mandatory recount under Nebraska law. But, probably to everyone's surprise, the real suspense has shifted to four seats up in the Great Rust Lakes Belt. From West to East, though not in alphabetical order, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Three of these four states are also under special scrutiny at presidential level, as they hold some of the many keys to the election. Ohio, once a swing state but now leaning Republican, is also one to watch here after a string of upsetting Senate polls. A year ago, nobody would have thought that veteran Democrat Sherrod Brown could face a serious challenge for a seat he has held for eighteen years. He may be a liberal, in the American sense, in a state that has swung more and more to the right recently, but his genuine class consciousness always helped him hold the working class vote in Ohio's post-industrial wastelands. But polls say that his luck may have run out now, which would be a real nightmare for the DNC, as it may be the tipping point seat in a tied Senate. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, also a three-term veteran with strong pro-working class credentials, faces a tougher fight this time too, and his defeat would also be a devastating blow for the Democratic Party. Here too, you can see the downballot effect of Trump's surge in these states. Finally we have four Senate seats that could have been worth watching, but clearly no longer are.
Florida and Texas were quite close in 2018, but the Republican incumbents are now predicted to hold their seats with increased margins, thanks to third-party candidates. Democrats were kind of gambling on quickly evolving demographics to turn the tide in both states, but it is clearly not working. Yet. Virginia looked like a possible battle ground some time ago, but incumbent Democrat Tim Kaine, a former Governor and Hillary Clinton's running mate at the 2016 presidential election, has gained back a two-digit lead that puts him beyond the danger zone. Neighbouring West Virginia was never in doubt after Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Manchin decided to stand down, and pollsters don't even bother polling it any more, as it is quite obvious that Republicans will gain it in a landslide. This final batch of polls quite conclusively says that we shouldn't expect an upset in any of these four seats. But there still may be upsets, some even unexpected, somewhere else.
As a child, Ted Cruz was bitten by an octopus at the beach and became seriously ill. Which is weird to me because, from the way he looks, I would have figured Ted Cruz was bitten by a divorced werewolf.
(Roy Wood Jr, Have I Got News For You? US, 22 October 2024)
© Bob Dylan, 1967
Is it still the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or is it becoming the land of the coward and the home of the slave?
(John Charles Eastman, Trump: The Criminal Conspiracy Case, 2024)
My projection of the Senate after the elections has changed, but not because of a number of really lousy polls for Democrats. As you have seen in the state-by-state polling, it's all because of Nebraska. With Deb Fisher now predicted to hold her seat by a hair, all hopes Chuck Schumer may have entertained, of getting two more years as Majority Leader until the next midterms, have been quashed. The real question now is which Republican will succeed him. Veteran Mitch McConnell, now 82 years old, has announced he will step down from any leadership role in the next Senate and retire at the end of his seventh term in 2026. John Thune of South Dakota, the current Minority Whip, looks like a favourite, if only because he is only 63. Unless the Republican Party want to inject some modernity into what looks like a male gerontocracy, and then Joni Ernst of Iowa may get her opportunity for a big career change. The choice will obviously depend on who wins the presidential election. Thune was chastised by Trumpistas, and Trump himself, after the 2020 election when he said challenges to the election's results would "go down like a shot dog" in the Senate, while Ernst has always been a faithful ally of the Orange Baboon.
The sequence of elections since 2018 shows that we can only expect small incremental change, as the days of massive waves of change in the Senate are clearly over. This is in fact a faithful translation of the current state of American politics and, more broadly, of the American psyche. A country deeply divided right down the middle, but where constitutional oddities grant disproportionate power to the small states. To the rural America that is right now voting en masse for Donald Trump because of his strong stance against immigration, even if they have never seen a Mexican or a Syrian in their home state. The same rural America that would feel comfortable with an American theocracy based on the Ten Commandments instead of the rule of law. That rural America who is rooting for the return of American isolationism because, ye ken, our taxes are better spent at home, and who wants to die for Kyiv anyway? Which is, of course, also the common discourse from the populist far left, just as it already was in the 1930s. But that's another story for another day.
One of the main features of the Senate for many decades was that it did not always align with the presidential votes, and quite often went the other way thanks to the personal component. But it could now become a serious problem for the Democratic Party. The last Republican in a Democratic state was eliminated in 2016, when Mark Kirk lost his seat in Illinois. Then the 2018 elections saw the start of a quite successful cull of Democratic Senators in Republican states, that continued in 2020. Tonight, Democrats will lose two of their last three seats in Republican states, and the third is clearly under threat. But they have opened a new front in 2020, Georgia, when it elected two Democratic Senators on the same day it switched its Electoral College votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Georgia nevertheless remains Republican at state level, with a Republican Governor and strong Republican majorities in both Houses of the State Legislature, and may even return to the Republican fold at today's presidential election. So the next two Senate races in Georgia will surely be ones to watch, for Jon Ossof in 2026 and Raphael Warnock in 2028.
I wish Elon Musk would invent a rocket that could get his head out of Donald Trump’s ass. I think he should be working on that next.
(Phil Wang, Have I Got News For You?, 18 October 2024)
© Bob Dylan, 1965
I love cows. But if we go with Kamala, you won’t have any cows anymore. I love cows, I think they’re so cute and so beautiful and so productive. But according to Kamala, who’s a radical left lunatic, you will not have any cows anymore, so we have to vote her out. They want to kill our cows. That means you are next.
(Donald Trump)
Meanwhile, all is quiet on the Governor Front, as they say. These races elicit very little interest from the pollstertariat and the punditariat, because all but one are as good as already wrapped up in favour of the incumbents. Also of course because the presidential race has an almost daily dose of shockers that make it much better headline material. And we have also just one of the races for Lieutenant Governor looking marginally suspenseful, and then only because of trickle-down effect of the race for Governor in the same state. That's of course in North Carolina, where you have one of these polling paradoxes that make me entertain lingering doubts about the presidential polls. It's pretty much the same phenomenon as the discrepancies between the presidential vote and the Senate vote in Arizona and Nevada. Here we have a state that is still marginally Republican in presidential polls, but will re-elect a Democratic Governor with an increased margin, and replace a Republican Lieutenant Governor with a Democrat. I definitely smell a rat here, and not in the gubernatorial polls.
What actually counts in The Day After's headlines, is who got the most Governors. Lieutenant Governors remain in the shadows, even when one of the positions changes hands, so the narrative will be one of complete stability. Because the real power is in the Governors' offices, and most tend to use their LG as an expensive stunt double, readily available to cut the ribbons at the Peanut Butter County Fair in the most remote corner of the state. Back to our projection from the small number of recent gubernatorial polls, it looks like Democrats will not swing enough votes in New Hampshire to gain the governorship, even if they do quite well at other elections there, so the net result is predicted to be a perfect status quo. No losses and no gains for either side.
There is an interesting subplot to the gubernatorial elections, and also to the elections for the State Legislatures. It is delusional to expect that electing Trump to the Presidency would stop the spread of the 'woke mind virus'. Just as it was stupidly delusional to advocate voting Conservative at our general election because they would stand up for women's rights. Because that's not how American federalism works. Almost all the legislation about the kind of social issues that are at the core of fabricated culture wars, like making the falsification of birth certificates or gay castration therapy legal, is squarely within the prerogatives of individual states, just like banning abortion of Farenheit-451ing the 'wrong kind' of books, which are trademark Republican policies. A federal blanket ban on either will never happen, as even the very conservative Trump-engineered Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional. Besides, what little can be decided at federal level, like Joe Biden's infamous transing of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, can easily be challenged in court with overwhelming odds of being struck down. As much as I enjoy all the juicy details and the successes of the War On Woke, let's not forget that it means jack shit for the people of Kyiv and Kharkiv, and that we shouldn't get our priorities wrong.
Remember the last scene? “Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner”, as this poor doctor walked by. I’m about to have a friend for dinner, but Hannibal Lecter, congratulations, the late great Hannibal Lecter.
(Donald Trump)
© Bob Dylan, 1965
We gave the Americans a language, and they just won't use it properly.
(Jeremy Clarkson)
On the 5th of November, the USA will also elect their state legislatures, partly or wholly. There are 99 chambers for 50 states, as Nebraska has a unicameral legislature that is counted as a Senate for statistical purposes. Nebraska also has this constitutional fiction that their Legislature is non-partisan, though they all know it is dominated by the Republican Party. Seen from where we're sat, these are pretty much the invisible elections, as these 99 chambers play no part whatsoever in America's standing on the world scene. But they are important to the Great American Public because of federalism, that is actually heavily skewed in favour of the states. States' Rights were at the core of the divisions leading to the Civil War, much more than slavery, despite the later narrative. Seen from that perspective, the Confederates won the war, as States' Rights have become one of the many Sacred Cows of American politics, on an equal footing with Free Speech and the Right To Randomly Shoot Kids In Schools. In the early 21st century, the Republican Party have gained a solid dominance on state legislatures, that has been then slowly eroded by the Democratic Party, and current projections say it will continue this year.
Rules about the electoral process vary from state to state on all sort of topics. Length of term, term limits, staggered or 'full house' elections, even years or odd years, you name it, you get it. That's why I traced the results for every year in Joe Biden's term. Democrats managed a big reversal of fortunes in 2021, but only small incremental gains since. Both Houses of the Alaska Legislature are ruled by a coalition of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and it is expected to remain the same this year. Democrats are predicted to gain both Houses or the Arizona Legislature, which sounds a bit odd in a state that is predicted to go to Donald Trump, but less so when you consider they are also predicted to re-elect a Democratic Senator with an increased majority. Democrats are also predicted to gain the House of Representatives of New Hampshire, the largest in the whole nation with 400 members, and also the New Hampshire Senate. But polls also hint Democrats will lose their razor-thin majorities in the Houses of Representatives of Michigan and Pennsylvania, also knife-edge states at the presidential election. So the net result is now predicted to be just two chambers switching from Red to Blue, disappointingly perpetuating Republican dominance at state level. So, for better or for worse, here's the summary of all these elections, as they appear bound to go tonight, or at some point later in the year, and that's my final answer.
Of course, the key word here is 'uncertainty', though it could also be 'unpredictability', not something any self-respecting psephologist should admit. But that's the way it is. From opinion polls, which might be wrong once in a while, not from bookies, that are easily manipulated, or Elon Musk, who is constantly manipulating. A weakly-elected Democrat at the White House, facing difficult battles against a split Congress, and plausibly undermined by Republican Governors and Republican State Legislatures, all of whom are more than likely to pursue some high-profile culture wars against the dominance of wokeism inside The Beltway. Don't misunderstand me, though, I do hope Kamala Harris wins and Democrats take back control of Congress. Not because I have suddenly decided that their asinine version of 'progressivism' is fine, but because the alternative is so much worse. That would be, to put it bluntly, Vladimir Putin sitting in the Oval Office. Because that's exactly what we would get if Elon Musk's blood money and vote-buying propel Donald Trump back to the White House. And I am definitely not getting hyperbolic here, it's in plain sight for anyone with a brain to see. As Bob Dylan once put it, check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row.
Bob Dylan and The Band on stage, opening night in Chicago, 3rd of January 1974
Left to right: Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Levon Helm
Garth Hudson is behind the keyboards, hidden by Robertson
Richard Manuel was on the other side, to the left of Helm, and is missing from the picture
To end on a lighter note, there is a fun subplot here. Before The Flood was recorded during Bob Dylan's comeback tour that lasted from the 3rd of January to the 14th of February 1974. It was the last time Dylan and The Band performed together, bar the short performance at The Band's farewell concert in 1976, immortalised by Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz. More relevantly, the tour took place at the peak of the Watergate Crisis, amidst rising speculation that Richard Nixon would soon resign the Presidency. Which he dutifully did, seven weeks after the album's release. And here we reach a fork in the space-time continuum, with one branch being our 'real' timeline and the other The West Wing's timeline. In that alterverse, the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was never ratified, so Richard Nixon never appointed a new Vice-President after Spiro Agnew's resignation. Come August 1974, nobody was constitutionally entitled to succeed Nixon and the only option was a snap Presidential election, two years ahead of schedule. That's how all election cycles in the series are 'off' by two years, with Jed Bartlet elected in 1998 and 2002, and then Matt Santos in 2006. Be seeing you for the post-mortems, then, in a couple of weeks after the recounts and before the lawsuits.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, for nothing now can ever come to any good.
(Wystan Hugh Auden, Funeral Blues, 1936)
© Bob Dylan, 1963
