Election 2024: Day -117

Things remain unsettled in Democratic circles, despite Biden’s best efforts to put any uncertainty behind him.

On Monday morning Biden made an unscheduled dial-in appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, bringing back memories of Trump dialing into Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” from the White House residence. Shortly before that, Biden had sent a two-page letter to Congressional Democrats, reiterating his commitment to the campaign and urging the party to unify behind him. With those actions, the Biden contract on PredictIt spiked upwards on Monday morning, trading as high as $0.67 and ending the day at $0.59.

After a steady day of trading yesterday, things started to turn badly for the Biden contract this morning after Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on “Morning Joe.” On the show, when asked if she supported Biden’s continued candidacy, she said something to the effect of “the President needs to decide what he’s going to do,” which is an odd statement in light of Biden’s letter on Monday in which he was crystal clear on what he intended to do. Another factor today may have been George Clooney’s NYT op-ed called “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” In his piece Clooney writes:

We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.

The Biden contract dropped from $0.61 early this morning to $0.41 as I write this, with the Harris contract now back up to $0.43.

Today the Cook Political Report moved AZ/GA/NV from “Toss Up” to “Leans Republican”, and moved MN/NH/Omaha from “Likely Democratic” to “Leans Democratic”. All of this is consistent with what we had previously discussed with respect to Nate Silver’s model.

Speaking of Silver, his team published an analysis today estimating the 2024 “electoral college lean” as R +2.0, versus R +3.5 in 2020 and R +2.9 in 2016. Given this lean, in 14% of their scenarios Biden wins the popular vote but loses the electoral college.

Trump has kept an unusually low profile in the past week, which seems like smart politics with Biden under such pressure. With the RNC starting on Monday, Trump is widely expected to announce his vice-presidential candidate over the weekend. The three names one now hears the most are Ohio Senator Vance, North Dakota Governor Burgum, and Florida Senator Rubio. I don’t quite understand how Rubio would fit on the ticket, in light of the 12th Amendment, but Bush-Cheney overcame that problem.