Tim Tai

As the 2024 presidential election enters its final week, the polls and forecasts have narrowed. The News spoke with professors at Yale who all noted that this year’s race is especially tight and hard to predict. 

“When elections are very close, we have to understand that our ability to forecast them will be limited,” professor Gregory Huber wrote. “This shouldn’t surprise us, just like we have to watch the World Series or the Superbowl to see who wins. We can’t predict close things and we shouldn’t expect to be able to do so.”

Huber cited the difficulty associated with getting reliable data on the individuals in the battleground states who will likely decide the outcome of the election, especially those who have not voted in past elections. Huber added that the closeness in the seven swing states in this year’s election leaves little room for any error and makes election forecasting especially challenging.

Professor Kevin DeLuca added that the issue with this year’s polls is not that they are unreliable, but rather they aren’t precise enough to pinpoint who the victor in a very close race. 

“I think the predictions are right: because they all predict a close race with no clear likely winner,” DeLuca wrote.  

During the 2020 and 2016 presidential elections, polls underestimated support for Donald Trump, and DeLuca said he will be watching this year to see if pollsters have gotten better at accurately predicting support for Trump. 

DeLuca said that it is also possible that pollsters have tried to compensate for past underestimates of support for Trump and so may now be overestimating his chances.

DeLuca further noted that incumbency, a key factor in determining election results, is complex this year. Vice President Kamala Harris could be considered an incumbent as the vice president but is trying to emphasize that her administration will not be a simple continuation of the Biden administration. Trump on the other hand, while technically not an incumbent, has been a President before and has expressed his desire to continue doing what he did during his first stint as President — somewhat like an incumbent.

DeLuca highlighted that the Dobbs decision could boost Harris, especially among young women. 

However, while Trump’s extremism, criminal charges and age hurts his support among moderate voters, the inflation and affordability crisis during the Biden administration works against Harris. 

According to DeLuca, three recent models predicted Harris would win, while five predicted Trump would win. DeLuca’s own model, based on economic conditions and candidate quality differences, predicts a Harris victory. However, since these models do not indicate a clear winner, the election is quite unpredictable.

“I’d be very surprised if we knew the outcome on election night. I think the thing that no one knows really is what the turnout operations are like on the ground in the five or six swing states that really matter,” professor Daniel HoSang added. “This election kind of captures and exemplifies that fear and mistrust and uncertainty about everyone’s future.”

HoSang noted that there is a sense of public “fatigue and exhaustion about the tenor of the campaign, as well as fear for the outcome, not simply due to the candidates and the electoral campaign itself, but due to the deeper anxieties that many people have of the future as well. 

These fears of the outcome might be caused in part by the continued deterioration of public trust in our institutions, political systems and elected officials, HoSang noted, is disconcerting because all of our biggest issues require some degree of bipartisan cooperation to be solved.

“There has to be some shared commitment to doing something together. “ clarified HoSang. “When we have elections and political climates like this that deep in everyone’s mistrust, it makes those kinds of collective projects much more difficult for the long term. So in that sense, a little cliche, but there is a way in which, like everyone is going to lose.” 

However, HoSang also expressed his hope that the worry and apprehension that many feel will not translate into cynicism. 

“I think cynicism is the poison that we all have to avoid, even when we feel apprehensive in all these ways,” said HoSang.

The current 538 presidential election forecast gives Trump a 52 percent chance of winning.

ELSHADAY TEKESTE
Elshaday Tekeste covers Graduate and Professional Schools. He is a first-year in Timothy Dwight from Charlotte, North Carolina.