2024 U.S. Presidential Election Odds

[00:00:08] Welcome to Riches Revealed, revealing how to improve your finances and live a richer life.

[00:00:14] Coming to you from the scruffy low city of Knoxville, Tennessee, is financial planner Jack Martin.

[00:00:32] So welcome to the show today and I'm your host Jack Martin.

[00:00:36] So today I thought we would talk about what I find to be really exciting, which is the, every four years, the elections here in the United States.

[00:00:45] So for me, it's probably better than the Super Bowl, to be honest, unless my team is in the Super Bowl, which this year.

[00:00:57] The Miami Dolphins definitely will not be in the Super Bowl.

[00:01:01] So as I record this, it is Monday, October 28th, and we are eight days away from election night.

[00:01:12] Now, a lot of people have already done their mail-in votes or early voting, whatever the case may be, depending on your state.

[00:01:20] But the majority of people still will be voting on November 5th.

[00:01:26] So both sides, in the meantime, are going to be trying to convince you that they are ahead.

[00:01:31] And that is to try and influence the turnout, which is going to be probably the deciding factor in this race, the way I see it.

[00:01:41] Because the race is so close, and it's going to come down to a handful of states.

[00:01:48] Most states in the United States are basically spoken for one way or another.

[00:01:53] We already know to a high degree of probability which way it's going to go in most states.

[00:01:59] But it's going to come down to seven battleground states.

[00:02:01] I'm going to give you those states today and tell you what to look for on election night and give you an idea what the odds are one way or another.

[00:02:11] So most of the research that I did on this was on a few different websites.

[00:02:15] There's one called 2702win.com.

[00:02:21] 2702win.com.

[00:02:25] Realclearpolling.com.

[00:02:27] That's realclearpolling.com.

[00:02:30] And 538.com.

[00:02:34] That's not the numbers.

[00:02:35] That's actually spelled out.

[00:02:38] 538.com.

[00:02:39] So the seven, what are probably the seven battleground states starting from the east coast and working our way towards the west will be Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania.

[00:02:54] Then we'll move to the upper Midwest which will be Wisconsin and Michigan.

[00:03:00] And then out west later in the evening will be Arizona and Nevada.

[00:03:08] So let me give you the first real interesting point of what to be looking for on election night.

[00:03:16] Trump will win if he takes Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

[00:03:25] If he takes those three states, basically everything else will be locked in and he will have at that point locked in the 270.

[00:03:34] So conversely, Harris will win if she takes Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

[00:03:45] So if you're paying attention, you've noticed something in common there which is Pennsylvania.

[00:03:50] Pennsylvania.

[00:03:51] So Pennsylvania is absolutely the linchpin in this election.

[00:03:56] And when you run the computer models, it will tell you that whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the election 90% of the time when you actually run the models over and over.

[00:04:07] So Pennsylvania is the one to be watching.

[00:04:11] I would say that there's a good chance that, from what we've seen in prior elections recently, that it'll be so close that we won't even know the outcome early in the evening.

[00:04:24] But if it was to be not as close as we think it will be, then maybe we could see something actually decided on November 5th.

[00:04:34] But I would say a good chance being it's so close that we may not even know on the 5th what the actual result will be.

[00:04:43] So when you look at the states, again, those seven states that I gave you, starting from the east, are going to be Georgia, North Carolina, and then Pennsylvania.

[00:04:52] In the Midwest, Wisconsin and Michigan, and then out west, Arizona and Nevada.

[00:04:59] But, as I said, Trump can take it if he wins Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

[00:05:06] Harris will take it if she wins Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania.

[00:05:12] The vast majority of the states in the country, we already know which way they're going to go.

[00:05:17] So it's really down to those seven states who's going to win.

[00:05:21] When you look at the current polls in Georgia, it's Trump by one to two right now.

[00:05:29] North Carolina, Trump by one to two.

[00:05:34] And Pennsylvania, a dead heat.

[00:05:37] My feeling about it, those three, and this is more a commentary based on what I'm seeing from the candidates and what I view as momentum.

[00:05:51] So, for instance, when I'm looking at a possible investment for clients, I'm not just looking at the price, am I?

[00:05:58] I'm looking at direction.

[00:06:00] And the polls have been moving in Trump's direction now since mid-September.

[00:06:07] Or, conversely, moving against tariffs since mid-September.

[00:06:11] And that's pretty much been the case in most of the states.

[00:06:15] So, right now, Trump is showing a narrow lead in Georgia and North Carolina.

[00:06:20] But again, moving in the right direction.

[00:06:22] PA, dead heat.

[00:06:25] When you look at who's voted in the early voting, it's not surprising that in the early voting that Harris leads.

[00:06:33] And generally, Democrats have acquitted themselves of the opportunity to use mail-in ballots and early voting more than Republicans have.

[00:06:44] So, she's been leading in that heavily by maybe a two to one.

[00:06:48] The interesting thing when I look at Pennsylvania is that it's showing about 150,000 votes for a third-party candidate.

[00:06:57] And when I look at it, this is a third-party libertarian or green candidate.

[00:07:02] So, I'm thinking that the third party being on the ballot may actually wind up hurting Harris in Pennsylvania.

[00:07:12] So, don't be too surprised, depending on what Pennsylvania looks like, if they are talking on the news about that.

[00:07:19] I'm a little surprised by that.

[00:07:21] When I look in the Midwest, when we look at Wisconsin and Michigan, those are basically both a dead heat.

[00:07:31] And out West, Arizona, Trump is up by one to two, and Nevada is also a dead heat.

[00:07:39] Now, as I said, Arizona and Nevada may not wind up mattering if one of the candidates runs the table on the states that I gave you previously.

[00:07:50] So, again, those for Trump, if he wins Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, that's pretty much the race right there.

[00:07:58] Conversely, if Harris wins Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she pretty much will lock up the race there.

[00:08:08] And what Nevada and Arizona do at that point is almost irrelevant.

[00:08:13] If that doesn't happen, then you're going to see the other states like Nevada and Arizona be critical at that point.

[00:08:23] So, right now, to give you a better idea of what the odds are that we're looking at,

[00:08:30] the simulations right now are giving Trump about a 52.7% chance of winning.

[00:08:38] And that's based on 20,000 simulations run by the computer modeling.

[00:08:43] My feeling about it at this point is that, again, based on things like momentum and also the press that Trump has been getting,

[00:08:53] that I think it's probably higher than that.

[00:08:55] I would probably give Trump maybe 60 to 65% chance of winning.

[00:09:02] I think he's gotten better press lately.

[00:09:05] Harris is just, she's not a strong candidate.

[00:09:10] I will tell you that prior to Biden dropping out, Trump was beating Biden handily in these states that we're talking about.

[00:09:20] I mean, 10, 15 points.

[00:09:23] And that instantly closed when Harris was announced as the nominee.

[00:09:30] And after the convention, she got more of a bump after the convention.

[00:09:34] So, neither one of these candidates are obviously perfect candidates.

[00:09:40] They both have pretty bad likability problems, disliked by a large percentage of the population.

[00:09:49] Harris, to focus on Harris for a minute, Harris did well in the debate against Trump.

[00:09:55] I thought she handily took Trump down in the debate.

[00:10:00] She just goaded him and was more focused than Trump was.

[00:10:04] She had a nice jump after she was announced as the nominee and got all sorts of favorable press, which is not surprising.

[00:10:16] But there's a reason why she didn't get any votes in her own party back in 2016.

[00:10:24] Tulsi Gabbard, for instance, took her apart in one of the first debates, her party.

[00:10:30] And so she doesn't come across very well.

[00:10:34] There's something about her that's not very likable.

[00:10:37] In addition to the cackling and she can't stop stumbling over things.

[00:10:45] She doesn't seem to think very well on her feet.

[00:10:47] And it's bad if like a place that's probably on your side, like CNN with Anderson Cooper, don't seem to like her answers.

[00:10:55] And she virtually has invented the word salad.

[00:10:59] I don't even remember hearing that term prior to Kamala Harris.

[00:11:04] But she says stuff like, it's time for us to do what we have been doing.

[00:11:09] And that time is every day.

[00:11:13] Who can figure out what she's even talking about?

[00:11:18] Believe me, that's not that's not even the worst of it.

[00:11:21] Then she was given a softball question of what does she think that maybe she could have done differently.

[00:11:27] It's a perfect opportunity just to be able to, you know, distance herself from the Biden administration and be able to then be able to look forward.

[00:11:36] Because by admitting that maybe there are things that could have been done better in the past, but not maybe taking full responsibility for it.

[00:11:42] But she came out and said she couldn't think of anything.

[00:11:47] Absolutely the worst possible answer that she could have come up with.

[00:11:50] I mean, based on things like that, that people are really upset about, you know, the inflation that's been going on and the border crisis in Afghanistan.

[00:12:00] And she couldn't think of anything.

[00:12:03] Then she was asked a question about what are your weaknesses that you're bringing into the office with you?

[00:12:11] And she couldn't come up with a coherent answer to that.

[00:12:14] Again, this is the kind of kind of question you get asked in a job interview, right?

[00:12:18] All of us should be able to come up with something that's not too damning, but at least shows that we have some ability to be introspective.

[00:12:26] And then there was the so-called town hall with Maria Shriver.

[00:12:32] Where you think the format of a town hall, the whole idea is that people get to ask questions.

[00:12:38] But somebody was apparently able to ask Maria Shriver a question.

[00:12:43] And the question was, when do we get to ask questions?

[00:12:45] And Maria Shriver said, unfortunately, you don't.

[00:12:48] We have pre-prepared questions that we are going to ask.

[00:12:52] And hopefully I will be able to come up with the kind of things that you guys might be interested in.

[00:12:59] That's not a good look at all.

[00:13:04] So she's got problems.

[00:13:05] Now, Donald Trump is a known quantity, which is good and bad because a certain percentage of the population is never going to vote for Donald Trump.

[00:13:13] And there are lots of understandable reasons for that.

[00:13:18] Donald Trump can't stop bragging.

[00:13:22] Everything is the greatest, the best.

[00:13:25] He's amazing.

[00:13:27] He just can't stop it.

[00:13:29] And I mean, it really does affect his likability.

[00:13:34] He can't stop insulting people.

[00:13:37] And that turns off a lot of people.

[00:13:40] I think women seem to be more turned off.

[00:13:43] Trump has a real problem with female voters.

[00:13:46] And a lot of that is because of the fact that he is so abrasive and derogatory.

[00:13:52] And a lot of things that he apparently has done in the past have been really demeaning towards women.

[00:13:58] So he's got a whole set of problems there himself.

[00:14:03] And, of course, when he was in office, there seemed to be sort of daily drama going on.

[00:14:08] There were people, you know, who were leaving the administration.

[00:14:12] So he's got a whole list of problems himself.

[00:14:17] But Donald Trump has also been doing better, I think, in terms of his publicity.

[00:14:24] Now, he's got less money, but he's been doing better in terms of publicity.

[00:14:27] I thought that the McDonald's thing was genius.

[00:14:31] I mean, it looks so good to have a guy who's a billionaire willing to go out there and work at the drive-thru at a McDonald's.

[00:14:44] It looked so good.

[00:14:46] It was genius just on appearances.

[00:14:49] And the fact that he came across as so relaxed and such a man of the people type in his dealings with the people at the McDonald's.

[00:14:59] So that was really good.

[00:15:02] The other thing that he's done well was he went on Joe Rogan.

[00:15:07] And I have watched most of that episode at this point, and I would say that it was very interesting.

[00:15:16] Joe really tried to keep him directed.

[00:15:19] And Joe helped him out so that Donald Trump wasn't stepping on his own landmines.

[00:15:26] So Joe was very favorable to him from what I've seen in this.

[00:15:31] And Joe tried to lead him in the direction in terms of policies that Joe would like to see.

[00:15:37] So overall, I thought that was very good.

[00:15:39] On the negative side, at the end of the convention, I thought Donald Trump really dropped the ball.

[00:15:46] At the end of the convention, which had been a great event, all Donald Trump had to do at that point, this was shortly after he'd been shot,

[00:15:54] all he had to do was get up there and say,

[00:15:58] you know, I've been recently shot.

[00:16:01] I think we all need to turn down the rhetoric.

[00:16:04] We need to stop being so antagonistic to one another.

[00:16:07] We need to move forward.

[00:16:10] And I need to do better with my rhetoric as well.

[00:16:14] If he had said that, he would have earned so many fans.

[00:16:20] People would have realized that the man does realize that he's gone too far many times.

[00:16:28] But that isn't what he did.

[00:16:30] At all.

[00:16:31] And in fact, I think he may have started his speech at 1030 at night or something like that.

[00:16:36] And then he just went on a two-hour ramble that people just absolutely must have turned off the television at some point.

[00:16:44] In fact, I know people who did that exact thing.

[00:16:49] So he had a big missed opportunity there.

[00:16:53] So neither one of these candidates are perfect by any means or even in the remote ballpark of perfect at all.

[00:17:04] I think it's really going to come down to which party is going to get the best turnout, which side is the most motivated.

[00:17:12] And not nationwide.

[00:17:14] We don't care about that.

[00:17:16] We care about these seven states that I just told you about.

[00:17:19] And they're so close that it's really going to come down to the turnout in those states and which party can get the turnout the best.

[00:17:28] Democrats have always said that they are really good at turning out the vote.

[00:17:34] If that's the case, because these races are so close, that might be enough to turn the election in Harris's favor.

[00:17:42] If on the other side, Republicans are just plain motivated to go out there and vote because they are so opposed to the ideas that they perceive to be Harris's policies.

[00:17:56] Yeah, that will be enough to turn it around as well.

[00:18:01] Historically, turnout is generally in this country around 55% of eligible voters.

[00:18:06] So in 2016, we actually had a high turnout.

[00:18:10] And that would be the first time that Donald Trump was running.

[00:18:16] And that was 59%, 59.2% to be precise.

[00:18:21] In 2020, during COVID, it was higher, actually.

[00:18:27] And that appears to be because people took advantage of doing things like the mail-in voting process.

[00:18:34] So that was really high.

[00:18:37] 65.9%.

[00:18:39] Indications so far look like this is going to be a very heavy turnout election as well.

[00:18:44] And I would like to take a moment to say as well that, you know, we talk about how the country seems to be so evenly divided and that that's a bad thing.

[00:18:55] They were so antagonistic towards one another.

[00:18:59] And there is a lot of truth to that.

[00:19:01] But I would also say another way to think about it is that it's not a bad thing for a country to be kind of evenly divided along political lines because there's a balance point in there somewhere.

[00:19:15] It's much better than the alternative, which would be a country that has no political options at all.

[00:19:22] For instance, a one-party system.

[00:19:26] Communism, dictatorships.

[00:19:27] Those are one-party systems.

[00:19:30] We're much better off having what we've got here, which is at least a two-party system, which is in this case was a winner-take-all system.

[00:19:38] It's not a parliamentary system, which sometimes you see over in other developed countries like in Europe, for instance, where they can have multiple parties available.

[00:19:48] So you can have kind of a niche-type parties, you know, like a green party over in Europe where they can get a percentage of the vote and then represent a percentage in parliament.

[00:19:59] Here we have a winner-take-all system, and then with a winner-take-all system, if you have a third party come in, then, and if it's similar to one of the other parties, the similar parties will wind up dividing their vote.

[00:20:13] And then the party that would not have won actually gets into office.

[00:20:17] So it's a different system, but it's certainly better than a one-party system.

[00:20:24] It's better to have a choice, and for us to, if we are fairly evenly divided, that probably means that both parties are trying to appeal to that center segment.

[00:20:38] They're not, they can't move too far to the right or the left, although they definitely have moved in those directions here in the last 20 years, become more extreme on both sides.

[00:20:48] But let's say our vote is divided, you know, 48-48.

[00:20:55] So that's leaving a 4% section there in the middle, and that's what both parties are trying to get here at the end, is get that, get the turnout from their base and capture as much of that 4% in the center as they can.

[00:21:08] So it's not a perfect system, but we bemoaned so much about people being evenly divided, but I don't perceive that as necessarily being the worst thing.

[00:21:18] All right, so I think that does it for today.

[00:21:22] I might do another one just prior to election night to see if there are some changes here in the process.

[00:21:30] But again, I'll just give it to you one more time.

[00:21:33] Trump will win if he takes Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

[00:21:38] Harris will win if she takes Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

[00:21:44] Those are the states that you need to be paying the most attention to on election night, so it should be exciting to watch.

[00:21:52] Again, I don't know that it's going to be decided, unfortunately, on election night.

[00:21:57] Nowadays, we don't seem to be able to quite manage that, despite all our computers and everything in the world.

[00:22:02] But it'll still be fun to watch.

[00:22:04] It's democracy in action.

[00:22:06] I always love election night.

[00:22:08] To me, it's just about the most exciting thing to happen.

[00:22:12] It's right up there with the Olympics, another thing that only happens every four years.

[00:22:29] The end.