Pivots and Swings
Pivots and Swings
National polls likely don't foreshadow the outcome of November's U.S. presidential race -- it may come down to a smattering of votes in a few counties
The Democratic Party National Convention is underway in Chicago. It’s a decidedly different atmosphere from what organizers envisioned a few months back when the gathering was to be a rather sedate affair to officially send the incumbent president and elderly party leader into his second consecutive battle against a slightly younger Donald J. Trump.
When I attended the Republicans’ conclave in Milwaukee where the delegates dispatched their party head, for the third consecutive time, back into the fight against the Democrats, those with whom I spoke were confident, with polling to back them up, that Trump — despite his felony convictions — would extract revenge on Joseph R. Biden. I asked a number of them about the speculation that Biden might drop out. Some did correctly predict Vice President Kamala Harris would replace her boss. But as many others, surprisingly, predicted the rival party would pick first lady Jill Biden (nope), former first lady Michelle Obama (never) or California Governor Gavin Newsom (maybe next time or 2032).
The most popular chant during the Milwaukee convention was “Joe must go!” Republicans got their wish, albeit prematurely. Now they watch this week as the Democratic Party hosts a coronation for Kamala, the one on the ascent.
Much of the news this week will emanate from Chicago, as it did from Milwaukee during the RNC, definitely giving the Democrats millions of dollars’ worth of earned media and possibly a further climb on the rollercoaster.
In between the two conventions, I spent time in a couple of cities that are much more critical in this year’s presidential election than the convention localities. And it is likely you will see Trump, Harris and their respective running mates, Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, in and between Bethlehem and Easton as soon as next week until early November.
Playing presidential historian, I dug deep into the historical data of elections after concluding that Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is a must-win for the 2004 contenders. After all — despite lacking a Ph.D — I’m now a bona fide historian — at least according to Steve Reilly of CBS News, who is chair of the National Press Club board of governors. He referred to me by that title — much to my surprise — while moderating our launch for Behind the White House Curtain. (Our obscure hour of public service television began airing Sunday on C-SPAN’s BookTV.)
Yes, it is possible Trump or Biden could prevail without winning Pennsylvania but it is extremely unlikely, according to election statisticians. As a result, I sought to determine the swingiest county in that most pivotal state.
Hands down, it is Northampton County in the Lehigh Valley. Bethlehem and Easton are entirely in that county, as is part of Allentown.
As I explained in my VOA report, Northampton County is one of those unique entities that went for Barack Obama twice (2008 and 2012), Donald Trump in 2016 and then to Joe Biden in 2020. Those are precisely the outcomes for America overall in those election years. In a country where most state, counties and cities are reliably red or blue, Northampton County is an exception. The county has mostly been in sync with the state and country for a long time.
You can see and hear what is going on in Northampton County this month in the TV version of my VOA report from where we illustrated even when the locals don’t swing, they do the polka.
There are a few other counties I would suggest keeping an eye on as they also have the potential to sway this year’s presidential election.
There’s Clark County, Nevada, where I cast my first vote in an election in the late 1970s. The county contains Las Vegas and Henderson (with more than four times the voters of the state’s second largest county, Washoe, way to the north).
Clark County will determine who gets Nevada’s six electoral votes — the smallest number of any of the swing states — but in a very close election, certainly important. Nonpartisans are pivotal. The political machine of the late Senator Harry Reid remains influential is rallying Democrats to the polls, as is Culinary Local 226 (the first union of which I was ever a member), representing the hotel/casino workers.
Clark County has interesting demographics. The combination of Hispanics, Blacks and Asians totals nearly 60%. As Democrats have learned, they cannot take Hispanic voters for granted. Conversely, Asian-Americans were once a reliable constituency for the Republican Party but now a slight majority are Democrats.
A few years back when thinking of moving farther way from the Washington, D.C. area than I eventually did, I went house hunting in the Atlanta area, including Cobb County. It has become diverse in recent years and this slice of the Georgia peach (16 electoral votes) is no longer reliable for Republican Party candidates in the Trump era. The home of Home Depot and the Weather Channel, Cobb County barely favored Hillary Clinton in 2016 (by just 2%), but Joe Biden beat Trump there by 14 points four years ago. A Harris-Walz loss in the county would likely mean a Trump victory in Georgia and possibly in the total electoral vote count.
The final county to mention means a return to Wisconsin (10 electoral votes). Affluent Waukesha County was still staunchly Republican a decade ago. It is one of the state’s WOW counties (Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha) and a red wall for decades. Waukesha is still considered Republican, but more voters who dislike Trump’s brand of politics are moving there from neighboring Milwaukee County. (Waukesha County has gained something of a notorious reputation for delayed reporting of vote totals holding up election results, leading to inside humor referencing “crucial Waukesha County”).
Republicans (and maybe the Kremlin, if one sarcastic New Yorker cartoon is taken literally) will be nervously eyeing Waukesha this November, recalling that the last time the county voted for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee was in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in a landslide.
As noted in our previous musing, Lyndon Johnson would not seek a second full term, dropping out in 1968, much earlier in the process than Joe Biden did in 2024, putting the Democrats on a crash course in Chicago.
The messy nominating process in ‘68, led to Vice President Hubert Humphrey at the top of the ticket. As Kamala Harris must decide this year, Humphrey had to navigate how far he wanted to distance himself from LBJ’s policies. The albatross around both their necks was the unpopular war in Vietnam. That allowed Republican Richard Nixon (who had lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960) to become president. In the popular vote count, it was close. Humphrey lost by less than a percentage point. But Nixon trounced Humphrey in the electoral vote count - 301 to 191, with independent segregationist George Wallace capturing 45.
It is unfathomable that even one electoral vote will be tabulated this year for anybody other than a Democrat or Republican (despite the best efforts of unaffiliated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Green Party and a few others who may appear on your ballot).
What Kennedy, or one of the others, could accomplish — individually or collectively — in a very close election in a swing state or two, is to capture just enough ballots to determine whether Harris or Trump is victorious in that state, thus tipping the electoral vote bucket.
Ralph Nader, still with us at 90, is likely leave a legacy not only as a pioneering consumer advocate (with his classic book title, Unsafe at Any Speed), but also as the year 2000 spoiler in Florida where he compiled more than 97,000 votes in the ‘hanging chads’ election in which Texas Governor George W. Bush was eventually deemed by the U.S. Supreme Court to have defeated Vice President Al Gore of the Democratic Party by 537 ballots out of the nearly six million cast in the Sunshine State. It was one exceptional swing vote — that of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, which made it a 5-4 decision to stop the Florida recount and, after two months in limbo, give the Republican Party the presidency.
Presidential elections in America are supposed to be decided (technically indirectly) by the voters. In case of an electoral vote tie, the outcome goes to the House of Representatives. But, as an election a quarter of a century ago demonstrated, the fate of the nation can be steered to the hands of nine lifetime presidential appointees who wear black robes.
