WSU’s Foley Institute held an election prediction panel with some of Washington’s leading political scientists Tuesday.
The panel is part of the ongoing 2024 Foley Insitute speaker series concerning this year’s election. The panelists discussing election predictions included WSU’s Carolyn Long and Western Washington University’s Travis Ridout and Todd Donavan.
During the lecture, the panelists broke down their opinions on the major races on the ballot, including the presidential race, predictions on the Senate and House, and a breakdown on the Washington state races, including the govenor’s race and state representative’s races.
Long and Ridout predicted a win for Vice President Kamala Harris via both the popular vote and electoral college, predicting Harris winning by an average of 50.95% of the popular vote and 284 electoral college votes. Ridout predicted a 49.9% popular vote and 292 electoral college votes for Harris; Long predicted a 52% popular vote and 276 electoral college votes for Harris.
Donavan had a dissenting opinion on the presidential race. He thought Trump would take both the popular vote and electoral college majority at 48.1% and 281, respectively.
“We’re not going to get a big difference in 2024…it’s going to be super close,” Donavan said. “There’s a lot of wishful thinking going on with the polling…but I will never underestimate the amount of racism and sexism in the American Electorate.”
Based on the election results currently available, Trump will return to the White House for a second term after winning both the popular vote at 50.9% and taking the Electoral College with 295 electoral votes.
Based on reporting from the Associated Press, Donald Trump’s victory is due to the conservative shift that occurred in most of the country’s key swing states including Wisconsin and Michigan, states that typically go blue and make up Democrats ‘blue wall.’
According to current political reporting from the New York Times, the swing states of Nevada and Arizona are still counting ballots, although President-Elect Donald Trump is maintaining his lead in both states.
In line with the panelist’s predictions, the U.S. Senate went red in this election, with the Republican majority gaining three seats to hold 52 total, compared to Democrats’ 44 seats.
The race for the House of Representatives is still ongoing, with Democrats control slipping as Republicans currently sit at 204-189, with 42 seats left to be called, according to USA Today.
