Elecshun Dae 2024
My 26-point layman's guide to getting your political junkie on tomorrow
In the Morning (7 action items)
1. Do not—under any circumstances—turn on a TV prior to 6pm EST.
This isn’t specific to the morning, but it has to be first, because it’s absolutely crucial. The only thing worse than the election night coverage on the cable news networks is the election day coverage on the cable news networks. And trailing right behind those two things is the douchebag in your office who watched the Today show on election morning and is now repeating the same drivel to you over the watercooler or over Zoom. Don’t be that guy.
In case you are tempted at any point in the day, I’ll save you the time by summing up the coverage for you here:
worthless anecdotes about turnout; anecdotal profiles about who the independents are voting for; analysis of rainy weather forecasts that supposedly affect turnout but actually do not; interviews with senior citizens who voted at 11am in the Midwest; explanations of the “science” of exit-polling and election prediction; questions about why aren’t there more moderates;
Meta-narratives about the parties probable reactions to a 5-seat swing in the House vs. a 15-seat swing; debates over whether this is 2016, 2020, or neither; editorials on whether this is a “change” election, a “wave” election, or a “turnout” election;
exposés on campaign financing, voter turnout, and enthusiasm; debates over divided government and gridlock; evidence-free polemics on Trump’s mental state and post-election plans;
stories about the parties angling with teams of lawyers to oversee recounts; worries on the right and left about voter fraud and voter suppression; some Blair-witch style Youtube videos showing something allegedly wrong.
Add to this 35 other things that could be studied with a rigorous methodology but instead will be delivered in the absence (or face) of data, and an equal number of things that should never be studied, period.
Did I mention this will all be delivered to you at a 4th grade comprehension level?
Don’t fall for it. Trust me.
2. Learn the Electoral College landscape cold.
You need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency on Election Day. Here’s the map of states that aren’t competitive. If we assign these as already locked-in, then there are now 226 electoral votes for Harris and 219 for Trump:
That leaves 93 electoral votes up for grabs, and only 7 states you really need to watch (AZ, NV, WI, MI, PA, NC, GA). Get yourself knowledgeable about when the polls close in those states, review some recent polling averages, and check out some of the online forecasts to think about different situations. (Here’s Nate Silver’s forecast, here’s the 538 forecast, and here’s the Economist’s forecast.) Over at 270towin.com, you can fiddle with a map yourself to see how different scenarios play out.
Is it possible Harris wins Texas or Trump wins Virginia? Sure. But if either of those things happen, the presidency will have long been decided; they simply can’t be the states that make the difference. If you use this interactive 538 tool, you can lock in particular swing states and see how that affects the overall forecast.
3. Learn a bit about the Senate landscape.
Right now, there are 51 Democratic (or Democratic-aligned) and 49 Republican Senators. In West Virginia, the Democrats are all but guaranteed to lose a seat, as Senator Manchin is retiring, and popular Republican governor Jim Justice is a near-lock to replace him. Of the other 33 races for Senate seats this year, there are 11 races that are remotely close enough to be at all in doubt. Three seats currently held by Republicans:
(States link to news articles about the races, candidates to wikis; rating via Cook)
Nebraska (Fischer, challenged by independent Osborne) LEAN R
Florida (Scott, challenged by Mucarsel-Powell) LIKELY R
and nine seats currently held by Democrats (or Democratic-aligned independents):
Pennsylvania (Casey, challenged by McCormick) TOSS UP
Maryland (OPEN, Hogan (R) vs. Alsobrooks (D)) LIKELY D
Look over the candidates and the stakes in each of these. Forget all the rest of the races. Review some recent polls, and check out some of the online forecasts to think about different situations. (Here’s 538’s forecasts).
4. Figure out some House bellwethers.
Unless you spend your days dealing with the House of Representatives (ahem), it’s hard to be up on all the competitive house races. But it’s a lot more fun to watch returns if you can assess the importance of a given House race result—both for who can control the House and what it says about the presidential race—without having to trust Chuck Todd. Throughout the night, there will be a flood of House returns, and if you know that New York’s 19th District and California’s 13th district are a lot more important in judging the national result than New York’s 10th and California’s 18th, you’ll be ahead of the game.
In the past, this has been a doable-but-arduous task. These days, there are now a lot of interactives and breakdowns that make your job easier. Start with this excellent op-ed rundown from my friend Kyle Kondik to prime you on the 2024 bellwethers. Then check out one or more of these websites to get the full lay of the land.
5. Make a prediction of some sort — and maybe a bet — but don’t be the “prediction-guy.”
Make your prediction public by emailing it to someone (Or heck, tweet it to me @MattGlassman312). Here’s mine: Harris wins the presidency with 286 electoral votes (WI, MI, PA, NC). Tester loses to Sheehy in Montana but the other vulnerable Democratic Senators survive, giving the Republicans 51 seats and control of the Senate. I also guarantee that either David Gergen or some pundit governor-type (Ed Rendell? Haley Barbour?) will get on my nerves at some point. And yeah, I’ll bet you a drink that I’m closer than you on that House total (I say an extremely narrow Democratic majority, maybe 219-216).
The trap to avoid here is turning the whole night into a test of your prediction ability. Don’t be that guy who’s only interested in the NCAA tournament because he’s got seven brackets going and $1000 on the line, but doesn’t really give a shit about college basketball. So keep the predictions light and modest. Guess some House and Senate totals, and call half a dozen races. And yeah, throw $20 down on Kalshi (it’s totally legal and there’s a free $20 bonus when you place your first bet).
But don’t go crazy. Face it: you didn’t build (you didn’t build!) your predictions from some proprietary model and a whole bunch of insider information, so your success or failure basically reflects zero on your ability as a forecaster. But your behavior tonight can reflect grandly on your status as a douchebag. So let Nate Silver and the British gambling houses sweat it out; your job isn’t on the line here.
On the other hand, if you would like to try some systematic forecasting, here’s an excel sheet that lets you run 50,000 election simulations to your basic specifications for the electoral college. Each time you alter any of the state win probabilities, the file re-runs a simulation of 50,000 elections, based on the individual state probabilities, and reports the following relevant national results: average Harris/Trump electoral college votes, probability Harris/Trump win the election, and the most common Harris electoral college vote total. Excel will instantly re-run the simulation (it takes about 2 seconds on my crappy computer) any time you change any of the state win probabilities.
Now, let me be crystal clear about one thing: this is not a model of the election. The Monte Carlo simulation is the final step in translating your model into a forecast. Your actual model is the data and analytical process that generates the individual state win probabilities. When you waste a fun hour plugging in various different state probabilities, your implicit model is “my best guess.” In effect, you are just doing somewhat-systematic punditry. If you want to actually model the state probabilities, you need at a minimum some sort of data (if you just want to forecast) or some data and a theory (if you want to forecast and explain the Way Things Work). Here’s my old blog post (set for a midterm election, but it all still holds) that explains in more detail.
6. “Watercooler” the election.
In the last 10 years, I spent a lot of time trying to avoid political discussions—and that was when I worked on the Hill! So I understand your general impulse to avoid your wackier colleagues and Crazy Neighbors on Election Day. But it might be the one day of the year when talking politics at the office or with your neighbors can generate some positive returns. Especially if you go beyond contemporary politics and talk to people about democracy.
Obviously, you have to weed out the cynics who want to lecture you on why they didn’t vote and the angry partisans who can’t imagine who would vote for that idiot and the monologuers who won’t shut up about why Denmark is such a better democracy than ours, but if you can weather those storms, you might strike gold.
You’re not looking for anybody specific here, but I recommend finding two people in particular if you can. First: a veteran. Ask him if he ever voted from a combat zone. Then listen. Second, someone who’s run for local office in the past. Ask them what it was like on election day when they ran and how it changed their view of democracy. Then listen.
7. Vote if you haven’t yet done so. Volunteer if you are so inclined (you should be).
Or don’t vote. It’s utterly not consequential to the election. But you’ll feel better about yourself if you do. If you need some inspiration, read my voting story from a few years back.
Or go past just voting and get involved! As political scientist Eitan Hersh says, “politics is for power.” Too many people know all about the election and watch endless news coverage, but don’t have the foggiest idea as to how you actually influence politics, and little inclination to start trying. They are essentially hobbyists, rather than participants. You should actually participate in politics.
It’s really easy to participate! Even as late as today, you can volunteer to phone bank for Harris or Trump. You can always walk your neighborhood and offer to take people to the polls. Or just go to the polls alone and stand at one of the party tables and talk to voters.
In the afternoon (6 action items).
8. Again, resist any and all temptation to turn the television on.
For full explanation, see #1. But remember, they’ll be doing things like using a panel of “experts” to interview David Axelrod for three minutes about who he thinks is going to win the swing states. You’ve been warned.
9. Figure out who you are going to watch the returns with.
In a typical year, people go all sorts of ways with this. I totally respect the people who have to watch alone, in the dark, just them and the TV, like they’re die-hard baseball fans watching game 7 of the world series. Others prefer the election-night-headquarters style parties with you and 200 of your closest friends at a barroom. Other people (like me) prefer a small home get together with a few friends.
And I think that’s important. American politics is ferociously partisan these days, and very stressful to a great many people. Consuming this sort of information can be a lot less stressful if you are with some friends.
My plan this year has been complicated by two things: first—don’t laugh—we are somehow having my wife’s family birthday party on election night. It was The Only Night That Worked. So I’ll have a bunch of family in tow. We’ll see how that goes. Second, I’m going to be one of the people working the live-chat with Nate Silver at his substack site. I’ve never formally live-blogged the election; my routine in recent years has been to do some tweeting but mostly just hang out. So something totally new for me this year.
A few tips. Brining a lot of huge partisans into the mix is a double-edged sword; I’m not a huge partisan myself, and I try to avoid both the echo-chamber style get-together as well as the Hatfield/McCoy scenario. But I do like having some strong ideologues around—from diverse viewpoints— who aren’t too attached to party labels.
One key: avoid cynics and Euro-philes at all costs. Face it, democracy is the least-worst alternative, and politics in the parliamentary systems on the European continent is just as much of a mess as it is here. Yeah, the Senate is anti-democratic, but so is the veto. Get over it. I don’t want to hear it tonight. And neither do your guests.
10. Get your snack setup straight.
This is tricky. It’s not a college football tailgate. It’s sure as hell not a dinner party. It’s not a BBQ. It’s not having people over for The Game. My suggestion is to go simple and traditional. That means, of course, pizza and beer. Fill in with pretzels or chips. The thing to stay away from is really messy food, since you’re going to want access to your laptop or Ipad (see below) regularly. So probably stay away from salsa, or guacamole. And as much as it pains my upstate heart, wings are a big no-no.
You also want a wonkcave configuration that’s amenable to eating and using a computer. You don’t have to go full-blown dork with TV trays and all that jazz, but figure something out ahead of time, so you aren’t sitting on a really deep couch, balancing a plate of pizza on your knees while you smear blue cheese all over your Ipad screen.
11. Learn about a few ballot initiatives.
Here’s a comprehensive cheat sheet that includes statewide questions voters will face Tuesday. Personally, I’m focused on the following: the Puerto Rico statehood referendum; the proposals in multiple states to legalize marijuana; the DC ranked-choice voting election reform proposal; and the proposals in California to lower the voting age to 16 for some local elections.
12. Forget the governors’ races.
Once you’ve studied the Senate races and found your House bellwethers, you might be tempted to start looking into some governor’s races.
Unless your state happens to have a competitive race—really just New Hampshire this year—it’s not worth it. And that’s double so this year. Just a small list of clunker races that aren’t close or all that interesting.
Invariably, they won’t affect your life and you won’t think about them again until they start announcing for President in a few years. Put your energy into learning more about the Senate races. It makes for much better viewing.
13. Ponder our republic.
The last eight years of American politics have featured a tremendous amount of vitriol, norm-breaking, and outright hostility between parties, candidates, elected officials, and citizens. While we have one of the strongest and longest-standing republics in the world, it is not immune to decay, rot, or even collapse.
Many political scientists, journalists, and other observes have serious concerns that these developments are not just an extreme version of ordinary election name-calling, but canaries in the coal mine for serious cracks in our democracy.
Even if you aren’t worried about the republic itself, things have gotten somewhat depressing in American politics. The candidates aren’t popular; it’s almost impossible to explain to someone who can’t remember that the losing candidate in 2008 had an approval rating in the mid 50s. Congress can feel hopelessly gridlocked. Former President Trump has successfully made banana-republic style politics a lot of the public discourse, but he has also accelerated the rearrangement of the ideological coalitions in American politics (see chart). And there’s a media fragmentation that’s both disorienting and disconcerting; is anyone even listening to the same information?
There’s an absolutely foreboding atmosphere among some people I talk to and among many people all over the country. On the other hand, there’s no real proof this is “the most important election of your lifetime,” especially since people declare that before every election. I still love this David Mayhew editorial from 2012 on what makes an election important (at least in retrospect).
14. Vote if you haven’t yet done so.
Or don’t. It’s utterly not consequential to the election. But yo u’ll feel better about yourself if you do. If you need some further patriotic inspiration, go read my old State of the Union post. Or check out these old excellent Jennifer Victor and Jonathan Bernstein articles on why voting and elections are important, even if the fairy-tale vision of democracy was never true.
Early eve, before polls close (6pm EST) (5 action items)
15. Again, resist any and all temptation to turn the television on.
For full explanation, see #1. But remember, they’ll be doing things like making predictions about national turnout levels based on anecdotal interviews at 2 precincts in the Midwest. You’ve been warned.
16. Get your laptop setup with the proper tabs open.
My setup is going to look like this: a few live-blogs sitting open on the desktop (such as Five Thirty Eight), an ideological spectrum of other blogs available for quick consult ( TalkingPointsMemo, National Review), the tally-maps from a major network or paper (probably New York Times Upshot), and the Virginia official returns site. Anything more than that, and it becomes unwieldy. But find your own, there’s no shortage of good election-night bloggers are work. And, of course, get a tab open with whatever I’m saying.
You also will probably want one of the great hour-by-hour guides to what is important available. None of them have been published yet, but there will be plenty by tomorrow (like this one from Nate Cohn at the NYT four years ago). I will also have a few of the prediction markets open, probably PolyMarket and Kalshi.
Also, if you want to be a real pro, get this f’ing thing loaded up on a tab. It was made by @alexandereo, and as it gets filled in during the night, it will let you see how the candidates are doing in specific counties (picked for their demographic profiles) compared to their past performance benchmarks. This is how most of the hardcore election analysts work in real-time; they examine county level results in key locations to see if candidates are hitting their targets, and draw conclusions from that. Now you can do it too.
17. Arm yourself with the proper printouts.
Some things are just better to have in hard copy. A copy of Cook’s House Race Ratings is the classic thing to just have sitting on the table. I also usually recommend getting some scrap paper ready to use as your own tally-sheet for House and Senate pickups.
But there’s a new sheriff in town: get a load of this freaking thing (pdf version here) that Daniel Nichanian put together, it might be the perfect hand-tally election tracker. Just get it, print it out, and it and have it sitting by your side. I’m not kidding. It has dozens of referendums to track and goes in-depth on some local elections. All in an easy to read format.
18. Get yourself setup on social media. (Pour one out for Twitter?)
Nothing has made following political events more fun in the last 15 years than Twitter. It brings just the right mix of seriousness and humor that democratic electoral politics deserves. As recently as two years ago, it was a no-brainer to be plugged into it on election night.
I still think it’s worth it, but the place has definitely become a lot less fun. In the wake of Elon Musk acquiring it, the social dynamics of it have changed. A lot of great follows, especially on the liberal side, left. The new algorithm pushes a lot more junk (and a lot more potentially offensive stuff) and a lot less wonky election content at you. And the overall vibe is no longer the freewheeling public square atmosphere that made the 2008 through 2020 elections so much darn fun.
The problem is that nothing has really replaced it. The Twitter clone sites like BlueSky just don’t have the critical mass, and stuff like Facebook isn’t quite right for the job. So you are sorta stuck. But I still think Less-Than-Perfect-Twitter is still worth it on Election Night. I’ll still be there and I recommend you be there too.
Follow some straightforward news sites (@AP, @CNN, etc.), and the big name forecast-types (@redistrict, @natesilver, @nathangonzalez, @kkondik, @nate_cohn, @ForecasterEnten, @GElliottmorris). But here are a bunch of non-obvious tweeps I recommend following (for all-around reasons of smarts, humor, and likely volume of tweets tomorrow): @speechboy71, @LPDonovan @daveweigel, @costareports, @MEPFuller, @TimAlberta, @wakeup2politics, and @joshchafetz. Also, follow at least one of the complete partisan clowns, my favorite has always been Bill Mitchell.
And, of course, @MattGlassman312. There are hundreds of other good ones too, so find your own!
After the polls begin to close (5 action items).
19. Ease into things.
If you plant yourself on the couch at 6pm, you will be brain-dead by 10:30. This is not college football; it is best enjoyed with an active mind. So turn on the TV, get your prep-work out, but don’t sit down. If you absolutely must be plugged in from the get-go, I recommend cleaning or exercising in the TV room. And for goodness sakes don’t eat a full sit-down dinner in front of the television. You’ll regret it. Have a light snack and order the pizza for 7:30. Make the returns background noise and a passive activity early on; by 7:30 or 8, you’ll be ready to hunker-down.
20. Pick a cable news network and stick with it.
And I recommend making your choice based solely on comedy. Who has the stupidest display board, with the most useless bells and whistles? Who has the most commentators lined up in a bleacher-like tier? Which network is doing live-remotes from the most ridiculous places? Who has the funniest name for their “war room”? The bottom line is that the cable networks have ceased to be journalistic endeavors, and are now only good for getting raw data or being entertained. Everything else — from play by play to commentary to meta-analysis — is better on the Internets. Like fifty times better.
21. Don’t be afraid to get emotional.
For whatever reason, America spent the 20th century trying to remove political intensity from the practice of actually casting and counting the votes. As recently as 100 years ago, polling places were raucous scenes, complete with bands, rallies, and liquor. Now they are like graveyards. And that carries over a lot of the time to how people adsorb returns. Don’t let it get to you. You’re emotionally invested in either politics or policy; you wouldn’t be reading this otherwise. Don’t pretend we’re counting the votes in a vacuum. Go ahead and cheer.
22. Around 9:00pm EST, call someone who’s only mildly into politics, and talk to them about the elections.
Or more precisely, listen to them. Mom is always good option if she fits the mold. Ask her who they voted for and why, and what she thinks of the emerging results. Don’t offer any opinions, analysis, or commentary. Too many junkies live exclusively in the world of the strategic meta-narrative; it’s both insightful and refreshing to hear people on election night who approach things at face-value.
23. Find out who won local office in your town.
Contrary to the indications derived from media coverage, your town and school board elections routinely have a bigger effect on you and your family than anything going on in Washington. It’s bad enough that you don’t know who your state rep is, but it’s unconscionable that you don’t know who’s setting the policies for your kids’ school. Take the time and find out who won these races, and promise yourself that you’ll have a better knowledge of them next time around. Or that you’ll get involved. That way, you’ll at least feel guilty two years from now when you say, “Is he the Democrat or Republican?”
Late Night (3 action items)
24. Mentally prepare yourself to not know the results of the presidential election, and be ok with that.
All indications are that it could be a very close election. If there’s a landslide (perhaps Trump or Harris wins going away in Georgia, North Carolina, and the WI/MI/PA group), we may know the results by 11pm tomorrow night.
But a lot of plausible outcomes (Harris solid victory, Harris narrow victory, Trump narrow victory, Trump solid victory) probably won’t be known until at least Wednesday, if not later in the week or even deep into November if the election is hanging on truly close result in one state (like Florida in 2000).
All of that is ok. No state ever certifies its results on election night, and many routinely take up to a week to tabulate final results. Once it becomes clear that we probably won’t know the outcome Tuesday night (say, if Trump wins Georgia and North Carolina, Harris wins Michigan and Wisconsin, but PA is too close to call), you are probably best off just going to bed by about 1am eastern time. The marginal value of staying up past that probably isn’t worth it.
That said, I didn’t go to bed until 6am in 2020. I was still live-tweeting sweet betting opportunities after Wisconsin came in at 4:30am. So YMMV.
25. Watch an unexpected victory speech, and an unexpected concession.
Obviously, if there’s a pretty big surprise upset (like Scott losing in Florida), find those speeches and watch them live. Otherwise, look for the tight Senate races in MI, WI, etc. If Ted Cruz loses, watch him. And if you can find an internet feed of a political amateur winning a House seat, those are solid gold moments.
26. Light up a joint if pot wins in Florida.
Just kidding! Federal law will still make marijuana possession, sale, and cultivation illegal in the United States, and Gonzalez v. Raich will continue to guarantee for the time being that those federal laws are constitutional, regardless of how much money we throw away in the War On Drugs and how many non-violent drug offenders we put in federal prison in the coming years. Think that’s dumb? Me too. But I tend to support candidates who are ready to end the drug war. Next time, will you?
Enjoy the elections, everyone!
I love this, especially because I'll be one of those annoying Euro-philes everyone should disinvite, watching from Sweden, several time-zones removed.
So I've made Calendar invites for myself to stage our family "Election Brunch" for Wednesday morning, our-time (Late Night in your run-down). Maybe it's easier to go the distance when you've just started the day rather than groggily slouching toward its ending?
Or you can pay it no mind tomorrow and then wake up Wednesday and take in the results while sipping coffee. ;-) In 2016 I spent the last few hours of the evening sitting on the couch enjoying a stiff drink and looking at the results with bemusement. I also laughed at how wrong so many of the pollsters got it. In 2020, well, I felt dread reading the folks on Twitter crying that fraud was the reason Trump was going down. "This is not good" was my feeling.