Beyond the polls and predictions: a deep dive into the landscape of the 2024 presidential election

Phil Schiliro (left), Ari Fleischer (center) and Professor Meena Bose (right) discuss the 2024 Presidential Election. // Photo courtesy of Molly Botros.

On Nov. 9, the Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, in collaboration with the Hofstra Cultural Center, hosted “Predicting the 2024 Presidential Race? Prospects, Politics and Policies,” an event debating predictions for the upcoming presidential election.

The panel consisted of Phil Schiliro, a political strategist and former director of legislative affairs for the Barack Obama administration and Ari Fleischer, a media consultant and former White House press secretary for the George W. Bush administration.

Meena Bose, the executive dean of the Kalikow School, was the panel moderator. She began by asking, “What is the state of the 2024 presidential race?” This question was the basis of the event as the third Republican primary debate occurred the day before on Nov. 8.

Bose also recalled a poll from The New York Times in collaboration with Siena College showing former President Donald Trump leading current President Joe Biden in five out of six battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The Democratic Party leads in the final battleground state of Wisconsin.

“I’ve never seen an election shaping up the way this one is shaping up. Both parties are on the verge of nominating two of the most unpopular people in America right now to represent each party,” Fleischer said.

He continued that despite the possibility of a felony conviction for the former president, Trump could still be elected to presidential office. “I [also] do not rule out the possibility that we are going to have a man go into the White House who is going to need a walker. We may have Joe Biden go in there who is going to be 86 years old [at the time of the election]. This is uncharted territory our nation is headed down,” Fleischer said.

“The image of Joe Biden has been so negative among both sides that it is looking unfavorable for him right now,” said Leivys Garcia, a senior political science, writing studies, geography and global studies major. “Republican candidates have gained a lot of traction, so it is very much looking like a Republican race.”

While discussing current voting polls as the sole predictor of election results, Schiliro provided the following example: “If I went back to Nov. 8, 2007, Hilary Clinton was beating Barack Obama in the polls 47% to 25%,” Schiliro said. “Rudy Giuliani was in first place in the polls, and it was going to be a toss-up. 35% of people said that Barack Obama was too inexperienced to be president.” He clarified that polls are not a foolproof metric for determining election victories and losses. Oftentimes, experts can never fully predict how an election will turn out.

Bose then shifted the conversation by asking, “[How is] former President Trump continuing to lead in the polls when he won’t participate in a presidential debate and has been very critical of many people in his party, including the Senate leadership and the Republican National Committee?”

“He is an outsider. He is an outsider at a time when a huge part of the Republican Party has deep questions about establishment Republicans. [They think] that Washington is broken, and [they think] that only a strong person can fix Washington,” Fleischer said. “He also had a very successful presidency policy-wise: we were at peace, Russia did not invade Ukraine, there was no war in the Middle East, inflation was low, unemployment was low and the southern border was relatively closed. So, for a tremendous amount of Republican voters, they look back at the Trump years and [wish] to have it again.”

Bose countered that it was interesting to assert that Trump is an outsider during this election since he was president for four years. “He went from the ultimate outsider to the ultimate insider,” Bose said.

Schiliro disagreed. “I have a different view on the success of his presidency. I think it was a policy disaster and a political disaster,” he said.

Schiliro reiterated that polls are an unreliable method of trying to forecast elections when compared to looking at past election results. “So, in the election [on Nov. 7], the theory was that Democrats were going to lose in Virginia, [but] the Democrats have both houses in Virginia now. In Ohio, we had a vote in August to change the rules to make it harder to pass an abortion referendum to go to 60%, and that lost by 57% of the vote,” Schiliro said. “In a city like Jacksonville, Florida, [they] elected the first Democratic mayor in 30 years.”

While Schiliro acknowledged that the Democratic Party is not winning everywhere, he stated that there is a discrepancy in the election poll forecast versus what is happening in state and local elections.

“We are a year out [from the election]; anything could happen,” said Christopher Casella, a senior audio/radio production and studies major. “It is honestly tough to predict anything.”

The conversation then veered to analyze the state of the Republican Party after the influence of the Trump presidency.

“[The election] will be polarized and turnout will be massive,” Fleischer said. “In 2016, turnout surged; [the] same trend [occurred] in 2020. Trump turned out so many new voters to politics who used to think that nobody cared about them and their vote didn’t matter. Trump also brought out huge numbers of people who hate him.”

Schiliro reacted by quoting John Boehner, the former Republican House Speaker, who in 2018 said, “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.” Schiliro continued, “If this sentiment is correct, then we have to think about this in a different way. If the Republican Party is not the Republican Party of the past, then where do those left-out voters go?”

Both Fleischer and Schiliro were then asked about the target demographics of their respective parties.

“Democrats used to be the party of the working class, blue-collar [and] rural Americans. [However], it is increasingly becoming the party of college graduates and postgraduates,” Fleischer said. Fleischer proceeded to contend how the Republican Party previously attracted college-educated voters. However, Trump deterred many of those voters. Similarly, blue-collar and low-income voters are turning to the Republican Party and away from the Democratic Party.

Schiliro responded to Fleischer that the policies of the Democratic Party do not favor the rich; they favor lower-income and middle-class Americans, so the claim that it favors the rich cannot be true. “It cannot just be based on policies, on pocketbook issues, it has to be something else. One issue … is abortion. [Abortion] is very powerful with some suburban voters,” Schiliro said.

“The Republican [Party] focuses a lot more on lower-income, blue-collar voters … I think that it will hurt Republicans long-term if they do not appeal to college-aged voters,” Casella said. “The Republican Party is not willing to budge on issues, like abortion, that lose the vote of young voters. Their way of thinking has to change, or they will end up losing. They have been losing the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004. If they want to maintain their hold on the country, their options are to either switch their base or do what they have been doing, which is to gerrymander districts.”

“There is talk in the Republican Party on how to attract young voters,” Fleischer said when talking about college-aged voters. “Vivek Ramaswamy is the only one with the wacky idea to disenfranchise young voters, which is a terrible idea. Republicans have to do better with the youth vote. It has been a reliable, strong block of votes for the Democrats, and Republicans have to do better [with the youth] to compete.”