The Statesman sat down with two Stony Brook University professors from the Department of Political Science to help contextualize whether the United States 2024 presidential election differs from previous elections.
The following conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Andrew Engelhardt is an assistant professor. His research dives into how the United States handles issues of inclusion and inequality. He looks at how people form and change their opinions about different racial populations and how these views affect their political beliefs and decisions. He currently teaches POL 317 (American Election Campaigns) and POL 353 (Contemporary Race Relations in American Politics).
The Statesman: Is race a contentious issue this election year?
Engelhardt: Race is the most contentious issue across U.S. history, and there’s a lot of social science to back this up.
Dividing lines between political parties today are grounded in part of race. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, especially after 1964, the Democratic Party was the party for civil rights. We can think about civil rights for Black Americans and then eventually for Asian, Latino and Native Americans. As a consequence of that, with former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, you have a lot of prejudiced white folks abandoning the Democratic Party and moving into the Republican Party.
The 1960s might seem like a long time ago, but just think about the candidates running: Vice President of the United States and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who is Jamaican-Indian-American, and former President Donald Trump, an old white guy. Their characteristics are emblematic of the broader party coalitions.
The Statesman: How have racial attitudes changed over time from the 2008 Presidential Election with then-President Barack Obama to now with Vice President Harris?
Engelhardt: With 2008 Democrats, white folks on average, for example, were a bit more positive in their views of Black Americans and other people of color than white Republicans.
White Democrats today have much more positive views of Black Americans, Latino Americans and Asian Americans than they did in 2008. He provides a positive example of being a Black man and Democrats, in turn, say, “That’s actually pretty cool.”
The Statesman: You mentioned a little about the news media; how does media coverage of race or racial issues impact us going into an election year?
Engelhardt: The media can serve as an agenda-setting function. One of the ways that the media affects whether or how race matters in a campaign is just literally introducing it as a topic for us to think about. The media can raise the salience by talking about a candidate who has a certain racial background by talking about an issue that is explicitly or implicitly connected with race.
For example, if we talk about immigration, we can all close our eyes and probably imagine somebody that looks like they’re from a Latin American country. The reason that’s the case is because the media coverage of immigration as an issue since the early 2000s has always paired it with somebody from Latin America. By making the topic of race at the top of our minds, it makes it more likely for voters to use race as a decision-making factor. It’s not that the media is decisive, but it can be influential.
The Statesman: Do you see people from Generation Z, like a majority of those who currently attend Stony Brook University, playing an impact on the 2024 Election?
Engelhardt: It depends on where people are living. For a generation to matter, you’re going to have to have a lot of people show up to vote and the group also has to be relatively large. Once you turn out to vote the first time, you’re more likely to do it a second time and so forth; it’s like habit farming.
Even if Generation Z doesn’t affect this year’s election outcome, it is whether or not you participate in this election has long-term consequences.
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Next, The Statesman spoke to Helmut Norpoth, an emeritus professor whose research focuses on electoral behavior, public opinion, wartime elections, electoral realignment and electoral forecasting. The Statesman asked about his electoral forecasting model. Prior to retirement, he used to teach POL 317 (American Election Campaigns).
The Statesman: Can you explain what your forecasting model, The Primary Model, is about?
Norpoth: I was always fascinated by the New Hampshire primary. There was something about it, and I always tell my students in POL 317 that nobody has been elected president who did not win the New Hampshire primary. Well, it was true until it wasn’t anymore with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1992 and [Barack] Obama in 2008.
Compared to most other primaries, it has a predictive factor that is second to none. So, I built this model, built it after the 1992 Presidential Election and tested it for the first time ever in the 1996 Presidential Election.
Something else that I had noticed in tracking elections over time is that people know it by the rule that first-term presidents, like the president running after one term, usually get re-elected. When the party has been in power for two terms, the candidate of the party in power usually doesn’t win. So, what I did was put these two things together.
The Statesman: Your model predicts that Harris is going to win with a 75% chance. How did your model come to that conclusion?
Norpoth: It’s a tricky situation because Kamala Harris wasn’t part of the Democratic parties.
When I made my forecast, U.S. President Joe Biden was the candidate. You have Biden having two things going for him: he was a first-term president and there were no challenges in the primary, especially in New Hampshire and South Carolina, meaning he’s favored to win against former President Donald Trump, according to my model. Compared to Trump, Biden was stronger in their party’s respective primaries, but both did pretty well, so my prediction came to the conclusion that Biden had a 75% chance of winning the election.
Of course, Biden finally decided to throw in the towel, and Kamala Harris became the anointed nominee without undergoing the primary so we don’t know how she would’ve done; there’s no primary record. The question was “What do I do?” I can say, “Sorry, this year I have to take a pass” because this is so unusual. But, I thought about what to do for a good bit.
It’s a tricky situation to be in when you’re in this business to make a forecast and then something like this happens.
The Statesman: What other limitations may your model face? For example, young people voting and polarization within the Electoral College?
Norpoth: With young people, you never know. Ultimately, it’s something you have to see what happens. In regards to polarization within both parties, there isn’t that much competition.
Let’s say the prediction comes true and Trump loses. I would be looking very closely at the votes of people who had favored [Nikki] Haley or somebody else in the primaries and how they ended up voting.
The Statesman: Your model has correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election since 1912 25 out of 28 times. Out of three elections the model got wrong, which one surprised you the most?
Norpoth: I was so sure about the 2020 Presidential Election. The certainty my model had — 91% certainty of Trump winning — was just mind-blowing. There was no way that I could see it not come true. Without COVID-19, not much could have changed the outcome of the election.
This post was originally published on here
