Watch New York - 2024's Potential Canary in the Coal Mine

Topic: 2024 Election Forecast

I’ve told the story many times about how I spotted the impending Trump victory in September 2016.  Media polling was obfuscating the true state of the race in that year’s decisive states – Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada – but I got my hands on a poll showing Trump carrying Ohio with ease.

One does not simply carry Ohio, correct on all but two presidential winners since 1896 up until that point, and get blown out by double digits in the national popular vote and move backward in adjacent states with overlapping working-class demographics.  I knew it then and reconstructed the electoral map according to trends and shifts in the Rust Belt and party registration indicators in Florida and North Carolina.  The result was a perfectly called map.

Today, not much has changed with regard to most of the MSM-sponsored polling.  Save for a select few, polling numbers in the decisive states are all over the place, ranging from ties or slim leads for either candidate (in other words, statistical ties), to the stray Harris +8 polls that pollute the averages and send betting markets into disarray.  While Trump maintains strong polling position overall, including sporadic leads in all but one of the seven decisive states (New Hampshire), a lot of work is being undertaken to conceal what appears to be visible in data coming from states that are considered “safe” to either candidate, much like what Ohio told me in 2016 when everyone knew Trump would take it, but acted like all of a sudden that wasn’t predictive.

Take New York – yes, the second largest blue state, now worth 28 electoral votes thanks to U.S. Census adjustments, and one that hasn’t backed a GOP nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1984, when every modern “blue wall” state but one (Minnesota) feared nuclear oblivion enough to duck Walter Mondale, the Democrat nominee.

With massive “fortification” and the abandonment of any sinew of election integrity, Biden took it by 23.1%, a margin of nearly two million votes.  Siena polled the race in October and found a Biden lead of 32 points, or 61-29%.

Seth, is New York in play for Trump?

In a real elections system with little voter roll corruption, we might be looking at a race within 10 points, like the ones we had in the 1980s when New York was amid a streak in which it backed the winner of every election from 1972 through 1984; however, thanks to the modernized system of elections that favors urban strongholds, I don’t expect Trump to be certified as the winner of New York, and I’d be very surprised to see the race within 10 points in official numbers.

Siena is back in 2024 with potentially game-changing data for analysts like yours truly, with a newly released poll showing President Trump down just 13% to Harris, 55-42%; in other words, Siena is polling Trump 19 points better in the Empire State than they did at this point in 2020.  A final result with the same polling error as last time (9%), would have President Trump only 4% off of Harris in final results.  This latest poll is almost identical to the poll Siena ran when Harris became the presumptive nominee, which showed a lead of 14%.  While Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in the state, the recent poll’s crosstabs suggest Trump is carrying Independent voters by a mile, 58-34%, which is why the result is shifted so hard to the right in 2024.

So, what does that mean?  Just as I used the truth about Ohio to forecast similar and adjacent states in 2016, I am going to use New York to show the corresponding shifts in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.  I am also throwing in New Jersey for sake of curiosity.

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When New York shifts Republican from the previous election, since 1952 (9 occasions):

To help you read the chart, let’s use 2016 as an example.  New York swung 5.6% to the right from its 2016 result when Donald Trump was the Republican nominee, meaning Hillary Clinton’s winning margin was 5.6% less than Barack Obama’s.  Pennsylvania swung 6.1% more Republican, Michigan 9.7%, Wisconsin 7.7%, Minnesota 6.2%, and New Jersey 3.3%.  The ratio column (State Swing/New York Swing) shows a state as more like New York the closer it is to 1.0.  Pennsylvania’s swing ratio was 1.1, meaning the shift in margin was 1.1 times the strength of New York’s shift.

The reader can see that in 45 samples since 1952, 42 followed New York to the right.  Wisconsin and Minnesota both went left in 2004 from their 2000 result by very small increments, and an examination of the Bush vs. Gore race suggests Ralph Nader’s 2000 candidacy impacted Gore much more than Bush, and the results normalized in 2004, hence the left shift as a technicality.  The only aberration here I cannot explain is Minnesota backing off of Eisenhower by 3.6% in 1956, albeit in a winning effort.

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The Rust Belt states, Minnesota, and New Jersey follow New York with precision accuracy thanks to the correlation of working-class demographics and voter sentiment.  What can we expect if this holds up?

Taking New York’s average swing since the 1984 election, which normalized the data after wild swings in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, we will assume New York will vote 6.7% to the right of its 2020 margin, coming in at 16.5% in favor of Harris by margin, or roughly 57-41%.  That seems like a light estimate given that the Siena polling is 19 points more bullish for Trump than it was in 2020, but for the sake of this exercise, we will use the 6.7% swing and apply it to the average state swing ratio since 1984.

Pennsylvania

Trump +3.5%

(6.7 x 0.7 = 4.69)

(4.7 – 1.2% 2020 margin = 3.5%)

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Michigan

Trump +5.9%

(6.7 x 1.3 = 8.71)

(8.7 – 2.8% 2020 margin = 5.9%)

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Wisconsin

Trump +8.1%

(6.7 x 1.3 = 8.71)

(8.7 – 2.8% 2020 margin = 8.1%)

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Minnesota

Trump +0.9%

(6.7 x 1.3 = 8.04)

(8.0 – 7.1% 2020 margin = 0.9%)

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New Jersey

Harris +10.5%

(6.7 x 0.8 = 5.36)

(5.4 – 15.9% 2020 margin = 10.5%)

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Conclusion

I think the equations produce overly bullish outcomes for Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota especially considering the state of the cheat, but it is quite clear that an obvious rightward shift with New York, especially its working-class voters, is certain to manifest in the states Trump needs to win to return to the White House and makes him the clear favorite according to these analytics.

New York may be this cycle’s canary in the coal mine.

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.