2024: Welcome To The Thunderdome
Odds and ends as we dive into Election Year!
Hello friends and Happy New Year! It has been a while since I posted here (long enough that in-real-life friends have checked in to make sure all is well) and I wanted to a) set everyone’s minds at ease and provide and b) send around an update on what is new, both with me and with the 2024 election environment!
First, the What’s New With Me update! The big news is that in just a few short weeks (!!) I will welcome a new baby daughter! After a very long journey to motherhood, I am completely overwhelmed with gratitude that I will get to be a Mom to sisters. Wally is thrilled, as you can imagine, because his list of active food acquisition targets is growing and he will have a new direct report around the house. This little girl ought to arrive sometime around Super Tuesday or the start of former President Trump’s federal trial here in Washington, so she is arriving at exactly the right or wrong time for her political commentator mama depending on your point of view.
Things have also been busy as ever on the professional front as the election year kicks into gear. My company Echelon Insights has been growing, and we are excited to spend the year advising our clients on how to navigate a turbulent political environment. And while I have said goodbye to my weekly SiriusXM Saturday morning show, I have filled that space with The Chris Wallace Show on CNN, where I am now a regular panelist alongside Kara Swisher, Reihan Salam, and Lulu Garcia-Navarro - every Saturday morning at 10 a.m.! I’m off this week but will be back the next week to spar with them over everything from politics to foreign policy to pop culture.
A few other fun odds and ends as of late:
I wrote at The New York Times about how the 2024 election will be about chaos vs. stability - and how based on the data I’ve seen, Trump (or at least his team around him) will likely try to position him on the side of stability this time around. In 2016, Trump vs. Clinton was “disruption vs. stability/experience” and enough voters picked disruption to put Trump over the top. In 2020, Trump continued to run as a “bull in a China shop”, but voters opted for calm and stability and handed the reins to Joe Biden. Unfortunately for Biden, voters don’t think he’s delivered on that promise. I argue this opens the door to the 2024 election being fought along that same axis (who will make America more stable?) but with a potentially different assessment of which candidate can best deliver.
I went on Hacks on Tap podcast with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy to talk 2024 and whether anyone has a shot at beating Trump in the GOP primary. (TLDR: I am skeptical!) This was a blast and I hope to be back on with them soon. Talking to Mike Murphy about his 2000 campaign experience made me want to re-read Dana Milbank’s Smash Mouth all over again.
I also joined Meghan McCain Has Entered The Chat along with Cato Institute pollster extraordinaire Emily Ekins. We talked about our career journey into polling, why you should (and shouldn’t!) trust polls in 2024, and a few rounds of commentary on news of the day.
Tune in to CNN where I will be around on-air most nights this month! As you may have heard, it is election season. There are town halls. There are debates. There are election nights. Jake Tapper keeps playing the CNN “we are calling a race” music on his 4 pm show from time to time and I feel my blood pressure go up temporarily every time. I’ll be on air tonight with Laura Coates after the DeSantis/Haley town hall doubleheader. (I’ve been told if I’m nice and the stars align maybe they’ll let me use the Magic Wall.)
A few quick TL;DR bullets on where my head is at with just a handful of days until the Iowa Caucuses:
Donald Trump is extremely likely to be the Republican nominee, but there is a non-zero chance that someone like Nikki Haley pulls off a miracle run. I have described this in various media as akin to the Trench Run on the Death Star at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope. Everything has to go right for Haley (including Chris Christie bowing out of the race before New Hampshire).
I’m moderately skeptical of polls showing Gen Z breaking toward the GOP. There’s lots of evidence that young voters are disappointed by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. There’s not a lot of evidence that they have pivoted to the right in terms of their views on issues. The headaches they can cause for Democrats are very real (especially if they stay home in November), but count me as a skeptic for the moment that Gen Z has decided they are Gen MAGA.
I’m not as skeptical of polls showing voters-of-color breaking toward the GOP. (In which I plug my colleague Patrick Ruffini’s book Party of the People!) The politics of an issue like immigration or crime are not what you might expect. The realignment has been in the works for a while. Even a slight boost to GOP fortunes among, say, Black men would be a massive game changer in our politics.
No, I am not predicting who will win in November (yet?). We have a long road to go. Take a deep breath. A lot is going to happen in the next few months.
And now, a quick update on the status of this newsletter. Since launching a year ago, I’ve posted periodically while also writing for lots of other outlets. This is a spot for musings that are either too short or too long to fit into a more conventional op-ed or piece like I might write for a paper or magazine. I’m hoping to use this as a venue to write up things I think are interesting coming out of my Echelon Insights data throughout the year that can inform 2024, and to occasionally round up more interesting odds and ends. I hope you’ll stick around to join me as the year unfolds.
Thanks again for being a subscriber (and if you’re not, sign up today - for free!). Wishing you an excellent 2024 and beyond!
Kristen