NBC’s Steve Kornacki analyzes 2024 election, shares predictions at UMass Lowell
LOWELL — After the polls close next fall, millions of Americans will follow along as the ballots are counted and totals are shared on TV. Delivering that news to them, very likely, will be Steve Kornacki.
UMass Lowell welcomed the NBC and MSNBC political correspondent to the O’Leary Library Thursday afternoon to share his perspective on the upcoming race in his “How 2024 Looks in 2023” presentation. To an audience of more than 200 people, Kornacki analyzed voting patterns and predicted possible outcomes ahead of the election.
Kornacki, a Groton native, gained national notoriety during the 2020 presidential election for his live coverage of the electoral map, on-air visual data tracking and entertaining, informative insight into the process. He returned to evaluate results of the November 2022 midterms, sparking renewed social media attention.
In many ways, however, presidential elections in recent years have been difficult to predict, for one big reason: former President Donald Trump. History proves that, with anything involving Trump, voters are rather unpredictable.
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Donald Trump seems to have taken a big hit,” Kornacki said. “His poll numbers are declining. Republicans seem to be abandoning him … Then, about a month later, we look at the polls, and absolutely nothing’s changed.”
It’s something Kornacki referred to as the “Trump effect” — regardless of the multiple indictments, the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republicans’ failed “red wave” in the 2022 midterms and the controversial statements he makes, Trump’s electability never seems to falter, Kornacki said.
When asked which candidate they believe has the best chance of beating President Joe Biden next year, 62% of Republicans say Trump, Kornacki said based on recent polling. That means, as Trump polls at 58.8% amid the Republican primary candidates, some people who wouldn’t even vote for Trump believe he’s still the most electable, Kornacki said.
Even against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who seems to be Trump’s biggest party opponent, Trump still dominates, Kornacki said.
With that in mind, Kornacki said it seems that, despite Americans’ little desire for a second Trump-Biden race, it is trending that way. And it will be an incredibly close one, he said, “much closer” than 2016 and 2020.
In 2016, Trump led by Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for about three days, Kornacki said, and in 2020, he didn’t lead Biden at all. Now, Trump leads the national average by half a point, he said, while Biden sits at an approval rating in the low 40s.
The country is now entering “uncharted waters” with Biden’s age. At 80 years old, he’s the oldest president in U.S. history, and would be 86 at the end of a potential second term.
“An AP poll, this is from two weeks ago: They asked if Joe Biden is too old to effectively serve as president, 77% of Americans said ‘yes…’ The number among Democrats was 69%,” Kornacki said. “So even among his own party, there are doubts about his basic ability to do the job.”
Trump, comparatively, scores at only 51% in the same poll, Kornacki said.
This was the journalist’s fifth visit to campus, having previously examined the results of the 2020 election in December 2020. Kornacki received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from UML in 2017 after delivering a commencement address. While in high school, Kornacki took a political science class at UML before attending Boston University.
The university’s Office of Alumni Relations and political science department hosted the free event as part of the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Dean’s Speaker Series.
Like Kornacki, UML similarly surveys sociopolitical factors and encourages civic engagement through its Center for Public Opinion, directed by political science professor Josh Dyck. The center polls at the local, regional, state and national levels, Dyck said, and plans to be active in the primary and election cycles coming up. They also support faculty research and student-teaching opportunities, Dyck said.
Kornacki’s support for the center — dating back to 2016, when he shared a poll of theirs — is sincerely appreciated, Dyck said, and they were “thrilled” to hear his political insights on campus.
“I really personally respect the way that he does journalism,” Dyck said of Kornacki. “He is the person that takes the complicated data, that takes a lot of information and makes it accessible in ways to the public that are gripping, compelling, makes election night TV fun to watch, but is also extremely accurate.”
In classic Kornacki style, he then looked at the electoral map to theorize which blue states may be flipped in Trump’s favor, narrowing in on Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Just about 12,000 votes prevented Trump from taking Georgia in 2020, Kornacki said, which historically votes Republican. Similarly, in Arizona, Biden took the state by less than 10,000 votes. Wisconsin split the vote by just 1% to win Biden its 10 electoral votes.
“Just going through those three, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, that is not a flip of many votes, as I just said,” Kornacki said. “Those three, as long as he doesn’t lose any that he’s already got, would give Trump the presidency.”
After the presentation, Shawn Driscoll, an adjunct history and political science professor at UML, asked about how Trump’s future running mate may impact the landscape. In Kornacki’s estimation, because of the strong sentiment behind Trump already, it’s unlikely another name would effectively sway voters.
Driscoll, who encouraged his mostly STEM students to attend the talk, said Kornacki provided an opportunity to expose young voters to civics and how elections work.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Driscoll said of Kornacki’s predictions. “It’s still ahead of time, but it’ll be interesting to see what changes or augments. I’m curious about what it brings.”
If Americans have learned anything from the past two presidential elections, Kornacki seems to believe anything is possible.
Originally published at https://www.lowellsun.com on September 23, 2023.
