Has the presidential election already been decided? Stanford professors weigh in last month

As the 2024 presidential campaign enters its final month, voters across the country are deciding where to cast their ballots.

Through debates, rallies and multi-million dollar ads, the two major party candidates, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, have worked to persuade undecided voters. However, according to political scientists at Stanford, these efforts will not have much impact because many voters have already decided who they will support.

“It’s not like an election where you have two fresh faces,” said political science professor Morris Fiorina. “Most people had their minds made up when this whole thing started.”

“I’ve known who I was going to vote for for a while,” said Colin Weis, 28, who interned in a congressional district office. Weis turned to the Democratic Party because he believed it would “produce the most electable candidate to oppose Trump.”

Alondra Martinez ’26, another Harris supporter and political science peer advisor, said in November that she “never questioned who I would vote for.”

Even after President Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic Party’s nominee in July and Harris took his place, little changed in the polls because of increasing polarization between political parties, said political science professor Bruce Cain.

“Loyalty within a party has never been higher,” Cain said. In previous presidential elections, individuals voted more based on candidate than political party. In past elections, there were many voters who “were registered Democrats but voted for the other side” and vice versa, Cain said.

Andrew Hong ’25 has already cast his vote for the presidential election and always knew he would support the Democratic Party.

“I was always very sure that I would not support the Republican party,” said Hong, who worked at a data analytics company focused on Democratic elections. “I made up my mind pretty quickly after learning that Kamala Harris would be replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee.”

Although high levels of political polarization may explain why the presidential debate had minimal impact on voter opinion, the debate was still important because it allowed the Harris campaign to attract more volunteers, which led to more support within the Democratic Party.

Cain said that face-to-face contacts between voters can help persuade hesitant voters more effectively than media ads or messages from the candidate himself. He believes increased engagement within the Democratic voter base is a big reason why Harris has been in power since January 1, according to The Economist October is an average of three points ahead.

Before Biden dropped out of the race, the Democratic Party’s support was, according to Larry Diamond ’74 MA ’78 Ph.D. just a fraction of what it is now. ’80, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In a previous Daily article, Diamond said that “Democrats have increased their chance of winning from about 20% to perhaps a slightly better chance of winning” due to the “momentum and enthusiasm” that Harris’ candidacy has gathered.

Independent voters’ opinions also changed slightly after the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Cain said, noting that independent voters typically “don’t pay as much attention to the issues as the most committed Democrats or Republicans, and if they do, they have.” more attention.” mixed set of issue positions.”

Instead, many independent voters tend to focus more on a candidate’s personal qualities, which Cain said have become the focus of presidential debates.

The debate “showed a lot of the personal qualities that people had forgotten about what was problematic about the Trump presidency,” Cain said, which he said explains why voters viewed Harris more positively than Trump after Sept. 10.

Weis also echoed Cain and Fiorina’s sentiments, adding that the presidential debate didn’t particularly affect him or other voters.

“It didn’t move the needle much,” he said. “It felt less like a political debate and more like a character debate.”

Although candidates no longer have much new information with which to influence voters, Fiorina expects candidates will continue to “try to push whatever buttons they think are working.” In particular, they will try to convince the remaining undecided voters in the key states in this election: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.

According to Fiorina, Trump has not used his campaign properly in these last few days. Instead of emphasizing the issues on which he holds popular opinions, such as fracking and immigration, he is “basically throwing away the election” by focusing on the parts of himself that people don’t seem to like, he said.

“When your enemy destroys himself, don’t stand in his way,” Fiorina said. He added that Harris’s correct strategy is “what she’s doing: just letting Trump keep saying things and hoping that enough people are scared off.”

Even though most voters’ decision has been made for some time, experts say the election can still swing in either direction due to the closeness of the race.

“I don’t think either candidate is perfect,” Martinez said. “But in a race this big we only have two options.”

Voters will see the results of these campaign efforts on Election Day on Tuesday, November 5th.