A Model of the 2024 Presidential Election with Candidate Quality

I introduce a new model for predicting presidential election outcomes, using it to forecast the two-party Democratic vote share and the electoral college results for the 2024 election. The national two-party vote share prediction builds on the economic fundamentals model from Fair (2009), enhanced by incorporating a candidate quality differential measure based on newspaper endorsements from DeLuca (2024), resulting in what I call the Economy-Quality Model. According to this model, Kamala Harris is projected to win the popular vote with 52.5% of the two-party vote share, approximately 1.5-2 points higher than most other forecasts and polling averages. I then calculate each state’s deviation from the national vote share (its relative Democratic or Republican lean) based on recent high-quality polling, adding these deviations to the Economy-Quality Model’s national prediction to derive state-level predictions and electoral college results. The model forecasts Kamala Harris winning the electoral college with 319 votes.