With just days until the 2024 presidential election, there’s still a lot of uncertainty. But Vox is here to help you navigate through it.
Last week, we asked for your lingering questions about the upcoming election. We then turned to senior correspondent Eric Levitz and senior politics reporter Christian Paz to answer nine of them. Here’s what they had to say:
The polls make it seem like there’s going to be a lot of split-ticket voting this year. How common is that historically, and would the scale indicated by polling be unusually high this year, or is it pretty standard?
—Richard from Dallas
Christian Paz
Split-ticket voting — when a voter chooses candidates from one party for a statewide or national race and another party for other down-ballot contests — has been on the decline over the last few decades because of polarization. Up to 2020, ticket-splitting was getting rarer — but then we saw surprisingly high levels of it in 2022, with voters choosing differently between governor and Senate candidates, or between those statewide races and local down-ballot races.
This year, if polls are to be believed, we might see more of it in specific swing states, like in Arizona and North Carolina. In North Carolina, ticket-splitting is more of a norm — they have a history of electing Republican presidents but Democratic governors.
Eric Levitz
Yeah. That said, there was enough ticket-splitting in 2020 to have really big consequences. Like, Biden won Maine comfortably but so did Susan Collins.
How will Harris’s and Trump’s policies impact the price of groceries?
—Pam from Jackson, Wyoming
Christian Paz
There is some talk about Harris going after price gouging? But Trump’s tariffs…
Eric Levitz
If Trump implements his proposed 10 percent universal tariff — which he would have the power to do without Congress — it will increase the prices of every foreign-grown/produced food product. So bananas and avocados would immediately grow more expensive.
Meanwhile, if he pursues Stephen Miller’s plans for mass deportation, that would create a labor shortage in the agricultural sector and dramatically increase prices. Surprisingly, Elon Musk — one of Trump’s biggest donors — has admitted as much in recent days, saying that there would be temporary hardship from Trump’s agenda.
If Dan Osborn, an independent, wins his Senate race in Nebraska, he says he won’t caucus with either the Democrats or Republicans. How will he get committee assignments? What clout will he have? Do you think he will change his mind after/if he wins?
—Joy from Rockville, Maryland
Christian Paz
Great question. Probably a ton of clout, but not sure how the committee process might work! Eric, would he essentially be like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema? Or more like a Bernie Sanders?
Eric Levitz
That’s a great question. Clearly, if Osborn wins, he will have done so with the tacit support of Democratic donors and officials, and in defiance of the Republican Party.
One might think that this would lead him to caucus with Democrats — particularly if doing so would give them an effective majority — so as to secure committee assignments. But given that his campaign/PAC is currently airing ads aligning him with Trump and calling him the “true conservative” in the race, I suspect that he sees direct association with the Democrats as politically suicidal. So, I don’t know. Maybe he’s able to trade his vote on a single high-profile piece of legislation for a committee assignment from whichever party holds the effective majority. But yeah, Christian, I think he would be a more pro-labor Manchin.
I am wondering what size victory constitutes a “landslide”? It seems like it can be as little as a 1 percent margin. That doesn’t exactly invoke a landslide. What’s the deal?
—Kevin from Portland, Oregon
Eric Levitz
I guess there’s a distinction here between an Electoral College landslide and a “landslide” as colloquially understood. If Trump had won the popular vote by 1 percent in 2020, he would have probably swept every swing state (because the Electoral College was heavily biased toward the GOP that year).
But it would be a little misleading to call that an electoral landslide, given that nearly half of the country would have voted against him in that alternate scenario. I think that, due to polarization, genuine landslides like Reagan’s 1984 reelection are no longer possible.
Christian Paz
Yeah, it’s helpful to divide between popular and Electoral College vote here. I don’t know if the landslides we used to see in either category are possible anymore, but if polling error works out in Harris’s or Trump’s favor this year, we might see an “Electoral College landslide” that isn’t actually representative of how the public feels. Either candidate could theoretically sweep the battleground states this year and that would result in 312-226 or 319-219 — not that much different than in 2020 or 2016. And we wouldn’t really call those years landslides, would we?
What about the federal budget deficit? How has it affected the economy during the previous administrations of Obama, Trump, and Biden, and what are the candidates’ plans for the future, if they’re even thinking/talking about it?
—Kirk from Austin, Texas
Eric Levitz
The federal budget deficit was mostly economically beneficial during the Obama and Trump years. When the government spends more money into the economy than it takes out through taxes, that increases overall demand for goods and services — and thus, workers.
In the wake of the Great Recession, demand was excessively low for a long time, as households and employers pared back their spending. Deficits under Obama and Trump helped to compensate for this demand shortfall, eventually yielding a 2019 economy in which unemployment was near historic lows yet inflation was negligible.
Under Biden, the impact of deficits is more debatable. The American Rescue Plan’s stimulus spending spending helped prevent an increase in poverty during the Covid crisis, and then spurred a historically strong labor market recovery afterward. But it also probably contributed to inflation a little at the margin. I personally still think that this was very much a net positive: America’s recovery has been stronger than other developed countries, even as we’ve seen comparable price increases. But since we’ve also seen inflation, people can reasonably object.
I don’t think Harris or Trump has articulated a plan for correcting America’s long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven by the combination of baby boomers retiring and medical advances — both extending life and increasing senior citizens’ consumption of health care services and low tax rates.
I think it’s debatable how big of a problem the long-run deficit is, but our colleague Dylan Matthews makes the case for concern well here.
Christian Paz
I would only add that their plans for the future would both involve more deficit spending, adding to the national debt, though by different degrees. This analysis comes from a more fiscally conservative think tank, but even the highest spending plan endorsed by Kamala Harris would still be about even with Trump’s medium-spending plan.
If Kamala wins, how could she get more Democratic seats on the Supreme Court?
—MJ from California
Eric Levitz
She would need to eke out a Democratic Senate majority, and then a conservative Supreme Court justice would need to retire or die.
Christian Paz
Court-packing is off the menu, and there likely won’t be a big enough Democrat Senate majority if they could get one to begin with.
Eric Levitz
Right now, it looks more likely than not that the GOP will win the Senate. This is an area where Osborn could make a difference though. He’s pro-abortion rights, so he would probably support Harris’s Supreme Court nominees.
What does the future of public education look like under each candidate’s potential presidency?
—Dave from Bend, Oregon
Christian Paz
Well, Trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education, so there’s that. I think his advisers probably would do this by draining it of money and directing public funds to other causes.
Eric Levitz
I think the basic aim is to reduce federal oversight of public education, devolve power to school districts, and promote vouchers that enable parents to defect to private schools. Although some people in Trump’s orbit also kinda want to increase oversight of public universities — to get the “wokeness” out of there.
Christian Paz
Yeah, and apparently it may require congressional approval to actually get rid of an agency, and it’s unclear if he’d have the votes to do that.
Eric Levitz
Almost certainly, he wouldn’t. Probably just budget cuts.
Christian Paz
So it would involve more bureaucracy to make the job harder to do.
Now, for Harris, she is messaging more funding for public schools and a boost in pay for public school teachers. The Democrats have also called for universal free pre-K and funding of Head Start, the federal program that helps low-income kids and their families.
Eric Levitz
She also favors mass student debt forgiveness, and has opposed attempts by conservative states to restrict how America’s history of white supremacy is taught, although it is unclear how that stance would translate into federal policy.
Which candidate as president will be more likely to help Ukraine win the war against Russia? Right now they both seem equivocal.
—Mike from San Rafael, California
Eric Levitz
Harris is definitely more supportive of Ukraine than Trump. In my nonexpert opinion, however, I am skeptical that Ukraine can win the war in the sense of recovering control over all its legal territory. Russia’s advantages in manpower and munitions give it the upper hand in a war of attrition, I think. Hopefully the next administration can help Ukraine secure favorable terms in an eventual peace treaty, though.
Christian Paz
Yeah, agreed. Trump likes to talk about how he would resolve the war in a day, but hasn’t provided a plan or proposed a vision for how. Would it involve territorial concessions? Would the Ukrainians agree to that?
What down-ballot questions may lead to significant changes? I know we’re poised to have over half the population now live in a place where weed is legal, but what other important issues are on various state ballots?
—Evans from Kilauea, Hawaii
Christian Paz
Weed and abortion are two big issues on state ballot measures this year. We have some minimum wage increase ballot measures in California, Arizona, and a few other states. Also in Arizona is a ballot measure aimed at the state’s conservatives and immigration hawks to further criminalize unauthorized border crossings and allow police to arrest illegal immigrants.
Eric Levitz
Nevada is voting on a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID. Though under state laws, they would need to pass the measure a second time in the future for it to take effect.
