The closest election in history: Daily Mail’s top political voices all make their final result predictions

The polls are predicting that today’s election will be the closest presidential race in US history. 

If they’re right, it will come down to just a handful of votes in the key counties in the most fiercely contested swing states. 

With the outcome too close to call, many experts have chosen to stay out of the prediction game. 

But here, the Mail’s top political columnists and analysts weigh in with their final forecasts – and they might just shock you…

Maureen Callahan

DailyMail.com Columnist  

Trump looks set to win.

But if this isn’t a landslide — and it’s looking decidedly not — America is in for days, if not weeks, of protests, potential riots, and the kind of election denialism that the left so deplores and mocks.

The mask of sanity will fall off our most august institutions (plus Rachel Maddow and The View): The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker and their ilk will endlessly rend their garments, employ creative math, and engage in the kind of conspiracy theories that they’ve long considered the purview of the right.

Joe Biden will limp to his exit muttering that he was the only one who could have beaten Trump. Jill will spend her free time lining up husband #3, a comparatively younger, wealthier guy in fintech. Trump pardons Hunter if Biden doesn’t beat him to it.

As for Kamala, like Hillary before her, she’ll become political roadkill for failing to beat the modern-day Hitler. She’ll get a book deal, some board seats, and — if she’s smart — a divorce.

She won’t concede on Election Night —again, shades of Hillary — but when she does, it will be word salad city (per David Axelrod).

Not yet exhausted by her well-worn script, she’ll remind us that she was the only one in this race who prosecuted ‘transnational criminal organizations’ while pledging her oft-stated belief in the ‘goals, dreams and ambitions’ of the American people. 

Tim Walz will pair with fellow traveler/pathological fabulist Brian Williams for a late-night basic cable show on NewsNation.  

Dying American legacy media gets a four-year reprieve thanks to Trump, but will come off the ventilator at the end of his term. 

Ultimate spoiler: The republic not only survives but, as Meghan Markle would say, thrives.

Andrew Neil

Daily Mail Columnist 

In normal times, up against such an outlandish candidate as Donald Trump, the Democrats should be cruising to victory on the back of a resilient economy.

But these are not normal times. And Kamala Harris has failed to resonate with the American people.

High inflation and chaos on the southern border with Mexico — both made worse by the Biden-Harris administration before it belatedly tired to make them right — have played to Trump’s strengths and Harris’s weaknesses.

The campaign has ebbed and flowed between the two candidates. One observer astutely noted that when Harris is the issue, Trump pulls ahead. When Trump is the issue, Harris takes the lead.

The final national and swing-state polls show a dead heat. Which is why the Democrats are worried because it’s Trump’s best presidential campaign performance in the polls to date. Better than 2016, when he won. Better than 2020, when he narrowly lost.

The Harris campaign, cheering itself up, claims to detect that late deciders are moving her way and that she’s building up a huge lead among suburban women. If so, they’ll have Trump to thank since, yet again, he’s made himself the issue in the final furlong.

But then Trump has a huge lead among white working-class men, to which he’s now adding working-class Hispanic and Black male voters.

Whoever wins tomorrow, it will be Trump who has called the voting shots. He has galvanized a huge working-class vote, especially among men, in his favor – and mobilized a huge middle-class, college-educated suburban vote, especially among women, against him.

Whatever cohort turns out in larger numbers will likely decide the outcome. At its simplest the result will be determined by which is the bigger turnout — rural and small-town men versus suburban women.

But there’s another factor.

For those tired of the disruptive Trump Show, Harris represents business as usual, continuity, a relatively quiet life.

For those who think the US Establishment is still too powerful, still too complacent, still too contemptuous of plain folk, Trump is their man — whatever the exhausting tumult that may follow.

As it stands, it is too close, too imponderable for me to call.

Niall Ferguson 

Daily Mail Columnist

If American politics were normal, Donald Trump would be comfortably ahead of Kamala Harris, and the outcome of the election would be in no doubt because, on most of the issues, he looks out of sight.

For likely voters, the economy is the number one issue by a clear margin – though, in some recent polling, abortion has now surpassed immigration to take second place.

Trump has consistently led Harris on the economy since she took over the Democratic nomination in the summer.

Moreover, Harris can’t convincingly claim to be a ‘change’ candidate when she’s been Vice President in what was, from the outset, billed as the ‘Biden-Harris administration’.

If American politics were normal, Harris would be poised to join that list of sitting VPs who have failed to win the presidency, along with Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore.

The reason that it’s still this close is partly that a great many women can’t stand Trump.

One of the most striking features of the weekend’s much-discussed ‘Des Moines Register’ poll of Iowan voters was the strength of Harris’s female support.

But that’s not all. Because Trump’s potentially fatal weakness is with older voters.

You might expect a 78-year-old conservative, to be leading with the 65s and over. He isn’t.

Nationwide, a recent ABC News poll put Harris ahead with the group by five percentage points.

According to a Fox News poll, in Pennsylvania – the most important battleground state – Trump is also running five percentage points behind with oldies.

What this election comes down to is whether you think women – or, to be precise, older women – are more likely to vote than men. (They usually are.)

A lot also depends on whether you think college-educated voters are more likely to vote than those with only a high school diploma. (They usually are.)

Sure, Trump is doing better than traditional GOP nominees with minority voters. But the minority vote is also less likely to turn out.

Trump’s potentially fatal mistake in these final weeks has been going too far.

‘At the suggestion of Elon Musk,’ he told the Economic Club of New York on September 4, ‘I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.’

By the end of October, Musk was talking about a new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ that would ‘cut $2 trillion from the federal budget’.

I can think of nothing better calculated to terrify retirees in Pennsylvania.

Kennedy 

DailyMail.com Columnist 

It’s going to be a blow out. Of stupidity.

Trust me, no one knows how this race will go.

One minute Nate Silver says Trump is up by 10, the next that the race is within a point. Do you know why? Because polling has become the most futile and stupid exercise known to man.

Yet somehow we’re addicted to it and love the sadomasochism of ever the shifting statistics.

If I had to bet on one candidate, it would be Nancy Pelosi. She’s running everything anyway.

I don’t think there will be all-out civil war. Maybe some burnt cars and punched police horses at ‘mostly peaceful protests’, but that’ll just be frustrated Yankees fans still blowing off steam.

Last week Trump had the momentum. Kamala has the slight advantage going into the actual day. Maybe she edges him out, but it would only be thanks to people grudge voting against him which adds the final layer of idiocy to this stale presidential cake.

Michael Wolff

Special US Election Columnist 

The data that insiders in the Trump camp are passing around has him winning. Likewise, the Harris people have statistics that show sure victory.

It strikes me that the public mood has shifted in the last week from likely Trump to leaning Harris.

In this view, Trump peaked just before his Madison Square Garden rally and since then he has repeatedly done damage to his chances.

This is what Trump’s allies have always privately feared. On the other hand, they also believe, from long experience, that what doesn’t kill him — and nothing does — strengthens him.

Kellyanne Conway 

Special US Election Columnist

Donald Trump is poised to win at least five swing states, and, with a ‘narrow landslide’ in reach, as many as all seven.

He walks into Election Day with his best polling position ever, having channeled his 2016 swing-state schedule, swagger and sold-out rallies. He’s reminded America how much more prosperous, secure and peaceful we were during his first term.

Since the summer, this election has always, in part, been a referendum on undemocratic switching of Biden for Harris.

Trump runs better as the outsider. The most important issues for voters favor Trump (economy, border security, change) and his ceiling has been raised following convictions, assassination attempts, and – the further we get from his time in office – with more and more people viewing his presidency as a success.

Harris’ playbook of abortion ad nauseam and ‘Not Trump’ has worked for Democrats in recent years.

But now it may have hit a wall – not a red or blue one, but one erected by fed up Americans whose sour and dour attitudes about our border, economy, crime, foreign wars, weakness and wokeness have reached boiling point.

James Johnson 

Daily Mail’s Pollster  

Our final election forecast shows Donald Trump has a 60 percent chance of victory, while Harris sits at 40 percent.

The ex-president is showing significant strength in the early voting statistics, as registered Republicans are turning out in record numbers in the Sun Belt states of Arizona and Nevada and rural communities across the country.

These voters are expected to back Trump overwhelmingly – though those ballots cannot be opened until Election Day. He has also made inroads into the Democrats’s traditional base of non-white voters.

And there are some other reasons for Republicans to be hopeful. A House race in a solid blue district in update New York is looking like a GOP win. Polls are tightening in New Hampshire, a state one wouldn’t think to be in play for Trump. And Democratic senators in swing states – like Bob Casey in Pennsylvania and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin – are favorably mentioning him in ads.

This all may seem very good for the GOP ticket, but their lead in the battlegrounds has also narrowed considerably in the last few days, as we’ve seen evidence that some late-deciding voters are moving toward the Democrats.

The former president may face a tidal wave of opposition from white women, repelled by Trump’s past, personality and role in appointing the Supreme Court judges who overturned Roe V. Wade, doing away with the constitutional right to an abortion.

Our Daily Mail poll has also pointed to other dangers. Trump still has a lower favorability rating than Harris. And while Trump dominates in rural areas, Harris has retained an edge in the suburbs, which often – but not always – lead to election victor.

Indeed, this race will come down to turnout, but Trump goes into Election Day with the edge.

Craig Keshishian 

Former Reagan White House Polling Director

After Donald Trump declares victory in the 2024 election, Harris will resort to her Plan B — running for Governor of California.

Harris failed her way to the top of the Democratic ticket (dropping out of the 2020 primary without winning a single vote and being anointed in 2024 by the party bigwigs), but she’ll be a shoe-in to lead America’s most liberal state.

Incumbent CA Governor Gavin Newsom is termed-out and Harris’s future in Washington DC won’t be looking very bright. Golden State voters will welcome her home.

Here’s why I am so confident in a Trump victory. My model — informed by excellent Insider Advantage and Trafalgar polls — shows that there is a ‘hidden’ Trump voter who has been overlooked by most of the public opinion surveys.

These ‘hidden’ Trump voters are black, Asian and Hispanic men voting for the Republican Party for the first time — and they’re driving the enthusiasm we’re seeing across the country.

Registered Republicans are voting early in historic numbers in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina. There are now more registered Republicans in Pennsylvania than at any other time in decades.

Trump has perfected the template that Ronald Reagan created — turning the GOP from a ‘country club’ party into a broad spectrum, middle-class, mainstream party.

I predict a decisive Trump victory. By the end of Tuesday night, America will know who its next president will be.