Duke’s Center for Politics and the Duke Triangle Alumni Chapter hosted an event previewing the 2024 presidential election Monday evening.
The Karsh Alumni and Visitor Center had nearly every seat filled for the event, called The 2024 Election, One Year Out.
The conversation was guided by journalist John Harwood, Trinity ’78, who was joined by two national political strategists, Sarah Longwell, president and CEO of Longwell Partners and publisher of The Bulwark, and Michael Podhorzer, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former political director of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
Introduced by Deondra Rose, director of Polis and Kevin D. Gorter associate professor of public policy, Harwood has had a decorated career in journalism, working for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and CNBC. He has covered national politics, Congress and the White House, “interviewing every president from President George H.W. Bush to President Biden” as well as moderating the 2012 and 2016 Republican primary debates.
Longwell, Podhorzer and Harwood discussed the complexity of the 2024 election during the panel.
Harwood first asked the panelists about their “baseline expectation[s] for the 2024 election.”
Podhorzer responded that “if voters understand what's at stake in the same way they've understood in the last several elections, they're going to make the same choice.” Longwell agreed, also coming to the conclusion that President Joseph Biden will likely be re-elected as president.
When discussing the stakes of the election, Podhorzer noted the influence of the media on the election. As with the 2020 election, the coverage of former President Donald Trump’s undermining of the election results “moved votes” among those previously unengaged in civil society, Harwood said.
Longwell jumped in, noting that this upcoming election is dependent on the media and variables such as “if Biden can put together the same coalition, and whether or not people are enthusiastic enough to come out [and vote].”
In the same vein, the panelists agreed that public perception of the economy will be critical to the election. Similar to how the media conveys candidates, Harwood argued that “the press has been bad” at presenting how objectively good the economy is doing.
Hardwood also identified current events, such as former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the speakership and the Israel-Hamas war, as important factors. Both Longwell and Podhorzer predict that the state of the House of Representatives will have minimal impact on Biden's re-election.
Following this discussion, Harwood referenced Podhorzer’s coined term “mad poll disease,” which includes symptoms such as “anxiety, problems sleeping, loss of affect and feelings of helplessness about the future of democracy, which are only exacerbated by frantic Twitter exchanges about polling methodology and sample bias.”
Podhorzer commented that “in this moment … we suspend disbelief and believe that it's possible to know today by asking 1000 people, what's going to happen next November? It’s just not right.”
The conversation concluded with questions from the audience, with one audience member asking if voter turnout will be the same for this upcoming election as it was in 2020 or if it will be a big hurdle for candidates like Biden.
Longwell emphasized that she is “worried about the lack of enthusiasm” and that “the turnout has got to be there.”
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Michelle Voicu is a Trinity sophomore and an associate news editor for the news department.