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US election: GOP could win a Trump-led sweep
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
It's election night in America. And a slightly unexpected result tonight, with the election returns coming back very strong for President Donald Trump. He may actually end up winning the national popular vote, which was not, I think, on anyone's bingo card, really.
Big surprise for Trump has been a surge in rural support where the Trump coalition showed up to vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris has somewhat underperformed in urban areas, and while she did have a pretty good showing with women voters, it wasn't enough to keep her ahead of Trump, at least in the results as we know them tonight.
Harris has been underperforming down-ballot Democrats generally, which has kept the Democrats competitive in the House, which could lead to an unusual situation where all three of the main political bodies in the United States, the White House, the House, and the Senate, flip in the same election. The Senate is in the bag for Republicans. They're going to have somewhere between 52 and 55 seats, it looks like. And Trump is probably the favorite to win in the Electoral College.
The House outcome we may not know in the next 24 hours. Some of the House seats that really matter in determining the majority, which is very close, are slow to count. But right now, it does look like Democrats have some momentum with a couple of Republicans losing key seats.
So stay tuned for more of what we're watching this week in US politics.
2024 US election: What to look out for
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching this week in US politics. It is, at long last, election week. The US has one of the longest most exhausting presidential election cycles in the world. That basically begins two years before general Election Day. And Tuesday of this week, it all comes to a conclusion. It's unlikely that we will know the results of the election on Tuesday night, although if Harris is significantly ahead in the early counting states, like North Carolina, that's going to be a strong signal that she's probably winning the overall electoral college. Seven key swing states to watch. Trump looks like he has the advantage in Arizona and Nevada. And the election, like it did in 2016, could potentially come down to the three so-called Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. On election night, Wisconsin and Michigan are likely to be known, but possibly not till late in the night. They were called for Biden late in the night on 2020.
Pennsylvania is the real outlier when it comes to counting votes, and this is because Pennsylvania does not count its early ballots until the day of the election, which means that the people who vote in person in Pennsylvania, who tend to be Republicans, we'll know where they are when the polls close in the evening, East Coast time, on Tuesday night. But then overnight, you expect to see what's been called the 'blue shift,' which is as those early and absentee ballots get counted, which are primarily democratic, you will see Harris's vote share start to climb. So if the outcome of the race is not known because the outcome in North Carolina is ambiguous or Trump is leading, and there's no clear winner in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that night, or it looks like a close race, officially calling this race could drag on until much later in the week, just exactly what happened in 2020. Now, President Trump tried to exploit that gap in 2020 by saying he clearly had won in Pennsylvania, and all these late-breaking votes were all just fraudulent, which isn't true, but that's what he claimed. And that could happen again this cycle.
The only situation in which we would get a genuinely ambiguous outcome, where we wouldn't know the outcome for weeks at a time, is if, one, there's evidence of widespread massive election fraud, which has not been the case at any time in recent US history and is a very low probability event. Or if it's such a close race in one of the key swing states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Georgia, where we don't actually know the winner because the margins are within several hundred votes. There is precedent for state-wide elections being overturned in recent US history, but typically, those elections come down to about 500 votes. There's been 31 recounts from the year 2000 before the 2020 presidential election, three were overturned because the margin was so incredibly close. And so, this is a very, very rare event, and it's unlikely to play out in this election cycle, but it could. You never know.
The polls are suggesting this is a very close race. So stay tuned for more watching this election week, and hope you find a nice, comfortable place to watch the election results because it could take a long time to count these ballots.
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US election: America is at war with itself
In a powerful and candid address, Ian Bremmer delivered a sobering reflection on the state of democracy in the United States during his annual "State of the World" speech at the 2024 GZERO Summit Japan in Tokyo.
"My country, the United States, is today at war with itself," said Bremmer.
With the November 5th election on the horizon, Bremmer highlighted the fractures within the US political system, emphasizing the growing chasm between political parties, voters, and the institutions meant to uphold democracy. He further painted a grim picture of the post-election period, saying, "We are about to have an election whose outcome will be perceived as illegitimate by nearly half of the country."
He noted that tens of millions of Americans are disillusioned and convinced that their political system is broken. The stakes are high, and the larger issue is the growing perception among voters that their democracy is being "stolen" or "subverted." The result is a deeply polarized nation, where even after a president is eventually declared, a significant portion of the population will reject the legitimacy of the outcome, leading to political and social instability.
Click to watch Ian Bremmer’s analysis and his full 2024 "State of the World" speech.
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The gap between Americans' perception of the economy and reality
As the candidates make their final arguments in the 2024 US Presidential Election, the economy is front and center on the minds of voters. Despite all signs indicating stable and above-trend growth in the US, many Americans feel uncertain about how well the economy is doing, said Robert Kahn, Managing Director of Global Macro-Geoeconomics at Eurasia Group. He discussed the gap in US economic perception versus reality with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings in Washington, DC, in a Global Stage interview. Kahn noted that heightened political polarization has skewed views of economic performance while lingering geopolitical shocks and high prices add to concerns. Kahn emphasized that there is an element of worry around the “legacy of the pandemic…that Vice President Harris is just really struggling to overcome” even though underlying data proves otherwise. The two also discussed former President Trump's accusations that the Federal Reserve is "playing politics" with interest rates and what the impact would be globally if Trump were, as president, to assert a heavier hand in decision-making at the central bank.
Ian Bremmer on the US election & crisis of democracy
With the US presidential election less than two weeks away, Ian Bremmer weighed in on who could come out on top in his "State of the World" speech at the 2024 GZERO Summit in Tokyo. Bremmer says the US faces a crisis of democracy, but who does he think will win the upcoming election? Watch to hear his prediction.
Click to watch Ian Bremmer’s analysis and his full 2024 "State of the World" speech.
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The US election: Freedom on the ballot
On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, we're mere weeks away from Election Day in one of the closest and most tumultuous national elections in American history. Both candidates are making their pitches to voters, and show guest, author and historian Timothy Snyder, argues that what they're really pitching are two different versions of freedom. Snyder discusses the election by drawing from his latest book, “On Freedom,” an exploration into how freedom is used—and often misused—in society and politics.
Snyder argues that America would do well to think about freedom in a more positive light, particularly in terms of freedom "to" rather than freedom "from." Freedom "to" vote, to control your own body, to love whom you want." Rather than freedom "from" oppression, for instance. “Freedom is about a future which is better than the present. Freedom is about all the good things that we might know about and all the good things we have yet to discover. It's not about anger, it's not about barriers.”
In taking a bird’s eye view of the many ways freedom can be interpreted, Snyder zeros in on Ukraine. He reflects on how Ukrainians often use the word “de-occupation” instead of liberation, because he believes that freedom is means towards a better future, rather than the end goal. “The word de-occupation reminds you that that is still just the beginning. You have to clear the rubble, and rebuild the playgrounds, and the buses and the trains have to start running again.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).
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Trump-Harris debate: What to expect
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What issues will dominate the Trump/Harris debate?
Well, I mean clearly the economy, migration, abortion, I mean these are the issues that are on top of everybody's agenda. I care the most about global issues, foreign policy issues, things like climate change, artificial intelligence governance, and say, the Middle East, China, and Russia. But I suspect that that gets a small amount of time and also is a very little impact to voters that has still undecided. Having said all of that, I don't think this is mostly about issues. I think this is mostly about how does Harris perform against Trump and vice versa. And keep in mind that given just how filtered people's information sources are, if one of them wins by a little bit, then both sides are going to come away saying we destroyed the other, and so will all of their supporters.
So I mean, there has to be a big mistake or a big win for anyone to break through in what's an extremely tight race here. And that's what everyone's looking for, especially because Harris hasn't been tested like this before and Trump's last few public appearances have been pretty all over the map and showing his age. So I think people looking for first major test of Harris of this sort and is Trump capable of still delivering big-time entertainment in this sort of a format? So that's where we are. Everyone will be tuned in tonight. I think a lot more than 50 million people in the United States are going to be watching. This should be a highly, highly visible and important. Only two months before the election action.
As Edmundo Gonzalez seeks asylum in Spain, what lies ahead for Venezuela and Maduro's opposition?
Well, the fact that the United States has impounded one of Maduro's planes shows just how much that policy had failed, an effort to try to use carrots to get the Venezuelan government to be willing to hold a free and fair election. That was never going to happen. Not from the Americans, not from the Colombians, not from the Brazilians. Not from the Mexicans. There was no one out there that was going to make a difference. And sadly not Venezuela's opposition either. What this means is the military still supporting the Venezuelan president, massively corrupt, completely stolen illegitimate election and he's not going anywhere. That's where we are. And if Gonzalez hadn't fled the country, he was going to get arrested. Venezuelan military and president, very happy for him to flee the country. They gave him more than enough time and indication saying, "Okay, we're coming for you. We're coming for you. Okay, now we have an arrest warrant. If you don't leave, you're going to jail." He left. And everyone, I guess, is comfortable with that outcome, but a horrible place for the Venezuelan people, millions of whom will be streaming, millions more mostly to the United States, to Colombia, to other countries.
How was Mario Draghi's report on EU competitiveness received?
Received very well because the Europeans are not spending on competitiveness and industrial policy the way the Americans are, the way the Chinese are. And that means that they're being left behind in terms of technology. They're also not spending enough on security, which means they're still super, super dependent on the United States. And Draghi is calling for the Europeans to do a lot more, but they don't have the internal leadership to make that happen, and they don't have the fiscal space, nor do they have the coordination capable, even in a strong European Union. So very welcome. Not going to get implemented. That's where we are. Love Draghi, but he ain't running the EU.
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Will the DNC momentum take Democrats all the way?
Watch full episode: Kamala Harris makes her case
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don''t miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO’s YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).