A worst case scenario

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With the 2024 presidential election just days away as polls continue to tighten, many liberals are losing sleep over the prospect of a Donald Trump victory, thinking it is the worst possible outcome we could witness. However, the reality is that the true 2024 nightmare scenario isn't one in which we witness a clear Trump win, it's the prospect of a nail-bitingly close Trump defeat that he then could successfully overturn. This result isn't just possible, it's quickly emerging as an incredibly likely outcome.

If the polls ultimately get this election almost exactly right, being about as accurate as they were in the 2022 midterms, we are looking at a photo finish across multiple pivotal swing states that will be decided by 1 percent or less. This is exactly what we ought to expect given that the 2016 and 2020 elections were also incredibly tight in the battleground states. In 2020, just 44,000 votes across Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Joe Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College. In 2016, only 80,00 votes across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin handed Trump the White House. History and current polling are then both clearly indicating that 2024 will be decided by similarly small margins.

In point of fact, 2024 could well be the closest election Trump has run in to date when it comes to both the popular vote and the Electoral College. If Kamala Harris sweeps the Rust Belt while Trump takes the Sun Belt states, she would win with exactly 270 electoral votes, the absolute minimum needed to emerge victorious. This result is one that would, with near certainty, lead us directly into a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The election being determined by a single vote in the Electoral College would obviously lead to Trump dusting off his 2020 playbook and fighting with everything he has to overturn it. Under these circumstances, Trump may well be willing to fight harder and dirtier than he did in 2020. For one, he knows full well that only victory is certain to keep him out of prison. What's more, the threshold for overturning the election under these circumstances is substantially lower than it was in 2020. In 2020, Trump needed multiple states to change their result, this time he would only need a single state or even a single elector to change their vote on order to overturn the election.

At the very least, after experiencing such a narrow defeat we can guarantee that Trump would again pressure state and local officials to claim widespread voter fraud robbed him of victory. He would of course again ask state legislatures to overturn the will of their voters, demanding that they award him their electoral votes instead. Should the House and Senate both be headed into the hands of Republicans after the election, he would also undoubtedly be able to rely on them doing everything in their power to refuse certification of the election.

We should also expect that Trump will, once again, call on his supporters in the electorate to come to his aid as they did on Jan. 6. With 1 in 5 Republicans already believing that the only way Trump loses is if he is cheated, his base is primed to be every bit as vitriolic and unhinged as he would need them to be in order to terrorize anyone in power who resists his demands.

In a situation where Trump really only needs one elector to flip to hand him victory, we should also expect Trump to call out, by name, the members of the Electoral College in the days leading up to their official vote. In states like Pennsylvania, where members of the electoral college are allowed to vote against the popular vote of their state, this could be an especially easy way to overturn the entire election. Swaying the vote of just one of these individuals could make all the difference in the election scenario outlined above, allowing Trump to utilize threats of force to ascend to the presidency in a way that technically follows the letter of the law while crushing its spirit.