Campaign

Carville: ‘This just doesn’t feel like a race that Harris is gonna lose’

by Sarah Fortinsky - 09/24/24 7:52 AM ET

Democratic strategist James Carville said Monday evening that he has a “feeling” Vice President Harris will win the election in November.

“I don’t like to predict elections. I would just say, this just doesn’t feel like a race that Harris is gonna lose,” Carville told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360.”

“But that’s just a feeling. That’s just a feeling,” he added.

Carville, who previously served as an adviser for former President Clinton, noted that most presidential elections in recent memory have been close until the very end — save for the 2008 election. The longtime strategist predicted 2024’s race will play out similarly, remaining close in the polls until eventually breaking for one candidate.

The least likely scenario, he said, is for the seven core swing states to split, 4-3, one way or the other.

“It’s close in the polls, and I’m not convinced that it’s going to be close on election day,” Carville said when Cooper asked why the race seems so close, despite former President Trump’s embrace of unsubstantiated rumors about Haitian migrants “eating pets,” and his support for North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) amid controversy around the gubernatorial candidate. “I’ll say this: If there’s seven swing states, the least, most least likely scenario is that it breaks 4-3.”

“I could be wrong, but it’s going to break in one direction or the other,” he added. “I really believe that. Most of the time, these elections do that.”

Harris and Trump remain locked in a close race that is likely to come down to the vote count in seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

While Harris’s performance in the national polls has improved over President Biden’s, she still remains less than 1 percentage point away from Trump in some key swing states, according to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling average. Nationally, the vice president is leading her GOP opponent by 3.6 points, 50.3 percent to 46.7 percent, the index shows.