The 2024 election is just a little over two weeks away now and most Democrats are down to their last nerve with worry. This is nothing new, of course. That's just the way they roll. Republicans meanwhile are already cracking the champagne strutting around saying they have it in the bag no need to worry. That's how they roll. Both of these phenomenons are indicative of a certain kind of temperament but they are also real political strategies and it's worth taking a look at their effectiveness.

The GOP's bandwagon strategy may not work with Trump's low or mid-propensity voters who figure they don't need to turn out if he already has it won.

I've written before about the Republicans' love of the bandwagon effect which really just holds that if you act like Donald Trump and pretend that you know you've got it won, some people will naturally follow because they want to go with the winner. They've actually been doing that long before Trump came along but nobody in politics has ever been more naturally adept at deploying it than he is. And we've discussed ad nauseum how Democrats are suffering from post-2016 PTSD and are thus more likely to believe the sky is falling. Many of these races have been so close for so long that they are rationally worried that it will fall the wrong way.

Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer explained why these two behaviors may just be counterproductive this time, particularly on the GOP side. The political strategy behind the bandwagon effect was specifically targeted at the high-propensity voters to whom Republicans have traditionally appealed: older and mostly college-educated people who always turn out. That is why they would win the lower interest midterm elections while Democrats typically win big popular vote victories with their lower propensity voters (those who vote only sporadically or not at all) attenuating the GOP base of regular voters in the presidential........

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