I’m not making predictions, but I am going to chronicle my feeling on this Election Day that could be either momentous or monstrous.

Today feels to me more like 2012 than 2016.

I had to be reminded by a friend that the 2012 election was considered close. In the end President Barack Obama won reelection decisively, winning the popular vote by a margin of 51-47 and winning 332 electoral votes. Until the results came in, however, the election was considered too close to call. So much so that Mitt Romney had not prepared a concession speech, and had to put something together when Colorado and Nevada were called for Obama late election night.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the last Marist/NPR poll that came out yesterday has Kamala Harris winning the popular vote 51-47. That’s also the same as the spread in the 2020 election.

As we all know, winning the popular vote by three or four points does not guarantee victory in the Electoral College. As I said, I am not making predictions and I am as nervous as any other Democrat (or Republican who cares about democracy), but it does seem that this time, as opposed to 2016, the Democratic campaign understands the importance of PA, MI and WI. That’s another reason I feel more like this is 2012, when Obama won eight of the then nine swing states, and not 2016.

The 2012 election followed the first term of a Democratic President, just as this year’s election does. Both of those Democratic presidents had won election in the wake of a national crisis (respectively, the Great Recession and Covid) and were dealing with electorates that had reasons leftover from those crises not to be happy. Obama and Joe Biden both lost control of the House of Representatives for the second half of their terms, which limited how much they could accomplish. Republican control of the House caused all sorts of chaos both then and now. Chaos does not help incumbents or their parties, but when all the votes were counted, in 2012 the voters preferred what they had to the alternative. (The alternatives, Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump today, couldn’t have been more different.)

Looking at the enthusiasm of the Harris rallies versus the desperation of Trump’s final rallies, my feeling is that voters this year will make the same decision. In 2016 it was Trump who finished with wildly enthusiastic crowds. Now he can’t fill small arenas.

Anyway, this post doesn’t do anything other than memorialize how this one blogger feels at this moment.

Thanks for indulging me, and I assume you have voted already! If not, get to the polls.