AI-Powered Election Insights: Predicting the 2024 Trump vs. Kamala Election Showdown with Machine Learning

The United States presidential elections receive a substantial attention not only from American voters, but also from news agencies, politicians, and international governments due to the local and global impact of the outcome. Therefore, different parties strive to predict the election’s results ahead of time, and opinion polls remain the predominant prediction method despite their bias and flaws. Online political communication has immensely evolved in recent years, especially on social media websites like Reddit, which has become a key platform in political discourse offering a valuable resource for studying public opinions on key issues. This study aims to utilize advanced machine learning methods to predict the outcome of the upcoming 2024 U.S. presidential election with a focus on the two primary candidates, former President Trump and Vice President Harris. Employing deep learning techniques to analyze more than 25 thousand online posts on Reddit, the results indicate that on the national level, Harris has more favorable sentiment in comparison to Trump among online users. However, analyzing the data associated with the battleground states, our model predicts that Trump has an edge over Harris, which may result in Trump winning the majority of the electoral votes in these states. This study underscores the importance of integrating social media data with machine learning capabilities for enhanced data-driven forecasts in upcoming elections and major public events.