Persily started his talk by sharing the “Election Administrator’s Prayer”— “Oh God, whatever happens, please don’t let it be close” — as close elections expose the “fragile underbelly” of the election administration system, like the 2024 election. Roughly 230,000 votes in key swing states ultimately determined Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory of 312 votes to Kamala Harris’ 226.

Persily situated the 2024 results within the broader political trends. Traditional political science predictors — public evaluations of the incumbent administration and economic perceptions — pointed toward a Trump victory. At the same time, public confidence in the electoral system shifted. Republicans’ confidence in the national vote increased markedly compared to 2020, while Democrats’ confidence declined — a reversal Persily described as a “sore-loser” pattern, but a decline that saw greater change with Democrats than in past years.

Persily narrowed in on the act of voting itself, and firstly covered vote-by-mail. He emphasized that vote-by-mail has a smaller partisan gap than might be assumed: states as ideologically diverse as Utah, California, and Washington rely heavily on all-mail voting. Nationwide, only about 34 percent of voters cast ballots on Election Day, reflecting a long-term move toward early in-person and mail voting. Persily emphasized that these categories themselves are increasingly fluid — voters may receive a mail ballot but choose to drop it off in person, complicating simple partisan narratives about “mail voters” versus “in-person voters.”