Here is a look at the national political landscape about a week ahead of Election Day 2024. Polls and prediction models are contradictory and are always less reliable in hotly contested elections.

Voter turnout in the presidential election is expected to be high. Some analysts believe the higher the turnout, the more it should help 2024 Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris. She needs all the help she can get.

Here is a look at recent U.S. presidential election turnouts of eligible voters:

Year             Turnout

2000            54.2%

2016            55.7%

2020            66.8%

We expect a 64% to 70% turnout this November .

Turning to presidential election results, here is what happened four years ago in 2020:

Joe Biden, Democrat

81.3 million votes (51.3%)

Electoral votes: 306             

Donald Trump, Republican

74.2 million votes (46.8%)

Electoral votes: 232

Many observers think this election will even be closer than 2020.

According to reliable polls, Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently had a 45% favorable rating and a 46% unfavorable score with U.S. voters. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had a 43% favorable rating and a 49% unfavorable rating.

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America has become increasingly critical of its presidents and national leadership institutions. We may be enjoying good economic times and stock market highs, yet here is how we think about politicians and other institutions:

Approve of how President Joe Biden is doing his job — 40%.

Approve of how the U.S. Supreme Court is doing its job — 43%.

Approve of how U.S. Congress is doing its job — 16%.

Approve of the U.S. military — 64%.

Approve of small businesses — 68%.

Approve of big business — 27%.

Think the U.S. is going in the wrong direction — 64%.

Americans are divided over several policy issues, including immigration, abortion, tax cuts for businesses, climate change policies, business regulations, support for Ukraine against Russia, health care reform and more.

We have a long history of sharp divisions over important policy issues. Americans were sharply divided in 1800 between big government Federalists and small government Jeffersonians. They were even more sharply divided in the 1850s and 1860s over ending human slavery.

There were sharp differences between the Populists and the Progressives at the turn of the 20th Century. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal was controversial during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 1960s, civil rights issues and the controversial Vietnam War divided the nation.

One of the enduring paradoxes of American politics is how Americans patriotically love their country — USA, USA, USA — yet have little love for political parties and politicians. Yet, no democratic republic has a chance of surviving for long without robust political competition and without politicians willing to run for public service positions.

Politics is the art of balancing our competing values and trying to bring about the needed compromises that can achieve the common good.

The philosopher Aristotle long ago pointed out people initially joined together in communities for the obvious necessity of self-protection. Once that is achieved, communities go about trying to provide for economic progress and “the good life.”

Americans understand this. And more than 70% of Americans agree the elected officials in our nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., should make the necessary compromises to achieve the common good.

It is tempting this year to ask what a “compromise” presidential ticket should be advocating.

It would likely include much greater border control, balanced antitrust policies, greater guardrails on artificial intelligence developments, more accessibility for higher education opportunities, a firm commitment to constitutionalism, sensible strategies to gradually reduce the national debt ,etc..

Those who get elected may be forced in this direction because the U.S. Congress is very likely to be closely divided along partisan lines, as it is currently.

There is a possibility Republicans could win the White House and take both chambers of the U.S. Congress. The Supreme Court already has a Republican-friendly majority.

This could lead to consequential changes, even with a loud vocal Democratic minority sounding off in Congress.

Time will soon tell.

Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris has had a tough challenge of trying to be a candidate of freshness, change and a new generation while being a very visible part of an unpopular lame-duck presidency.

That the national economy is good has helped Harris, but Joe Biden’s unfavorable polls and the inadequate Biden-Harris border policies haunt her.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is largely built around fear — fear of illegal immigrants invading the United States and undermining the American dream, fear of a looming World War III, fear of Chinese economic supremacy, fear of rising crime, etc.

Fear has always played an outsized role in American election campaigns.

Listen to this fearmongering in 1800:

“If Jefferson is elected, the Bible will be burned, the French ‘Marseillaise’ will be sung in Christian churches, and we will see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution…”

This was the shouted fear of Reverend Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale University.

We have had close elections in recent memory. In 1960 it was very close and a Democrat, John Kennedy, won. In 1968 it was again very close and a Republican, Richard Nixon, won. In 1976 it was a relatively close race with a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, winning.

In 2000 the popular vote winner, Democrat Al Gore, lost in the Electoral College to the Republican, George W. Bush, who was helped by a favorable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2016 the popular vote winner, Democrat Hillary Clinton, lost in the Electoral College to Republican Donald Trump.

Most everyone is expecting another close race. Nearly 40% of voters have voted by this weekend, a little more than one week before Election Day. About 50% will wait until Election Day, Nov.5, to cast their ballots.

Votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and probably Nevada will be decisive in the Electoral College counts.  If Harris can triumph in these states she wins the Electoral College.

Democrats, it should be noted, have won the popular national vote for president in seven of the last eight elections, but the Democrats lost two of those popular vote victories in the Electoral College. This could happen again.

It is the Electoral College tally that matters.

Every vote counts. Politics matter. Popular poet Ogden Nash, who understood our regularly dashed hopes about voting and politics, shared this memorable light verse:

“They have such refined and delicate palettes

That they can discover no one worthy of their ballots,

And then when someone terrible gets elected,

They say, ‘There, that’s just what I expected.’”

Vote.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are news columnists who write about Colorado and national politics.