I. The Horse Race.
The election is seven weeks from today. The race remains very stable. Biden leads nationally by seven or eight points, depending how you weigh the various polls. Biden leads in the Electoral College, and probably has enough of a cushion to win, even if the race tightens. But the EC favors the GOP, so the election is not over.
I am beginning to think in terms of a range of outcomes. Here they are, from worse to best.
1. Biden loses. I mean....it's possible. The professional prognosticators give him anywhere from 15 to 30 percent chance of winning. The betting markets like him even more than that. But my underlying theory remains that Trump doesn't have much upside. I do not think there are enough voters who can be persuaded to give him a second term unless something fundamental changes and redounds to his benefit. I am at a loss for what that could be.
2. Biden wins, but it's close. This would mean Biden wins the election, but not Florida. With WI/MI/PA he gets to 279. Add Arizon and he gets to 290. That would be a tough result. It means the GOP almost certainly held the senate and will probably give Trump an excuse to cry foul-somewhere, for some reason.
I think it's important to avoid this outcome. The best news this week is that Mike Bloomberg is going to spend $100 million dollars to promote Biden in Florida. Winning Florida will push Biden over 300 and should give him a bigger EC win than Trump had in 2016.
3. Biden wins, but modestly. This would mean winning FL and possibly NC. That gets him to 319 or 334, depending on where Maine and Nebraska's pesky congressional districts fall.
I think this is the most likely outcome. NC will be close but winning there would pretty much mean that Biden reassembled the Obama 2008 coalition. (Indiana excepted.)
4. Biden wins big. That means sweeping the above mentioned states and adding some combination of Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. If Biden lands in the 340-374 range, it will be seen as a big win. It also probably means he won the popular vote by a wider margin than Obama did in 2008.
5. A Biden landslide. Okay, this is where things get heady. Biden sweeps the above states and Texas. Now we are looking at 413 electoral votes. I think that's as good a result as Biden can expect. Winning Texas would really flip the "Red State/Blue State" narrative in a fundamental way.
It's also possible that Biden wins TX but loses Ohio and/or Iowa. I would gladly take that trade off. But either way, it's playing with house money.
And if you really want to go hog-wild, and look for a long-shot....I think Biden could win Montana. In fact, I think Montana and Alaska are more likely than South Carolina or Missouri.
II. The Issues.
The purpose of these weekly posts is to take the pulse of the horse race. But the horse race has been pretty boring, so I want to take a few moments to dig into that other pesky part of our electoral process, substance. President Trump made two outrageous statements this week that would be disqualifying in normal times.
a. Climate Change.
Donald Trump got into the following exchange when meeting with California officials to discuss the wild fires that are burning through much of the west coast, with Wade Crawford, the California director of natural resources.
Crawford: “If we ignore that science and put our head in the stand and think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed together on protecting Californians”
Trump: It will start getting cooler. You just watch....
Crawford: I wish science agreed with you.
Trump: don’t think science knows actually
Trump is an ignoramus. He does not have the first clue about science or critical thinking. This morning Scientific American made their first ever political endorsement in 175 years. This was done in response to Trump's failures on a lot of fronts-COVID-19, healthcare and most importantly, Climate Change.
The world is getting hotter. Sea levels are rising. Donald Trump does not care about that because he doesn't care about anything beyond his term in office. This along is a reason to vote for his opponent.
b. Extrajudicial Murders.
Last week the Presidenet was interviewed by Jeanne Pirro, (aka "Jude Winebox") on Fox News and was asked about the death of Michael Reinoehl in early September. Reinhoel was accused of murdering a pro-Trump protester in Portland Oregon. There were reports that the marshals killed Reinhoel without making any attempt to arrest him. Those reports have not been confirmed, but Donald Trump seems eager to take credit for them, whether or not they happened.
“The U.S. Marshals went in to get [Reinoehl], and, in a short period of time, they ended up in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this."
That is a full throated endorsement of tyranny. Donald Trump believes that he, as president, should have the authority to send out G-men and DEA Agents and Fucking Forestry Officers to go kill people who stand accused of a crime that he deems sufficiently serious. (These crimes of course will tend to be crimes against people who support Trump's agenda in one way or another.)
Trump has planted the flag of "law and order" all over his campaign. It has not worked, in part, because he is not actually a candidate who stands for law and order. He's really the candidate of authoritarianism. And if he is re-elected, he will exert even more pressure to turn federal law enforcement into an arm of state vengeance.
III. The Forecasts.
The biggest controversy among election forecasters this year was a Twitter beef between Nate Silver and G. Elliot Morris, the primary forecaster at the Economist. When Nate finally rolled out his forecast, he gave Biden a roughly 70% chance of winning, while the Economist had him at 90%.
That gap sprang from differences in their methodology. Silver factors in time, because things can change in an election. The Economist, as the name would suggest, puts more emphasis on economic data, relative to Silver. In the weeks that have passed since then, time has not been kind to Trump. He has no moved up in the polls and there is now less time for things to change. On the other hand, the economic data has been slightly better than expected.
Not surprisingly, the two forecasts have converged. Nate now gives Biden a 76% chance of winning, and the Economist has come down to 84%. So a 20 point gap is now eight. It will be interesting to see if these numbers cross at any point.
The betting markets continue to lag the betting data. North Carolina is a true tossup in the markets now, with Biden and Trump see-sawing between 49 and 52 percent each. Florida also remains closer than the polls suggest. I think this is a 2016 hang-over and it will probably recede in the next few weeks.
I have added a forecast to the sheet this week. Sean Le Van has an interesting forecast. He updates it several times a day and usually tweets out an explanation of why the latest data has nudged his numbers this way or that. I encourage you to give @plural_vote a follow, because he is doing really good work.
One note about his model-he does a probablistic estimate of which candidate will win but he lists his EV count by the most frequent outcome in his latest calculations. As of now, he give Biden a 72.39% chance of winning. If you look at his probabilities of each state, it matches my own-334 to 204 but his official prediction is 329-209, which is based on the "mode" rather than the aggregate of his median results.
I think the 5 EV difference means that his mode has Trump winning NV. I will be interested to see if his model predicts any quirks like that.
| Forecast | Current % | Current EVs | Previous | Changes |
| Spider Stumbled | 85.00% | 334-204 | 85/334 | None |
| Plural Vote | 72.39% | 329-209 | N/a | N/a |
| JHK Forecasts | 78.60% | 334-204 | 77.4/334 | Biden up 1.2% probability |
| 270towin.com | N/a | 278-169-91 | 278-169-91 | None. (Again. He is cautious.) |
| Predicitit.com | 57.20% | 319-219 | 55.3/319 | None. (NC is basically a toss-up.) |
| Sabato Crystal Ball | N/a | 269-204-65 | 268-204-66 | NE-2 from toss-up to Biden |
| The Economist | 84.00% | 334-205 | 84%/335 | ME-2 to Trump |
| FiveThirtyEight | 76.00% | 334-204 | 72%/334 | Biden up 4% probability |
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