Debate Eve (The Road to 270, Take 11)

  I.  The Horse Race.

I write one day early tonight, because tomorrow is the first debate between President Trump and I will of course be watching that tomorrow night.

Stop me if you've heard this before, but we have just had another week of stable polling. Joe Biden leads the RCP average by 6.8 points, up slightly from last week and back to the exact mark he had two weeks ago. Biden leads the 538.com average by 6.9 points, the same margin as last week. 

State level polling has mostly been stable too, although Biden got a great Pennsylvania poll tonight that showed him up nine.  He's also had some good Ohio numbers, which make that state a true toss up with five weeks to go. 

II.  Debate Prep.

The first general election debate usually goes poorly for the incumbent. After four years of being the most important man in the world, it can be a bit unnerving to have to treat someone like an equal for 90 minutes.  Even Ronald Reagan lost his first debate with Mondale, not that it mattered in the end.

The importance of debates tend to be over-stated. Nearly everyone has an opinion of Donald Trump and it is unlikely to change tomorrow night. But I think Joe Biden has at least some hope of picking up some voters who may have yet to commit to voting for him. The incumbent and no small portion of the media have fed the idea that he is too old and more than a little soft in the head. He also had some bad performances in the early debates with a crowded state taking aim at him as the front-runner. Biden can dispel a lot of those thoughts with a strong performance.

The most encouraging sign for Biden is how well he did in the only one on one debate with Bernie Sanders back in March. He was sharp and focused, and a little bit ebullient because he knew he was likely to be the nominee. I hope he projects a similar confidence tomorrow in Cleveland.

The first debate is going to be moderated by Chris Wallace. He is an interesting choice. The Trump people obviously assume he spends his days working in the Fox News Bubble and he has to placate that audience. I'm a little surprised that Biden didn't fight for a non Fox host but he obviously felt okay about it. (Wallace has given Trump some difficult questions when interviewing him.)

Wallace announced the six debate topics early this week.  Some of them are obvious but see if you can spot the Fox influence on a couple of these:

1. The Trump and Biden Records. This is very vague. I guess Wallace is going to let the candidates attack each other right off the bat. That is understandable and will make for compelling television.

2. The Supreme Court. Here is where Trump is going to set the chutzpah record when he tried to paint Joe Biden as anti-Catholic zealot. The thing to watch for is Biden's line of attack. He should focus on the fact that Trump is trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act and he intends to use Coney-Barrett to do just that.

3. COVID-19.  Trump will lie to you during this segment. Joe Biden will not.

4. The Economy. Trump will lie about how great the economy was before COVID. Biden will argue that he inherited a strong economy from his predecessors. I doubt many minds will be changed here, but I do hope Biden pins the recession on Trump.

5. Race And Violence in Our Cities. Okay-there's the Fox whistle. Trump will blame Biden for the riots, Biden will blame Trump for his lawlessness.  If the candidates feel listless at the start of this segment, they will get over that quick.

6. The Integrity of the Election. One guy will scare you, the other guy will tell you to vote.  Vote for that one.

But there's more....................

Yesterday the New York Times published in excruciating detail the fact that Donald Trump is a dead beat citizen. This news came out after the debate subjects had been set, but I'm sure Biden will hammer on them in every segment if he can. Trump will mumble something about fake news every time it gets mentioned.

If you're reading this blog, and God love you for doing so, you already know the details, so I won't bore you. But one fact is really hanging with me. Donald Trump chose to pay $750 in 2016 and 2017. He could have paid zero dollars, but he was obviously told that it would look bad. So they talked him into making a nominal payment. How they arrived at $750 is between him and his accountant. But it's kind of amazing to think that he could have saved himself a LOT of trouble by stroking a check for something like $26,000 or any amount that is substantially more than what the average tax payer pays in federal income taxes. A penny saved is a penny earned, I guess.

I also think this a lot more will come from this reporting. The first report was thorough and detailed but there are a lot of layers to the tax code and there will be a lot of eyes following the information as it comes out over the next week or two.

The most damning parts are that he apparently paid obscene amounts of his money to Ivanka and characterized them as "consulting fees" to save a few bucks on payroll taxes. The other is that he apparently took a $79 million tax credit under the 2009 economic recovery act. (Thanks Obama!)

But for now-the most memorable fact is this: the President of the United States paid $750 a year for his two tax returns that he filed from the White House. Fuck that guy.

III.  The Forecasts.

Time is on Joe Biden's side. Every week that he maintains his lead, his chances of winning go up. There is still time for things to change, but it may take something dramatic for Trump to catch up and make this race competitive down the stretch. (I will not point out that by this time tomorrow we will know for sure whether Wiki Leaks has any dirt on Joe Biden. So far, so good on that front.)

That said, there wasn't a lot of movement this week. The Economist remains most bullish on Biden's chance of winning, but 538 is closing that gap. In fact, 538 now projects Biden to win Ohio 51% of the time, so they technically forecast him to win by a bigger margin than the Economist.  But Nate Silver and the Economist's nerd continue to snip at each other on Twitter, which is kind of sad.

As for me, I'm moving Biden up from 84% to 86%.  I think the Trump tax story will sting. No one likes to be a sucker and now the world knows, definitively, that that is how Trump feels about the average American tax payer. At the risk of repeating myself, fuck that guy.

IV. Taxonomy, Again.

For the past week I have been focusing on Ohio. My theory is that as long as Ohio is close, than Biden probably wins. Trump needs Ohio, Biden does not. In 2016, Trump swung that state eleven points to the right, from a three point Obama win to an eight point Hillary Clinton loss.

Ohio has a lot of the voters that swung from Obama to Trump and a lot of Obama voters who stayed home last time. All week I kept an eye on Nate's projected finish for Ohio and watched Biden's numbers climb from down to two to up by a fraction of a point. (Currently just 0.2%, so I'll be watching it for another week, at least.)

A reminder of my taxonomy of states.  Nothing here has changed from last week:

A. It will seem close if he doesn't win Florida.  He probably only gets to 290 maximum without Florida.

B. It will seem comfortable if he wins NC and FL That probably gets him to 334 electoral votes. Getting over 350 will look like a nice win, especially if he can win a state like Georgia, which Obama never carried and which ought to be trending blue over time.

C. It will seem like a blowout if he adds Iowa and Ohio.  This means he recreated the 2008 coalition, with GA subbing in for Indiana.

D. The cherry on top would be Texas.  This probably only happens if Trump craters in some way, but the psychological value of flipping Texas will be enormous.

The Horse Race, As It Were (The Road to 270, Take 9)

 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

.

The General Election Gets Underway to Great Stability (The Road to 270, Take 8)

My last Road to 270 post is only six days old. It was written at the tail end of a brief spate of polls that showed some signs of hope for Donald Trump. Less than a week later, his convention ripple has flattened. 

Joe Bid leads the Real Clar Politics average by 7.1 points and the FiveThirtyEight polling average by 7.5 points. He has a clear lead in almost every true swing state.  In Nate Silver's model only one state is categorized as a "toss-up", which means neither candidate has a greater than 55% chance of winning.  That state is North Carolina. Mr. Silver's forecast has Joe Biden winning North Carolina 53% of the time.  The second closest race is Ohio, which Trump is currently winning in 57% of simulations.

A lot of the concern about Biden's momentum was based on a stutter-step in the 538 model.  When Trump got the slightly more favorable post-convention bounces, Biden's chances of winning dipped below 70% for a time, which changed the characterization of the race from "Biden Favored to Win" to "Biden Slightly Favored to Win."

A few days ago Nate tweeted out an important explanation of how his model works.  His mode factors time remaining quite heavily.  Polls a few months out are subject to a lot of change, and Nate balances those out by considering previous voting behavior and partisan fundamentals in each state. If you click on his Wisconsin forecast, you learn that "Right now, 56% of the forecast for North Carolina is based on polls and 44% relies on factors like demographics and past voting patterns." As the election gets closer, the polls will count more and the other factors less.  Silver summarized this effect by saying that if the election were being held that day, Biden would be about a 90% favorite to win.

So the difference between the Economist's bullish forecast and Nate's more guarded forecast is time.  As a general principal, I tend to favor Nate's logic.  But you do have to consider the specifics of this election.  A lot can go wrong in eight weeks, but Trump's biggest obstacle seems to be that the American people have firmly fixed views of him, and they tend to be negative. 

Trump will get over 40% of the vote. He might get over 45%. Because the electoral college structurally favors Republicans, that might be enough for him to win.  But so far he has tried several approaches to attacking Biden and none of them have worked. I simply do not think that he's going to be able to make up for his three years and eights months of shitty, incompetent, and corrupt governance. Trump will fight hard and he will fight dirty. But he is a the under dog, and for very good reason.

The only real news this week was that Trump's campaign may be having financial troubles.  Biden raised $364 million dollars in August.  That is more than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined to raise in August 2016.  Trump has not yet released his number for August.

I think some of the reporting on his cash woes is a bit overstated. I do not think he will have any trouble being on the air waves in the closing weeks of the election. But big Republican donors can read polls too. If they think Trump can't win, they may start diverting funds to important Senate races.

I revise my forecast slightly by giving Biden an 85% chance of winning. That is up from 83% last week and back to where I had it 3 weeks ago.  My prediction remains Biden 334, Trump 204 in the Electoral College. Nothing I have seen recently has convinced me that a single state has changed. 

I think Biden will sweep the Big 3 Rust Belt states that swung the election last time (WI, MI and PA). I also think he will win Arizona and Nebraska's 2nd congressional district. I remain cautiously optimistic that he will win Florida and I favor him slightly in North Carolina.  

The states to watch for an expanded map are, in order, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas. For now, I assume Trump will sweep them.

Forecast	Current %	Current EVs	Previous	Changes
Spider Stumbled	85.00%	334-204	83/334	Biden up 2% probability
JHK Forecasts	77.40%	334-204	79.7/335	Biden down 2% and ME-1 to Trump
270towin.com	N/a	278-169-91	278-169-91	None
Predicitit.com	57.80%	319-219	55.3/319	Biden up 2.5% probability.
Sabato Crystal Ball	N/a	268-204-66	268-204-66	None
The Economist	84.00%	335-203	84%/352	None
FiveThirtyEight	72.00%	334-204	70%/319	Biden up 2%, NC to Biden

Faint Signs of a Bounce (The Road to 270, Take 7)

This post is a day late and it will also be very brief. Since the Republican convention ended, the mood in the media has been an anxious anticipation of a tightening race. But 5 days after the Republican convention ended, we are seeing only a modest bounce for the incumbent. Biden's lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average dipped from 7.8 points to 6.2 points. It currently stands at 6.5. And Biden's chances in Nate Silver's forecast dropped slightly from a high of 73% down to 68%. It currently sits at 70%. Trump has gotten a couple fo decent polls. One poll of Michigan by a Republican pollster had him up by two. And a national poll conducted by Emerson right after the convention showed Biden's lead down to two. But the cross-tabs on that poll showed some screwy results, like Biden winning the suburbs but losing the cities. More importantly, Morning consult released a new round of battle groun polling yesterday tha showed Biden up in every swing state except North Carolina, where he was two points behind. The only state that showed significant movement was Arizona, where Biden's lead went up to 10 points. Two new national polls are out this morning, showing Joe Biden up by seven and eight points, respectively. So with both conventions behind us and Labor Day upon us, Joe Biden maintains a clear lead in national polls. He also has the upper hand in the electoral college and just announced a massive haul of $300 million dollars raised in August. His campaign is doing great. The biggest news fo the week might be that Donald Trump has embraced the notion that recent violence in Kenosha and Portland is a harbinger of things to come in Joe Biden's America. It has apparently not occurred to him or his senior staff that these events have happened in Donald Trump's America. No matter. If this gambit was going to work, we would be seeing more movement in his direction. There will be a flurry of polls in the next week or so. But for now, I remain confident that Biden is the heavy favorite. And I'm not sure what moves Trump can pull to change that dynamic. 

I. The Forecasts. I'm shaving one point of my forecast. I now give Biden and 83% chance of winning. I'm not flipping any states, so my official forecast is still Biden 319, Trump 219. Here is a look at how others see it:

II. The Paths. As the election gets in full swing, I thought it might be helpful to write a bit about what the most important states mean to the Biden campaign.

 

a. The Straightest Line. Hillary Clinton won 232 electoral votes. Her closest path to victory would have been to carry Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (11). Those three states would have gotten her to 278, but she lost each of them by less than one point. So the most obvious path for Biden is to do one point better in each of those states. 

But if something goes wrong, here is how he can make it up by winning something in the sun belt. 

b. The make-ups. 

If Biden loses Wisconsin (or Minnesota) he can make up for it by winning AZ, NC or FL.

If Biden loses Wisconsin AND Minnesota he needs to win FL or AZ AND NC. 

If Biden loses Wisconin (or Minnesota) and Michigan, he needs to win FL or AZ and NC. 

If Biden loses Michigan, he needs to win AZ, NC or FL. 

If Biden loses Michigan and Wisconin (or Minnesota), he needs to win any 2 among NC, AZ and FL. 

If Biden loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, he needs to win FL or NC AND AZ. 

If Biden loses Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, he wold need to win FL plus NC or AZ. 

c. The quirks. 

For all of the above scenarios, GA could do the job of NC. I think Biden is more likely to win NC, but this could be a year that rearranges some things. Also must note that NH could throw a monkey wrench in some of these secnarios, but it's only 4 electoral votes and I think Biden will do well there.

Just Kidding-The Road to 538, Just for Fun-Take Two.

I realized after my last post that JHK forecasts also ranks the contests by likelihood of outcome.  So I checked my rankings against their more sophisticated forecast and not surprisingly, there was a lot of similarity.

They are a little more confident than me that Biden will win Florida and (to a lesser extent) North Carolina.  I make him the modest favorite in both places but they are pretty bullish on him, especially in Florida. They give him an 82.8% chance of winning there. The scars of 2000, 2016 and especially 2018 make it impossible for me to go much higher than 60%.

Their forecast also gives Biden a shot in Alaska.  He is the heavy underdog there but at 10.7%, they give him odds roughly equal to picking a correct digit at random.  I don't see it happening for him. LBJ in 1964 is the only Democrat to ever win Alaska. And Trump's foolish drilling policies are popular there.

Here is the chart for comparison.I had to estimate their odds for some of the congressional district races in Maine and Nebraska.

Jurisdiction	Electoral Votes	Running Tally	JHK Chances of Biden Win
DC	3	3	100
Delaware	3	6	100
New York	29	35	100
California	55	90	100
Hawaii	4	94	100
Vermont	3	97	100
Massachusetts	11	108	100
Connecticut	7	115	99.9
Maryland	10	125	100
Illinois	20	145	99.9
New Jersey	14	159	100
Washington	12	171	100
Oregon	7	178	99.6
Rhode Island	4	182	100
Virginia	13	195	97.2
Colorado	9	204	96.6
New Mexico	5	209	99.4
Maine 1st CD	1	210	100
Maine	2	212	95.5
Minnesota	10	222	93.2
Nevada	6	228	90.1
New Hampshire	4	232	88.5
Michigan	16	248	92.7
Pennsylvania	20	268	87.9
Wisconsin	10	278	82.1
Arizona	11	289	73.3
Florida	29	318	82.8
North Carolina	15	333	75.1
Nebraska 2nd Cd	1	334	63 (Estimate)
Iowa	6	340	53.2
Georgia	16	356	51.9
Ohio	18	374	47.4
Maine 2nd CD	1	375	50 (Estimate)
Texas	38	413	30
Montana	3	416	5.2
South Carolina	9	425	6.8
Missouri	10	436	3.7
Indiana	11	446	4.1
Alaska	3	449	10.7
Mississippi	6	455	2.8
Kansas	6	461	1.8
Nebraska	2	463	0.2
Nebraska 3rd CD	1	464	0
Nebraska 1st CD	1	465	0
Tennessee	11	476	0.1
Louisiana	8	484	1
South Dakota	3	487	0.1
Utah	6	493	0.1
Alabama	9	502	0
Kentucky	8	510	0
Oklahoma	7	517	0
Arkansas	6	523	0
Idaho	4	527	0
North Dakota	3	530	0
Wyoming	3	533	0
West Virginia	5	538	0