The Election Reduced to One Chart.

Today is Labor Day, the traditional beginning of the general election season. I have no changes to make to my previous forecast of Harris winning 292 Electoral Votes to 246 for Trump.   (This means Harris winning Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia while Trump wins Arizona and North Carolina.)

I. Polls, Betting Markets, Forecasts and Wishes.

Harris holds a modest lead in most national polls. Five Thirty Eight, the Economist and Nate Silver have up by about three and a half points. Real Clear Politics has her up just under two points. 

The Prediction Markets are very close. Predictit favors Harris slightly (54 cents to 49 cents) and Polymarket favors Trump slightly. (50% to 47%)

Most of the forecasts favor Harris by narrow margins. Five Thirty Eight has her winning 57 percent of the time. The Economist 52 percent of the time. Nate Silver has Trump winning something like 52 percent of the time but he has all but admitted that his model is suppressing Harris' vote too much because it's within two weeks of the DNC. (Put differently, she didn't get as large of a post-convention bounce than his model expected.)

So, you know.....close.

I for one am slightly more optimistic than these models. I think Harris has about a 65 percent chance of winning. I am of course biased in her favor. I want her to win. But the reasons for my optimism is that her personal approval ratings are about 10 points better than Trump's. That will make it difficult for him to change minds in his favor. 

Right now the median undecided voter is a normie who is sick of Trump's shtick. I believe they will be willing to turn things over to the next generation. Trump's job, as cynical as this sounds is, is to make that person afraid to turn things over to Kamala Harris. I think his attacks will get uglier over time but I don't think it will work on enough people for him to win.

He does not have the personal charisma, political skill, fund raising or even the personal energy to make that happen. He is old and declining. It shows more and more when he speaks and it is reflected in the less robust campaign schedule that he has been keeping compared to four and eight years ago. 

But campaigns are there to be won and stranger things have happened. A bit of bad news can always hurt the incumbent party and Harr is not yet running away with this thing. 

II. The Electoral Math.

We pretty much know what the result will be in 43 states and the District of Columbia. If we also assume that Harris will win Nebraska's 2nd congressional district and Trump will win Maine's 2nd congressional district, we can assume that the election starts with 226 electoral votes in the Democratic column and 219 in the Republican column.

That leaves seven swing states to decide the contest. There is an easy way to divide them-Northern and Southern. The three Northern swing states were all won by Biden last time and they generally poll to the left of the four Southern swing states.

If Harris wins all three Northern swing states, she will hit the magic number of 270 electoral votes. If she loses any of these states she will have to make up for it by winning a matching number of electoral votes in the southern part of the map.

Here's a way to think of it.  

1. Harris is expected to win 226 votes in reliably blue states.

2. She needs 44 more Electoral Votes to get to 270.

3. The quickest way to do that is to win the three Northern Swing States-Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Pennsylvania (19). That puts her on exactly 270.

4. For every electoral vote she loses in the Northern Swing States, she must make up for them by winning that same number in a Southern Swing State: Georgia (16), North Carolina (16), Arizona (11) and Nevada (6).

Here a chart for what combinations of Southern Swing States would make up for losing one or more of the Northern Swing States.

That is the scorecard you need for election night. As the weeks progress, I'm sure I'll update my expectations. But the math on getting to 270 is pretty simple here. Harris needs to rebuild the Blue Wall of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania or patch any cracks in it with an equal number of Electoral Votes from Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada.

PS: I want to plug a new election forecaster for this cycle. He goes by Theo and I came across him on Twitter. (His Twitter handle is @ctolga_ )  

He has built a neat and visually appealing website for his forecast. His fore cast is considerably more optimistic than the older established forecasts. But I have a hunch that those forecasts are going to trend in his directions as the weeks go by.  Here is the link to his website:

https://theo-forecast.github.io/

2024 Begins (Iowa Caucuses)

 Tonight some modest number of Iowans will brave sub zero temperatures and lumber their way to fire houses and gymnasiums to begin the formal process of picking the 2024 Republican presidential nominee. His name is Donald Trump.

But four other bozos are trying to upset him. So let's play along. Here is my official prediction for tonight:

      Trump 53%

      Haley 21%

      DeSantis 20%

      Ramaswamy: 5%

      Hutchinson: 1%.

So there will be something to watch for tonight-the battle for second place. If DeSantis doesn't win second, he will have to give some consideration to dropping out. But I suspect he will stay around for awhile. Hutchinson will probably drop out tonight. Ramaswamy has nothing better to do with his time.

So what happens next?

New Hampshire, of course. There have been some polls that showed NH being more competitive than Iowa. If you squint, you can convince yourself that Nikki Haley will make it close. Maybe only lose by ten points. New Hampshire does have a history of rejecting Iowa's winner. And there will be some number of Democrats who choose to vote for her since the Democratic primary is not sanctioned by the party and Joe Biden isn't even on the ballot there.

 But Trump's going to win. Probably by closer to 20 points than to ten.

Then the race turns to South Carolina. Nikki MUST win there to even pretend she can beat Trump. If she loses her home state, (and I expect she will), then she'll be out of the race promptly.

In a normal year, there wouldn't be any candidates left to run against Trump. But, this year, there's this other thing.

This Other Thing.

Donald Trump is facing four separate criminal trials: one in New York that no one cares about, one in Florida that the judge is set on delaying as much as possible, one in Georgia that is complicated by the number of co-defendants and one in Washington DC that is set to being on March 4th.

I think there's a chance that one or more Republicans will stay in the race even after getting drubbed in the early primaries because they will know that chaos is likely to come and they will want to grab as many delegates as possible before that happens.

Trump is desperate to get this trial delayed. And he might succeed. But I think it will go, if not on March 4th than sometime before May. If that trial goes, he is very likely to be convicted of at least one felony. That would normally get him him thrown of the Republican ticket but the Republican party in 2024 is anything but normal. Trump will appeal his conviction and cry foul, as he always does when he faces a setback. By April 2nd, more than 3/4 of the delegates will have been awarded but a conviction would leave at least some doubt on the identity of the nominee. 

One or the other-an acquittal or a persistent march through to the required delegate number, Donald Trump will be the nominee. He will not get out of the race gracefully. He controls the party apparatus thoroughly enough he will ward off any legal or technical challenges.

I suspect that no later than June 1st, the world will realize that Donald J. Trump will be the Republican nominee for President on Election Day, 2024. 

Meanwhile....

Meanwhile Joe Biden will safely, surely move his way through the primaries. Dean Phillips might do some numbers in New Hampshire, since Biden's name isn't on the ballot. But that won't move the needle and Joe Biden will vacuum up most of the delegates elsewhere. By May, the electorate will finally accept what has been obvious to anyone since November of 2020-Joe Biden will be the Democratic Nominee for President in 2024.

He certainly deserves to be. He has been a great president, both domestically and on foreign policy. He got important and productive legislation passed at home. And he has stood for America's commitment to Democracy and our alliances abroad. It's been over two years since an American service member lost their life in foreign combat. But NATO is stronger than ever. Russia looks week and despite some caterwauling from the Tiktokigentsia, he made the right decision to support Israel's right to defend itself against the brutality unleashed by Hamas on October 7th.

And oh yeah, a year ago most economists thought we would be in a recession by now. We ain't. In fact, the economy is growing great, job growth has been incredible and real wages are up. If this is news to you, you need better news sources. Because the media narrative has been quite different and the zeitgeist of the electorate seems to be "Economy Good when Gas Prices Low" which is exceptionally stupid.

The General.

Biden's success does not assure him of an easy election. His age is a negative. The public is weary of the situations in Ukraine and Israel. Many voters are not sophisticated enough to understand that Biden's policies have been principled and productive. They just want the world to be safe and normal, as long as it doesn't cost them anything to achieve that.

But sometime this summer, or early fall, the American people will realize that they have only two choices for President. I expect that gradual realization to favor Joe Biden. Because the other choice is a raging doofus. For all the talk of Joe Biden's age, Donald Trump seems to be older, more frail and in generally bad health. He's also nuts. Like, really, really nuts. Talk to the Pepsi machine at the laundromat nuts.

That doesn't mean he can't win. In fact he has a plan to do just that. His job is to convince people that every problem in the world is Joe Biden's fault. His biggest assets are the migrants who are showing up at the border every day and being promptly bussed to cities that Trump wants to make look bad. Those cities are legitimately straining at the burden. I doubt that House Republicans will agree to any package of compromises that allow improvement in this situation. (To be clear, yes I believe the Republican party is intentionally setting out to let many thousands of poor people make their way to this country so they can be dumped out on the street and make Joe Biden look bad. If this works, the first people to suffer will be those very unfortunates who are currently being used as pawns in this game.)

This Shit Can Work.

Four Years Ago when I did my first post about that election, I declared the race a dead heat. I said Biden lead in 268 electoral votes and Trump in 260. My best guess was that Wisconsin would determine the winner. That was before COVID-19. By April I said that Biden was the modest favorite to win. 

That's about where I am right now. It's customary to say something about "if the election were held today." But the election is not being held today or a week from now. A large swathe of the electorate still thinks that a bunch of farmers in Iowa tonight and another bunch of Boston suburbanites will get together this month to hand them choice more palatable than Biden and Trump. But that will not happen.

Both parties are sticking with their choice from last time. Neither party thinks that is ideal, but both think it is better than the alternatives. For Democrats, they have to run on Biden's record. Not nominating him would make that suspect. And incumbency is powerful while competitive primaries are usually fatal for the incumbent party. For Republicans, the majority of their membership simply love Trump for what he represents a rich guy who is proud of his own ignorance. He also gives legitimacy to their prejudices and simplistic solutions.

This campaign will be ugly. Trump will try to make Americans afraid of immigrants and foreign allies and taxes and math. Biden will beat the drums of abortion rights, prosperity and the importance of remaining committed to democracy here and abroad.

Biden is vulnerable, as is every incumbent to world events. A terrorist attack, a disruption of shipping lanes or a huge setback in Ukraine would make him look weak and his foreign policy look like a failure.

I'll do my first official forecast after the first few primaries. But if I had to bet right now, Biden will win the popular vote by three or four points. I don't see him expanding the electoral map. Maine's 2nd congressional district and North Carolina are his only really plausible pickup opportunities. He very well could love Georgia and/or Arizona. Some think Nevada will go red, but I think Trump's negatives will keep that home. Let's say Biden 293, Trump 245. 

Democracy (The Road to 270, Take 10)

 I.  The Horse Race.

We have seen another week of very little movement in the polls. Joe Biden led the RCP average by 6.8 points one week ago and he leads it by 6.6 points tonight. Biden leads the 538.com average by 6.9 points, virtually changed from 7.0 points last week.  The only slight movement in these averages was caused by an outlier Rasmussen poll that showed Trump up by one. Everybody else has Biden up somewhere between six and nine points.

At the state level, there has been some modest tightening in Pennsylvania but nothing that will cause me to change any predictions.  

Okay, now to the real news of the week-the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

II.  Democracy.

Ruth Bader-Ginsburg died on Friday evening, aged 87.  The death of a SCOTUS justice is always major news, but the proximity to the election and the expected nomination of someone at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum made this one a huge story.  Polling indicates that the American people think the nomination should be filled by the winner of the looming presidential election. Facts on the ground indicate that this will not deter the Republican party from cramming through someone in the six short weeks they have to play with.

The most tiresome subject in politics is hypocrisy but a few words must be spared here for the colossal flip-flip that Republicans have made from 2016 in the aftermath of Antonin Scalia's passing. That event caused them to collectively pull a precedent out of their own ass and say that a vacancy that opens in a presidential election year can not be filled until after the election.

That precedent went right back up their ass this week in record time. The Republicans are goin to put a 6th Federalist on the bench because "fuck you, pay me" is the most subtle, nuanced idea they are capable of believing in.

I'm a moderate guy. I'm an institutionalist. I was stupid enough to think that some Republicans in 2016 would insist on giving Obama's nominee a hearing. But even II am not surprised that that they are pulling this move. They exist to exert power and they think this helps rally their base. You have to remember that a group of (mostly) men who are willing to surrender their self-respect to licking Donald Trump's shoes are not goin to be concerned with fair-play or niceties.

Despite the seemingly inevitable outcome of this process, let's take a minute to measure how bad this is for the country.  Republicans have been justifying their flip-flop, to the extent they bother explaining themselves to anyone, by saying that the American people have chosen them to make these decisions.  Let's take a look at the numbers behind this claim.

This coming election is the last one before I turn 50. In my whole voting life, Republicans have won the popular vote exactly once.  The longest serving justice at the moment is Clarence Thomas.  He was nominated by George H.W. Bush in 1991.  If you add up all of the presidential elections since Bush's victory in 1988, Democrats have received 443.5 million votes. Republicans have received 416.5 million.  That's a 27 million vote deficit.  

As for the senate, it is true that the Republicans held on to the majority in the 2018 election by winning races against incumbents in Indiana, Florida, Missouri and South Dakota. But that doesn't tell the whole story of the 100 senators in that once august chamber.  If you add up the votes from the last 3 cycles of elections, that is from the last time that every seat was up in a regularly scheduled election, you get an aggregate result of 124.5 million votes for the 47 Democrats against only 99.7 million votes for the 53 Republicans. 

The senate is an inherently non-democratic institution. Creating it was part of the grand bargain between large and small states. This favors Republicans in ways that are not subtle. They currently control 53 percent of the seats after getting only 44 percent of the votes in the elections for those seats.

At least we can say the House of Representatives represents the will of the people, as it was designed to do.  In the most recent regular House Election, Democrats got 60.6 million votes and the Republicans only got 50.9 million.  The Democrats do have a majority in the house, although the 53.4 percent of seats they hold slightly undercounts the 54.3% of the two-party vote they got last time.  And, of course, the House plays no role in confirming Supreme Court Justices.

This is not sustainable.  The Democratic party have gotten over 54% of the votes during the most recent round of elections for President, Senate and the House.  Those numbers are likely to be worse after November third, where I expect the Democrats to take back the White House and they are slightly favored to win control of the senate. But soon the Supreme Court will have six dogged conservatives and only three Democrats, none of whom are as consistently liberal as the late lamented RBG.

There are two specks of hope on the horizon. RBG's passing led to an avalanche of donations to Democratic candidates over the weekend.  No Democratic candidate for senate with a serious chance of winning will have trouble getting the word out in the closing weeks. And Joe Biden has an apparently commanding cash lead over the idiotic incumbent he must defeat.

III.  The Forecasts.

The professionals barely budged this week-again. Biden gained 1% chance of winning in both the 538 and Economist forecasts.  He slid a point in the Neutral Vote and JHK forecasts. 

Trump did have some good news in the state level betting markets this week.  Predictit.com went a little nuts after the RBG news and flipped both NC and FL from Biden to Trump. We haven't really seen any polls to justify that movement, but the speculation seems to be that a Supreme Court Confirmation battle will rally the base to Trump.  It's not a crazy idea, but I will wait to see polling evidence that the counter-effect among Dem voters isn't greater.

I will trim 1% of my confidence in Biden winning. I now give him an 84% chance of winning.  The weeks in polls was fine but his lead is better described as stable than growing. With the lead he has, that's probably enough. But we're not in the zone where we should be overly confident.

IV. Taxonomy, Again.

Every time the numbers move slightly, I start to think of the electoral map in different ways. This is how I can best describe my current expectations.

I am confident that Biden will win. But the size of the outcome depends on the following:

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 GA. 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 is where he recreates 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.

Third General Election Forecast: Clinton 50, Trump 43, Johnson 4, Stein 2, McMullin 1 (Electoral College Clinton 359, Trump 179)

I did my first forecast before the conventions.  I stood pat with that prediction until three weeks ago, when Trump's enduring poll surge forced me to modify a 50-44 Clinton result just slightly to Clinton winning 49-45. Since then, we've had 3 debates and a never ending string of dumpster fires for the Republican ticket have tilted the race back in Hillary's favor. I am therefore adjusting my projection back toward the Democratic nominee. I now project Clinton to win 50 percent of the vote to Trump's 43 percent. One new wrinkle: I think Evan McMullin will get one percent of the vote. With a little bit of luck he could catch Jill Stein for 4th place.

Forecast	Popular	Electoral	Changes
First (July 10th)	Clinton 50, Trump 44, Johnson 4, Stein 2.	Clinton 348-190	(From 2012) Clinton wins NC and NE-2
Second (Sep 26th)	Clinton 49, Trump 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2	Clinton 340-198	Trump wins IA, NE-2 & ME-2
Third (October 16th)	Clinton 50, Trump 43, Johnson 4, Stein 2, McMullin 1	Clinton 359-179	Clinton wins IA, NE-2, ME-2 & Arizona

Specific Changes.

For the second time I'm updating only to move a few electoral college votes in one direction. In fact the four changes in this update cancel out the three changes from the first. Here are my thoughts on each:

Iowa and Maine 2nd District: These are places that Obama won twice and I don't think Trump is going to ouperform Romney anywhere. Maine's 2nd district is mostly white and rural, so that's probalby his best pickup opportunity but I think his oafish behavior has turned off enough people to prevent him doing better than Romney even there. This behavior simply does not fly in Iowa.  He will lose for the same reason that he lost the caucuses there: there is a more palatable alternative.

Nebraska 2nd district:  My hunch is that this will be be the closest jurisdiction on election night. Warren Buffet is fighting hard for Hillary there and I think she will out perform Obama in 2012, when he lost it but probably fare worse then 2008 when he won it.  Nate Silver gives Trump 51% of winning it.  I think Hillary will finish strong, so I'm tipping this over to him.

Arizona: This would be a significant pickup for Hillary. It's only voted for a Democrat once in the last 68 years. But the states Latino population is booming and Hillary is putting resources there, something that Obama never did. (In part because it was McCain's home state.)  I think the state has progressed and will flip blue.  

Four Scenarios for Election Night.

In a close election the battle grounds would be Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida.  This is not shaping up to be a close election. THe battlegrounds are instead Arizona, Iowa and Georgia.  But how big will the margin be?  I think the race will take one of 4 paths. 

1. Clinton wins by more than Obama's 2008 Margin.  Barack Obama won the popular vote in 2008 by nearly 10 million votes. That translated to 7.36% and was good enough for 365 electoral votes.  I think Hillary has a tough rode to get to 365.  She should win all 332 of Obama's 2012 states plust North Carolina. That gets her to 348.  NE-2 and Arizona only get her to 360. (Note: the electoral college has been updated since the 20120 census, which tilted it a few points toward the Red, because Illinois, New York and Pennsylania all lost electors.)  To get past 360, she would need to add a true upset.  Georgia and or Utah would do the trick. So would Missouri.  Montana would only get her to 363. A sweep of all these states would get her to 395.  I think that's very unlikely.  Chances of Hillary winning with 365 or more electoral votes?  About 10%.

2. Clinton wins by less than Obama's 2008 margin but more than 2012.

Obama was re-elected by a margin roughly 1/2 the size of his first win.  He won the popular vote by just over five million votes, which worked out to 3.86% and 332 electoral votes  I think Hillary is very likely to win North Carolina and is only really needs to worry about Iowa and Maine's second district. If she wins NC but loses those 2, she still comes out ahead of Obama in 2012, gaining 15 but losing 7. That would be 340-198.  Chances of Hillary winning 333-364?  About 60%.

3.  Clinton Wins an Election Closer than 2012.

This would take a substantial shift towards Trump.  He presently seems incapable of making that happen, but outside events could intervene.  If Trump defends NC, he will probably add Iowa and ME-2 to Romney's pile.  That gets Hillary down to 325.  Trump might also win Ohio and Florida under these circumstances. That would get Hillary down to 278.  Chances of  Hillary winning with 270-332?  About 20%.

4. Trump Wins, Barely.

In my second forecast I went to some pains to describe Trump's likeliest path to 270.  That involves

1. Defending NC to keep Romney's 206 votes.

2. Add Iowa and ME-2. (213)

3. Add Ohio (231)

4. Add Florida (260)

5. Add Nevada (266)

6. Add New Hampshire (270)

That's still his likeliest path, but Nevada and New Hampshire seem to be trending towards Clinton in a big way. To replace those 10 votes, he would need a substantial upset in a largish blue state.  Michigan, Wisconsin and (of course) Pennsylania would do the trick. Nate Silver gives Trump about a 10 percent chance in PA and WI, slightly less in MI.  Chances of keeping Hillary below 270?  Less than 10%.

Enter McMullin.

Evan McMullin has emerged as a sane alternative for conservatives who are repulsed by Trump.  He is only on the ballot in 11 states but that doesn't really matter because he's only campaigning in Utah. He is running a de facto favorite son campaign, albeit in a state that is no longer his home. (He was born in Utah but raised in Washington State.)  He is a Mormon and a BYU alum.  His appeal is obvious especially to social consservatives that don't want to vote for a brigand like Trump but are reluctant to vote for the Democrat or Libertarian.

Some recent polls have him getting around 20% of the vote in Utah.  With a little luck he could make a 3 way race.  He is selling a fantasy scenario of winning Utah withe around 500,000 votes and somehow depriving Hillary of 270 electoral college votes.  The race would then go the House of Representatives, where he would have to persuade 26 delegations to vote for him.  This will not happen as it would require asking Republicans to ignore about 50 million votes case for its nominee in favor of a guy who probably will get around one million votes.

But Trump has turned off a lot of voters. There are a lot of people do not want to tell their kids and grandkids that they voted for a monster over the first female candidate for president. One optin is to lie, the other is to indulge McMullin's fantasy. At least some public intellectuals on the right are going to do just that.  With some luck, he could lap Jill Stein and the Green Party, especially if Hillary finishes strong and convincnes enough young people not to waste their votes on the profoundly unqualified Jill Stein.

Second General Election Forecast: Hillary 49, Trump 45, Johnson 4, Stein 2 (Electoral College 340-198)

I published my first general election forecast on July 10th. I thought I would be publishing a new forecast every two weeks or so.  But it's been over 2 months and I haven't updated it before now.  Simply put, I didn't think the election had changed much.  Of course the polls went up and down a few points, but I stuck with my fundamental premise that this election is likely to be similar to 2012. Trump has polled better than expected over the past few weeks and the race is definitely closer than I expected it to be.  It's time to update the projection accordingly.

Today seemed the perfect day for an updated forecast.  The first debate is tonight and we will know a lot more about this election 10 hours from now.  Donald Trump has not done a one-on-one debate yet and I'm not sure how the format will suit his temperament.  But he is first and foremost a TV star and I don't expect any really dramatic outbursts or stunts. He will be his usual annoying, stupid, childish self. But he won't call her a vulgar name or set the podium on fire.

Hillary will be extremely well-prepared and she will hit him on a variety of predictable fronts: his horrible record of offensive comments about women, his racist immigration policies and his penchant for ignoring the constitutional limits of federal authority.  I think that Trump's main counter-attacks will focus on Hillary being implicitly corrupt because she is an insider and that she represents a continuation of Obama's foreign policies, which he will call weak.  (We will hear that word out of Trump a lot.  Hillary/Obama = weak, Trump = strong and smart.)

Presidential debates are more about impressions than fine points of policy.  In 2000 Gore dusted W. on substance, but his bracing exasperation with the stupidity of his opponent came off as arrogant.  Al Gore over-corrected in the next two debates and came across as inauthentic.  Enough people put faith in the idea that a governor of Texas and son of a likable president couldn't really be that dumb while it was easy to believe that a politician could be phony.  Sixteen years later, we are still paying for that price.

There will be some temptation for Hillary to bait Trump into a fight. It might happen organically, and that will be good for her.  But I don't think she should focus on provoking that responses.  She needs to make the case for herself and to point out the shallow stupidity of his ideas. Trump will want to lash out at her in personal terms, but he has to be careful with that.  He can drop a "Crooked Hillary" or two, but he could really hurt himself by bringing up Monica Lewinsky or other skeletons of  the right wing nutosphere.   I think he will avoid any of the nightmare scenarios that have probably kept Kelly Anne Conway up at night.

Why I'm confident.

Trump's relatively strong polling has endured for several weeks now.  He definitely walks on to that stage tonight believing that he will win on November 8th.  There's plenty of empirical data to support the idea that he might.  But the choice between two viable candidates will be very clear tonight. And I still believe that she will win this race.

I think the polling has been distorted, for lack of a better word, by Gary Johnson.  After tonight people who don't want to vote Hillary will begin to admit that Trump is simply unacceptable and their own personal grievances against what Clinton represents do not justify taking a chance on four years of Trump. Nate Silver's model says that if the election were held today, Gary Johnson would get 8.1% of the vote. His forecasts of November 8th have that number receding to 6 or 7%.  I think it will recede more than that.  I'm putting his number at 4%.

Jill Stein will benefit from a bunch of people too young to remember 2000 and too stupid to accept the idea that one candidate thinks global warming is a hoax and that if that candidate wins he will appoint the next head of the EPA. I hope that number falls below one percent but I think it will be closer to 2 percent.


Specific Changes.

I am making three Electoral College changes from my first forecast.  I do not think Hillary will pick off Nebraska's second congressional district.  And I think she will lose Iowa.  I also think Trump will pick of Maine's second congressional district, which is overwhelmingly white and rural. That is a gain of eight electoral votes from my first forecast.

But I want to acknowledge that this race could become very, very close.  If the election were held today, Trump would do better than Romney.  He would win Ohio and Nevada and if he also won Florida, it would put the electoral college at Hillary 279, Trump 259.  That's really damn close.

But the election is not today and I still think we will move back towards our 2008 and 2012 political maps. Trump deserves credit for keeping overwhelming percentages of his party in the fold. (Republicans in turn deserve a lot of shame for that very same fact.)  A return toward the prevailing political coalitions favors Hillary, on balance. I think she will do better on November 8th than she is doing on September 26th.

If Things Get Worse.
North Carolina is a a pure toss-up, just as it was 4 years ago.  I think the bathroom bill  has made the state a national joke and that will motivate enough progressives to show up in big numbers but the result will be very close.  Trump also could win Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire and Florida.  The only good  news is that he probably has to win all of them to take the White House.

Trump's best route to 270 looks like this:

1. Defend North Carolina to retain all 206 of Romney's electoral votes.
2. Pick up Maine's 2nd congressional district. (207)
3. Add six for Iowa (213)
4. Add 18 from Ohio (231)
5. Add 4 from New Hampshire (235)
6. Add six from Nevada (241)
7. Add 29 from Florida (270)

The path is there.  Hillary's job tonight is to prove to everyone why the destination is so dangerous. With any luck, Donald will do that for her.

Good News, Hillary (I Think)

Only three presidents have been elected without benefit of having won the New Hampshire primary: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  So the only three presidents to pull of this feat are the last three presidents. It looks very likely that that streak will run to four now that the 2016 New Hampshire Primaries were won by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.


I.  The Big Picture: Hillary is More Likely Than Not to be the Next President.

Bernie beat Hillary lost by 22 points.  That is an ass-whopping and coming off of their virtual tie in Iowa, there is much reason for Sanders to be encouraged.  The next states to vote for the Democrats are Nevada, which should be very close and South Carolina, which Hillary is expected to win comfortably. The early states are likely to result in two ties and two blowouts in opposite directions.

Hillary is likely to survive that.  The predictions market at predictwise.com gives here an 82% chance of being the nominee. And they give the Democratic nominee a 61% chance of winning the general election.  If you multiply those possibilities, she has a 50.002% chance of being the next elected president of the United States.

I like her chances even better than that. The theory of my 2016 posts has been that the prediction markets are underestimating the Democrats' prospects.  Instead of being a 60% favorite, I think the Democratic nominee should be more like a 2 to 1 favorite at about 66%.  I think the market is about right on her being the nominee, so .82 *. 67 is right about 55 percent. But a lot has to happen before then and we have two very interesting races unfolding for the weeks and months ahead.

So here's some fun with math.  Here are the probabilities of each candidate becoming president, based solely on the two prediction markets on predictwise.com:

Clinton 51%, Trump 22%, Sanders 10%, Rubio 9% Cruz 6%, Bush 5%, Kasich 1%.

And here are the most likely candidate match-ups for the general election:

Match-up Probability	Clinton	Sanders
Trump vs.....	39.0%	8.0%
Rubio  vs....	18.3%	3.7%
Cruz    vs....	13.3%	2.7%
Bush	10.0%	2.0%
Kasich	1.7%	0.3%

II.   The GOP State of the Race.

Trump dominated New Hampshire. Before the primary I was not sure if he could get over 30% of the vote. He blew that away with 35.3%.  He more than doubled his nearest competitor, John Kasich. Kasich had a great night too, but only got 16% of the vote in a state that he campaigned in almost full time. Ted Cruz also had reason to be happy with a third place finish.

Perhaps the most significant result is that Jeb Bush beat out Marco Rubio for 4th place by just over 1,000 votes. I don't think Jeb would have dropped out if he finished 5th, but the 5th place finish cemented the image of Rubio coming off the rails because of his terrible debate performance.

South Carolina will decide a lot for the Republicans. Trump is very likely to win and that will mean that his appeal is not just a quirk of New Hampshire. Cruz seems like a lock to finish second, but if Rubio somehow passes him, then the narrative will be that he overcame his New Hampshire slip up. He will then head into Nevada and Super Tuesday with some momentum.

But Jeb Bush is the most interesting story.  He did terribly in Iowa and middling in New Hampshire. Between the two states he has received less than nine percent of the votes. But he is doubling-down on this effort and has recruited his brother George W. Bush to record commercials and campaign for him. This is a classic short-term decision based on W's inexplicably high approval ratings among South Carolina Republican voters.  So they seem to think he can be of help in the SC primary. But who is really persuaded by learning that a candidate is supported by his sibling?  And if Bush somehow does well enough in SC to continue his campaign and be nominated, those commercials will just be used against him by the Democrats. So yes, a Bush has once again committed to a strategy without contemplating an exit strategy.


III.  My Updated Forecast.

I remain bullish on Rubio, relative to the predictions market.  But I think this has now become a pretty close race between Trump, Cruz and Rubio.  Kasich is also in better shape because I think he benefits from Rubio's stumble.  I give Bush a 5% chance mostly because he has the resources to compete.

This chart lists some relevant numbers for the Republican race. The IA&NH column reflects the share of each candidate's votes among the remaining candidates. (Votes for Paul, Huckabee, etc are not included in the math.)  The Predictwise column is their current marketshare to be the nominee.  The last two columns refer to my personal forecast. The yellow column reflects where it was before New Hampshire and the orange is my current forecast.