Today We Synthesize (The Road to 270, Take 13)

 Joe Biden is winning by ten points. Some polls say nine, some say 12. It averages out to right about ten. There are three weeks and one day to go until the election. In the history of modern polling, the biggest swing  during the last three weeks was seven points, which happened in 1980 and again in 1992. Both of those large swings related to the polling of a major third party candidate.

At this point in 1980 Ronald Reagan led incumbent Jimmy Carter by just three points. Then he performed well in his only debate with President Carter. Support for John Anderson, a moderate Republican member of  congress collapsed after the debate and Reagan won by ten. 

At this point in 1992, Bill Clinton led incumbent president George H.W. Bush by about 12 points. On election night, he won handily. But Ross Perot far exceeded expectations, taking 19 percent of the vote. Clinton won the popular vote by just five points, but cruised in the Electoral College, 370 to 168.

No such cavalry is coming for Donald Trump.  Joe Biden is now getting over 50 percent in most national polls. He has polled as high as 55 percent in an ABC/Washington Post poll a few days ago. Third party candidates are lucky to break one percent each or three percent in the aggregate. They will probably get some of the undecided voters, but not enough to dramatically move the popular vote.

Donald Trump is unpopular, incompetent and corrupt. He continues to mismanage a raging pandemic and refuses to make it better by unambiguously encouraging people to wear a mask. Even three nights in a hospital could not convince him to take this seriously.

Polls, forecasts and the betting markets moved toward Biden after the first debate and after the Vice-presidential debate. The second debate has been cancelled and the third debate is in doubt. Ten million people have already voted and there are lots of indications that while the Biden campaign is flush with cash, the Trump team is taking down ads in what should have been swing states. A week from now we might know that Trump's . The election is not over but we are in the eight inning, he is down by several runs and the lengthening shadows will only make it harder for him to hit.

Still, ten or 12 percent is not zero. Let's look at where things stand and where they might move in the coming weeks. We do things in tiers on this web site, so I have created a handy color-coded guide to understand how the race might move.  We'll start with the worst scenarios and move on to happier times.

Note: All prices/margins are for Biden/Democrat.

State	Elect Votes	2016 Margin	Predictit Price	538 Margin	538 %
New Hampshire	4	0.37%	80	9.3	84
Nevada	6	2.42%	80	7.1	87
Minnesota	6	1.51%	80	8.4	91
Michigan	16	-0.22	76	11.9	91
Pennsylvania	20	-0.72%	70	6.5	87
Wisconsin	10	-0.76%	73	6.5	85
Nebraska-2	1	-2.00%	N/a	4.8	76
Florida	29	-1.19%	58	3.8	72
Arizona	11	-3.50%	54	2.9	67
North Carolina	15	-3.66%	56	2.1	63
Georgia	16	-5.10%	43	-0.6	46
Ohio	18	-8.07%	42	0.5	53
Iowa	6	-9.41%	41	-0.9	45
Maine-2	1	-10.29%	N/a	-0.7	47
Texas	38	-8.98%	30	-3.2	31
Alaska	3	-14.73%	20	-6.8	23
South Carolina	3	-14.27%	16	-6.7	16
Montana	3	-20.23%	13	-10.3	11

I.  The Taxonomy Down the Stretch.

A. The Nightmare scenario: Biden Plays Defense.

It used to be an axiom of presidential politics that the incumbent could lose close or lose big, but they only won big. In the 20th century only Woodrow Wilson was re-elected in a closer election than his first. George Bush won two very narrow victories and Barack Obama won fewer electoral votes (332) in 2012 than he did in 2008 (365). And it is safe to rule out a Trump landslide. Nate Silver still gives him a 13 percent chance of winning but only about a five percent chance of winning all of his 2016 states and adding more.

The polls and the markets agree that Biden doesn't have much to worry about in the states that Hillary Clinton won last time. But if things shift toward Trump for some godforsaken reason, he could try to win New Hampshire, Minnesota or Nevada. 

B. The Tight Scenario: The Rust Belt Is Close.

We all remember how angry we were at Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016. If the election was going to be close this time, this is where the most intense campaigning was going to happen. And no one will relax until these states are called for Biden on November 3rd but right now it looks like he will win all of them. And that would be enough for Biden to win the election with 279 electoral votes or 280 if he also adds Nebraska's second congressional district.

C. The Good Scenario: Sun Belt States.

The Rust Belt is likely to be the tipping point for the election outcome but the sun belt might decide whether it was a close election or a comfortable one. I am personally most confident in flipping Arizona, but the data suggests that Florida will be a better state for Biden. And if he's cruising there, he probably adds North Carolina too. 

This gets Biden up to 335. If I had to place a bet today, this is where I think the election ends up.

D. The Great Scenario: The Map Expands.

Ohio and Iowa were the Obama states that swung towards Trump by such a large margin that they were not competitive by the end. I still favor Trump in both of them, but the polls do suggest they will be close. At the moment, Nate thinks Biden will win Ohio by a  half point and lose Iowa by less than a point.

Biden's best chance of carrying a state that Obama never won is Georgia. Nate Silver rates it a toss-up with Trump winning 54% of the time in his simulations.  

These three states will determine if the election is perceived as close or not. If Biden sweeps them, some will call it a landslide. If Iowa and Ohio return to the fold, Biden will have recreated the Obama coalition, save Mike Pence's Indiana. Replacing it with Indiana would be quite the feat.

E. The Dream Scenario: A Blue Texas

I still have a hard time believing it, but Texas is in play. Nate favors Trump by about three points. He gives Biden a 31% chance of winning-a higher number than he gave Trump winning the White House last time. There is also a semi-competitive senate race and Biden is spending money there. 

F. The Blow Out Scenario.

There is a huge gap between Texas and the next most competitive state. The next state up for Biden in 538's forecast is South Carolina. But Biden only has a 16% chance of winning there. Betting markets and the JHK forecast give it very similar numbers. I doubt this will happen, but we'll keep an eye on it for now.

Alaska has comparable numbers, but it is historically much tougher to poll than the lower 48. 

My choice for a dark horse continues to be Montana. Nate only gives Biden an 11% chance there but I have this hunch. (Full disclosure-the hunch is that MT will be close, not that Biden will win.)

II. The Forecasts.

1. FiveThirtyEight. Biden is at 87 percent, up from 81 percent a week ago. Moreover, Nate is on Twitter explaining that his forecast assumes the race will tighten but the day to day events on the trail are undermining that assumption. Put differently, Trump is blowing his escape routes, one after another. This week he pissed off Dr. Fauci and tonight he went back on the campaign trail to host a crowded rally despite still being positive for COVID-19.

2. The Economist. The most aggressive forecast in the field inches up again-moving Biden up to 91% from 90% a week ago. No states moved this week, so he is still with me in forecasting a 334-204 result. 

3. Sabato Crystal Ball. Biden 290, Trump 248. This week he moved Arizona from toss-up to lean Biden. His forecast is always cautious and he still has five states as toss-ups. 

4. 270toWin. Biden 290, Trump 248.  Moves Arizona and NE-2 from toss-up to lean Biden.

5. JHK Forecasts. Biden 87.7%, up from 83.9%  They also have Biden slightly favored in Iowa, Georgia and Ohio. If he were to sweep those states, the final tally would be Biden 375, Trump 164. But Biden is not more than a 55% chance to win in any of the those three states, so it might be closer than that. 

6. Plural Vote. Biden 74% of winning, Biden 323, Trump 135.  They have Trump slightly favored in Arizona.)  I'm starting to think he gives too much weight to internet search data, but maybe he is on to something.

7. Betting Markets. Predictit.com gives Biden 61.1%, up slightly from last week's 61.5%. The other markets, which do not cap the amount you can bet on a race favor Biden by roughly two to one.  I expect that number to stay stable for the next week or so, but to shift in the last two weeks as Trump runs out of time to close the gap.

8. SpiderStumbled.

I leave Biden where I had him last week-91%. The only change I made in specific contests is to move Maine-2nd from Trump to Biden. That puts my best guess at 335 to 203.

For these last few weeks, I will also put in a guess at where the popular vote lands, so here we go, my best guess:

Biden 52.55%

Trump 44.85%

Jorgenson (Libertarian) 1.75%

Hawkins (Green Party) 0.65%

Others: 0.1%

Looking at all of the date-polls, forecasts, betting markets, there is simply no reason to doubt that Joe Biden is on a path to 270 and beyond.  Just try to keep calm for the 22 short days between now and then.

 

How About The News, Huh? (The Road to 270, Take 12)

 I.  The Horse Race.

Last week I wrote one day early because of the first debate. It occurred to me that I will do my last forecast on election eve, so I will stick with Mondays for these posts over the last four weeks of this blessed election season.

We have received enough post-debate polling to confirm what we all saw with our own eyes-Joe Biden won the debate.  More importantly and decisively, Donald Trump lost the debate, spectacularly.  He needed a win and he couldn't even muster a tie. Joe Biden leads the RCP average by 8.3 points, up from 6.8 points one week ago. Biden leads the 538.com average by 8.2 points, up 1.3 points from one week ago.

State-level polling has also moved in Biden's direction. Biden now has stable leads in enough states to win the presidency. He now leads every swing state that Real Clear Politics tracks closely.  He leads in each of the critical states of MI/PA/WI by five or six points. He leads in Florida by two and Arizona by three. Polling has also been close in the states that Biden doesn't need to win. Iowa, Ohio and Georgia are all  competitive and the Democrats are making a play for Texas. 

Some of this polling was conducted after President Trump tested positive for COVID-19. But most of it was taken before we learned the full extent of how reckless trump was in the days between the first debate and the public disclosure of his diagnosis. There was some concern that people might rally to the president because he is ill but his cavalier treatment of the COVID crisis works against that. And, as can be depended upon, his erratic and reckless behavior only underlines the fact that he is not up for this job.

It has been difficult to get accurate information about the President's health. His doctors and political staff have both obfuscated the details. Some doctors on social media have interpreted the information about his treatment as indicating a severe case. But it is equally plausible that the President is steam rolling his doctors into prescribing whatever treatments are available, without regard to side-effects or medical efficacy.

In the past 24 hours he seems to be doing better. The most encouraging sign so far is that he woke up this morning and released a flurry of nonsensical all caps Tweets from his iPhone. Nature is healing, and perhaps too the president. But he's not out of the woods yet, even though he talked his way out of the hospital a few hours ago. He has been given oxygen at least twice. He is old and he is obese. If he really is loading up on experimental drugs, then he might experience severe side effects. He could take a turn for the worse and leaving the hospital early has all the earmarks of being premature and stupid.

His health will dominate the news, at least until the Veep debate. Now that he is discharged, he will want to recklessly throw himself back into campaigning. Maybe he will wear a mask more often. Maybe he will avoid large crowds. And maybe, just maybe, he will keep being the same brazen jackass that we elected four years ago. (I am purposely avoiding any medical predictions here. That is not my beat.)

But time is not on his side, no matter what his prognosis might be. Trump needs to change the narrative. He probably thinks "I beat COVID" will rally his people to him. But I think this story reminds a lot more people that we are so very bad off because he has been reckless with everyone's life and health, not just his own.

II.  Veep Debate Prep.

The Vice-Presidential Debate is not an important event most cycles. Bob Dole screwed up really badly in the 1976 debate, Admiral Stockdale became a punchline in the 1992 debate and the 2008 demonstrated how low the media would set the bar for debate performances by a certified moron when they acted like Sarah Palin deserved praise for not literally shitting on the carpet.

This year will be hyped as a bigger deal because both candidates are elderly and at least one of them has suffered a serious medical condition in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Senator Harris has the cadence and style of a prosecutor. She knows how to build a case. But this doesn't necessarily help in a forum where she can't ask follow-up questions. She was not as effective defending herself in the primary debates and I expect Pence to have a few lines of attack prepared. But her main objective is to look like a moderate, dependable person should the worst happen to her boss in the next four years.

Mike Pence has one incredible gift for these debates.  He can can gaslight better than anyone in politics. At some point on Wednesday night, he will say "Of course the president does not believe "X" with an a mildly indignant tone. It will not matter, even if we have all seen vide of the president saying exactly "X" on multiple occasions.

Pence has two goals for this event. First, present a more mature face on Trumpism. It is possible that he will be the candidate by November 3rd and he will almost certainly be a candidate in four years. This is a chance to build up his brand. 

III.  The Forecasts.

I want to spend a little more time with these this week, because the movement has been significant. 

Biden's national lead is significant. He has clear and steady leads in enough states to win the election. He also had stable, though smaller leads in Florida and Arizona.  Ohio, Iowa and Texas all look to be competitive. But each forecaster has a slightly different take on where the race stands.

1. FiveThirtyEight. 

Nate Silver started this season late and with a conservative estimate of Biden's chances. He opened the forecast giving Biden 71% chance of victory. Since then, our weekly tracking had him at 73-70-72-76-77-78%. So the trend has been good for awhile. As of tonight, Nate gives Joe Biden an 81 percent chance of winning. 

Nate's model has a built-in hourglass. Trump is behind. As time and events pass, he loses opportunities to turn that around. Most significantly, Nate had Bide narrowly winning Ohio for most of this week. Right now, it is a true toss up: 49.5% to 49.5%. The leaves his score at 335 Biden, 185 Trump and 18 Toss-up.

2. The Economist.

This continues to be Biden's best forecast. Last week they had him at 85% and tonight they have moved him all the way to 90%. Their EV projection is officially 341 to 197, up from 332-206 last week..

The Economist is one of 2 forecasters who advertise a "mode" result but also publish their state by state probabilities. I prefer the latter method. There Biden remains at 334-204, with no changes from last week.

3. Sabato Crystal Ball

Prof. Sabato just projects the states as individual results, so I don't know what percentage he would assign to a Biden victory. But he currently has Biden winning 279 electoral votes and Trump just 179 with 80 tossups. 

Sabato moved both IA and OH from Leans-Trump to Toss-up. And he moved WI from toss-up to lean Biden.  He now forecasts that Biden will the Hillary states plus WI/MI/PA and NE-2nd.  

He considers FL, IA, OH, NC AZ and ME-2nd to all to be toss-ups. That gives Biden a lot of outs.

4. 270 to Win.

Similar methodology and temperament to Sabato. But he made those changes a week ago, so his ratings didn't move this week. He gives Biden a 278 to 169 lead with, 91 Toss-up votes. (OH, ME-2, NE-2, AZ, NC, GA and FL)

5. JHK Forecasts.

Biden did well here nationally this week, moving from 79.7% to 83.9%. But there were no flips in the individual races. He has Biden getting 335 votes to 203 for Trump. But he thinks Biden has a good shot at winning Georgia. (47%). 

This forecast is probably most similar to my own "hunch cast."

6. Plural Vote.

Plural Vote includes internet search data as a component of their forecast. If more people Google Donald Trump, then Trump's numbers go up. I assume they adjust for the fact that Trump is the incumbent but this week, a lot of people Googled to find out more about Trump's medical condition. That affected the model. They currently give Biden a 73.2% chance of winning, with 329 electoral votes as their most common outcome. (This is up slightly from last week when they gave Biden 70.7% and 322 EVs.)  

This forecast diverges the most between mode and aggregate mean result. If you award each state to the candidate who wins each contest most often, Biden is all the way up to 352 votes. (They project Biden to win GA about 56% of the time. That seems bullish to me.)

7. Betting Markets.

There was real movement here too. One week ago Biden had a 57.3% chance of winning the election according to the bettors on Predictit.com.  Tonight Biden has a 61.5% chance there.  This number bounces a little bit as Trumps health waxes and wanes but the movement is clearly in Biden's direction.

8. Yours Truly.

I think this week was a very bad one for the president. He is obviously ill but the whole week unfolded with a distinctly Keystone Cops feel. A number of close associates, including his wife and most of his debate preparation team have now tested positive, along with three friendly senators. His arrogance has been on full display on how he has treated the disease and even his own well-being. I don't really see how he can overcome this. 

I am moving Biden up from 86% to 91%.  Trump needs to change the trajectory of this course. To do that, he needs to recover quickly, to do well in the remaining debates and to hope that Biden has something bad happen to him.  We might look back on the first weekend of October and realize that this was where all of his bullshit caught up with him.  The polling data is encouraging. The narrative could not be worse for him. There are 29 days to go  and his campaign is in very bad shape. Almost as bad as the candidate himself is in.

IV. Taxonomy, Again.

Standard reminder of my taxonomy of states.  

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 Georgia 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.

E. A true blow out is possible. If Trump does not recover physically and/or his behavior descends further into the realm of laughing stock, we have to look for some long shot states that might shock the world. I am partial to Montana, a state which has a track record of not liking incumbent presidents. I also think Alaska is in play during a true blowout. Beyond that, South Carolina is the only state I can even entertain as a possibility now. (Nate Silver gives Biden a 14% of winning, which is a bit better than the average National League pitcher getting a hit in any given at bat.)

Debatable, Barely

 I. Analysis.

The President is an ignorant, racist, deadbeat. These traits were on full display last night. He did absolutely nothing to persuade anyone that he has matured in office or that he is capable of being civil. 

Vice-President Biden was slightly overwhelmed by the reality of sharing a stage with such a rude, vituperative person for the first 15 or 20 minutes. He didn't have a great night, but he spoke cogently and avoided any terrible gaffes or unforced errors that will sting.

Biden went in with a substantial lead and he came out of it with what is likely to be a slightly larger lead in the days ahead. The instant polls indicate that he won the debate and even some of Trump's media talking heads, like Rick Santorum and Chris Christie, acknowledged that Trump hurt his own cause.

Presidential debates are usually remembered for moment and I think there are three that will be the focus of conversation this week.

1. Donald Trump refused to renounce white supremacists. He started to, but either got distracted or lost his nerve, and wound up giving a rallying cry to an obnoxious gang of racist louts. So far today his team is trying to spin this, but he has not rushed out to clarify or change the impression he made.  

2. Joe Biden invoked the military service of his deceased son Beau.  The President responded by taunting him with comments about the substance abuse issues of Biden's surviving son. Imagine responding to someone bragging about his dead son who won the Bronze Star by bringing up the fact that that person's other son had a drug problem. It is unfathomable.

3. Biden called the President of the United States a clown. He also told him "Shut up, man." These moments struck me as appropriate responses to Trump's rudeness, but I don't doubt that there are some voters who were turned off by that. Of course, people who care about decorum are unlikely to be voting for Trump, unless they are full of shit about why they are voting for that clown.

Oh and Chris Wallace is catching hell for losing control of the ship last night. He did start poorly but I think he reacted well, under the circumstances. He wasn't great, but I don't think anyone else would have done much better. 

II. A Little Bit of News.

It was easy to miss but there were at least 2 news worthy items in the ether of last night's circus.

First, President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that he is open to having the vote on Judge Coney-Barrett's nomination after the election.  He said there was "plenty of time" to do it after the election. I think that means the Republicans have read the polling on this point and are having some doubts about the wisdom of cramming this through. (I still think they will, but it was an interesting comment. I also think they will hold the vote no matter what the outcome of the election is.)

Secondly, Biden seemed to say that the Private Option of his healthcare plan would only be available to people eligible for Medicaid. I hope that reporters ask him to clarify that, but the news will probably focus on other things for the next few days. 

III. Early Signs of Movement.

I don't put a lot of stock in instant polls. The one done by CBS had Biden winning 48 percent to 41 percent. That mirrors almost perfectly the pre-debate polling average. The CNN poll had Biden winning 60 percent to 28 percent.  But only 25% of respondents were Republican, so that's probably a bad sample.

But there is one data point that has to encourage the Biden campaign this morning.  The betting markets have moved, noticeably toward Biden over night. On Predictit.com, both North Carolina and Florida have flipped from Trump to Biden. (By small margins, it must be said.)  States like Ohio and Georgia have also moved toward the Democrats. Biden's chances of winning the election have gone up by about a nickel.

IV. What Happens Next.

One of the most striking impressions last night was that Donald Trump knows that he is losing this race. I assumed that he knew that but it was really evident during the portion of the debate on election security. Trump needs to change minds. Last night was his best chance to do so, but he could not help himself. He is a rude, obnoxious jerk. That works very well with 40% of the country. That's not enough to win.

The next event is the Vice-Presidential debate. This is usually a snooze fest and I think this year will not be an exception to that. Kamala Harris had some good moments in the early primary debates but she is less deft at counter-punching.  

Mike Pence did well against Tim Kaine and I think he will hold his own against Senator Harris. The secret to his success is that he is the ability to lie with great confidence. If he gets asked to defend something absurd that Donald Trump believes, he will just start with "Of course the President does not believe that. The President is an honest, decent man.....etc, etc." The lies do not stop.

The contrast from last night will be telling. Pence might be able to make some coherent arguments that will make some voters say, "See, they're not so bad if you ignore the crazy pants way the Boss talks." But I don't think the needle will move much after a Veep debate.

The next presidential debate is a town hall forum. I think both candidates will do better in that setting. Biden is a natural retail politician and he will look more comfortable addressing regular voters than President Trump. But I also think Trump will benefit from the change in format. Trump knows he can be rude to Biden. His people expect it. He also knows he can be rude to the moderator. That's all in the game. But he has to hold back a little bit when regular old voters ask him a question. I wish the voters had a chance to ask follow-ups in this forum. That tripped up Trump in his last ABC town hall. But they usually do not allow such questions at the Town Hall debate, so we may not get to see how he does when someone tries to hold him to answering the question. 

Fun fact-the next debate will be moderated by Steve Scully, the incredibly patient and poker-faced C-SPAN host who has to listen to all those crazy morning callers. Good practice for listening to Trump's tantrums.

As I write this, the President has just appeared on the White House lawn to try to undo the damage of his Proud Boys answer last night.  His words were less than convincing but the important thing is that he seems to understand that he had a bad night and had to try to put this fire out.

He will probably be more sedate at the next debate. It would be hard not to. But by the third debate his polling situation might be so dire that he comes completely unhinged.

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.

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.

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

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