one thing about biden leading or close in the 11-12 swing states (loose definition) is that the state outcomes are correlated.

if trump rallied 4-5 points (unlikely), polls are not highly indicative of the voting population to a 4-5 point difference (pretty much unlikely) or there are voter turnout/suppression issues (quite likely) then all the states will move up together.

florida gets little attention because it's not pennsylvania or wiscsonsin but if biden wins florida (slight 50%+ right now), trump winning election becomes almost impossible. and as mentioned, trump has alienated the military (callous regard for their safety), senior citizens (threaten social security), hispanics (disrespect for them. democratic-bias already i think) in florida

People overestimate the importance of Trump winning in 2016 in terms of polling errors, the polls were off by 1.5% or so, and Trump ran hot in that he swept the swing states by sub 1%, Clinton campaign got overconfident/Dems got complacent on turnout/Hillary was a unique candidate hated by both all of the right AND the far left

538 had Trump 30% to win and that was about right given where the popular vote ended up and factoring in the polling error, 2016 was just one of the 3 in 10 times he wins

This year he's probably 50% or so if the popular vote is a similar margin to 2016, midwest is trending slightly red but AZ and NC trending slightly blue to offset and FL is TBD with the Puerto Rico voters/felons able to vote changing the demographics and also 4 years of people dying/moving there

I'd say the line on where Biden is a favourite to win the election at winning the popular vote by somewhere between 2.5 and 3 percent. With current polling numbers that would require a polling miss 2-5x where the 2016 polls missed by, in the same direction as in 2016 depending on his national polling numbers day to day (seems to vary between Biden being up 6-9% mostly, with the odd outlier at like 4 or 11 etc)

If Biden does somehow win the popular vote and not the EC vote it'd be absurd that since 1992 the Rs would have only won the popular vote once, but the EC vote 4 times giving them a 50% win rate in elections with a 12.5% popular vote winrate

The Dems need to be as ruthless as Republicans were in 2010 with redistricting if they crush it in 2020; gerrymander everything in their favour in the states they control with the end goal of getting Republicans to agree that gerrymandering is unconstitutional and getting rid of it (along with adding states like DC and Puerto Rico both because they should be states and lessening the electoral college/senate advantage Rs have due to doing better in smaller rural states on average)

It's honestly insane that political parties have anything to do with redistricting, in Australia the electoral commission is nonpartisan and youre not allowed to work there if you are or have been politically active or a member of a party etc (forget the specifics but I actually was considering working there out of uni a decade and change ago)

Swoop, i agree on 2016..............

i think it was going to come down to florida/pennsylvania... D's needed one, R's needed both.

some talk 2016 that NC go D but i didn't believe it. could have gone D in a big win. but i think florida goes first for D's and they don't need NC anyway......

polls were close but consistent HRC lead........ lots of talk that "maybe these polls don't capture things properly.. only 0.1% responds etc".... FBI takes action in last week of campaign (honestly, DJT should thank FBI not denigrate it)

and wisconsin/michigan went way off polls........ have to check on other places. but maybe iowa (expected R win, but huge win). maybe NC to lesser degree.

now in 2020, do the polls not reflect things properly this time??? lots of reasons they might not. lots of reasons 2020 is different...... imho, the trump shyness voter is much fewer in number. i wonder if we have opposite "someone who dislikes dems who says 'do i really want 4 more years of insanity?" and/or "biden/harris are ok".... honestly, who has visceral rational dislike of biden/harris personally or their policies? mostly uneducated people from mostly white communities it seems.

one thing about progressive votes........ two D supreme court justices are well above 80 years old. R's have one above 70 years old.......... trump/R will probably choose 50 year-old replacements. and if trump is out of office, i bet john roberts goes back way more republican/conservative..... so if trump serves another 4 year term, the supreme court is dead to progressives for the next 25-30 years. that is massive...... gotta get trump out of office way beyond "he's a horrible human being"........... the religious right understands plugging their nose and voting for someone they consider personally vile

we will see.... if voter turnout is heavy, biden wins big.... if election day is a fiasco, who knows?.... not sure who can do this, but can't they have more one in-person voting day? or do they already have that?

FWIW, Trump is priming that pump today but claiming (with no basis, obv) the "Deep State" at the FDA is slowing down testing so that no vaccine will be approved by Election Day. This permits him to, yet again, gaslight the gullible into believing either that, OR show what an amazingly effective leader Trump is in the event one actually does get approved, though every scientific piece I've read says early 2021 is super optimistic.

His tweets could be read either like you said, or to set the stage for an emergency authorization going above the heads of the FDA.

Plus, they could just legitimately have a vaccine through P3 by then. Pfizer/BNTX reported on Thursday that they have >11,000 volunteers enrolled and are on track for an October readout. Then Moderna said they had >13,000 volunteers. There's definitely better than 50% chance one of them actually works.

That's not the alternative. Saying that the Nate Silvers of the world are basically charlatans is not saying to "shoot from the hip" or to listen to some biased partisan.

Why do you think Nate Silver is a charlatan?

Imagine putting those Warriors/Cavs odds out there for public consumption. But I'm sure Nate's politics models are just fine lol.

Haha perfect.

His team rankings suck, and always have since he went to 538, but I don’t think that makes him a charlatan.

Hell, if the NBA markets were half as inefficient as the political markets, his NBA model might even be useful lol.

Yeah, his sports stuff is basically just ELO. In the NBA playoffs that fails hard because great teams coast during the regular season.

In sports, you can compare him to Vegas lines, which aggregate thousands of opinions into a very efficient number. In politics, who's better? All the other numerical pundits had Trump as a bigger underdog than 538. PredictIt had him at 22% the night before the election.

So on the stuff where we can easily evaluate his models, he is terrible, and on elections, he is less bad than the idiots who had Dems at 90%+ last cycle? You guys are making a hell of a case for Nate Dogg.

Tell me who's better.

Maybe publicly available, widely known-about projections don't beat the market. Just a thought.

I guess not having a platform beyond 'whatever Trump says' would have mattered before this weird post truth world we live in

https://politicalwire.com/2020/08/23...arty-platform/

The Republican Party announced it will forego a platform.

Instead of drafting a document outlining the party’s beliefs and agenda, the Republican National Committee simply states that it agrees with everything Donald Trump has done and will do.

Somehow Trump has improved his position by 10c or so since this announcement lol

yes, it's got so the trump supporters judge any other prominent person on their support for trump.........

i put this at the end of another comment......... 4 more years of trump is very very bad for progressives. these 4 years were arguably helpful in they gained so much momentum through DJT idiocy......... BUT, there are 2 dem-nom supreme court justices over 80, one way over 80. not sure his exact age, clarence thomas is 72.... so 2 more 50 year-old trump nominees plus at some point roberts goes back more conservative = 6.5 conservative justices with only one being fairly old........ the conservative justice have helped dial back DJT's idiocy but once he's gone they can probably go more conservative without much controversy

who can speak at RNC (or DNC)? anyone?

obvious that there's so few of old guard republican names.

but doesn't seem like that many high profile senators either

the one speaker that could really help DJT is his daughter tiffany.... she seems isolated from all the idiocy. too young at first and victimized by the backlash.

I don't think either convention is going to change the overall dynamic much

I do think it's important what happens with DeJoy and Trump's attempts to undermine the USPS, if successful that could bring the election back to coinflip via cheating if a large number of absentee ballots never arrive/are deliberate too late to be counted etc

They have to force them to put the sorting machines back that have already been removed, not just 'not do anything else from now' to get Biden back to his win% from a few weeks ago

I think Biden is still a fav, but def less so than a few weeks ago, Trump's clearly winning to cheat via any means necessary even if it means undermining the post office of all things and while I do doubt his competence in doing so, it's still somewhat scary as someone on the Biden side (and for the future of democracy obv)

According to what I've been reading, Biden has gotten a 5 point boost in favorability after DNC convention. I imagine Trump will get a boost too. Although I personally don't see the Trump campaign, and the RNC convention, doing anything different to win over new voters, but rather to solidify his already loyal base. I could be wrong.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...cid=uxbndlbing

Edit: On the other hand, some conservative outlets seem to be claiming the convention did nothing for Biden. Wishful thinking?

If you want to get any pro-Trump bets down, now is the time. His odds will get a couple point boost from the convention while Biden's wears off. Personally I bet on Trump in MN and MI, expecting to exit in a week or so.

seems just as likely people realize its 2 months from the election and a 1-2% (possibly temporary) polling boost doesn't change the overall outlook

You pays your money, you takes your chances.

Flat out not true. When PECOTA came out it was as good as or better than anything else out there at the time.

Horse and buggy inventor was great in his time too. Not relevant at all today, of course.

Got sources that would back that up?