That's a great point about all the Peurto Ricans who moved to Florida after the hurricane.
I didn't think of that.
I guess their vote doesn't count in Puerto Rico but, being U.S citizens, it does once they're residents in the mainland?
Anyone know the status of that?
I know it's a dumb question.

Quick look up. They certainly can vote once living in the U.S.
Puerto Rico is a territory (colony). I know I didn't have to explain that. Just covering my bases.

i was operating on the theory that florida would be fertile ground for trump due to some small home state pull as well as a friendly governor and skewed 2018 polls, but the covid response is going to ruin the GOP there.

its weird, though. florida is damn near checkmate for biden, so why isn't he doing better in the betting odds?

I'm still waiting before I tie up more money. We still have time.
But, my amateur guess would be that these polls are still fresh and price hasn't been adjusted. But On the other hand, it's been about 2 weeks already that his margin in Florida has increased. That's maybe not so fresh.
So what do I know.
But I guess if the price is still good in Florida, now is the time to commit before the books adjust?

Trump won in an upset last time is why, random people over-compensate by assuming he's more likely to win as an underdog than he did

Obv if he's down 3-4% in the popular vote on election day he could very well win, but if he's down 9% still thats way way outside the margin of error

Unknowns re turnout with Covid as well, plus GOP schenanigans trying to lose/destroy/suppress Dem leaning postal votes, plus the usual voter suppression and an admittedly slim chance Trump may try and outright cheat as in try and compromise voting machines etc

At the end of the day Biden is a clear fav today as anyone up 9% in the polls would be

Florida has a Republican secretary of state in event its close/recounts etc remember Bush vs Gore and hanging chads, it's incredibly likely Gore won Florida if all of the votes were recounted using voter intention etc but yeah, i'd snap take Biden next President over Biden wins FL, because if he wins FL he's also won the Presidency, but he can win the Presidency through the midwest while losing Florida - Florida is a must win state for Trump, it isn't for Biden

Also i'm pretty sure everyone considers Trump to be a New Yorker right, he has links to FL through Mar a Lago etc but I don't think people from Florida actually think of him as a local do they?

At the end of the day anyone betting on Trump is betting that he will dramatically improve his position between now and election day

That said every couple posts we all make another week has gone by and the overall numbers are about the same. Less than a week until August now, then it's three months or so til the election.

August will be about the conventions and VP picks. I assume Trump picks Pence, or if he picks Haley to shake things up I guess that's a thing but given the Dem VP nominee will be a woman too I don't see how any VP candidates will be a major positive or negative, Pence shores up Trump's evangelicals and Biden's VP either boosts black/female turnout or in the event they go with Warren boosts leftist turnout instead, but i'd be shocked if it isn't Harris or Rice at this point, the markets are usually right about these things and while Duckworth is great too she's from a blue state and doesn't work as well demographically as any of the black women Biden is likely to pick

Warren makes more sense staying in the Senate probably to actually get Biden's agenda passed and move him a bit to the left on policy as an advisor and it might make the socialist attacks stick more if Biden picks her so i'd pass at this point, enough of the far left will hold their nose and vote for Biden just to get rid of Trump, what he needs is to mirror Obama's turnout with black voters and win the moderates in the midwest, if he does that he gets the midwest and/or FL+NC and it's game over anything beyond that doesnt matter

@neepee specifically I don't see any reason to bet Biden wins FL over Biden next President, do you see any scenarios where he wins FL and isn't President? By comparison, he could win PA/MI/WI and lose all the other Trump '16 states to Trump if Trump improves his position a bit but not in the Midwest and Biden still wins

Biden to win Florida on Bookmaker is -163 and -169 to be the president elect.
So I guess the safe bet is Biden to be president elect.
Forget about 2016. That was a totally different scenario. The only way Biden loses right now is if he himself really screws something up. Trump won't do anything to change the negative trend. He keeps pushing all the wrong buttons and he won't change because that's who he is. Now he's trying to force the schools to open on schedule because he's desperate for the economy to turn around somehow. At the same time he's pressuring the schools, he cancelled the Republican convention because of Covid.
But it's not just the pandemic, he totally screwed up, and continues to screw up, in his response to the George Floyd murder. He's clueless.

I've been following this guy on YouTube. Channel is called Election Predictions official by some guy named Ryan Gest. He predicts Biden will narrowly win Florida.

I would very much ignore what random Youtube pundits have to say but yeah Biden wins the Presidency WAY more than he wins Florida

Can you form a path to the presidency for Trump if he loses FL, keeping in mind if he loses FL he has issues with high minority turnout that may cost him NC too

For Biden it's easy, win the Hillary states plus WI/MI/PA or even if he doesn't sweep those he has AZ or NC as possibilities

Hillary states plus FL is 261 and if Trump is losing FL is he really gonna sweep NC, AZ and the entire midwest? Because if he loses a single other state he loses

Anyone betting Biden to win FL but not to win the Presidency at the same price needs their head examined

The YouTube guy I mentioned is just someone posting videos based solely on polls. Have no idea of his credibility or who he is. But I guess the point is it looks good for Biden in Florida. It looks like Trump will hold on to NC if it stays within the margin of error, but I think it's looking more and more likely that Biden takes Arizona.

Very interesting video uploaded today by my guy " Election Predictions Official ". Something I never thought about. I'm a square guys, never claimed to be shark.
But It's based on a New York Times survey done, not his own. Anyways.
The electoral map based on the amount of donations to each candidate in each state.
According to donations, Biden leads in the electoral map by 328 to Trump 210.

Gotta love these Twitter blue check modelers who don't even bet their models. One of them earlier today had the nerve to tell someone else their criticism (their model says Biden wins >90% of the time) was "empty talk".

I mean if the polling is the same as today on election day he does win 90 percent plus the issue is things can change in 100 days

I think Biden's still about 70 percent atm and I do have some but not sizing up until it's much closer if things don't change and obv lots of time to get off the bet if they do

This was supposedly based on election day expectations, not just current polls. From the geniuses at the Economist.

jhk is maga and has biden at 87 vs economist 93. i think it's just really hard to make a good model

I think it's a lot easier to make a good model close to election day

People act like Nate had 2016 completely wrong when his model had Trump winning 30% of the time, and it's worth remembering with Clinton winning the pop vote by 2.6% or whatever it was Trump was probably a small dog to run the table on the swing states the way he needed to and that was with a 1.5-2% polling miss in his favour (obv if it goes 1.5-2% in the other direction or even matches the polling Clinton wins easily)

Weighted polling averages is still probably the best indicator (along with voter enthusiasm and expected turnout levels) they just don't matter much this far out - we only have a snapshot of what would happen if the election was held today (Biden would win)

Trying to determine whether Biden's 55, 60, 70, 80, 90 percent etc is pretty tough, it's fairly clear he's a favourite atm, the only President in recent times to surrender this big a polling lead this far out was Dukakis the rest of the candidates in the past half century leading by this much or more 100 days out have won, but obviously Biden isn't 95%+ yet like some dumb models will say just because anything can happen. That said anyone who thinks Trump is a favourite atm is wrong too, even if he ends up winning he is definitely less than 50% to win right now simply because his approval numbers and polling are so poor and there are only three months and change to go

I'm not committing myself to putting money on who's going to be Bidens VP pick, but Harris and Rice seem to be the frontrunners.
But whom ever Biden picks, it's important for Biden's campaign that they bring the energy and enthusiasm he lacks. I'm not saying a wrong pick will break him, but a good pick will probably solidify his chances until election day.

Absolutely. But when their model is that far off the market and they aren't betting it, they're saying they know their model sucks. And not only that, but then they get touchy when you point out their model sucks. And since they pass themselves off as experts to the wider public, there's a name for them: charlatans.

good thread, thank you

i have said this before but here goes: i think trump is toast, but it is a long time to go before the election....... this reminds me of the time between end of college football season and start of workout season in regards to nfl mock drafts. i check mocks every day but there's basically no new info for scouts to change their minds.......outside of more trump complete insanity (vs. day-to-day insanity), i don't think you'll see much change in the presidential odds.

i think only biden/senate/governors/supreme court can win election for trump. i don't think he can win on his own.......

biden takes alot of crapp online and he is very old and a bit slow, but he was VP for an incredibly popular president and is a very likeable person. HRC was not

related to last point, are people not concerned with covid and voter turnout? certainly basic voting numbers support trump. but so much of trump's support is rural where it's easy to vote in person (wisconsin........ florida?)

if you aggregate more analytical and sophisticated predictit.org markets, they are not consistent with biden/trump 62/38

eh, these are free projections. and the economist is open source. this isn't people selling their sports betting picks and not betting themselves.

as SwoopAE brings up, it's hard to model this far out. nate, imo, did well in 2016. jhk did well in the primaries.

i don't know enough about the models to really comment further. the only thing i'd say is that whenever someone has a lead, they should price in regression to the mean and diminishing returns on good campaigning for the candidate that's ahead.

im not sure jhk is doing that. his model's simulator is spitting out anywhere from trump +6 to biden +20. trump +6 is possible. biden +20 is impossible. hyper polarization and negative partisanship is too high for someone to win by more than 15 or so, and his model pumps out 12 pt biden wins as often as trump electoral college wins.

They're not selling picks to people but are instead selling their supposed expertise (they get paid to do this after all). They won't bet against the market because they recognize that their models can't beat the market. And yet they promote their models in their analyses, which they get paid for. So again, they are charlatans. What is even more galling is that these clowns have the nerve to talk about how irrational prediction markets that they are afraid of betting into are.

If Nate Silver bet on his picks, everyone would say his projections were just trying to move the market. He's smart not to try to pick up a couple thousand from predictit while making millions from his site.

He's also objectively correct about everything he wrote in those tweets.

A few other points:

1. He could still bet, just not publicly. Maybe for kicks on Predicit or larger stakes.
2. If he is betting there starts to become a conflict of interest issue, all of sudden story could be flipped against him.
3. He has a brand to protect, so he definitely has incentive to get things as right as possible.

As others have said if Nate was betting his model for politics he wouldn't be publicising it or he'd be getting accused of market manipulation etc it's bad publicity for his brand to have any involvement in gambling etc

market was wild for rice until this happened. hmmm



id guess its just a place holder article as august 1st doesn't make a ton of sense as a date (saturday), but makes sense as a template

Yeah, this is like a prewritten obituary. Just got published by mistake.

Biden did say today he'll announce his VP next week. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/28/p...ate/index.html