A rant about election predictions

 So...I've been noticing that some people are getting increasingly hostile about election predictions. I know I share my predictions on several subreddits at this point because it's October and everyone else is doing it so might as well show off my work on the subject. But then I get ripped on as of late, especially by democrats, because my elections...show Trump winning. I'm told I'm using biased sources (RCP), that they're trash, I'm only cope posting because I want Trump to win, blah blah blah, so I wanna really set the record straight.

I don't want Trump to win. I can't say I'm huge on Harris, but I am left wing aligned all things considered, and while I don't really LIKE the democratic party, I do want them to win. HOWEVER, and here's the thing that these people don't understand: election predictions aren't about cheerleading for your side. They're about the data. They're about the science. It's about the process of arriving at the conclusions you arrive at. I use RCP because I've ALWAYS used RCP. I've been doing prediction since 2008 and back then RCP was the only polling aggregator site just about. 538 didn't come onto the scene until 2012, and I dont remember his work being hyped until he basically got a perfect prediction. In 2016, he got hyped again for "being the closest". Well, given the entire media industrial complex minus the conservative media sites were cheerleading for Clinton, they got it wrong. It was easy to go for clinton. The polls favored her. However, leading up to the election, the polls shifted, and by election day, I considered the race a tossup. And a tossup it was. Silver is famed for getting a 70% probability for clinton and acknowledging that Trump had a chance. Again, I had 56%. You can go back to 2016 posts and read my prediction. I literally posted it live here. In 2020, I followed Silver's lead in removing conservative pollsters accused of poll bombing the averages. it made my prediction more off than if i just let it ride. Silver made the same error, got roughly the same prediction, and let's face it, we both got clowned for it. So...in 2024...with all of the accusations of biased pollsters flooding the averages, I say, let it ride. Because I tried to remove that stuff last time, and then Trump overperformed. This time, I'm just reporting the data and what happens happens. 

It's not about cheerleading your side. It's about getting it right. It's about being honest and reporting the data even if it doesn't go in your favor. Quite frankly, I'll be honest with you. America deserves better than both of these jokers. I dont like Harris, I don't like Trump. In 2016 and 2020 I felt the same about Biden and Clinton. In those elections I protest voted and went green. This time I went harris, primarily to save democracy. I don't even like Harris. She's going too far in the new dem direction and any previous praise I gave her can effectively be retracted because she's just becoming a generic new dem clone politician. I held my nose for her. Doesn't mean I want trump to win, I actually really am scared about that, but I have little to no reason to cheerlead Harris on at this point. My vote was transactional. I ain't really invested in her presidency, that's it. If anything as her numbers tank I've become more critical, as have most lefties as they recognize that her centrist pivot is landing like a wet fart. 

But yeah. My predictions have always been about the data. If my side is winning. I report that. If they're not, I report that. I don't fluff the data or try to lie about who I think is gonna win. If there's anything I learned, it's that getting high on your own BS and thinking you're ahead and the data that doesn't conform with your perspective is wrong is just gonna lead to pain on election day as reality comes crashing down and we realize that the data was correct after all. And it almost always is...within reason. Not saying it's always dead on, but again, if you dont trust polls, learn what error is and understand that everything is about statistics and probabilities. And even if my data shows trump ahead, it's a REALLY REALLY close election and at 45-55, anyone can win. 

Keep in mind, anything less than 60-40 is what i consider a "statistical tie". Like...flip a coin. That's basically it. anything in the 61-39 to 84-16 range is in the "lean" category. Whoever is winning has an obvious edge but it's still very possible things flip the other way due to normal polling error. 84-16 to 98-2 is "likely"...basically I'd expect the side ahead to win decisively, although as we saw in 2020....being that far up is no guarantee, especially if you use questionable methods to get that conclusion, like removing polls affiliated with the political party you don't like. And anything 98-2 or better is basically...safe. Like statistically, don't expect it to flip. it probably won't. 

But yeah. That's basically it. And right now at 45-55, it's like who knows. I give trump a slight edge, and I do believe the momentum is on his side going into these final weeks of the campaign, but it's not a statistically significant one by any margin. It's virtually not an edge at all. A single point of polling error in either direction is likely to decide the election either way. I mean, those probabilities mean something. And when it's 45-55, that means it literally can go either way at a near 50-50 level. It means if i run my simulator, in theory, i should get 11 trump outcomes and 9 harris ones for every 20 simulations i run (currently it's closer to 10-10 as it seems to slightly favor harris for some reason, still haven't figured that out). And yeah. So...please, people getting wrapped up in the election prediction stuff where they can't keep their partisanship out of it, take a chill pill and remove that stick from you know where. There are places where you can cheerlead for your own side. Prediction subs and forums shouldn't be one of them. Let's keep those academic and based more about the science and not about the feels. My predictions aren't meant to hurt liberals' feelings. They're just data and math that I applied to said data that give me probabilities. This isn't even my first rodeo. This is the 5th election i've actively tried to predict in my life. I got 3/4 so far right, and the 4th one is the one no one got right, so...yeah.

My election predictions are an example of economic growth in action

 So...we all know my election predictions have...shall we say, greatly improved in format over the course of this election cycle. While I developed my existing methodology back in 2016, I didn't really perfect it until now. A lot of it is because those predictions took time. Take my 2016 election prediction chart. It actually took me the whole day before election day to put this together. And then I ended up editing it as new polls came in. Again, HOURS. This was HOURS of work. For ONE chart. And while I did keep reusing that one chart and filling out the data again and again in future predictions, once again, this took HOURS. 

This is one of the reason I only did election predictions once every few weeks, and earlier on this election cycle, I would be spotty with them and not be able to release them as I wanted because I could only fill out the chart properly on my desktop, and with it being up to 95F in here because summer, i would be suffering in the heat for hours just to do ONE prediction. Not wanting to ahve my predictions be dictated by the weather, I developed a solution. Gee, why don't I make this chart in excel and have it fill itself out and update itself from me just inputting new data? That way I could save hours of work, do it in the air conditioning, and release a chart when I felt like it.

So, I spent the 4th of July doing exactly that. My family was grilling food, and I was working furiously on replicating my chart in excel. And it took all day to figure it out but by that night, I was able to produce my first forecast.

At this point, it was a bit rough. If I updated it, sometimes it would break. If I added new lines for additional states, it would break. But it worked. And I was able to produce the same charts I always did exceedingly easily. Now, labor saving inventions are intended to save labor, but such is the curse of growth. Sometimes we dont just work less on the same tasks, sometimes we want MORE! We pursue more growth instead of more leisure. And because election predictions are a passion project of mine, and I'm an autist obsessed with my special interests, I ended up being so proud of my new chart that I started doing predictions more often. And talking more about the race in light of the predictions. And I kept improving my chart.

Eventually, simply having the chart wasnt good enough. Remember how I used random number generators to create hypothetical outcomes to the election? What if I could do that in excel? So by the end of july, I worked on that, eventually creating a rudimentary simulator that spat out a randomly generated outcome with the push of a button. 

Now I could generate outcomes whenever I wanted.

I even experimented with, with the help of a friend who knows more about excel than me, a version of the simulator that generates hundreds or even a thousand outcomes at once. It worked...kinda, and did allow me to understand the flaws in my methodology that caused these particular simulations to have limitations, but it was cumbersome, it broke constantly simply by updating the data. And it would crash the spreadsheet or slow things to a crawl when it was used. I gave up on that because there was way too much maintenance associated with it, and returned to my simple 1 at a time simulator, but I did try to grow in that regard too. I still might bring that back just for my final election prediction maybe.

As such in a sense, a lot of time I'd be spending making simple charts once every few weeks has been spent on improving my model, with me often investing a lot of hours id otherwise dedicate to election predictions to improving my chart to give me better election predictions. This is kind of like how, when we automate a job, we end up creating new jobs associated with fine tuning the automation of the previous jobs, and we end up going from low skill grunt work to high skilled brain work dedicated to improving efficiency and making things better. As such, in a sense, more efficiency doesnt always lead to reduce time spent on certain tasks, just reallocating that time toward more complex tasks.

And this is the problem with the modern economy. We're reaching a point with automation where most low skilled tasks are at risk of automation, leaving mostly white collar workers automating the work away and using their high skills to continue making things more efficient. This will, inevitably, lead to a reduction in work over time, if we allow it, but because we have a system toward more and more endless growth, we keep subjecting people to a never ending cycle of work instead, with the work getting less pleasant and more miserable as tasks that remain are often menial and don't pay well unless youre part of the higher end of the economic spectrum that can focus on the automation and increasing efficiency of the more basic tasks. 

And the growth continues. Eventually I found out how to add election maps directly into my spreadsheet, so I've done that. And to my simulator too. So now I got election maps that I dont have to make on yapms any more (although admittedly the yapms ones are a bit nicer in some ways). 

And yeah. My model just keeps improving. 

And again, the simulator has a map too now:

Yep. Change the outcome, change the map...

It's not perfect, it actually does crash a lot. Especially if you spam the button asking for too many simulations too fast. The raw text part of the simulator is fine but the map adds a lot of complexity that causes google sheets themselves to crash. So this isn't perfect on their end, which makes it less than perfect on my end. 

And yeah. This one simple desire to automate spreadsheets to save me labor has actually made me work more on this topic. But in a sense, this is okay, because at least in my case, I'm not being forced to do this by economic anxiety. This is weaponized autism being directed toward a passion project aka a special interest, and as such, I'm using the time freed from making simple charts to being able to do that in seconds, and I'm working on fine tuning and improving my predictions, even delving into simulations to create more sophisticated predictions.

And I'm not the only one who has done this. There are other posters on reddit and the like who have even more sophisticated models than me, that calculate fundamentals, and take into account multiple polling aggregators (or even aggregate their own polls), and while I don't plan on getting that sophisticated, it's amazing what people can do. And this ins't even being driven by the economic need of capitalism, this is just stats nerds who wanna predict elections making models that do exactly that. And then we all argue online about whose model is better and who is correct and we get in stupid spats like the Nate Silver vs Allen Lichtman one. 

And yeah. All of this is done without economic coercion too. Just passionate people doing things they wanna do. We act like we need paid work to motivate people. No, people would find things to do to motivate themselves if they eventually recenter their lives away from work. As I said, that's what business leaders are afraid of so they invented 9-5 to keep us working like sispyphus. 

THAT is the bad kind of work, because it's driven by economic need, coercion, and exploitation. It takes people away from simple passion projects and keeps them working needlessly on crap they don't even enjoy forever and ever.

In some ways, more automation doesnt have to lead to less labor. I mean, it's true in this case. If anything I'm working harder on election predictions to the point it's taking away from other projects, and next month, i plan to focus on other things after this election is done. but until then, I'm in election mode, pouring over the data, updating my charts every time a new poll drops, and trying to make my predictions more advanced and sophisticated. I likely have hit a wall this time. Outside of maybe trying my hand at another simulator to mass produce possible outcomes for purely statistical purposes (no promises, I may choose more leisure on that front), I doubt I'll be doing more than just updating data, making screenshots, posting screenshots here, and on social media, and sharing them with friends. And omg, you want another one even though I just made one yesterday? yes, I'm getting annoying with these. I overshare as we autistic people do. Did you know Harris only has a 45% chance of winning now? I know I mention it every time I post, and I posted that exact graphic above already showing off my charts. But yeah. 

Anyway. I just had a thought about the nature of growth and the tradeoffs between leisure and growth and wanted to put it into practice. But yeah, our entire economy is just my election prediction model in practice. We do stuff to save time, then we instead do more with the same time, and while with me it's driven by passion and that's fine, for most it's driven by pure economic coercion which is messed up. But yeah. Growth is like this. I could use this extra efficiency to spend less time doing the same thing, or I can spend the same time doing more things. Much like with the economy, I'm spending more time doing more things and constantly trying to improve my methods. Of course, again, it's voluntary for me so that's okay. i just resent coercion in capitalism forcing us to be economically productive all of the time when I'd rather F off and do passion projects like this. Or maybe even do nothing at all. Because that should be my right as a human being. I'm a human BEING. Not a human DOING. Remember that. Always remember that. You are a person, you are not purely a factor of production. What you produce isn't you. You can wrap up your identity in it if you want and you're proud of it, but you should always make that call yourself, society shouldn't force you. And you should be able to stop and just...exist if you want.

Wow, I kinda hate FDR now...(aka, YOU WILL WORK AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!)

 So, I'm reading a book called Free time: the forgotten american dream by Benjamin Kine Hunnicutt, and uh...wow. I just had a major breakthrough there. 

Basically, the book is about how we shifted so much away from the dream of reduced working hours and why all of this extra productivity never leads to reduced economic powers.

In short, the business community doesn't want it to. They feared a world in which Americans turned away from work. They wanted work to be central to their lives, believing all of this protestant work ethic nonsense about how they would never be able to use their free time effectively. Even more so, they feared that a shift toward less work would mean that workers value things other than work and that they might "recenter their lives" away from work. Given human centered capitalism is, effectively, literally just that, a recentering of human life away from jobs, and productivity, and consumption, and GDP, my ideology is quite counter to this. 

So instead, an ethos was developed around working the same amount of time, for higher and higher levels of productivity. And stimulating economic demand to cause people to want new products and services. They dont want people checking out of the economy. They want people HOOKED. They want people buying things and seeking higher and higher standards of living. They want people to produce things. Work, consume, work consume. If we don't do that, people feared the economy would collapse as we'd be able to meet our needs with minimal effort, and people wouldn't seek much more. 

This ethos became prevalent among union leaders early on. They were told, okay, you want higher productivity and wages, fine, I'll give them to you, but they resisted giving people less work. So unions struck a compromise. We're get our boys to work, you give us higher wages. As such, unions became an integral part of defending the jobs system, which is how we got the dignity of work nonsense they spew. 

And then the depression happened. And....there was a lot of discussion about what should be done. Hugo Black actually pushed a bill for a THIRTY hour work week, known as the Black-Connery Labor Labor Standards Act. You see, people were talking about, in response to the great depression, reducing working hours further than 40 hours. 40 hours had been pushed for by unions for decades, and by the 1930s, people were actually talking less. This spooked business leaders who, given their relatively limited bargaining position were like, yo, FDR, we'll give you what you want, but you can't reduce working hours. Again, they literally feared the future of capitalism if they did and how workers might...have lives outside of work. And might not wanna...buy things that they produced. And FDR...gave it to them. He basically tanked the bill, but passed the other stuff in Black's bill in what we now know as the Fair Labor Standards Act. He did greatly improve the standards for workers, but in doing so, he sealed their fate.

From there, the narrative shifted toward 40 hours a week, forever. Infinite growth, with no further reductions in working hours. And while I still have to read the rest of the book, I presume that there were no significant challenges to the 40 hour work week after that. I mean, we had WWII, couldnt work less then when we had a war effort to win. And then in the 1950s we had the second red scare and anyone deemed too far left was suicided out of 17th story windows or otherwise accused of being communist and anti american...and from there, the new order was established, labor power was crushed, and a few decades later, we got reagan and deregulation leading to the economic crapshow we have now. 

Oh, and the system of job creation that I often criticize and point to as why capitalism and jobism can never provide for everyone was established in this time. You see, there was a lot of debate over "work sharing" during the depression. But given the system ended up trending toward 40 weeks forever and full employment, they developed keynesian economics and the federal reserve system of job creation in order to stabilize things and keep us in this circle of never ever reducing working hours. if we run out of work, we'd just have the government lower interest rates and take on debt to encourage businesses to create new jobs. The new productivity and growth associated with them would stabilize the market, allowing them to then raise interest rates to keep inflation in check, and then we will just stay stuck on this cycle of never ending job creation forever, with the discussion of any further hourly reductions off the table.

And it's worked. Americans are addicted to jobs and consumption like it's crack cocaine. We talk constantly about creating jobs, whereas I took one look around during the great recession and was like "WHY?!, i only thought we worked this much because we had to anyway, we have all of this wealth, why do we insist on creating more work just so people have a paycheck? I don't wanna do this crap, businesses don't wanna hire me, why do I have to jump through hoops of this bull#### system when it's not necessary?"

And once I made that breakthrough, I was able to develop the views I had today. And of course because I was on the tail end of an existential crisis and in a state of questioning literally everything, and developed a system of secular humanism to replace my previous religious system based in christianity, i started thinking of the economy in humanistic terms, developing my own iteration of human centered capitalism years before yang did. With my core premises being 1) the economy exists for humans, not humans the economy, 2) jobs are a means to an end, not an end in itself, and 3) we should move away from GDP growth as the end all be all of everything, and balance it with other priorities, ESPECIALLY leisure. 

And that's MY iteration of human centered capitalism. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to abolish capitalism. I'm not some flaming marxist who wants to seize the means of production. I dont care about the means of production. I just wanna not be forced to work, and I want everyone to live free and happy lives without poverty. And if that means more people opt out of the rat race, so be it. I WANT people to be able to opt out of the rat race. 

But...FDR took another path. And in some ways, his new deal framework may have greatly helped workers, but it also helped seal our fates, keeping us stuck on this cycle of full employment at 40 hours forever like sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill for all eternity. And yeah. I might respect him in some ways, but after finding this out, I also kinda hate the guy. He did us dirty in this one specific way. And I'm gonna have to formally break from him ideologically over this. I always had differences from him due to my hatred of jobs and rejection of his job guarantee nonsense, but now, it's doubly so. Because it's quite clear he did that stuff to save work itself, when work didn't deserve to be saved. Work as a concept should be taken out back and put out of its misery. It is an affliction on humankind and we are prolonging our suffering for no better reason than to keep business owners happy. It's sickening. 

I kinda understand why leftists become leftists reading this crap. Not that I think leftism is the solution. I want to be clear, it very much is not. I literally just want capitalism but without all of this forced labor BS, and a universal minimum standard of living without having to work for it. Again, human centered capitalism. Capitalism that serves us, not capitalism we're forced to be slaves to. So yeah. Never thought I'd say it, but F FDR on this one specific thing. He was a decent guy otherwise, he's always had a bit of a mixed legacy among the left, but yeah. This is IMO one of his greater sins, at least in the eyes of my ideology. That and the whole interning the Japanese thing.

Okay, for the love of god, democrats, GET OUT OF YOUR OWN DARNED WAY!

 So. I've been watching a lot of segments from left wing commentators i listen to. TYT has discussed this. The majority report has discussed this (although i didn't finish their segment since they kept going on and on about gaza). And Vaush's take is surprisingly up my alley. The left is starting to realize understand the problem here, and I agree with them. Harris is tanking in the polls because she's running too far to the right and alienating people.

When Harris assumed the candidacy when Biden dropped out, it was like a breath of fresh air in the party. And early on, the democrats seemed to have good messaging. Because it was HARRIS'S team doing the messaging, not the DNC and their stupid consultants. We started calling the republicans weird. We made couch ####ing means about JD Vance. We said boldly "we;re not going back". Even back then, I was nervous. I had no idea what direction Harris's campaign would go in, whether it would go in a progressive direction, or a moderate one. I feared the moderate one, in part because i personally despise that brand of politics so much it drives me to wanna vote green, but in part because I believe I'm not alone and that those politics alienate people and make them wanna vote for anyone but the democrats. 

Early on, Harris seemed to be on the right path. She chose Tim Walz, who was the #1 pick of progressives. I know some will still say she should've picked Shapiro, and he was my compromise, but I saw him as kinda slimey, and I don't think that's wrong. But then...she started abandoning her positions, and by the time the DNC rolled around in August, I was already feeling deflated. She leaned into all this BS "hard work" crap and "opportunity economy" nonsense. She abandoned universal healthcare as a priority. She clearly made sacrifices to try to win this mythical moderate voter. And i held my nose at the time like...well...maybe it's what is necessary to win. I follow the polls. I know that the dems are clearly the underdogs this election. I was happy just to not be at 13% odds any more. 

Fast forward now, and the whole "were not going back" thing, gone. No more calling republicans weird. Apparently the consultants didn't like it. They brought on Hillary Clinton, you know, the most out of touch democratic lady in the country who lost before and STILL seems clueless as to why she did. She's touting that Dick Cheney endorsement like it's really firing people up (it's not, it's alienating them). She claims she would do nothing differently than Joe Biden but have more republicans in her cabinet. Allow me to puke in the sink for a moment.

*walks away*

*gross puking noises*

OH GOD WHY?!

*more puking noises*

*Comes back all disheveled*

Sorry about that. But that's just...how I feel about Harris's final campaign pitch. And now we're watching the balloon get deflated like Tom Brady is in charge of it and we're watching Harris lose her edge in the electoral college. I keep saying it, but as I saw it, this race is gonna be 50-50, and then toward the end of october, it's gonna break in one candidate's direction or another, and that's PROBABLY gonna be the one who is gonna win. It's "only" mid october, but so far the momentum is going toward Donald Trump. And that should make democrats crap their pants. I'm literally getting 2016 flashbacks. Remember how I had Clinton up through most of october and then her chances dropped last minute? Here's a graph I made based on my election predictions on this very blog:

Happening a little more prematurely this time, but this is why these trends matter. Again, the most current trend line I have:

Not as big of a deal, but to be fair, we dont have laurels to even rest on like Clinton did, no, this basically World War I, we're in the trenches spending months to gain minimal ground. What is the price of a mile? 83000 people, according to the math of the song. So we're in the thick of it, and even minor losses are something to be concerned about, because we literally don't have the margins to afford losing ANYTHING. And I don't know where this trend is gonna go from here, maybe it will reverse again, but still. I'm scared. The democratic voters are getting scared. Everyone is getting scared. And Harris and the DNC is like THIS IS FINE, STFU, DO YOU WANT TRUMP TO WIN! As if us pointing out the problem is why we lose. No, the dems just have this culture of not allowing dissent within their ranks. It's why it took so long to get rid of Biden. We didn't need to wait for him to have a complete old age related meltdown on stage on live TV to know this was gonna end badly. Anyone who listened to the dude speak for more than 5 minutes could tell this wasn't working. But the dems don't take criticism kindly. They just tell people THIS IS WHAT YOU'RE GONNA GET, YOU BETTER VOTE FOR IT, STFU, IT'S YOUR FAULT IF WE LOSE. And that is a dangerous strategy.

Under normal circumstances, ie, 2016, I was willing to let them F around and find out. You wanna run a crap campaign and alienate people? Fine? I won't vote for you, and I'll laugh at you and say i told you so when you lose. And man, I did have schadenfreude when clinton suddenly lost. 2020, I still refused to vote for them, but I did get concerned about the health of our coalition vs Trump's when Trump had such a strong near win.

But then trump went all sore loser, screamed it was rigged, and literally incited a mob to attack the capitol to overthrow the results, and...after that, I can't just sit back and laugh at the dems when their hilarious back tactics backfire on them any more. No. This is getting scary for democracy itself.

But, i sometimes swear, the DNC consultancy class would rather blow election after election than admit they are the problem. They'd rather lose, than be thrown out. They'd rather be in charge of a dying institution that cant win elections, than to concede power.

It seemed pretty clear to me the move to oust biden wasnt just because of his age, it was because someone somewhere wanted Biden gone. And it seemed like it was these braindead third way crapheads who despited the fact that Biden listened to progressives at all, and THEY wanted to run things. Rather than F off and ride into the sunset like the eisenhower republicans, they're fighting to maintain their relevancy in an age where the country desperately wants to be rid of these guys. And they'd rather force the same bitter pill that we vote for the garbage they serve up or get nothing every election, than to do the right thing and just...go away.

And as long as they're in charge, the democrats will all sound the same, whether it's Biden, Harris, or someone else. All democrats will follow the same policies with the same framing and the same branding, because it's what THEY want. I thought Harris was gonna push back against these guys, but no, she's letting them RUN her campaign. And it's flopping. Because NO ONE LIKES THIS CRAP!

And you know what? Vaush is right about independent voters not actually being moderate and being inconsistent ideologically. As he said at one point in his video, they'll have one view that's out of mussolini's playbook, and then another out of lenin's. It's why trumpism works in the first place. Of course trumpism is a hot mess of contradictions. it's trickle down economics mixed with populsim for crying out loud. But it resonates because there's a segment of independent voters who dont know exactly what they want, they just know what we're doing now isn't working, and they want change. And choosing between a milquetoast democrat and a firebrand populist like trump, trump suddenly looks good. it's why the obama coalition has collapsed and why these white working class guys are going trump. In 2012, when I formed my existing views, WE had that energy. I was ONE of those guys fleeing the GOP. And Obama win because he was the guy who cared about the little guy while romney was an out of touch ###hole that liked to fire people and talked about the 47% who didnt pay taxes. But for some reason, clinton and the third way were like white working class voters? We don't need you. We got republican friends now, and they tried to win over moderate romney voters. And since then, dems have struggled to win elections and their only saving grace is literally "we're not trump." 

And this election is like another 2016. The economy is good, on paper. But yet, people don't care about the metrics, they're hurting, the metrics are flawed, they are ignoring that capitalism itself is flawed and in need of reform, and people want SOME sort of change. But again, they don't know what they want because unlike say, me, they're not really smart enough to do research and develop a coherent set of policies and an ideology around them to actually articulate that pain and how to fix it. So they just go to whatever demagogue tells them what they wanna hear. They could've gone bernie in 2016. And Bernie would have won. Remember the election map I made on that based on ACTUAL voting data? Who remembers "bluetah?" I do. To be fair Even McMullin might've made that one happen. 

But yeah, this is the world that we could've had. But instead, the democrats got in their own way and we got Trump winning instead. Because the democrats are dinosaurs, and they won't fricking step aside and let a new generation have nice things. We need to be stuck in the 1990s forever and don't you DARE ask for anything more or better. Do you want the republicans to win? You HAVE to support this or else!

Again, under normal circumstances, I'd be fine just sitting back and letting them lose. Vote for Jill Stein and then kick my feet up and watch the fireworks happen. Can't do that with Trump though. He really IS that dangerous, and the dems need to get their heads out of you know where now. For your own good, get the hell out of your own way. Let Kamala be Kamala. Authentic Kamala was a far better candidate than this DNC rebrand being shoved down our throats. Bring back the LIFT act, aka, UBI lite framed as a tax credit. Bring back the public option. I'll even concede single payer, because i KNOW it's too far left and can't win in this environment. Just do the public option. Reuse your plan from 2020 but drop the whole "getting rid of private insurance" thing. If the suburbanites wanna keep their healthcare, let them. Just make it better for the other 65-70% of people who actually want better healthcare. Be for good things. Be progressive. Make peoples' lives better.

For all the talk from the right about how Harris is a radical socialist, and all of the talk from DNC consultants about how she can't even appear to lean into that, I'll say it. People just want their lives better. They'll vote for anyone who does so regardless of ideological affiliation. Americans arent smart. They hate obamacare but they love the affordable care act. They hate socialism but love Bernie's policies. If Harris has to sell a progressive platform under the guise of centrist framing, so be it. But to actually BE a centrist is gonna make you lose voters, because those guys don't wanna do anything to improve the lives of the American people. And just like 2016, the dems stand to lose again if they lean too hard into this framing, which is why I think harris's numbers are dropping. The honeymoon period is finally over, reality is setting in, and most people are realizing they're just getting Biden 2.0, just more moderate. BLEH!

And remember how badly Biden polled. NO ONE ACTUALLY WANTS MORE JOE BIDEN! They dont feel the economy being good. You can lecture them and scream at them about metrics, but most americans go by vibes and their immediate situations. This is also why allen lichtman was full of crap with his 13 keys. He thinks the dems are gonna win because the economy is good. But most americans don't FEEL it's good. And that's what matters. in 2016, we still felt like we were in the 2008 recession. In 2024, we still feel like we're in covidflation. It doesnt matter if the metrics say it's over and the economy is returning to normal. Maybe it is but people dont feel it. So you gotta be more populist and progressive. You just gonna be careful how you frame it. Americans arent in the mood for leftism or anything that will be perceived as increasing inflation. But at the same time, if you run to the right and do nothing, you're gonna be nailed for that.

It's a darned if you do darned if you dont scenario. But that's why trump has such an advantage. He can just say if he was in office none of this would be happening and blah blah blah and he wants this and he wants that and he can lie all day, people will vote for him because they know he's at least listening to them. Keep in mind, a lot of voters like trump because he has this undercurrent of populism to his views. His actual views might be anti populist AF. he might talk about draining the swamp while being the swamp, but then the democrats will tell you that nothing will change and you will like it. Who do you think independents are gonna vote for?

Given that, it's no wonder Harris is starting to lose. The independents are gonna make their minds in this last month, and they're starting to go toward trump. I dont know how much damage is already done. But I do know that damage is being done. And if Harris doesnt course correct, I fear that this will get worse and Trump will win. 

And that's an outcome none of us want. Except maybe those DNC consultants because they'd rather lose than cede power to progressives. If we werent facing such an existential threat to democracy, I'd be fine with letting the dems lose and purge themselves. I do think another loss is needed to bring them down to earth and force them out for good. But at the same time, we are gambling democracy on that outcome, so let's just get it done, vote harris, and then decide what we do next. We're in between a rock and a hard place here. Ugh.

Debunking the "republican poll bombing" narrative

 So, in the latest case of liberal cope that I've seen regarding the poll numbers the second things turn south for the left, a common narrative I'm seeing is that republican polling firms associated with Trump are poll bombing the averages. Now, in 2020, I did believe this to be the case. And I even removed several polling firms from RCP's averages in order to get a clearer picture of what's going on. And that's why I had an 88% chance Biden was gonna win, rather than a 62% chance. And I wasn't even close. And long story short, don't mess with the polling averages, that can make you more off than you'd otherwise be. 

But...let's say we did it again. Let's say I went through the polling averages RCP has in the 7 states, removed offending firms like Trafalgar, Insider Advantage, Center for American greatness, etc, and I recalculated the averages, what would my forecast look like?

....and nothing of significant value has changed. Outside of the rust belt, the effects are completely negligible and things moved 0.1% at most. In the rust belt, MI and WI shifted leftward by 0.3%, with PA being the only state that flipped and saw any significant difference at all at 0.7%. None of these shifts fundamentally altered the state of the race. My overall forecast remains largely unchanged at 45-55 in Trump's favor, although PA did shift back to the blue column. 

Either way, none of these differences make or break the forecast. They really are simply the matter of a rounding error in a lot of cases, and don't greatly affect the averages.

I mean, for reference, PA is currently at a 49% chance in my official forecast, it's 56% here. Both are functionally coin flips. WI shifts from a 53% chance to a 56% chance. MI shifts from a 41% chance to a 44% chance for Harris. None of these are ground breaking. 

So, let's dispense with this narrative that Harris is only declining because republicans are bombarding the averages. They are, but they are mostly doing relatively decent polling and removing them isn't massively shifting the race. Many of the biggest blows to Harris's polling averages come from relatively unbiased pollsters with outliers that swing hard Trump. Nevada had a poll from the Wall Street Journal that was Trump +6. It is almost single handedly responsible for shifting it from being a D+1 state to being an R+<1 state. Michigan had a R+4 poll from Quinnipiac that tanked Harris's average there. PA is the only state where several R leaning pollsters published several R leaning results that could affect the lean of the state. And even then most of the most recent polls are only R+1 or R+2, they're kind of in line with the average and aren't shifting it THAT much. 

The fact is, Harris is just declining. And this is a numerical fact. I know dems seemingly like to cope and bury their heads in the sand whenever the democrats start to lose. I mean, remember the mass delusion over Biden's chances? Yeah. Dems really dont like to admit that they're losing or something is wrong with their candidate or strategy. And they need to stop that crap. 

No, something is going wrong here. Maybe it's just a temporary shift, or maybe as we enter the final month of campaigning, Harris's momentum is falling apart. Denying reality isn't gonna help us. We need to address the problem head on and fix it. I don't want trump to win either, but I also don't lie in my forecasts. I keep it real and follow the data. And on that data, who knows how reliable it is. It could be underestimating trump again. It could be underestimating harris in overcompensating for the flaws of 2016 and 2020. Or it could be dead on. We won't know until election day. And to be real, Harris still has a good chance. It's 45%. While I'd rather be trump right now with the current numbers, again, anything less than 60-40 is a coin flip. The race is still a toss up. it's just a trump leaning one rather than a Harris leaning one. 

Parsing out my "conflicting" views on abortion

 So...abortion. Everyone's favorite topic in 2024. I just sat through a thread where a bunch of pro lifers were discussing the topic, and a lot of them had...shall we say, overly simplistic views. Basically, they'd say stuff like they don't believe in exceptions because it's philosophically inconsistent. This isn't the first time I've heard such things so I kind of wanted to debunk this nonsense mindset. I notice right wingers do this a lot. They care so much about "philosophy" that they will adopt the most extreme possible perspective on things, even if it isn't in touch with reality like...at all. I like my views to be in touch with reality. I like them to actually correspond with the world around me. So I find this to be the most nonsense perspective I've seen. 

So, before I get into my own possible philosophical conflicts, I do want to address this as an ex right winger who used to be very pro life.

Why there should be abortion exceptions, even if you're pro life

So, as I see it, abortion has always been a conflict of two priorities, the life of the fetus, and the freedom and well being of the mother. Even if I were to believe life begins at conception, blah blah blah, I would still be for abortion in cases in which the life of the mother is at stake. Why should the mother die because fetus? This is a trolley problem with life against life, and if I prioritize the life of born persons over unborn persons, what's wrong with that?

Likewise, stuff like exceptions for birth defects and severe diseases, if the fetus is gonna die or suffer from some incurable illness, why not just abort it? Why force the mother to carry it to term, even if it's unhealthy for her? As you can tell a lot of it simply prioritizes the life of the mother, but if the life of the fetus is forfeit or compromised in some way, obviously that lowers its value too, does it not? Why shouldn't we prioritize other concerns? This philosophical perspective that a life is a life and the life of the fetus trumps all is not only irrationally extreme, it's dangerous. It ignores the complexities of the situation and condemns people to intense suffering and possibly unnecessary death because you decided to get self righteous over babies. It's a dumb perspective, sorry, not sorry. 

Even as a pro lifer when I was young, I recognized there should be exceptions. I was even for exceptions for rape and stuff like that. I recognized that abortion for funsies was probably wrong, but there are obviously exceptions where it should be allowed. This take has aged badly for me, as shifting away from my Christian perspective, I significantly downgraded the value of fetal life in my calculus to the point that I'm now unapologetically pro choice, but yeah, I never adopted the extreme perspective pro lifers hold today, and I find it increasingly insane as I get older. Even back in high school I recognized nuance existed.

How secularism shifts the moral calculations of fetal life

So, when I was a christian, I highly valued life in my moral calculation. I believed God made all of us for a reason, that we had to obey his will, and that abortion was violating his will. I believed fetuses had souls, and that killing them was functionally equivalent of killing people. I believed that all life was functionally equal, although i did prioritize the life of the mother for pragmatic reasons. 

But....secularism changes a MFer, and going into a more naturalistic idea of what fetal life is, the calculations changed. I started recognizing life existed on a spectrum from simple cellular life to conscious, sentient beings. And that abortion was a question of where on the fetal development scale the prohibition should be. The value of the parents' liberties, bodily autonomy, etc, were far more important for me, and the value of fetal life became almost nonexistent in the early stages. I put the cutoff point around 24 weeks. I did this based on viability, as well as fetal development regarding consciousness and the nervous system. All of this stuff came together around 20-28 weeks, where beyond that point, i would morally treat the fetus as a premature baby, and before it, I would treat it as a clump of cells. The 24th week marks the 50% mark for fetal viability, and also marks the date range the brain and nervous system start to form what I would say is the first real inkling of consciousness. 

In my perspective, no consciousness, no problem. The parents' choices trump ALL other concerns, period. Abortion on demand, for any reason. Post that point, the fetus starts being conscious and viable, and I tend to support more restrictions, in theory at least (see next section). However, I'd still allow exceptions for all of the reasons I always have. Which brings me to the pesky issue that is the GOP.

My moral vs legal position on abortion

So, morally, 24 weeks with exceptions for birth defects and the mother's health. Legally...legal until birth. Why? Because GOP. 

The fact is, the extreme pro lifers I mentioned above can't support exceptions to the rule for some reason, and insist on pushing these, quite frankly, batcrap insane laws that push the issue in the most extreme direction possible. This leads to women not being able to get abortions even when they should, putting them at risk of sepsis and crap. It leads to non viable fetuses being forced to come to term because...reasons. Again, these dunder heads dont have views nuanced enough to allow for reasonable exceptions, so I end up countering this by moving in the most extreme position possible; pro choice, no exceptions. Because quite frankly, I still prioritize late term fetal life lower than born persons, and believe given how rare late term abortion is, that the harm of allowing it is minimal. Very few people would get abortions that late along. Many do for medical reasons. Others may not know they're pregnant, but even then I don't particularly care. I would still rather see someone who isnt worthy get an abortion than someone who is worthy be denied one. Just how I view things.

So...yeah. Even though I'd morally be opposed to late term abortion, unless you craft a bill to address my very obvious objections, I'm gonna be against all regulation on this topic. 

How my spiritualism changes the calculus (again)

So...even though I am spiritual, and even though I have views related to souls again, I dont believe this is relevant to the question. Because we should base policies on the evidence we have, and because I can't prove that this stuff is real, I can't very well make rules based around it, right? As such, in my views, I have a perspective in which unless I can justify an idea secularly, I'm not gonna use it as part of my moral calculus on this issue. I think that's fair. Separation of church and state, having rational, evidence based policies, blah blah blah. Practicing what I preach.

However, even if the legal position doesnt change, how does the moral position change? Well, here's the thing. It's hard to say for sure what's the truth here. However, I have consulted several sources related to my exact spiritually (including the afterlife 101 book, as well as michael newton's books on life between lives) and largely, abortion is not considered a crime. Michael Newton describes a process in which the soul attaches itself to a fetus later in the pregnancy, between the 4th and 9th month (with 5th-6th being average, that aligning with the 20--26th week or so to my knowledge), and that if the fetus is aborted, oh well, soul goes back to heaven, tries again with another body. 

I have seen a story in which a young child remembered being aborted in a previous life (children sometimes do remember past lives, apparently...), and was sad over that, but yeah. I generally don't see a ton of reason to consider abortion some sort of grand moral transgression, the bulk of the evidence seems to at least align with my secular moral views. 

Even then, did I mention that we shouldnt legislate things based on spirituality which isn't proven? Yeah. So my spiritual views actually change remarkably little. It was really only my original christian framing of the issue that highly prioritized life.

Conclusion

So...as we can tell, I dont like simplistic moral perspectives. I believe pro lifers and conservatives in general have this perspective where rather than crafting rules and morals around life as we understand it, they have these strict and unbreakable moral codes and they expect human behavior to bend around them. God said, therefore, X. You cant argue with X. If you argue with X, you're wrong and immoral by definition, that's just how the world works, and this is objective fact. 

I dont see morality that way. Morality is complex, it arises from human interactions, and it tends to be of human origin. So I dont value the concept of objective morality at christians and other right wing moralists frame them. Second of all, I see the abortion issue as a debate of conflicting priorities. We value the life of the fetus, we value the life of the mother, the freedom of the mother, etc. And as I see it, pro lifers value the "life" of the fetus, and the pro choicers value the "choice" of the mother. That's just how the debate is.

On a personal level, people are free to believe what they want. I dont believe theres a singular right answer. I came to mine through logic, and I feel comfortable defending it. But that's just my truth and people are free to do as they want.

On a legal level, the level that concerns all of us, nah, I believe the pro life perspective needs to be justified, and it just isn't. It mostly comes from unnuanced perspectives of philosophy that arise from religion and authoritarianism. And I would go further even than my personal moral limits allow on the subject, simply to counter the extremists running in the other direction. I'd rather err on the side of "choice" than life. Sorry. Not sorry. How I see it. I know some pro lifers will think that I'm a terrible person for that, but bite me, and praise abort.

Election Update 10/11/24

 Okay, so, new election update. This isn't a very good one (given my obvious biases), but I'm gonna report the facts as I see them.

Presidential

I'm not going to mince words. We are LOSING. New polls this week have eroded Harris's advantages in the swing states she was ahead in, although to be fair, Trump's advantages eroded in the states where he was ahead. All 7 swing states are now effective tossups, with 6 of them being in the republican column. While I must emphasize that this IS still a tossup, and Harris still has a healthy 45% chance of winning, it is a marked decline from where things were. Last week, we were a point in the other direction, and while the race was STILL in tossup territory, Harris had the advantage. She is losing is and the election is shifting to Trump. I don't like this shift, and I don't like where the energy is going. Remember what happened in 2016. Clinton was ahead, by A LOT (looking at my old predictions from this point in October I had her at like 90%), but then by election day she eroded to 56% and lost. I always said that because polls are a lagging indicator, we didn't really measure the shift fast enough for it to happen. We could be seeing that happen here, and we really don't want that. Even if the race is a tossup, just the energy shifting like this could mean that people intend to vote for Trump an ARE voting for Trump. Keep in mind, mail in ballots are being received and I just got word that my vote has been received by the state and I am locked in. So this is happening now. People are voting now. And that map is getting a little pink in the swing states.

Even worse, look at the trends.

I normally only include the first chart here. It's the election odds, but this is the strongest trump has been in two months. The second map, which measures projected electoral votes, is really breaking for Trump. Again, this is because 6/7 of the swing states are now tilting Trump. The only one we're holding onto is Wisconsin, and we're only holding onto it by 0.3%. The others we're losing by 0.2-0.9%. Again, not lethal in and of itself. A singular point shift in either direction could toss the race either to a 226-312 Trump win scenario, or a 319-219 Harris one. It's THAT close where any error at all can still shift the race either way. I just don't like this because again, when you're on the wrong side of a trend line, that can be dangerous. We still have about 3.5 weeks to turn it around, but I'm starting to get nervous. 

Now, in all fairness. Let me present the counter argument to this narrative, and that is that the republicans are poll bombing the averages. They like to do this sometimes. There's a reason I tried excluding trafalgar and making my own averages in 2020. But that also ended up throwing my results way off, where I was way too bullish on Biden, and that's why he only barely won when my projection had him winning in a relative landslide. Yes. The averages were off in the trump direction either way, but excluding those polls made them WAY off. So you know what?  I have the same mentality and motto as much of the election prediction community has this time: "throw it onto the pile" (or throw it into the average). Stop trying to read individual polls like they mean anything, just give me the average. Of course, if the republicans have so many polling agencies clogging up the averages it's gonna be off anyway. Still, not wanting to make the same error as I did in 2020, I'll just let the averages speak for themselves. I also don't think the unbiased polls are that much more optimistic than the nonpartisan ones anyway, and I ain't under the impression that the averages shift much. I normally use RCP but I did try looking at 538, race to the white house, and a few others, and while they still have harris leading, they are still seemingly recognizing the same shifts, as they had harris up more like 2-3 anyway, whereas I had her up <1. Now RCP has trump winning by <1 and the others have harris winning by <1. Honestly, we're splitting hairs over tenths of a percent here. I'm not gonna act like it's a huge real. I always used RCP going back to my original prediction in 2008, I feel like they do good work, I have no reason to switch at this time. 

So...that's the presidency. What about the Senate?

Senate

So, adding the Osborn race has changed the calculus about the senate, giving the dems a better chance of hitting 50-50. That's now my most likely outcome at 52%, with the GOP having a 33% chance and the dems a 16% chance. 

A big point of worry though is the fact that the rust belt has hollowed out in the past two weeks. Many of those races were "likely dem", now they're only "lean dem" showing that the race is tightening up as we go into the final month here. To be fair, the Texas and Florida races are softening up for dems, but I honestly don't expect them to flip. Florida is technically now "lean rep" but when you're at like the 1, 4, and 8 mark, you're kinda in that in between zone where i could theoretically classify you in either, and I probably would still call Florida as likely rep given its history. If it were going from 2->4, sure, lean. But going from 6->4 or whatever, yeah, likely. Either way I'm not too optimistic there, and it is still pretty obvious the rust belt states have a better chance of flipping at a 16-31% chance, whereas Florida is at a 16% chance and Texas is at 12%. Now I did do some simulations, but Ill save those for their own section. Which I'm going to transition to...now.

Simulations

Now, again, with simulations, take things with a grain of salt. My simulator treats each individual state as an independent trial, so no trends are involved at all. Meaning in the real world, if PA goes blue, I'd also expect MI and WI to. However, in this simulation, anything can happen. You can see a simulation with blue Texas and red Minnesota. It kind just brute forces possibilities and some of them are kind of nonsensical like the one I mentioned above. So, with all of that said, what results do I get?

Well, with the presidential, I get 51 Harris outcomes, 48 Trump outcomes, and 1 tie. It's definitely closing up on the simulator. For some reason the thing inherently favors Harris. Idk if this is due to the distribution of random numbers or if something about this map just leads to more harris outcomes, but yeah, all things being equal, harris tends to win the simulations slightly more often. And even with a 0.5% handicap, it's still slightly winning. Take it for what it is.

The senate is more interesting in a sense. The senate still heavily favors a republican map, with 68 outcomes being republican, 24 being ties, and 8 being democratic leaning. Again, if we follow the normal linear model of elections, I'd expect about 52% ties, 33% republican outcomes, and 16% democratic ones. Take it as you will. This part of my forecast is mostly experimental. I would say my official forecast are the charts above.

Conclusion

As such, there's a lot to get nervous about with this week's prediction. Perhaps it is early to be sounding alarm bells, but at the same time, we're seeing a decent amount of movement in the republican direction over the past 2 weeks or so, and given how we only got 3.5 weeks left and voting is already happening, there's reason to be concerned. This kind of movement was witnessed by myself in the week leading up to the 2016 election. And even though i still favored Clinton, Trump won, because polling is a lagging indicator. When polling shows a trend, it often does so behind the actual trend happening in the real world. So seeing movement toward trump at this late date concerns me, especially as early voting is a thing post covid now. We could be seeing the first signs that trump is gonna win. At the same time, it's also possible republican polling firms are just poll bombing the averages. Either way, I say throw them on the pile, and my prediction is based on said pile.

I will say that this isnt necessarily lethal for Harris. I know people mention in 2022 polls went red toward the end too and then the democrats overperformed by 3 points. But at the same time, republicans could ALSO overperform by 3 points. Honestly, a single point or two can make or break things, especially for the presidential. For the senate things are still a bit more robust, but a 3 point shift would more likely hurt democrats than republicans here. 

Still, the above is what the median outcome is projected to be. Over 80% of outcomes will likely either feature a 319-219 Harris map or better, or a 226-312 Trump map or better. All I know is with this movement, I'd probably bet on the trump outcome over the harris one as things stand right now. Still, we got a few weeks, things can shift back the other way.