The cheap GPU list version 2

 So....I went over the cheapest GPUs that are worth buying last week, but I do want to offer a newer, more consolidated list. Some of the deals offered were temporary deals. Sometimes I want to consolidate to offer a cleaner list of choices, and yeah. So, condensed version!

$100- GT 1030 (DDR5)

The bare minimum. Basically an integrated graphics tier card. It'll run games up to 2015ish reasonably well but be iffy beyond that. I mean, if you really REALLY wanna play newer stuff it can probably work due to 2 GB VRAM, but keep in mind it's not intended for anything MODERN and it is weak.

$140- Arc A380

Yeah the 1650 super was a temporary deal. So, the Arc a380 is 3x the power of the GT 1030, giving it A LOT more power. It also has 6 GB VRAM. But it's intel, and intel cards have had issues with drivers and other issues due to the immaturity of the architecture. It might ironically have compatibility issues with some games, or poor performance with some games, so something to keep in mind. But let's face it, it's about the best youre gonna get. There's a lot of ewaste and junk the lower you go, and if $140 is all you can afford, well, this is what's available. Basically it should run games up to around 2022ish based on power alone, but keep in mind compatibility issues

 EDIT: After reviewing this more, yeah, I really want to emphasize that the experience on Arc GPUs are VERY rough. Literally the only reason this is still being recommended is because nvidia and amd have just decided not to even compete at this price point any more, with older GPUs like 1050 tis, 1650s, and RX 6400s/6500 XTs no longer being available at this price range. While the experience will likely still be several times better than what can be had out of the 1030, this is going to be a very rough gaming experience and I'd highly recommend paying more for something better. 

$200- RTX 3050 6 GB

So, after reviewing the intel GPUs a bit more, I decided to remove the A580 recommendation and just recommend this. yes, the Arc A580 is more powerful, but just like with the A380, the experience is VERY rough, and I'd just recommend the 3050 instead. 

As for the 3050 6 GB, it's not great, but again, the market is what it is. It's not a ton faster than the A380, but it is going to be a whole lot more stable. It'll play most games on SOME level, although some VRAM intensive ones may not run well due to the 6 GB. But yeah, it's what the market offers right now, and it's probably the best card you're gonna get at this price. 

$260- RX 7600

The REAL bare minimum gaming card for modern games. You want something that "just works" and gets you in the door, you want this thing. It's on par with my 6650 XT, having used THAT extensively, I can say that this will run everything you throw at it. It might not be a GREAT experience but hey, low settings, possibly with FSR? 60+ FPS? It'll do it. Probably not very futureproof, but in this market, what can you do?

$360- RTX 5060

About 30% better than the 7600, still 8 GB VRAM. Probably not futureproof but it'll run games a bit better at least. I don't even consider $300+ "low end", but at this point, it seems to be extending up to $450-500, so....yeah.

$410- RX 7700 XT

Honestly, wouldnt even bother with the 9060 XT 16 GB at this point. Yeah you get 12 GB instead, but its just as powerful and $60 cheaper. And let's face it, vs the 5060, you're paying for VRAM. $50 more for 12 GB, $110 more for 16 GB. Maybe 16 GB will be more futureproof, but yeah, you're paying a bit more for it.

What would I get?

Of these options I'd probably opt for the RX 7600, putting me at the same level of performance as the 6650 XT I already own. But here's how I look at it. Anything less has compromises. if you feel adventurous, the A580 might be worth it for $200, but I would just want something that works without compromise. The 3050 6 GB is also too weak and lacks VRAM for modern games (you really want 8). And beyond that, if youre gonna an 8 GB card, uh....yeah. Just get the cheapest one that does the job. The 7600 is the best one in terms of value. The 3050 8 GB looks like its being phased out and its ALSO $260...and it's A LOT weaker than the 7600. The 5050 is on par but for $300, why pay $40 more just for nvidia? 5060 is $350, but uh....it's still 8 GB. Like if youre thinking long term, I'd imagine all current 8 GB cards will go obsolete at the same time, since the VRAM is expected to eventually be the bottleneck. And to avoid the 8 GB trap, youre paying prohibitively more. Theres a 12 GB B580 for $310, but its on par with the 7600 otherwise and keep in mind, intel cards.... So youre paying $410 for a 12 GB 7700 XT, and then $470 for a 9060 XT. As you can see, you're getting stuck in an escalation trap at this point. Sure, you can get 30-50% more power with such a GPU, but yeah youre also paying a lot more, especially to get that power WITH more VRAM. 

So yeah. Like always, do your own research, but yeah. I just wanted a more clearly written and definitive article on this. 

EDIT: I changed some recommendations based on the intel GPU experience being even rougher than I anticipated. Seriously, just save up and buy intel or AMD instead if you can. There's no reason to buy one unless you LITERALLY can't save up for something better.  

Ya know, the more I think about this, the more I think, we're gonna do fine

 So....the GOP...they have nothing. They literally have nothing to campaign on but racism, islamophobia, and red scare tactics. Trump's calling El Sayed a communist. Mike Rogers is talking about helping hunt down Bin Laden and how El Sayed said we deserved 9/11. Like...what the actual fudge? Let's face it, we've known for a while that the GOP is intellectually bankrupt, but it's like they can't go 12 hours without showing their butts here. Seriously, we're not even 24 hours after the race was called and they're already going THIS unhinged. This is gonna be a fun election season if this is the best the GOP has. I thought they mightve actually been a threat. After all, Mike Rogers was relatively silent through the primary. He was sitting there with a poker face hiding his hand and now he's coming at us with a 7 high. It's like...wtf even is this?

Really, I'm tired of acting like the two sides are somehow equal to each other in terms of validity. The GOP has NOTHING. Like, they're barely stringing sentences together over there. And I aint saying you have to like El Sayed's politics, but holy fudge, if this is the best they got, we got this in the bag. The only thing we gotta worry about is the American people themselves being stupid here. Which...is...admittedly....a concern.  But....again, I'm just here like....really? That's all you got? I thought the republicans were actually gonna be scary. I swear, high school me could've come up with a better offense against El Sayed. Or maybe not. Idk. College me maybe? This is embarrassing. I'm embarrassed FOR you guys on the right. Holy crap. It's like your whole strategy is to scream about crap and lie and hope it works. To be fair, that's all they really got...

This is why I spend so much more of my time discussing the party infighting amongst democrats. I might not like the third way, but at least they have an intellectual framework for their ideas and it's worth engaging with. These guys, it's like that "why cant you just be normal" meme I saw recently. 

Mom: "I just want you to have food and healthcare!"

Kid: "Screams racial slurs"

That's where American discourse is honestly at right now...seriously... 

Republican infiltrators in the democratic primary?

 So....I have a friend from Michigan who explained to me that Michigan apparently has an open primary system, and given Mike Rogers was uncontested, there was apparently an effort by republicans to vote for Haley Stevens, and then abandon her for Mike Rogers in the general. Im not sure how reliable this is. It might not be reliable at all. But it would explain some things. Things like why the polls were off by like...9. Seriously, we're OUTSIDE of the margin of error now. El Sayed was expected to win by 10, won by 1. Like something is off there. But what if the pollsters measured actual democrats' responses and republicans showed up and skewed the results? That would explain some things. Like why the polls were off so much. As for the general, does this mean we're screwed? THe reason I was freaking out is if El Sayed was supposed to win by 10 and MASSIVELY underperformed, if he does the same in the general, that could be devastating to his numbers. Like he needs to OVERperform as it stands just to win. He has no comfortable buffer to underperform, and 8-9 points isnt an insignificant underperformance. That could be a sign of general election weakness. At the same time, if this is what happens after the GOP AND democrats AND AIPAC throw everything they have at him, well, there's hope. 

Anyway we're already seeing how the republican general election campaign is shaping up and it's just screaming about him being an Islamist and a communist so far. This party has no valid arguments so all they can do is the same fear mongering they've already been doing. If this was their best shot....we'll be fine. See you guys in November on this one. 

Abdul El Sayed wins; thoughts

 So....at around 2 AM they FINALLY called the race for Abdul El Sayed. What was supposed to be a roughly 10 point margin of victory was turned into a 2 point one, with lots of people saying polls were wrong. Well...yes and no. 

Again, polls have ERROR. In my own forecaosts, I assume a 4 point margin of error. Given that this applies to BOTH candidate, this gives a massive 8 point range the polls can be off in either direction. So we can expect the margin of victory for El Sayed to be between 2 and 18 with a 95% degree of confidence. When I said that I gave him around a 99% shot at winning, that's because the probability of the polls being off by 10 is about 1%. And as it turned out...that didn't happen. We just ended up at the extreme end of the 95% range roughly speaking. This was like a 2nd-3rd percentile margin of victory for Abdul El Sayed, a small margin of victory, but a victory nevertheless.  

Now, my big concern is where this leaves us with the general. As things stand, Haley Stevens was leading Mike Rogers by around 1.7%, giving her around a 66-67% chance of victory. El Sayed trails Rogers by 0.3%, this gives him a 47% chance of victory. This is not fatal to El Sayed in and of itself. Stevens is not super strong here, but El Sayed is not super weak either. Still, Stevens WAS the better candidate for the general, despite my own preference for El Sayed, and if El Sayed is gonna underperform by 8 in the primary, does that mean he stands a chance in the general? Hard to say. Quite frankly, the general looks very competitive, and once again, error will determine who wins in all likelihood. If democrats overperform, El Sayed wins. If they underperform, Rogers wins. It's that simple. But El Sayed's underperformance was significant here. We had a very comfortable margin and El Sayed only won BECAUSE he had that much of a buffer. If it were within the margin of error, El Sayed would have lost here. Because again, we got just about the worst possible outcome in that 2-18 point possibility range. We ended up only winning by 2. 

Now, to be fair, polling was funky here. After McMorrow dropped out, polling was all over the place, but then consensus polling in the weekend leading up to the election seemed to coalesce around El Sayed in a way that gave him a double digit lead. It was sudden. But with multiple polls showing similar outcomes, plausible. Well....again, while he won...it was close. It is possible that the error happened because lots of people had to make up their mind last minute and they went in favor of stevens. Maybe the sampling was off. Who knows. But yeah. Again, this just shows how funky polling can be and how imprecise these forecasts really are. Still, the model TECHNICALLY held up. El Sayed won, so...yeah. 

Anyway, I just hope this doesnt mean anything for the general. Michigan is strangely in play for how blue of a year 2026 is shaping up to be, and El Sayed is admittedly the weaker general election candidate. If we get a similar underperformance in the general, we're screwed. of course, given Haley stevens was only 2 points better here, she'd be screwed too. D+1.7 actually means R+6.3 to D+9.7. R+0.3 means D+7.7 to R+8.3. Ya know? Again, this is why i didnt sweat El Sayed's electability in the primary, but if he underperforms like this, I got a bad feeling about the general. I guess we'll have to see though. El Sayed was my favored candidate so I'm glad he won, but yeah. This was nerve wracking and the general is too. Not only could this race decide the control of the senate, but also is a test balloon for the viability of progressive left candidates in a swing state. if El Sayed screws this up, centrists will just hold this over us to push electability arguments and we might end up with more moderate candidates in the future. So yeah, let's see where this goes. Challenge 1 over, but challenge 2 is about to begin. 

Still, I feel better about El Sayed than I do Hong in Wisconsin. If you notice I didn't endorse her. Yeah, it's her electability or lack thereof. Nothing against her, but uh...YIKES, her numbers are bad. Even I dont wanna touch THAT. El Sayed though? As you can tell, it will only matter if the race is super close. If El Sayed loses by less than 2 points in November, Stevens probably would've won. otherwise it wouldnt have mattered. 

Navigating the divide between centrists and leftists...again....

 *sigh*, it's a big topic these days, idk what to say, but Kyle Kulinski is kinda having it with Bill Maher and I wanted to give my thoughts. 

On the one hand, Kyle has a point. If you're willing to vote for the republican party in this day and age, you're on the right, period. Even more so, for all the talk of how illiberal the left is, the right is basically fascist. I don't care if you think the left is too far left, holy crap, the right is a bigger problem NOW. 

The problem with the left is if socialists and communists take over the democratic party 10-20 years ago, THAT'S a threat. And LONG TERM, maybe it is. I certainly am leery of DSA for that reason these days. A little bit of them is good, and will give us social democratic goals. Most DSA candidates are running on social democratic priorities, and even if further left, yeah, we're gonna see good results short term, even if a few of them are far left.

The problem comes as they gain more power. What if they become a majority of the democratic party? or a majority of the government? Well, then we literally got blue MAGA. yeah, Again, if this is our tea party moment, we do gotta worry that maybe in 10-20 years from now, we'll have a MAGA moment if these guys gain TOO much power, and start throwing out ALL moderates. We need SOME. I mean, keep in mind my overall philosophy. Conservatives (as in, conserve the status quo, not the whackjob "regressives" we call "conservatives), progressives. The two need to operate in harmony against each other. Progressives try to change things, but conservatives stop it from being too much too fast. Right now, we got conservative democrats and regressive republicans. That's a HUGE problem. We want the democrats to be progressive again. We just can't afford for them to be TOO progressive where they start changing too much, too fast, and too irresponsibly. It's a balance. And ideally, we get it right. But right now, we need more progressive politicians. If some of them are DSA, well, a little DSA won't kill us. It's when they start becoming more than 50% of the government that we begin having problems. 

And, keep in mind, unlike what Bill Maher says, many progressives, even DSA ones, aren't full on seize the means of production.  Most of them want goals aligned with social democracy, at least in the short term. Higher wages, medicare for all, free college, public housing, a green new deal. hell, Darializa Avila Chevalier, for for all of her faults, is pro UBI of all things. Bill Maher is freaking out about Zohran Mamdani and his socialist grocery stores. it's just wild. There's red scaring over literal communism, but then there's crapping on good things.

I ain't saying we all have to agree with every left wing proposal. Im not big on a green new deal. I thought Biden's BBB framework was better on that. I ain't even die hard on medicare for all these days. I'm actually for an aggressive public option instead. On the flip side, a lot of other people don't like my UBI ideas. We're not gonna all agree. But we should agree that things are fundamentally fudged and we need the biggest recalibration of the economy since the original new deal, and we should pass a suite of progressive legislation to get that done. If you wanna be on the team, we at least need to agree that broadly. I dont want centrist liberalism. Nor do I want communism. I want social democracy. But, at this point, it seems like to get that, we need a broad tent, with some to my right, and some to my left. That I can accept. 

In this moment, if you freak out over the mere thought of social democracy, like people like Bill maher are doing, feel free to leave the democrats and never come back. Really. I'm done with centrists who oppose even social democracy. If youre concerned about literal communism that's one thing, but if you just hate the idea of all progress, you're not on the team, get out. Likewise, if you're so far to the left nothing but literal communism will satisfy you, well....go have fun voting for a third party that gets <1% of the vote, you're not on the team either. 

If we can agree on social democratic goals now, you're on the team. We need to move left of where we are. That doesnt mean we need to go FAR FAR left, and again, we need to restrain the coalition from doing that long term. But that doesnt mean we moral panic over people who want socdem priorities. Seriously, this is MY beef. If you look at mere SOCDEM priorities, and you cant agree on THAT? Feel free and vote republican, you're not on the team. Like seriously, if trump's fascism is more acceptable than you than say, zohran mamdani's leadership in new york, or abdul el sayed in michigan, or troy jackson in maine, well....idk what to tell you, you're tastes suck and youre pretty much a republican to me. So go have fun with that. 

And for people who wonder what the hell I'm thinking calling people republicans and telling them to vote that way, thinking that that's a suicidal strategy, no, it's not. It's actually genius. Here's the thing. Centrist democrats demotivate the base. For all the talk of how we need swing voters, we bring them in by giving them something to vote for. The answer isnt to always moderate to the point we get this bland flavorless politics made in a lab (which is what mainstream democratic politics is). It's to enthuse people to get them to vote for you. And to basically reverse uno chuck schumer, for every moderate republican we alienate, maybe we'll bring in 2 working class voters who would otherwise sit it out or vote republican. Seriously, elections are won by enthusiasm. over the course of my life, the side that panders to annoying centrist types almost always loses. The only election in the past 30 or so years I've seen a plainly uncharismatic candidate win was 2020, and that's because trump governed so badly anyone could win. Even then, he only barely won. In 2008, I was part of that centrist demographic, and you know what? The democrats didnt need me, they needed millions of enthused young people who wanted change. And they lost subsequent elections because they couldnt maintain their momentum, because centrism is a massive momentum killer in politics. No one LIKES centrists. They tolerate centrists. And centrists create low energy coalitions that lose elections.

Hell, if we throw those centrists out and they vote republican and republicans pander to them, it kills two birds with one stone. First of all, it moderates them and their priorities, which neutralizes the fascism threat. Second of all, it shrinks their coalition because more conservative values voters will stay home if they dont elect crazies. And that's what we want. A more moderate republican party and a more progressive democratic party is exactly what we need. If we neutralize MAGA by demotivating them and flooding them with centrists who moderate everything they do, then that's a win. If we move the overton window to the left with a progressive populist coaliton, that's a win. So no, it's not stupid to tell these guys to leave the democrats. I'm fully convinced whatever side gets stuck with these losers won't win elections, and that voters will vote for progressive candidates, at least in the short term.

I do think voters will eventually tire of populism and change, but only after the first big wave of change, which fixes many of the issues. The coalition that was fired up for change in the 1930s and 1940s was significantly more divided by the 1960s when Kennedy and Johnson were in office. The reagan coalition that was fired up in the 80s and 90s became divided by the 2000s and was becoming anemic in the 2010s until trump came around. And even then, I'm convinced trump is the final hurrah of that coalition unless they can radically change our democracy to run by permanent minority. Which is why it's so openly fascist. This is the last gasp of the reagan coalition fighting for its life. If we can form a new coalition around social democracy, that will hold for a while, and then eventually fall apart as well, while politics returns to "normal" for a time. But we gotta get through this change wave first. 

And yeah, that's my strategy. Have a huge wave of change. Maybe a second smaller wave 20 years from now. And have some normalcy in between. Keep the leftists from fully taking over the democrats, but keep it progressive at the same time. Really. The threat of DSA and their illiberal tendencies are a problem in the long term. But right now, the big threat is trump. I aint concerned about DSA taking over government and doing anything radical any time soon. And if we get to that point, well, it means we succeeded with social democracy, and the rest of the overton window will hopefully be hard against them. Even I'll become conservative by that point, pulling us back to sanity. 

But yeah. It's like worrying that the heat will cook us alive one day when we're currently freezing to death. That's what all of this feels like. It's stupid. Let's raise the thermostat to a comfortable level before we worry about whether it will eventually get TOO hot.  

Best GPUs for low end gamers?

 So....after seeing a dude buy a GT710 and being like THIS SUCKS! I wanted to look at what the best deals are on the extreme low end for GPUs. Now, a big factor here in this. I'm only looking at NEW. At the price ranges we're talking, you're probably better off buying used. BUT, given the unreliability of the used market in terms of pricing, possible issues with used GPUs, etc., I understand why some might want used. For the record, I would probably recommend you save up, as we will soon see (and I'll tell you the cheapest GPUs remotely worth the cash), but yeah. All of this data will be derived from PCpartpicker. 

So the bottom end of the market seems to start around $60 and has a lot of GT710 and quadro video cards. I dont know much about quadros, I'm under the impression they're workstation cards and people rarely bought them for gaming. I guess that does set the baseline. The big problem with them is they seem to lack drivers for games, so game compatibility and optimization is gonna be iffy at best. 

For $60 you can get the quadro 2000D. It's on par with a 9800 GT, which was a high end card when I got into dedicated PC gaming in 2008. Integrated wise it's comparable to, say, an intel UHD 620/630 or thereabouts. It's half as powerful as modern integrated and IN THEORY, can play like, gen 7 games up to around 2011-2013. They might play low end games past that, but take note of the flaws with drivers. 

For $75-80 you can get a Quadro P600/620. Those are twice as powerful, approaching a GT 1030 level of performance. Just keep in mind the lack of gaming drivers. In theory, they should be able to run games through 2014-2015ish, and lower end ones past that. But yeah. This is on par with modern integrated solutions like a intel UHD 770 or RX vega 11. Again, if you have a modern PC with modern integrated, you got this level of performance already. It literally comes with your computer.

At $100, you get the GT 1030, which IS a gaming card and will have gaming drivers. Again, we're talking 2014-2015 being the limit for actual decent performance in modern games of the time, with older games past that still working. If a game requires something like a HD 5850/HD6850 or GTX 460/650 ti style card, this is on par with THAT. 

Id probably buy the 1030 over the quadro just to get actual software support. Pascal was supported until fairly recently so there should be lots of game ready drivers for it.

At $140 there's a GTX 1650 super available. It is 4x as powerful as a GT 1030, and should run games through 2022. It's a solid choice, although it's disappointing given this was a $160ish card in its heyday. 

There's also the Arc A380, which is weaker at the same price. I wouldnt recommend it vs the 1650 super due to intel drivers being iffy and it being worse, but it is an alternative if the 1650 super dries up. 

There's an Arc A580 available at $200. Again, drivers are iffy, but this thing pulls in performance up to around a RX 6600, which used to be the king of the $200ish range until the supply dried up. 

For $10 more at $210 there's the RTX 3050 6 GB. The 6 GB is gonna cripple it and its performance is weaker than the A580, but nvidia generally has better software support. 

At $260 there's the RTX 3050 8 GB which is WTF, this one WAS $230-240 not long ago. Anyway, if you want something for MODERN gaming, this is what gets you in the door if you dont wanna risk it with the A580. It's the bare minimum, dont expect much from it, but at least every game will RUN on it...for now at least. Kinda sad THIS is what you get. A few years ago, you could get RX 6600s and 6650 XTs for less which were more powerful than this and had better drivers than intel cards. Disappointing.

RIght now there's a deal for $260 for the RX 7600, this takes precedence over the 3050, and basically at where I'd say the minimum for a comfortable experience is. Normally, this is $280-300 these days, but for $260, dang. I know its not that impressive, given it launched at $250 3 years ago, but that's the market. I dont make up the rules here. And i hate the rules too.

The 5050 is available at $300. This is on par with the 7600, but has better (nvidia) tech. Again, its kinda bad this is STILL $300ish. This is basically on par with a 3060/4060 which has been around this price point for years now. 

Anyway above $300 youre not really at the low end anymore. Heck, by rights you shouldnt be above $200 but again, market is market. Still, I'll keep going.

$310 there's the Arc B580, which is on par with the 7600/5050 but has 12 GB VRAM. I wouldnt really recommend it due to drivers. 

At $350 there's the 5060, which still has 8 GB VRAM but is 50% better than the 5050 roughly. Worth the upsell there (yeah this is why Im still going). 

At $360 theres the 9060 XT 8 GB, which i wouldnt recommend over the 5060 given all things being equal: Nvidia > AMD > Intel > workstation cards. 

Theres a 5060 ti 8 GB for $400, although Im not sure id buy the 8 GB version at that price.

At $410 theres the 7700 XT which is roughly as powerful but with more VRAM.

And finally at $450 theres the 9060 XT 16 GB, which I'd say is the most expensive card I'll cover. Has similar performance as the 5060/5060 ti/7700 XT but the 16 GB VRAM makes it more futureproof. 

And yeah. At the end of the day, which of these would I say are the BEST deals? Probably these:

GT 1030 (MAKE SURE YOU GET DDR5)- $100

GTX 1650 Super- $140

Arc A580- $200

RX 7600- $260

RTX 5050- $300

RTX 5060- $350

RX 7700 XT- $410

RX 9060 XT 16 GB- $450

Yeah....

Surprised the 3050 didnt make it in there but the Arc A580 was so good and the 7600 was cheap enough to supplant it. Often times the 3050 8 GB is my bare minimum recommendation for new games around $230, but the A580 was significantly better for less, the 3050 was $260, and the 7600 was ALSO $260, so...7600. 

Anyway, make sure you further research ALL of these cards before you purchase if you take my advice. Especially the intel cards and workstation cards here. Seriously. I normally go Nvidia or AMD gaming cards and dont trust anything else in practice. ANd yeah. Make sure you buy what you want. Dont buy something and then be like "this sucks". Basically anything lower then the A580/7600/5050 wont run new games well. I aint even sure about the A580 there. But yeah, if you want a quality modern experience thats your baseline. The lower you get the crappier it gets. Low end GPUs is like boots theory, you spend less, you get WAY less, sometimes its better to spend a little more to get something a lot better. THis is also why I went up to $450 because sadly....that theory is true up to that point. And even beyond it. once you get into the $500+ range youre dealing with 4070/5070, RX 9070 tier cards, and yeah. It just keeps going. 

But yeah this is why i always complain. The sub $200 market is dead. $200-300 is on life support, and most modern releases cost over $300 and sometimes into the $400 range and yeah this is ridiculous. I remember when $100 was low end, $250 was midrange, and $400-500 was high end. It's crazy. And we cant just say "but inflation" on this one. Inflation has only been like 40-50% since 2010ish? Yeah. So no excuses for this. Just corporate greed. 

ANyway, that's basically what I came up with, and yeah, I wanted to do this so people dont buy fricking GT 710s or even worse 210s. Seriously, theres A LOT of ewaste i skipped here. If it aint on here, suffice to say its probably not a good value. 

Discussing FiftyPlusOne's midterm model

 So, FiftyPlusOne (previously FiveThirtyEight) released their midterm forecast and it's looking....pretty reasonable. I largely concur with it in broad ways, although I may differ on details. They give the democrats a 56% chance of winning the senate, a mere point off from my 55% forecast (and theirs was 55% earlier). On actual senate predictions, we vary, they tend to think Michigan has a much higher chance of going blue, whereas they seem to think Nebraska is more likely to go red. Their probability for each race seems far more....likely than my forecast. I tend to be more likely to reach extreme outcomes more easily (like 97% certainty, whereas they'll be at 85%), but these are all methodology issues. 

As discussed in 2024, my model is more simple. It's polling only (outside of placeholder data where I estimate the outcome based on previous cycles), and merely represents a snapshot of where the race IS, not where it may be several months from now. Meanwhile, 538/50+1 likes to do things like do long term forecasts based on fundamentals. I guess if you do a fundamentals model, yeah, youll be more likely to make michigan blue and nebraska red. If anything, that might even be more correct. I just let my model model. Sometimes the data picks up on things that seem counterintuitive, but end up happening, like the blue state weakness in 2024 in states like new jersey, illinois, and new york. So who knows? And I guess you gotta temper certainty when the election is months out and technically anything can happen. Im fine with adjusting things on the fly, but yeah these guys just do things differently.

My own house model is currently more fundamentals based given the sheer lack of polling. They come up with 231 house seats and an 87% chance for democrats. Again, willing to split the difference is this is a long term forecast and not a snapshot. My current model is like 233 with a 97% chance. It was 231 with a 96% chance this morning but RCP updated their GCV polling average and plugging it into my model boosts dems chances. 

I will say that with the lower probability, they account for a higher range of outcomes than mine. In the senate, they seem to think that democrats will get between 47-55 seats, with their median outcome at 51. My own model agrees with 51 being the median (technically 51-52 due to iowa being a tossup), but and my range of outcomes is 46-54. Not a huge difference but it is weird seeing up to 55. Do they really think states like south carolina, montana, or florida can flip? Well, they have a higher probability than my model so I guess they do.

THe house is where this really gets funky. They seem to have outcomes ranging from like 211 on the low end for democrats to around 253 on the high end. My own model has a 95% confidence interval between 220-244 currently. Even if we account for the sudden 1 point shift we're still talking 217-244. This isnt to say outliers outside of these ranges cant happen, but I tend to try to stick to around 95-96% confidence (two tailed). Still looking at their charts, it's the same. If we include extreme outliers they got senate outcomes with 58 dem senate seats and 280something house seats. No way that's gonna happen. My model doesnt even account for extreme possibilities like that, since once we get beyond 99.8-9% or so I'm just like "let's just say it's 100%." 

Again, interesting to see the methodology differences here. I'll stick to my own model out of pride but yeah. We'll see. I find my model tracks pretty well in practice. Aint perfect, but i aint expecting it to be. Again, it's the AK47 of election models. Simple, easily accessible, it just works. Might not be the most accurate or sophisticated in the world but it gets the job done. Sophisticated models are a double edged sword, the additional complexity allows more accuracy in theory, but given the raw noise of probability, it can backfire. We'll see who is more accurate on election day. At least it's better than their 2024 "50% no matter what" forecast they seemed to have. 

Speaking of 2024, let's look at their final forecast.

So, they had it 50-50, and the deciding factor was polling error. That's about where I was. Funny how I can have a simple model, they have a complex one, and they end up in the same place more or less. Goes to show how even the best models are gonna have error and inaccuracies, same as mine. On the state level they seemed to do what my model did, with MI and WI leaning left, but they also though PA leaned slightly left too. So they technically had harris winning. I know it's being really nitpicky, given a 0.6% difference between theirs and my model, but mine was actually ever so slightly more accurate in that regard (although I was personally even more bullish toward harris where i thought the error would go in her favor). Still, they knew that polling was gonna be inaccurate, and estimated it being off by 3.8 points in either direction. And yeah....that would lead to either 226-312 as we saw.....or 319-219, depending the direction it went in. 

In the house, they came to roughly the same conclusion I did. Slight dem advantage but virtually a dead heat. In the senate they gave the republicans a 92% shot whereas my model was at 87%....and yeah. Very minor differences. Again. Really goes to show how my model punches above its weight. Only slight differences from theirs as of election day. 

So interesting model, let's see how ours compare in 2026.