Election Update 9/11/26

 "Sir, another democrat favorable poll has hit the averages..." *Bush face*

  Yeah. That's what it feels like these days. So...I got a lot to talk about with this one. Let's get to it.

Senate

So....we finally got some good data out of South Carolina and Kansas, which mostly corroborated those crazy polling averages that made me revert my Nebraska data, since it actually does seem reasonable to believe Osborn may be winning or at least within a reasonable range of doing so. 

This makes the map look REALLY bad for republicans. Not only are they losing states that were previously unthinkable like Alaska and Texas, but now Kansas and South Carolina are showing up as swing states. Like, what the actual fudge? Yeah, this is NUTS. Trump is REALLY unpopular and he's losing badly. 

House

This I don't have as much to talk about. Average lurched back toward the democrats a bit more, making the forecast more favorable. 

 Governors

 

Here, a few more dem leaning governors got added to this. I dont expect Minnesota or New York to flip any time soon, but I like to track everything within around 12 points or so, so those got added. Maine is technically out of range but I'll keep it for now since it's being tracked pretty regularly and it's already there. 

Conclusion

This week's forecast is really bullish on democrats, even more than normal. I really have to be wondering, is this real? or are republicans REALLY doing this bad? I kinda gotta believe the numbers because I look at trump and I honestly wonder how anyone, even someone who is conservative, can support this guy. Seriously. So maybe he really is doing this bad? Either way, happy to see it, and hope this holds out come election time. Like always though i would advise anyone reading this to use a bit of caution here. If republicans have a reasonable overperformance, all of these crazy gains can be reversed and they'll still hold onto the senate, as I've discussed before. I really do think the republicans taking the house is highly unlikely though.  

Dont fall for Trump's $5000 stimulus checks

 In a desperate ploy to save the republicans in the mid terms, Trump is promising to give every American $5000 if republicans win both the house and the senate. As the UBI guy, I'm just going to warn you guys NOT to do it. There's more at stake this election than UBI. The republicans are a proto fascist party that's a threat to democracy itself. They're toying with AI that could eventually kill us all as I just discussed in the previous article. Yeah, let's not do this.

Even more so, as the UBI guy, let's discuss why this proposal actually sucks. Remember COVID? Remember how he gave everyone $600 checks and then Biden gave them $1400 checks, and then republicans turned around and blamed those checks on inflation and making people lazy? Yeah...I remember too. And here's the thing. UBI, done properly, is supposed to be funded with taxation and spending cuts. We do that to stop inflation. If you fund it without doing that, you increase the money supply, which, without proportionally increased production, devalues the currency. More money for the same amount of stuff means money is worth less. 

This ploy will likely cost $1.25 trillion, assuming we give $5000 to 250 million adults. That will be added to the deficit. Rich people wont pay for it. They probably wont be able to cut anything to fund it without screwing over a lot of people (this is why a lot of people on the left are skeptical of UBI). And for a one time check, the money will be spent and then it's gone, and then everything will cost more. It's a terrible policy.

And then UBI will be toxic for a generation, because the worst possible person did it in the worst possible way. "Oh remember when that guy gave everyone $5000 and it caused inflation?" They already pulled this with Biden over $1400 checks, and those barely contributed to inflation in the grand scheme of things given the complexities of the global economy at the time.

But yeah. Say no to Trump's $5000 checks. If we're gonna do UBI, we should do it right. We do it poorly and we hurt the cause more than we help it. And we dont want Trump to win anyway. Again, there's far more at stake here than a single use $5000 check. 

AI is going to kill us all

 So, this isn't good. People are quitting anthropic and claiming that AI has a >10% chance to kill us all by the end of the decade. That....isn't good. I feel like, we're in a science fiction movie. We got the scientists warning main plot point is a bad idea, a bunch of morons in charge who are like "I DONT CARE DO IT ANYWAY", they do it anyway, and that's the movie. Terminator, Frankenstein, any B sci fi or horror movie that I used to think was too stupid to ever happen in real life, and yet, here we are. 

Regulate this crap. I mean Im under the impression AI intelligence isnt real intelligence, but viruses arent really alive and yet they replicate in ways that kill humans anyway. It's like that. Even if it's simulating intelligence, it can still simulate doomsday scenarios and enact them in real life. It doesnt have to be superintelligent. It just has to mimic it in ways that are dangerous enough to cause the problems. 

You'd think that we'd have smart people in charge who are like "this is a bad idea" but because billionaires who care more about short term profit than the longevity of the species and the Trump administration who is very much in bed with those types, yeah, we're screwed. Keep in mind climate change will eventually screw us over too if not kill us all and they've been ignoring THAT for 50 years. These people dont care as long as they continue to make money short term. It's highly idiotic. Ugh...

So what should be done about Nebraska?

 So...I came across a post online with Nate Silver's polling averages and it had Kansas at like R+3 for the senate. i know the governor's race is expected to be in play, but is Kansas REALLY in play? Well, looking at the polls, it's mostly a lot of dem aligned internal polls. Low quality. But wait, Nebraska is the same thing. No polls on realclearpolitics, and the polls reported by other sites are low quality internal polls that don't pass muster on more reputable outlets. I also checked out south carolina, same thing. Annie Andrews floods the averages with internal polls suggesting she's winning even though South Carolina is basically safe R. 

So...this is making me rethink including Nebraska in my model. The reason I've been so interested in this race is because Dan Osborn got within 7 points in 2024. If we actually have shifted 8 points since then, it's plausible he can win. At the same time, it's also possible the 2024 matchup was more favorable to him. After all, the state went by 20 for Trump in 2024, Osborn overperformed by 13 points. But if we're seeing R+13 states like Ohio, Iowa, and Texas performing close to 50-50 as we have been, that means under NORMAL conditions, we should still see Nebraska go like R+12 or something. Osborn is an overperformer here. And he could overperform again. I don't know. 

The problem is, if I include it in my model as is, I should also add kansas and south carolina and their junk data. Seriously, the polls on Nebraska are just as bad. All Osborn sponsored polls, low reliability. Probably way too D optimistic. 

So...what should be done with Nebraska? Well, I could revert to some placeholder data and just throw a number in there that may be realistic or not realistic, but I dont know what that number should be. I'm seeing anything from D+1 to R+12 as realistic in the current environment, and if I split the difference it would be somewhere in the ballpark of R+5.5. Osborn last time performed around R+6.6. He could perform better than that, but I don't know where.

If I were to rate the race in terms of general probability, I'd be inclined to say either lean R or likely R. Lean R is the range between R+1 and R+4 in my model. Likely R is R+4 to R+8. 

If I did a kneejerk probability rating, I'd probably be inclined toward the upper part of lean, giving the possibility of a flip somewhere around 1 out of 6. That's 83% which is just short of the 84% of an R+4. So I'm leaning toward either an R+4 or an R+6. Maybe an R+5 to split the difference. If I were to estimate a range of performance I'd say it'll likely go between like R+11 or so to D+1. Once again, R+5. 

So....with that said, I'll axe the polling data which is partisan, low quality, and unreliable, and assume an R+5 rating. I mean, all of the factors I'm considering like the range of possible performance, to relative position of Nebraska vs other states, to Osborn's past performance, seem to converge around R+5. So until I get reliable data, as in, reputable data that RCP actually reports, I'll consider it R+5. 

So with that said, here's my updated senate prediction:

Yeah, that looks a bit more realistic. Anyway, that's my updated senate prediction. 

They're building 1984

 Okay, so this is gonna sound a bit conspiracy theoryish, but I think it's worth grappling with. So...I talked about fascism, techno fascists, and how the trump administration is openly authoritarian, supporting people like the dark enlightenment people who don't believe in democracy, and that Trump might make a pass at going full on authoritarian. But one thing I do want to emphasize is the surveillance state aspect of it. What do flock cameras, data centers, and smart devices all have in common? They create a surveillance dragnet to watch everything you do. Gamer's nexus talked about it today and this has been going around in my head for a while.

Flock cameras 

So...flock cameras, they're everywhere now. And people keep pointing out that they're creepy and dystopian. I have mixed opinions on them quite frankly. I live in a high crime area and some have wanted cameras for years in high crime intersections to track criminals and get them arrested. While there's nothing wrong with this, if they're placed there through democratic consensus, they have a clear purpose, and clear guardrails, these cameras are popping up everywhere, often against the will of the people, they dont have a clear purpose, and they are ripe for abuse. They can track people wherever they go, giving them no privacy outside of their homes. And even if we're okay with THAT, well...buckle up.

Smart devices

So gamer's nexus mentioned smart tvs, but this applies to phones, tablets, laptops, etc. It's possible, in theory, for these things to listen to what you say and record everything you say or do in your own home. It's also possible for them to be used without a warrant if corporations just hand your data over to the government on demand. Which they are probably doing. So not only are you being tracked outside of your home, but in them as well. That heated political discussion at dinner where someone said something they shouldnt have said, its probably in a data base somewhere. Speaking of which.

Data centers

 So we all know AI data centers are being built like crazy. But there's a clear financial problem with them. It's a product/service with no real demand. The whole bubble is artificial. But....what if the real client is the government? All that stuff being recorded, the data needs to go somewhere, right? So...why not tons of data centers? And how are they gonna sift through all that data? AI, of course! So....yeah. Really crappy dystopian spy crap. 

Discussion 

And all of this seems to bypass normal 4th and 14th amendment protections. You have no right to privacy outside of your home, they hide behind terms and conditions and corpo speak no one reads to justify you giving your data to corporations, and the corporations partner with the government and give it to them. 

Now, under a normal administration,  this would be concerning as is. There were concerns about, for example, spying on people during the Bush administration due to the patriot act and its provisions. But during the Trump years? When this administration has explicit anti democratic tendencies and seems to be aligned with some really dark mofos who not just share those tendencies but are the same tech bros pushing this crap? Yeah....scary to think about. They're literally building 1984. They were just 40 years off. 

if our country goes to crap, this data will be used against us in significant ways. They'll find whatever crimes or infractions they can and charge you for them. They'll use directives like NSPM7 to justify spying on the political opposition. They'll try to go after dissenters and jail them. Oh, and they already are putting the apparatus in place to handle that, what with the militarization of the police, the use of troops on US soil, ICE being trump's personal army, etc. Oh, and those camps for migrants. They can quickly be converted into makeshift prisons for dissenters. Kinda like what Hitler did in the 1930s. That's how we got concentration camps btw, they started as places to send dissenters and they ramped it up to genocide in the later years. Fun fact. 

But yeah. This crap is CREEPY. Like....really creepy, and I've been thinking about it for the past few days, and I just wanted to discuss it a bit. We're heading toward a world where the government records everything you do, and if they dont like you, they can theoretically start jailing and disappearing you. This is America in the 2020s. Scary to think about. Vote democrat while you still have the liberty to and hope we can remove trump and the republicans without them going full fascist here. There's still time to reverse course, hopefully....

Election Update 9/4/26

 I figured I'm probably gonna be busy so I'm gonna push the election update out now. I still might do another one in a week or two if I feel like it/if I have time, but yeah. I gotta create one for a contest anyway so I might as well post it here. I won't really comment on it though, so it will be kind of abridged.

Senate

 

House

Governors

 Conclusion

 I don't have much to say on this that hasn't already been said. I just wanted to post the latest numbers since idk if I'll get to do my normal next week one or not. Not much has changed since the last one. House narrowed a little. Dems are doing well in the senate. The odds are what the odds are. Seriously, you guys know how to read my charts by now I hope.

Dear nvidia, can we NOT?

 So....I've mostly been ignoring the talk of DLSS 5, because I dont care about DLSS 5. As I see it, DLSS was created to solve a problem that we didn't need to have in the first place. Ray tracing had an enormous performance cost, and in order to make it run, we needed DLSS to upscale images to higher resolutions.

Now, upscaling is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I like the fact that I can upscale a game from a lower resolution to a higher resolution. In theory it can extend the life of aging systems. But then developers RELY on it as a crutch, where games expect you to use it and it makes games a blurry mess. 

Now, to be fair, I cant use DLSS< because I bought AMD. Why? Because nvidia thinks charging a 50% premium for a better upscaler and ray tracing I dont want is a justifiable business practice. I just see it as predatory. nvidia wants to be greedy, I'll buy AMD. Anyway, now they made DLSS 5. And the internet hates it. Basically, it takes AI and makes games look better with it. Now, it has mixed results, with some saying AI ruins the art direction of games by making everything realistic. I kind of agree. And quite frankly, I dont really care that much about it. Games look good enough already and I havent seen anything from DLSS 5 that makes me go "wow, I totally want this RIGHT NOW."

But heres the thing. This new tech, much like upscaling, which STILL isnt really worth using on most mainstream systems (keep in mind mainstream gamers game on 3060s/4060s, so basically those "8x 1030" cards that are generally the sweet spot in price/performance for the past 4-6 years), has INSANE performance costs. Like truly, insane, performance costs. Like you're losing 60-75% of your FPS using it. Now, let's be real, is it worth it? I mean, I could see some idiot who goes out and buys a $5000 RTX 5090 act like it totally changes the game and they cant live without it, but let's face it, they're just rich ###holes trying to justify a ridiculously expensive purchase. For mainstream gamers who actually care about getting good value for the money...well....NO.

Like, again. Do we need graphics to keep getting better? It would be one thing if we could just keep pumping out $250 cards that double in performance every 3 years like we used to, I mean, sure, if we do that, and PC gaming was still affordable and things kept getting better, that's one thing. But when we're hitting a performance wall like we are, it's not worth it. And now with rampocalypse making GPUs start appreciating in value like the COVID pandemic all over again, honestly? Who wants this?! No one can afford a GPU that can actually run this stuff at decent settings. Why the heck should I wanna play a game at like 30 FPS when I can play it at 120 FPS? Seriously. And that's if you have a newer nvidia card that can handle it. I mean, Im on AMD but when someone tested a 5050 today with it, it was like...13 FPS with DLSS5 on. On low. At 720p. Again, who wants this?!

I feel like these billionaires are just massively out of touch with the normal person. They have their little visions for the future, and they insist on telling us that their vision is the future, and we gotta get with it, and eventually the devs of major gaming companies start making their games around tech like this, and it forces us to upgrade to expensive GPUs we dont really need outside of the artificial obsolescence, and yeah, it's bullcrap. Idk why we cant just focus on optimizing games better. I dont want this crap. I've been fine with how games looked since around 2016ish. And I still insist most progress since then aint really progress. It's just a bunch of tech bros forcing fancy tech on us no one wants or cares about. Like yeah yeah yeah it looks a little better. Who cares? Games look good enough, theyve looked good enough since BF1. Just give me better frame rates and more longevity for hardware if we can't actually get more raster performance. And no, I dont mean frame gen. That tech is iffy as all fudge too. Fake frames introduce latency which makes games harder to play. it's not free performance and it only works properly ABOVE 60 FPS anyway. And given I run a 60 hz monitor for longevity purposes...yeah. What is this actually doing for us? 

Like again, I really hate all this crap. Everything's expensive, we cant afford new hardware any more, and OH HOW ABOUT A TOOL THAT KILLS YOUR FPS BY 2/3 THAT NO ONE BUY 5090 USERS WILL WANNA USE? Uh...HOW ABOUT NO! *puts pinky to mouth* 

Anyway, end rant.