Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Unpopular opinion: Trump won the debate, but it was a pyrrhic victory

 So, we many of you know, we had our first debate between Biden and Trump last night. And as many of you probably know, it was a dumpster fire. I've come to have low standards for what passes as "debates" on the national stage in this country for a while now, but this managed to reach a new low. It was a microcosm for everything wrong with America today. You have loud mouth republicans acting like uncivil bullies and browbeating subservient democrats who are desperate to prove they aren't in fact radical leftists into line. Biden sucked, Trump sucked, the entire thing was a disaster, and I'd be reluctant to call a winner in effect, but if I had to call it for one, it would be for Trump. This seems unpopular in liberal circles I frequent, with many of them seeing Trump as a bully. It also seems unpopular among undecided voters, who seemed to dislike both candidates and seem alienated from the process, but ultimately hated Trump more. But, having watched a lot of debates and observed the dynamics of many of them, I have to say that despite how grating Trump is, that he actually probably won more than Biden.

 How I view debates 

Part of the reason I hold this controversial view is because I have a controversial view of debates in general. Many people expect debates to be about two or more people coming together and actually having a thoughtful discussion on issues and trying to make stronger arguments than the other. That's the idealized view of how debates are supposed to work. However, political debates are a farce. Both in 2016 and 2020, debates have shown to be far less about actual issues being discussed in a fair and biased way, but as a way for various candidates to show off their political chops. Sound, dry policy is boring and never takes center stage. What seems to matter for most are the zingers, and maintaining control of the narrative. A huge reason I believe Bernie, for example, never did well in debates, is because the center of ideological gravity was to his right in them. As in, the questions and lines of discussion were framed from a perspective to his right. Candidates who don't fit the mold often find themselves on the defensive and find themselves in a poor position to make their views known, because they're never allowed to sit down and fully explain their views. They're asked often loaded questions and then given 2 minutes to respond. No, debates are about ideological control, they're about charisma. They're about guiding the discussion to go where you want it to go, and for the discussions to be had on your terms. Debates are about power. They're about saying things that stand out. I've watched many political debates in my life, and back around 2014 when I was really fine tuning my views, I watched at least one debate from every presidential election going back to the 1970s. And I find that no one really likes the boring, dry, intelligent candidates. They like the charismatic ones and the one liners. No one remembers Walter Mondale taking down Reagan's trickle down economics, but they remember Reagan saying "there you go again." So to me, who wins a debate is about who makes a stronger case for their views and who dominates the discussion. I've seen many debates where I'd say the person I disagreed with did a better job, simply because they were able to put forward better arguments on their own terms while their opponent was uncharismatic, underprepared, or caught off guard in some way. I've even seen this happen among more factual debates between atheists and Christians. I've seen Christians with terrible arguments win simply because the atheist didn't have charisma, didn't know how to debate, or was unprepared. Many atheists have a tendency to underprepare, and when a Christian uses unorthodox arguments, well, the Christian can actually win the debate. It doesn't make him right. It just means he won the discussion.

How I felt like the debate would go and what I expected from the two candidates

Here's the thing. Going into the debate, I gave Biden a massive advantage. Trump has nothing. He is literally the worst president in American history at this point, in my opinion, and really has no legitimate case for a second term. All he has are lies, misinformation, and attacks against Biden. He has no real argument. That said, I knew Trump would likely lie a lot. And his key to success is, in my opinion, lying and not being called out on it. Framing the debate from his perspective and Biden fumbling in the moment. Biden being attacked and not being able to respond properly. If Trump can do that, successfully, then Trump can win the debate. On the other hand, Biden has a much easier job in my opinion. The dude has to be a fact checking machine in tip top form. Much like he did with the final debate vs Sanders in the primary, which caught many by surprise, what Biden had to do here was to be at the top of his game and respond to Trump in real time, proving he isn't really "sleepy Joe" in cognitive decline, and hold Trump accountable for his record. Biden barely had to make a case for himself at all. All he had to do was show he was competent and that Trump was not. Hammer home how badly Trump has handled various crises and tripping him up. 

So what happened?

I won't go through the entire debate play by play, but the summary was this. Trump came out of the gate very aggressively. Too aggressively. He flooded the debate with gish gallops against Biden and made so many lies that Biden couldn't realistically respond to all of them in the debate format. He spun the facts to his favor to make it to an uninformed viewer who doesn't fact check this stuff, that he was large and in charge, while Biden would not have been. He spun covid back on Biden and said if he were in office he would've done a worse job. Biden did an okay job at responding to this, but he seemed too off kilter to really take on Trump as firmly as he needed to. 

I want to emphasize that. Biden, given what he had to work with, didn't do a bad job. I don't think he did particularly well, but he didn't do terrible either. But Biden seemed unprepared for this. You see, this is something democrats do often. They try too hard to play by the rules, and be civil and polite, and expect to work with republicans and expect them to also play by the rules, but they never actually do. So the right just walks all over them, and they don't really fight back as firmly as they wanted. Biden should've known Trump would try something like this, and he should've been more prepared. I've seen Biden debate before and I've seen him in a much sharper state. I won't say Biden was necessarily "sleepy Joe", but he wasn't the Joe Biden who took on Paul Ryan in 2012 either.

The worst part of it all was Trump constantly had Biden on the defense. Trump made one wild accusation after another. That he's a radical socialist. That he wants to abolish health insurance. That his green new deal would bankrupt the country. He fought Biden as if he were Bernie, forcing him to distinguish himself from Bernie. This, actually was a very smart play by Trump. Because whenever Biden would back away from Bernie's ideas, Trump would then turn around and say "you lost the left". And I have to say, as a leftie voting for Hawkins....he's not wrong. Biden was forced to take stands on controversial ideas within his platform. That he's not for medicare for all, or a green new deal. That he is the face of the democratic party and that it is, in fact, a centrist party. Trump was very smart using that form of psychological warfare on his base to demoralize them, and I think it worked. I also think, echoing sentiments of independent voters who weren't convinced Biden had solutions for the country, that it might've discouraged people from supporting Biden as well. Because let's be honest, Biden doesn't stand for anything. His big argument is being more competent than Trump. He's another third way politician who relies on triangulation to appeal both to the left and the center for votes, and when Trump accuses him of being a leftist, and Biden denies it, it costs him the votes of actual leftists who are demoralized. This is entirely a Biden and democratic party problem. They keep insisting on this strategy, and it opens them up to aggressive attacks from Trump. Biden's ideal strategy was to go on the offense and often times, he didn't. That's not to say that he didn't attack Trump at all. He had a few good moments in there. But given Trump's lies, to an uninformed viewer, it likely would come down to immature he said she said games. Trump was just that good at crafting his arguments.

Ultimately, I'm reluctant to call a winner here. Both candidates sucked. As a more informed viewer, Biden came off as very boring. Sometimes he took charge and discussed things like covid very masterfully, but other times he seemed to get caught in Trump's traps, reminding his base that he doesn't represent large portions of them. On the flip side, Trump was overbearing and while he dominated the debate, he was insufferable. There was also that moment where he refused to condemn white supremacy. Trump is going outright fascist at times this election and that should be concerning. Thankfully, he is getting a lot of negative coverage for that.

All in all, will this debate change anyone's mind? No. Probably not. Trump voters seemed to think Trump won, Biden voters seemed to think Biden won, and undecideds seem more alienated than ever. But if I had to choose a candidate who won, I would say Trump, mainly because his chosen debate style wreaked chaos, deflected from his flaws, and managed to drag Biden down too. Which is all he had to do. Trump played his hand well considering he basically didn't have a hand, and Biden could've played his better. This seems to be an unpopular take, but that's how I see it.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Late September/Early October Election Predictions

Okay, so this time I waited for a Tuesday to update my predictions. Last time I released my stuff on Monday only for a ton of new polls to come in from the weekend and invalidate much of what I said. So I waited for Tuesday this time. Looking at polling averages I'm glad I did because something similar happened. 

In the grand scheme of things, did things fundamentally change in the past few weeks? Not really, especially not for the presidential race. But a lot did change in the nuance. A few things I'll mention outright:

Minnesota is going to be removed from the model. It's up 9.4% right now which safely puts it in the Biden camp, outside of my generous margin of error. I'll also include South Carolina, which I took interest in due to the Senate race there. While polling isn't great there, and it is a pretty hard leaner for Trump, my best estimation based on the two newest polls have it at Trump +8, which is just low enough for me to include it. I don't expect it to turn blue, but if I'm counting most states up to the +8/9 category in either direction, I should include this. 

That said, let's look at the data:

General election: Biden +6.1%

4 way: Biden +6.3%

Biden is slightly down compared to where he was nationally, but still commands a good lead. Keep in mind anything over 3 and he can likely keep the electoral college. Last time I tried correcting for a potential spoiler effect with my odds, as last time around there was a 1 point discrepancy between the two averages, but observing the trends further, I'm inclined to believe this is just a statistically insignificant anomaly and the numbers are functionally the same in practice. That said, it doesn't look like there's much of a spoiler effect going on. If it exists, it's so small it's negligible. Something the anti third party people should know if they don't already (stop expecting us to vote for Biden, cough). 

Anyway, let's look at what's going on at the state level:

StatesWinner/ MarginZ
% Biden Win% Trump WinElectoral Votes if Biden WinsElectoral Votes if Trump Wins
New HampshireBiden +6.7%
-1.68
95%
5%
226
316
Nebraska CD2Biden +6.5%
-1.63
95%
5%
227
312
PennsylvaniaBiden +5.7%
-1.43
92%
8%
247
311
WisconsinBiden +5.5%
-1.38
92%
8%
257
291
NevadaBiden +5.3%-1.33
91%
9%
263
281
MichiganBiden +5.2%-1.30
90%
10%
279
275
Maine CD2Biden +4.0%-1.00
84%
16%
280
259
OhioBiden +3.3%-0.83
80%
20%
298
258
ArizonaBiden +2.8%-0.70
76%
24%
309
240
FloridaBiden +1.1%
-0.28
61%
39%
338
229
North CarolinaBiden +0.5%-0.13
55%
45%
353
200
IowaTie +0.0%
0
50%
50%
359
185
GeorgiaTrump +1.2%
+0.30
38%
62%
375
179
TexasTrump +3.2%
+0.80
21%
79%
413
163
MissouriTrump +8.0%
+2.00
2%
98%
423
125
South CarolinaTrump +8.0%
+2.00
2%
98%
432
115

Okay, so despite the popular vote share declining, the statistics have evened out in a way in which I now estimate Biden has a 90% chance of winning the presidency, with Trump only having a 10% chance. This is the best electoral map I could come up with. I left Iowa blank as it literally has a 50% chance of going either way, but as it stands, Biden wins either 353 or 359 electoral votes and Trump wins 179 or 185. This is a crushing, 2008 style defeat for Trump.

However, I would discourage people from getting too comfortable. Remember, Wisconsin was up 6.5% in 2016 on election day with a 94% chance of going for Hillary. It still went Trump. A lot of the rust belt swing states are in the 5-6% range, which should imply that they're relatively safe, as this is effectively Biden's firewall, but that blue wall can crumble like it did in 2016. Don't get complacent. It looks good for Biden but if that goes again, it's all over and Trump can win again. I know Wisconsin has been shifting to be more red. It was up almost 7 points but dropped to 5.5 recently. On the flip side Pennsylvania and Michigan have gotten more blue. Arizona is a bit more red but that's not too surprising as Arizona being +5 for Biden seemed very strange to me in the first place. I finally got Nebraska data from another site and yeah, that looks dismal for Trump too. Trump can still theoretically win the election, but he would need to gain more than 5 points across the board to do so based on current data. That's very unlikely. It's also possible, given statistical uncertainty among these states, that we could end up with a tie even of Trump goes +5. A few scenarios of this could be this or this. What are the odds of these maps coming up? Probably less than 1%, but after discussing the issue on a forum a couple of weeks ago I realized, looking at my previous prediction, if PA went red but Michigan stayed blue and everything else followed my trend up to those states as predicted, we could have seen a 269-269 split. I wouldn't worry about this too much, but it's a nightmare scenario worth mentioning. If that happens it could seriously screw with the legitimacy of our democracy, especially given the loudmouth's threats of refusing to leave and claiming it's rigged if things don't go his way. However, unless a random 5 point swing in Trump's direction happens in the next month, I doubt that things will go that way. Also, due to COVID, people are voting NOW so I doubt there will be massive swings from the polls as are.

Now, onto the senate forecast:

StatesWinner/ MarginZ
% Dem Win% GOP WinSenate Seats if Democrat Wins
Senate Seats if Republican Wins
Maine
Gideon +6.5%
-1.63
95%
5%
47
54
North Carolina
Cunningham +6.0%
-1.50
93%
7%
48
53
Arizona
Kelly +5.2%
-1.30
90%
10%
49
52
Michigan
Peters +3.8%
-0.95
83%
17%
50
51
Iowa
Greenfield +2.6%
-0.65
74%
26%
51
50
South Carolina
Graham 0.5%
+0.13
45%
55%
52
49
Montana
Daines 1.6%
+0.40
34%
66%
53
48
Georgia
Perdue +2.8%
+0.70
24%
76%
54
47

Ouch. The GOP took a hard tumble here, with the race going hard in the democrats' favor. The strangest thing is the South Carolina seat. I previously had him up 8 points, but that was old polling. Looking at the 2 most recent polls he only has a 0.5% advantage on average, which is almost a coin flip. I guess telling people to quote him on something he said 4 years ago when he contradicts himself in a very predictable way isn't going well for him. To inject my opinion, I say good riddance if he goes.

To go back to what this data means, it looks like it's going to be very easy for democrats to get a hold of 4-5 senate seats, with a possibility of them getting a 6th here. They need 4 for an effective tie in the senate, which, given Biden is likely going to win, means democratic party control. The odds of the democrats winning the senate outright with at least 5 seats is around 74%. The odds of the GOP holding onto 5 seats and maintaining control on the other hand is 17%. The odds of an effective tie is 9% in my model. 

Things are looking very good for democrats right now, and not very good for the GOP.

I'm also not doing further house forecasts, but if I had to guess, the democrats have an insanely good chance of maintaining control and the GOP's odds are abysmal.

 

Monday, September 14, 2020

Comparing Nate Silver's popular vote/electoral college predictions with mine

 So, Nate Silver put out a tweet earlier this month claiming that in order for Biden to have more than a 50% chance of winning the electoral college, he would need to win the popular vote by greater than 3 points. I just want to compare my percentages with his given my recent electoral college data. His predictions are as follows:

Biden +0-1% - 6% chance of EC win

1-2 points- 22%

2-3 points- 46%

3-4 points- 74%

4-5 points- 89%

5-6 points- 98%

6-7 points- 99%

Currently, as I stated in my previous post, Biden is up 7.4% 7.1% in a 2 way race. Since most other data for the general election on a statewide basis is a 2 way race, I will use that figure. 

To regurgitate my chart from last time (note this is old data, the updated chart changes some things around but has minimal impact on the purpose of this specific exercise): 

States

Winner/Margin

SD

% Biden Win

% Trump Win

Electoral Votes if Biden Wins

Electoral Votes if Trump Wins

New Hampshire

Biden +8.0%

-2.00

98%

2%

216

326

Minnesota

Biden +6.4%

-1.60

94%

6%

226

322

Wisconsin

Biden +6.3%

-1.58

94%
6%

236

312

Nevada

Biden +6.0%

-1.50

93%

7%

242

302

Arizona

Biden +5.6%

-1.40

92%
8%

253

296

Pennsylvania

Biden +4.3%

-1.08

86%

14%

273

285

Michigan

Biden +4.2%

-1.05

85%

15%

289

265

Ohio

Biden +2.4%

-0.60

74%

27%

307

249

Florida

Biden +1.2%

-0.30

62%

38%

336

231

North Carolina

Biden +0.8%

-0.20

58%

42%

351

202

Maine CD2

Unknown (0.0%)

0.00

50%

50%

352

187

Nebraska CD2

Unknown (0.0%)

0.00

50%

50%

353

186

Georgia

Trump +1.3%

+0.33

37%

62%

369

185

Iowa

Trump 1.7%

+0.43

33%

67%

375

169

Texas

Trump +3.5%

+0.88

19%

81%

413

163

Missouri

Trump +7.7%

+1.93

3%

97%

423

125

And my conclusion is that the ultimate swing state that decides the election is Pennsylvania at +4.3%. Assuming a 4% margin of error, that gives Biden a roughly 86% chance of winning the state. That said, I give him a roughly 86% chance of winning the election. Because if Pennsylvania falls, I assume all swing states with lower margins also fall such as Michigan, Ohio, and Florida, while states with higher margins might hold. In reality things might be more messy as in 2016, but I don't really want to worry about bumps in the data introduced by chaos theory. That's way above my pay grade. 

As it stands, with Biden at a 7.1% popular vote lead, by Nate's model, he has Biden at a 99% chance of a win. I have Biden at a 86% chance, more in line 4.3% lead. That is what he has in PA, but we're talking the national vote here. If we got rid of 4.3 points of Biden's lead, he would be down to 2.8% in the national popular vote. So roughly 3% is the 50% mark for Biden. 2-3% is also where Silver predicts a 46% chance of a win, so that's not far off. His data seems to coalesce with mine.

 That said, let's start off as the baseline. Say Biden and Trump are tied in the popular vote and there's a 7.1% shift toward Trump. Well, at that point, the entire slew of swing states goes red outside of New Hampshire and Trump wins 322-216. Pennsylvania, the tipping point, will go Trump by a total of 2.8%. At that point, by my model, Trump has a 76% chance of winning the presidency, with Biden a 24%. That's much higher than what Silver holds. As a matter of fact, I'm going to run over the entire spectrum of possibilities to give you an idea:

Popular Vote Lead

Pennsylvania Lead

Z score

Percent Biden Win

Percent Trump Win

Trump +6

Trump +8.8

-2.20

1%

99%

Trump +5

Trump +7.8

-1.95

3%

97%

Trump +4

Trump +6.8

-1.70

4%

96%

Trump +3

Trump +5.8

-1.45

7%

93%

Trump +2

Trump +4.8

-1.20

12%

88%

Trump +1

Trump +3.8

-0.95

17%

83%

Tie

Trump +2.8

-0.70

24%

76%

Biden +1

Trump +1.8

-0.45

33%

67%

Biden +2

Trump +0.8

-0.20

42%

58%

Biden +3

Biden +0.2

+0.05

52%

48%

Biden +4

Biden +1.2

+0.30

62%

38%

Biden +5

Biden +2.2

+0.55

71%

29%

Biden +6

Biden +3.2

+0.80

79%

21%

Biden +7

Biden +4.2

+1.05

85%

15%

Biden +8

Biden +5.2

+1.30

90%

10%

Biden +9

Biden +6.2

+1.55

94%

6%

Biden +10

Biden +7.2

+1.80

96%

4%

Biden +11

Biden +8.2

+2.05

98%

2%

Biden +12

Biden +9.2

+2.30

99%

1%

So, my results don't really align with Nat/se very well in the details. My spectrum of probabilities is far more broad. I suspect this is because I use a 4 point margin of error leading to the Z scores being more spread out. With my model, I'm not calling you in safe territory with a 98% chance of a win until you're 8 points ahead. I do this to be cautious, and understanding not all polls are equal. It is an estimate on my part and I admit it might be a bit strict at times. Many polls do have margins of error closer to 3. But just to compare directly with Nate:

Popular vote total

My prediction

Nate’s prediction

Nate’s estimated Z score

Biden +1

33%

6%

-1.75

Biden +2

42%

22%

-0.77

Biden +3

52%

46%

-0.10

Biden +4

62%

74%

+0.70

Biden +5

71%

89%

+1.23

Biden +6

79%

98%

+2.05

Biden +7

85%

99%

+2.33

Nate definitely has a far more aggressive bell curve going on with a much tighter margin of error. I'm estimating about 2.5-3 points? He might have different assumptions than I do. As I said, I'm far more conservative in my outlook, especially after 2016. I mean, I saw states swing a good 7-10 points, so I don't want to give false hope saying "oh yeah there's no way this will go red/blue."

Regardless, there are similarities, and despite the difference levels of aggression in terms of certainty in our models, we do come to the same overall conclusion: Biden needs to stay around 3 points ahead in the popular vote to win the electoral college. If the popular vote is a tie, I would expect most swing states to go Trump like in 2016. Even if we had an HRC type 2.1 point lead in the electoral college, that's a Trump +5 scenario vs what we have now. That's game over. Trump wins again. He gets anything from Pennsylvania on down on my chart and he might even win over a couple extra outliers like in 2016 (looking at you, Wisconsin). He would have 285+ electoral votes and while it would be a narrow victory, it would be a victory. And looking at the vote totals in 2016 by state, Trump won Michigan and Wisconsin by a point or less, and Pennsylvania and Florida by slightly more than a point. So one point can make a difference when you're talking 2 vs 3. In my own model, a 3 point popular vote lead for Biden would mean narrowly taking Pennsylvania and Michigan, and those two states would swing the election. That said, at their core, my predictions are similar to Nate's, I just assume a wider bell curve of possibilities.

Now, I know some people assume this means the electoral college leans republican. And I guess relative to the popular vote, it does. While democrats can win big in California and New York, if they aren't 3 points ahead nation wide, they lose the electoral college. That isn't really fair. The electoral college is a trash system. 

At the same time though, I will say that the electoral college generally does favor the democrats under current conditions. Democrats are more popular than republicans overall. Republicans take advantage of the flaws of our system which sometimes gives power to people based on land area than population and get overrepresented. However, republicans are declining in popularity overall and have been for a few election cycles now. From 1992 on, democrats hold the edge. When they lose, they lose narrowly, when they win, they win big. Republicans haven't had a truly decisive win since the 1980s. 2004 is their only outright popular vote win. Otherwise they get in this weird territory of winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college. And I would personally argue most losses happen simply because they run uninspiring candidates and republicans gain support by default. That said I think democrats are ultimately poised to shift the map more and more in their favor as long as they dont screw it up. But they kind of do. Which is one of the reasons I rip them so bad on this blog. It's embarrassing to lose to republicans in the electoral college, but I digress. 

But yeah, I just wanted to see how my predictions line up with Nate Silver's in this respect. Same results, but with different levels of confidence. It's interesting to see how our two models contrast but have similar conclusions.