Election Update 7/19/24

 So, like always, I'm going to be doing an official prediction on Friday. While I have been doing electoral stuff during the week as it is election season, yeah, polls start slowing down over weekends, and I can get an idea of where things are.

This weekend is an odd one. We just came off of the RNC and Trump's assassination attempt last Saturday, and we also are hearing rumors that Biden may drop out. Nothing is official. heck, he's still claiming he's staying in the race, but there are some signs he's considering exiting. As such, this might be my last actual election prediction with Biden as the nominee, and if he steps down, I'll have to do something completely different next week. What I do depends on the facts on the ground. I already did compile a chart for Harris. If she is the presumptive nominee, I will just start going off of the Harris data and using that as my primary chart. If we have an open convention, I'll have to make charts for all candidates being considered, as well as how they poll against each other.

So Biden dropping out may be chaotic. We'll have to see where things go, but yeah. All hell might break loose, and we don't know what's gonna happen. 

But this week, we just have a normal election prediction with Biden, and I will consider the 5 way data and Harris as well. 

So, Joe Biden. How is he doing?

 Biden 2 way prediction

So, Biden's down 3 in the popular vote, he's down 4.5% in the electoral college with Pennsylvania being the tipping point state. He's at a 13% chance of winning, compared to Trump's 87% chance. Now, this is better than last week. He is rebounding a bit, and as people online have been noting, Trump has had no major polling bump.

However there are some chances on the state level I want to make apparent to people.

Yes, you're reading that right, Biden is now losing in Virginia. The "blue state" that a lot of people thought there was no chance he could lose. 

Wisconsin is now down 3.3 for Biden. It's been trending in a more Trump direction for a while, as had Michigan, and yeah, they're harder red. However, Pennsylvania, the tipping point, is slightly less red. Another state Biden is surprisingly gaining ground in is Florida. For a while that wasn't even a swing state or barely was one. But, as new polls replace old polls, it's gone back to a more reasonable Trump +6. As you can tell, Biden still only a 6% chance there, but more movement could increase that. 

As for the electoral college, this is what it looks like, being 213-325 Trump:

 

Yikes. That's not a good map. 

Biden 5 way prediction

So I fleshed out my 5 way chart. I couldn't find data on all states as some are criminally underpolled, and admittedly, I have fewer polls to draw from even for ones I do know, but that's where things seem to stand. All in all, I would say that the 5 way data is a point or two worse for Biden on the whole. HOWEVER, since PA is still the tipping point, and its polling average is significantly less than the 2 way in Trump's favor, Biden's odds up up to 20.5%, whereas Trump's are 79.5%. Still not great, but better for Biden.

To produce an electoral map for this one, we get 198-312 for Trump, with Virginia being tied, and NM and CO having no data, so I'm just gonna leave them blank.

How does Kamala Harris do?

And again, people keep talking about wanting to replace Biden with Kamala Harris or someone else. First, no one but Harris beats Biden's popular vote by a significant amount. Newsom is around Harris's level, but as we know from months ago, did HORRIBLE in swing states. Harris is at least 1 point ahead of Biden in the popular vote, but once again, let's look at the state level data:

So, right before I was gonna post this, I double checked the data and a new poll was added to Pennsylvania that brought the polling average back to a reasonable about. I had +7 Trump for PA yesterday, but they added a recent Trump +1 poll so now it averages to +4 Trump.

That gives Harris a 15.9% chance and Trump an 84.1% chance. That means Harris is now officially MORE LIKELY to win the election than Biden is, if only by a marginal amount.

I won't make a map for Harris as I don't have an extensive data set into the "blue" side of Biden's map, but the data above is what I do have access to.

And now I can present the trends for the race as a whole:

I was originally going to argue that replacing Biden is a horrible idea. Biden is starting to recover from his post debate lows, and until literally today, Harris has been objectively a worse choice. Now she does slightly better than Biden. Only slightly, but slightly can win the election.

As such, I'm going to shift my official position on the "replace Biden" matter from "keep Biden" to "undecided." I don't think harris has a significant enough edge for me to full on endorse her. I mean, this could all just be statistical noise with little to no actual advantage either way, and historically, I do think she's been the weaker candidate. But, data is data, and if the data continues trending toward Harris or someone else, I'm going to go full on "replace Biden" here.

Above all, I wanna win, and this election cycle, I will go with the candidate with the best odds, whoever that may be.

Senate

So let's move on to the senate:

All in all, there has been positive movement in the democratic direction, but the odds are fundamentally unchanged with the deciding races that matter that determine control of the chamber. 

We're still at 49D-51R for the median prediction, with the GOP at a 64% chance of control, dems at a 7.7% chance, and a 27.7% chance of a tie.

It should be noted that John Tester, the democratic candidate in Montana, is one of the ones coming out against Biden lately. I really think this has to do with the state of his own race and how Biden's poor performance is hurting him down ticket. It very well could. Weak presidential candidates can lead to down ballot electoral wipeouts. 

Also, you may notice I did implement the generic congressional vote into the above chart. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I will possible implement it into a more extensive house forecast later on this election cycle. As we know, I dont like to do house forecasts because polling sucks, but if we use the GCV as a bellweather, I may be able to approximate how many house seats each party is projected to win.

Conclusion

So yeah, this concludes this week's official election update. Biden is still in trouble but slowly recovering. Harris is emerging as potentially being an appropriate replacement candidate, but I'm not entirely sure. And yeah, that's where the race is at.