Mid October Election Predictions (10/13)

So it's been two weeks. A lot has happened since then. Trump had an awful debate where he just yelled over Biden and Biden seemed kinda weak in response. Then another debate where Pence tried a similar strategy with Harris and it didn't work well. And then Trump got COVID and recovered, and likely had it at the debate. It hasn't been a good two weeks for Trump. And polling reflects that. Biden is now in a very strong position to win, overtaking anything I predicted in 2016 with Hillary. While democrats shouldn't claim victory just yet because remember 2016, it's looking very good for Biden and I don't see how Trump can realistically recover. That said let's look at the data.

 General Election - Biden +10.0%

 4 Way -  Biden +8.8%

Now keep in mind, I don't think a spoiler effect exists here, rather the polling averages haven't shifted as much in the 4 way from last time due to less polling. Still, in both matchups, Biden has a commanding lead outside of a 4 point margin of error. The 2 way results report double digits between Biden and Trump. In both the 2 way and 4 way polls, Biden is at 51.6%, which means even if Trump won every undecided vote and third party vote at this point, he still can't win and would top out around 48%. Yikes. I'd say it's over, but hey, remember 2016.

 For the swing states, I'm removing New Hampshire from my analysis  because it's up by 10.5%, outside of the margin of error. It will be assumed "safe" for the purposes of this analysis as the chance for Trump to win it is under 2%. As for the rest:

States	Winner/Margin	Z Score	% Biden Win	% Trump Win	Electoral Votes if Biden Wins	Electoral Votes if Trump Wins
Pennsylvania	Biden +7.0%	-1.750	96.0%	4.0%	246	312
Michigan	Biden +7.0%	-1.750	96.0%	4.0%	262	292
Nebraska CD2	Biden +6.5%	-1.625	94.8%	5.2%	263	276
Wisconsin	Biden +6.3%	-1.575	94.3%	5.7%	273	275
Nevada	Biden +5.2%	-1.300	90.3%	9.7%	279	265
Florida	Biden +3.5%	-0.875	81.0%	19.0%	308	259
Arizona	Biden +2.7%	-0.675	75.1%	24.9%	319	230
North Carolina	Biden +2.7%	-0.675	75.1%	24.9%	334	219
Iowa	Biden +1.2%	-0.300	62.0%	38.0%	340	204
Ohio	Biden +0.6%	-0.150	56.0%	44.0%	358	198
Maine CD2	Trump +0.2%	+0.050	48.0%	52.0%	359	180
Georgia	Trump +0.4%	+0.100	46.0%	54.0%	375	179
Texas	Trump +4.4%	+1.100	13.6%	86.4%	413	163
South Carolina	Trump +5.5%	+1.375	8.5%	91.5%	422	125
Missouri	Trump +7.5%	+1.875	3.0%	97.0%	432	116

Ouch. Biden has a 94.3% chance of winning and Trump only has a 5.7% chance. A Biden win is just short of statistical significance. Now, again, does that mean he will DEFINITELY win? Well, many ballots are being cast now. And I doubt Trump can regain the energy he lost. Even if he regresses to the mean and gains say, 3-4 points, he would only be at 259 electoral votes with Florida. You'd literally need a Trump +6-7 scenario for him to WIN, which is extremely unlikely. Like, 4-7% level unlikely. Trump is toast. The electoral map is a commanding 358-180 win for Biden.

I mean, for reference, the highest I ever gave Hillary by this methodology is like a 85% chance, with Trump having a 15% chance. And Hillary's numbers fluctuated a lot with her going into the 50s. A bad day for Biden is a good day for Hillary. 

Now, how does the senate look?

Well for starters I added Texas into the mix as it's now technically "in play". I don't expect it to go red as it's barely in play but it's worth looking at. This brings the GOP's "safe senators down to 45. 

States	Winner/ Margin	Z Score	% Dem Win	% GOP Win	Senate Seats if Democrat Wins	Senate Seats if Republican Wins
Arizona	Kelly +8.0%	-2.000	97.7%	2.3%	47	54
North Carolina	Cunningham +5.7%	-1.425	92.3%	7.7%	48	53
Michigan	Peters +4.9%	-1.225	89.0%	11.0%	49	52
Iowa	Greenfield +4.8%	-1.200	88.5%	11.5%	50	51
Maine	Gideon +3.7%	-0.925	82.3%	17.7%	51	50
South Carolina	Graham +0.5%	+0.125	45.0%	55.0%	52	49
Georgia	Perdue +2.8%	+0.700	24.2%	75.8%	53	48
Montana	Daines +3.3%	+0.825	20.5%	79.5%	54	47
Texas	Cornyn +7.6%	+1.900	2.8%	97.2%	55	46

Based on this, the democrats have an 82.3% chance of winning the senate by the trend model. The republicans have a 11.5% chance by comparison. This means there's a 6.2% chance it's a 50-50 split. This is up from last time for the democrats, but is still far less certain than what will happen with the presidency.

All in all, it looks like the GOP are screwed. As I said I ain't even doing the house, but I doubt that is particularly going well for them either given they need virtually all swing seats just to achieve a narrow majority. Yikes. While we still have 3 weeks and a lot can change, this looks like a blow out for the democratic party. Bye Trump, you're fired! Or you will be a month from now, probably. 

For the record I'm probably gonna be doing these more frequently between now and the election. We're getting close so I'll likely be doing them once a week now unless literally almost nothing changes, and I will especially be paying close attention in the last week or two leading up to the election. If things change, I want it to be documented here so we can analyze what happens.

VP Debate opinions

 So, this time Mike Pence and Kamala Harris had a debate last night. I won't go on about it long, but I feel like this is a good follow up to last week. Long story short, my initial reaction was that Harris won commandingly. And here's why.

Mike Pence had similar talking points to Donald Trump but was less likely to talk over everyone else. This made him appear weaker than Trump last week, because both Trump and Pence have literally nothing to work with. Pence's strategy was to lob every wild accusation and attack at Harris, and almost none of them hit. Pence also dodged and evaded virtually every question thrown at him. While I argued Trump won last week because I feel like he controlled the narrative of the debate, Pence failed to do that. The attempted blows did not connect and made Pence seem unhinged, and he had little to offer of substance for himself.

On the other hand Kamala Harris had it together. She was very aggressive relative to Biden and had good answers to most questions. She dodged a few, such as the court packing one, but she ultimately did a very good job at defending Biden's platform. She was calm, in control, and when Pence tried to talk over her a couple times like Trump did, she handled him like an adult handles a child. She said I'm speaking and then went on with it.

That said, I feel like Harris' performance was very much improved from Biden's last week and reached the peak I expected from the ticket, while Pence performed more like I expected Trump to last week and while he didn't fall apart, he dodged, lied, and obfuscated his way through it. 

Now, the real question is who the public thinks won. I was surprised to learn after watching Trump vs Biden that a lot of people didn't like Trump's performance. Honestly, this is a bias on my own part, I tend to think the American public particularly undecided voters aren't very informed, and go with "who sounds better". Biden came off as weak and uninspiring, Trump was very aggressive and dominated the discussion, and normally I would suspect most neutral parties would go for the person with a better debate form who controlled the debate. Instead people wanted their 1.5 hours back and said Biden won...if anyone. Most were just too frustrated with the whole affair. 

This time, it seems a lot more...mixed. A lot of people suddenly like Pence but think Harris was overbearing or something. WHAT?! Admittedly there was a bit of a gender gap, with mostly males thinking this, and it seemed to be an instance of sexism, but I did NOT get that at all when I watched that. To me Harris was in control whereas last week Biden was not. Pence lost control and since the Trump/Pence ticket literally has nothing but shady debate tactics, I actually gave them a lot of credit. But to see the opposite reaction this week with backlash against Harris is weird to me. Almost makes me feel like the Hillbots in 2016 had a point with some voters. To be fair the polling shifted back toward Harris, but it seems to largely be along the lines of who people are voting for anyway, with people preferring the candidate they're closer to them. 

But yeah, it's weird. I admit I'm more likely to be democratic party bias, but I really don't like either. As I've stated many times I voted Stein in 2016 and I'm voting Hawkins this time. I really don't like either party and while democrats are better than republicans, to me I just see "crazy republican vs moderate republican." And I generally grade debate performance based on who I think did a better job regardless of party affiliation. I've seen people I agree with flop in debates. I've seen people I can't stand win. If I felt Pence did a good job I would've said so, but I felt like Harris was just far more substantive and that Pence seemed evasive and his wild accusations didn't connect. I felt Trump pushed Biden into a corner last week and Biden didn't really respond strongly, but here I felt the roles were reversed. And it's strange, the public actually hated Trump last week and some people disliked Harris this week. I just don't get it. I mean with Harris it appears to be a legit case of actual sexism at work, but I guess that aggression doesn't work if you come off as childish like Trump does either? We'll have to see I guess.

Anyway I'm tempted to make another election forecast but I'll wait another week. Biden has gained a lot of ground in the past week between the debate and Trump getting COVID, but at the same time I don't know if this lead will be permanent or is just a fluctuation. We'll have to see. Probably will make and release it next Tuesday as that seems to be when tons of polls from the weekend and previous week come in. I don't want to make something only for it to not be relevant in 2 days.

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.

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:

States	Winner/ Margin	Z	% Biden Win	% Trump Win	Electoral Votes if Biden Wins	Electoral Votes if Trump Wins
New Hampshire	Biden +6.7%	-1.68	95%	5%	226	316
Nebraska CD2	Biden +6.5%	-1.63	95%	5%	227	312
Pennsylvania	Biden +5.7%	-1.43	92%	8%	247	311
Wisconsin	Biden +5.5%	-1.38	92%	8%	257	291
Nevada	Biden +5.3%	-1.33	91%	9%	263	281
Michigan	Biden +5.2%	-1.30	90%	10%	279	275
Maine CD2	Biden +4.0%	-1.00	84%	16%	280	259
Ohio	Biden +3.3%	-0.83	80%	20%	298	258
Arizona	Biden +2.8%	-0.70	76%	24%	309	240
Florida	Biden +1.1%	-0.28	61%	39%	338	229
North Carolina	Biden +0.5%	-0.13	55%	45%	353	200
Iowa	Tie +0.0%	0	50%	50%	359	185
Georgia	Trump +1.2%	+0.30	38%	62%	375	179
Texas	Trump +3.2%	+0.80	21%	79%	413	163
Missouri	Trump +8.0%	+2.00	2%	98%	423	125
South Carolina	Trump +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:

States	Winner/ Margin	Z	% Dem Win	% GOP Win	Senate 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.