Why? They’ve continued to hold massive rallies, and Harris has been working the media with gusto. I can see maybe some of the initial excitement at her entering the race has worn off, or at her kicking Trump’s ass in the debate, etc., but she has done nothing to make herself look bad.
Contrariwise, Trump has done nothing to look better but has suffered a barrage of negative reporting and credible people coming out against him. Hitler’s generals and all that. We know that his base is perverse and might even celebrate such things, but it’s not the kind of stuff that wins over undecideds, etc.
I simply don’t buy that Trump is doing better than he was, say, a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign has massive amounts of money for GOTV. Harris is going to win.
Here is my prediction, less than two weeks out. Harris wins each of the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania by about a percent and wins one other state, probably either NC or Georgia. This gets her past 270 even if she were to lose a single blue wall state.
On election night, PA, being in the eastern time zone, has the potential to be called early and will be a bellwether:
Solidly for Harris or Trump: That candidate definitely wins.
Mildly for Harris or Trump: That candidate probably wins.
Inconclusive before other swing states are called: Harris probably wins, since she has more paths to victory.
If this was sports betting I’d say it’s a sign of a lot of dumb money coming in. In this case I’d suspect an attempt to manipulate the odds to set a narrative.
This is not new and has undoubtedly been mentioned before, but it may provide some reassurance. Historian and distinguished professor Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted 9 of the past 10 presidential elections over the course of 40 years, and the only one he got “wrong” was the unprecedented election of 2000 in which the Supreme Court essentially awarded the presidency to Bush.
The voting population in 2020 was larger than it had been in any previous election. I don’t really find that to be significant - you mah as well argue that Jimmy Carter was a more popular president than Lincoln because he got more votes.
If we want to go full Godwin’s Law here for a moment, runaway inflation is one of the biggest reasons the Nazis were able to seize power in pre-WW2 Germany.
Sure, we’re nowhere near the point of needing to bring a wheelbarrow’s worth of marks to the store to get a loaf of bread. But historically, fascists have often taken power at a time of economic despair.
In other words, getting prices under control and reducing wallet pain is crticial in stopping fascism from taking power.
The important states will not be “called” on election night.
I doubt if the actual results will be known for two days.
Calling a state is not the true result.
In most years, the news channels call each state before all of the vote has been counted, and the results are accurate. But this year, the race is too close to call early. And in many states, the law requires a re-count if the results are very close. It’s going to take a long time.
Counting by hand all the early ballots, and then possibly re-counting the entire state, including every ballot…is going to take a day or two.
The precinct workers have to sleep.
I hope that on Thursday we will know the final results
If multiple networks and decision desks (Associated Press, New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN) project ticket X, that, on rare occasion, been a mistake. But if all without exception are agreed, and none have taken it back after, say, an hour, it is gaslighting to tell me that the result is in question. That’s what Trump does.
P.S. And even my one hour dodge is dubious. The AP and networks learn from past mistakes.
Some of it undoubtedly is. Even if it is only a small single digit percentage. I have heard, but have not read about yet, people betting millions of dollars on Trump, and if that’s true, that’s more indicative that they have a lot of money than an indication of their confidence. So, to the extent that betting is a good indicator of how confident you are and thus contributing to the wisdom of crowds, those whales should only be counted as one extremely confident person rather than thousands of extremely confident middle class bettors.
But the counter narrative is that the whales per se are a small percentage of bettors, with a small effect on the overall market. But who knows if regular old dumb money is in in addition to individuals with lots of dumb money.
A stark shift toward former President Donald Trump on the political gambling platform Polymarket this month stoked scrutiny about four accounts that have collectively spent over $28 million betting on the Republican nominee to win the 2024 presidential election.
Polymarket on Thursday confirmed what a number of experts have suspected: All four accounts are controlled by a single trader.
I wasn’t sure whether to take “I have heard” as “I’ve heard rumors” or “I was listening to a podcast/news radio/etc.”. I’ve included both an online text article and a video below.
It wasn’t just the absolute numbers that were up though. the percentage of eligible voters actually voting was also much higher than usual. 65.9% came out, which is the highest it’s been since they started measuring it that way in 1980.
ETA: the VEP population went up by about 10 million between 2016 and 2020, while the number of votes cast increased by about 22 million. That’s 12 million people who got off their buttts in 2020.
A combination of several factors. Much of the voting populace had a collective animus to oust Trump. Additionally, COVID loomed large – pandemic voting got A LOT of people turned on to both early voting and to mail-in options in places that hadn’t had them before. “Getting out to vote” on for the 2020 general election was a lot less overhead for a lot of people than in previous cycles who couldn’t/wouldn’t make time during a typical November Tuesday.
