It’s also about the right timing for a “return towards mean” after Debate 1 and Trump’s covid.
Yeah, Trump was having an extraordinarily horrendous 2-3 week run there, beginning with his debate meltdown and continuing into his super spreader event. We knew it couldn’t last.
Here’s to hoping he does something so outrageously stupid that he can’t recover in these last 2 weeks.
Does picking a fight with 60 minutes count?
How about burning through half his cash in September, leaving him with just $63 million 2 weeks from the election?
Not seeing it.
Overall 538 remains at about 87% probability of a Biden win, as high as they’ve ever had it, with the biggest popular vote margin for Biden they’ve ever projected. No sure thing but no change. Ohio, Georgia, and ME2 remain toss-ups whichever color they get coded day to day. North Carolina has moved to a 68% chance of a Biden win. Florida at 69%. Their Pennsylvania forecast would have to be off by over 6 points for Trump to prevail in the EC.
What votes have been swayed where? A few in Iowa maybe?
Well, for one 538 had Ohio going from 51-49 Biden to 50-50. They had a national poll that moved a point towards Trump.
It may just be that it’s close enough in some areas that asking different people gets you a different enough poll result.
Really? 51% to 50% probability change in one state that is not needed and a national poll 1 point different? Okay.
The race could slightly tighten but still have Biden maintain his percentage chance of winning because $45 needed the race to tighten more to close the gap to account for 538’s “unknown” factor.
The bigger concerns to me, this morning, are the new Pulse poll on Pennsylvania showing Biden’s lead down to 3 (50-47). But while that causes the reptile parts of my brain to start panicking, the more mammalian parts try to remember
- Don’t over-react to one poll
- Biden is still up by 3
- Pulse is a C+ - rated pollster with a 1.5 point Republican lean, according to 538
But it’s still not a great result.
- even in the one poll that my reptile brain wants to overreact to.
I’m aware that other polls have shown him with a more comfortable lead.
I checked Nate Silver’s site and I didn’t see the data for a question I had. But, I didn’t dig.
Trump has a 18 percent (replace with the real number) of getting at least 270 electoral votes.
Biden has a 18 percent (same number) of getting at least ___ electoral votes.
What is the number?
Based on the scatter chart at the top of 538’s main presidential forecast page, they are now saying that Trump receives at least 270 electoral college votes in 13% of their model runs. It looks like Biden gets at least 420 votes in about 13% of their model runs.
I can’t even get Biden to 420 giving him Texas, Ohio and Georgia.
I came up with 341 in my head while I was mowing grass today. But that included Iowa.
If one looks at the models (hover over the individual “dots” on the scatter chart at the top of the page, and a map of that model appears), those are scenarios in which Biden gets all three of those states, plus Florida and Iowa. Those scenarios aren’t likely, but @Author_Balk was trying to understand which sorts of lower-probability scenarios for a Biden win were comparable (as far as odds) to the scenarios in which Trump wins the electoral college.
I guess if Sleepy Joe wins all of the battleground states, there are a couple of others that I just can’t see right now, flipping from momentum. Missouri? Montana? Kansas? South Carolina?
If the chance of all that happening equals Don’s current chance of winning, I’ll take those odds.
There’s actually a fairly large spike in the probability distribution of EVs just around 420, which is about where I’m seeing the 13% line for Biden as well. This is probably because of Texas - if the actual results are that far weighted towards Biden, it’s likely he’ll be picking up Texas and less likely he’ll be picking up multiple other states that give him less points.
Right. The EVs are not smoothly distributed, and the 38 for TX will make for a big spike. OTOH, TX is listed at a little over 1 in 3 chance of going for Biden, so there must be some scenarios where Biden wins TX but loses other battleground states that keep him in the mid 300 range rather than the over 400.