I must have missed something - we can post pictures again?
Yeah, if you link to them from somewhere else. I just upload the pics I want to my Google online photo account (whatever that service is called), create a link, and then post the link here.
Is Discourse mangling the link somehow? The picture shows up fine in the thread, but the link, which appears to be https://photos.app.goo.gl/HwQY4VPUvWFyEjnu6, is broken (ie, I get an HTTP 401.)
¯_ (ツ)_/¯
I don’t think 538 have put up their model yet but the Economist has and they give Biden a 93% chance of winning the election which seems around right to me given the polling that we have. In particular Biden has been consistently leading in PA and Florida and it’s really hard to see him losing if he wins both.
3 1/2 months is a long time. I fear Trump still has many dirty tricks up his sleeve, and that the only reason he hasn’t played them is that it’s still too far away from the election.
It’s also not as long as you might think. And six months is an even longer time but Trump has only been losing ground and getting in deeper and deeper since the beginning on the year.
I mean, yeah, sure anything can happen yadda-yadda. I’d still much rather be +12 and with an estimated 320-390 electoral votes right now than -12 and with 190 estimated EVs.
You can check the predictions of a number of different groups at 270towWin.
Right now, Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Predictit have Biden winning the EV. Sabados Crystal Ball and Politico have him at 268 EV. None of those give him toss-up states.
That’s all based on current poling, of course. Any bombshell could change that drastically. The good news for Biden voters is that there is less and less time for a bombshell to fall and nothing less than a cataclysm can move every swing state plus at least one lean Democrat state to Trump. His route to 270 requires a sweep.
Yes, polls are looking good for Biden 3 1/2 months from Election Day. Particularly state polls. But counting on the final vote in Florida to be a good result is a bit foolish imho. The Democrats have been well and truly fucked in pretty much every election, Presidential and mid-terms, for the entire 21st century. Though the polls look strong for Biden at the moment, I am certain the powers that be will see to it that changes come Election Day.
I have no data to back this up, but I think there may be a significant number of “shy Biden voters” out there in November — that is, folks who profess to their friends and family that they’ll vote for Trump (because they live in a Trumpy milieu), but who will pull the lever for Biden. Some portion of these are going as far as to lie to pollsters — not out of malice, but because it’s so hard for them to admit (even to a stranger) that they won’t vote for Trump again.
I’m guessing this will balance out “shy Trump voters” this time (whereas in 2016, indications are that there were many more shy Trump voters than shy Clinton ones.) Yet more good news for Biden, if I’m right about this.
I think it’s more likely that “shy” voters simply won’t vote for either Trump or Biden. Maybe they’ll vote third party, or maybe they’ll skip he top line on the ballot but still vote downballot. Most likely, they’ll stay home, and we’ll never be able to figure out how many didn’t vote because they a) were afraid of going to the polls b) effectively had their votes suppressed or c) couldn’t bring themselves to vote for either one. Given that we’re lucky if 55% of eligible voters turn out for a Presidential election anyway, it will be hard to figure out.
I don’t think anybody is counting on anything. Every thread on this topic is filled with people tempering their optimism but saying that it’s early and things can change. Remember 2016! is their motto.
And the Democrats aren’t standing pat on their glorious polls. They are raising more money than the Republicans month after month. They are pouring money into races to force the GOP to do the same. They are trying to improve their get-out-the-vote apparatus. They are putting out a series of center-left proposals that won’t scare anyone but the far right and yet have appeal to the progressives.
And, perhaps most importantly, they are lying low and not making mistakes in public while Trump and his “Science should not stand in the way” of opening schools team aren’t. Not making mistakes is a good way to operate when you have a lead. The other side therefore needs to do something extraordinary even to catch up, let alone win.
Can that happen? See above. Of course it can. What I don’t understand is why, when everything is going right and efforts are being made to keep that course, people seem to think that taking a chance of shooting themselves in the foot while they fire guns randomly is a better idea.
Very much this. Not just on here, but I see regular doomsaying that seems to be “Democrats are sure they’ll win based on the polls but just you see…” when I haven’t really talked to anyone who was completely confident in a win, much less planning to run out the clock until November.
I may have not been clear in what I meant - I realize Biden is looking strong in places like PA, MI and WI. I find it likely those polls are accurate for those states, at least to the extent polls can be. If things stay the way they are and have been going I can see that may be where they end up on Election Day, However, given how things have gone in the past in Florida, I question whether there is any chance Biden could end up winning there. If he does, then that’s pretty much game over but I’m not convinced there is much chance FL will go to the Democrats based on polling in previous midterm and Presidential elections and how the vote actually turned out.
How were Dems fucked (for the presidential ballot anyway) in Florida in 2008 and 2012? Obama won Florida by about 3% in 2008 and squeezed by about 1% in 2012. Assuming the correctness of the current polls as well as the expectation that the race will tighten in the next few months, it wouldn’t be surprising if Biden won Trump’s new home state by 1-2%.
Man - things looked good for Hillary up until a week before the election. Heck, things looked GREAT for Kerry in 04 as we git into the car to drive to a freaking election night party! But by the time we got to the party a half hour later…
Sure, as said upthread, I’d rather be ahead. But There are so many stupid voters out there, so much crap that could be pulled to impose hurdles to turnout in person or via mail, so many wildcards COVID could deal in terms of in-person voting… The LAST thing any sane person should do right now is get complacent.
Trump’s trouble in suburbs [may be] key to suddenly competitive Ohio: Trump's trouble in suburbs key to suddenly competitive Ohio | AP News
Why do people keep saying this? It very much didn’t. Trump’s odds of winning were very high the entire time. That’s why everyone was freaking out so much. It seemed like Clinton should have been able to get this sizable lead, but she never could.
As pointed out, the margin between Clinton and Trump was closer at this point last time than it is between Biden and Trump.
No, we shouldn’t get complacent. Things can change. And there have been a lot of moves to make the election more unfair. But, at the same time, there’s no reason to push this “polls and data mean nothing” narrative.
As for Kerry v. Bush, I can’t say I know the numbers. But that always seemed to me to be just about riding Bush’s high from 2001. People were still in that patriotic/nationalist fervor that covered up his sins. What highs does Trump have that could do similarly?
Also, WI, MI and PA were very lightly polled in 2016 since blah blah “Blue Wall” blah blah and everyone was paying more attention to Florida and Ohio. This cycle, the polling firms are all over the upper Midwest to hopefully give a more accurate picture of what those important states are up to.
The final polling average was Bush +1.5. The largest lead Kerry every had was mid-summer (around now, actually) and was Kerry +2.5. Cite: RealClearPolitics - Election 2004 - General Election: Bush vs. Kerry
That is, obviously, nothing like the current (and solid for at least a month and a half now) lead for Biden of 7 points or more.
The polls clearly show that Biden is ahead, and if the election were tomorrow it would be a shocking indictment of polling if Trump were to win. So much so that I think the very notion of politically polling would have to be shelved for awhile until pollsters figured out why their methodology was so fatally flawed. We have not, as far as I know, ever seen a polling error for a highly-polled election great enough to wipe out a 7 point lead. The chart here from 2016 shows that only one presedential election had anything remotely like that miss, and that was back in 1980 where polls had Reagan in a solid 2.5 point lead but he ended up winning by almost 10.
But, of course, the election is not held tomorrow. Much can happen in 3 months. The big concern for Trump has to be that there doesn’t seem to be anything on the horizon that is likely to break in his direction. He would need COVID to “disappear”, the economy to come roaring back, and/or some significant domestic disturbance or large Biden scandal to appear (and no, that does not include the plagiarism stuff that somehow has become a topic again).