Board 8 > Election 2020 Statistics and Discussion

(+) Yeah! (+)

red sox 777 posted...

This election feels rather strange to me - based on a lot of my metrics, Trump should have a fairly easy win

What are your metrics?

---

I kept hearing about how the polls are narrowing and have started feeling depressed about this election. Still think Biden pulls it out but would hardly be surprised either way. Trump's core won't abandon him, but the people who voted for him last election as the "lesser of two evils" probably will and that's what I'm banking on.

---

red sox 777 posted...

You mean "nothing"? This is a man who when asked if he had asked for forgiveness from God, said that he hadn't because he had never made any mistakes in his life.

No he has not. He has done and said horrible things, but obviously it didn't impact his career or image one iota.

People like Trump are literally the reason the #metoo movement exists. Probably the best thing to come out of his administration really.

---

MarkS222222222222222 posted...

What are your metrics?

Mainly, the economy, but also the Democrats' refusal to change a thing from their losing strategy in 2016. Voters usually don't take well to a party that is rebuked at the polls and does nothing to change course.

the democrats could have made a more radical change (by nominating bernie, for instance) but "they didn't change a thing" is a ridiculous exaggeration. they changed plenty. biden is a man instead of a woman, he's emphasizing different things than hillary, the way he presents himself is very different from how hillary did it, etc.

also, even if you're right and there are absolutely no differences between biden and hillary, i wouldn't say calling it a "losing strategy" is correct because hillary only BARELY lost to trump. this is like, after link narrowly lost to cloud in the summer 2003 contest, you're claiming that cloud "should have a fairly easy win" in the next character contest.

---

HeroicCrono posted...

Mainly, the economy, but also the Democrats' refusal to change a thing from their losing strategy in 2016. Voters usually don't take well to a party that is rebuked at the polls and does nothing to change course.

To be fair Republicans are dead set on the Democrats trying to destroy the nation with their social justice antics so what's the point in changing just to appease to them?

Anyway yeah, Biden isn't someone who has been a fixture of American politics for 20+ years.

---

bump

---

Too close to call still I'd say. Gonna come down to 6 states or so like it always does.

---

bump

---

Trump finally gets below a 7 point deficit in the 538 polling average. Now down to a 6.7% gap today.

---

Does that matter tho? National polling is kind of useless when you could win nationally and lose the election.

I'd suspect that polling numbers in the middle ~10 states would be more important? No?

---

HeroicCrono posted...

Mainly, the economy, but also the Democrats' refusal to change a thing from their losing strategy in 2016. Voters usually don't take well to a party that is rebuked at the polls and does nothing to change course.

Yeah. Its the reason why repeating the same strategy and candidate without any efforts to change a losing strategy led to Biden beating Bernie.

---

Espeon posted...

Yeah. Its the reason why repeating the same strategy and candidate without any efforts to change a losing strategy led to Biden beating Bernie.

No, biden beat bernie because democratic primary voters suck

---

Sure, Bernie lost again, but Bernie's been losing for decades and hasn't changed his platform. That means that he does not see winning as the highest or only end. It really is irrelevant though, as this topic is for discussing elections, and not the morals of either candidates or their supporters.

pezzicle posted...

Does that matter tho? National polling is kind of useless when you could win nationally and lose the election.

I'd suspect that polling numbers in the middle ~10 states would be more important? No?

It matters only because it's correlated with the swing states. Yes, the swing state polls are better correlated with swing state voting than the national polls, but these polls all have a significant margin of error so the national polling does add some information. There are a lot more national polls than individual state polls so the individual state polls sometimes are not that accurate, whereas the 538 national polling average is going to be very accurate barring a systemic bias in the polls that extends across all the pollsters.

---

I will say, Ulti and Corrik have both come out as saying that Biden is a virtual lock, which is a fairly strong indicator for me. I think them two are probably the most swingy voters we have on this board, and Ulti has a knack for knowing which way the wind is blowing, even if he can be incredibly far off on the magnitude (he called Trump winning in an electoral college landslide in 2016 and was further off the margin than people who picked Hillary to win a very narrow contest).

Since I live in a blue state now and it's now been 9 years since I've lived in a swing state, my ability to get a sense for the national mood based on personal interactions has diminished.

---

red sox 777 posted...

I will say, Ulti and Corrik have both come out as saying that Biden is a virtual lock, which is a fairly strong indicator for me. I think them two are probably the most swingy voters we have on this board, and Ulti has a knack for knowing which way the wind is blowing, even if he can be incredibly far off on the magnitude (he called Trump winning in an electoral college landslide in 2016 and was further off the margin than people who picked Hillary to win a very narrow contest).

it is a factor but it's also pretty anecdotal, really.

counter-anecdote: scott adams predicted that trump would win in the '16 election literally days after trump announced he was running (though he, like ulti, incorrectly predicted that it would be a landslide). he's now arguing in his podcast that a trump victory in the upcoming election is a 100% lock.

---

how will the presidential debate affect the polls? let's find out!

---

I thought Trump wrecked himself in this debate. As the candidate behind in the polls, he needed to win the debates to improve his standing. I don't think this performance is going to do it.

---

I definitely don't see how that was supposed to expand his base

---

less than a month until the election!

---

Looks like he is loosing ground

---

So, I do think Trump's coming down with coronavirus and recovery injects some chaos into the election, which Trump badly needed to overcome what became a large polling deficit after the debate. Not sure that it helps him rather than hurts him, but at this point he needs max chaos.

I don't get a lot of Trump's plays like fearmongering with suburban voters, going all-in on fracking, etc. I thought one of the smartest things he did in 2016 was say that Bernie's diagnosis of the state of the union is exactly right, and he only disagreed with the proposed remedy. Trump needs to find a message like that that resonates with swing voters.

---

What are your current EC, Senate, and House predictions?

---

red sox 777 posted...

So, I do think Trump's coming down with coronavirus and recovery injects some chaos into the election, which Trump badly needed to overcome what became a large polling deficit after the debate. Not sure that it helps him rather than hurts him, but at this point he needs max chaos.

I don't get a lot of Trump's plays like fearmongering with suburban voters, going all-in on fracking, etc. I thought one of the smartest things he did in 2016 was say that Bernie's diagnosis of the state of the union is exactly right, and he only disagreed with the proposed remedy. Trump needs to find a message like that that resonates with swing voters.

I agree. It seems he has just doubled down on his base as opposed to trying to maintain the swing voters he grabbed last election from the Dems

---

Trump's going insane. Even more than he already was. It feels like his campaign is in disarray now in a way it simply wasn't four years ago.

---

this topic sucks and is now about the nz general election

labour's got it pretty much

i party voted greens just because

locally, the new national person here doesn't seem nearly as good as the one who's quitting and i hope he doesn't win... though really all the candidates here are hit or miss

Corrik7 posted...

What are your current EC, Senate, and House predictions?

---

Will need to do some research to make my predictions. Might not happen this week as I am pretty busy with other stuff.

---

UF8 posted...

this topic sucks and is now about the nz general election

labour's got it pretty much

i party voted greens just because

locally, the new national person here doesn't seem nearly as good as the one who's quitting and i hope he doesn't win... though really all the candidates here are hit or miss

Why would we talk about that it's basically already over. Labor either gonna win outright or form government with the greens

---

Its good news in NZ though. I havent had that feeling about an election in the country Im living with since I was a literal child.

---

Trump is back to 40% on PredictIt. My guess is that the market is pricing in uncertainty relating to so many people voting by mail. The polls show Biden is winning those voters with more than 70%, so if even say 5% of mail votes are rejected for not being signed, getting lost, etc., Biden could lose millions of votes. Not sure how else to explain the huge delta between the polling models and the prediction markets.

Trumpfear.

2016 is seen as being a giant upset. I wonder if people are scared to pick against Trump because they got burned before even though Trump's current situation is far more dire than it was against Hillary.
---

I mean, you look at a map like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/18/politics/joe-biden-election-2020-best-electoral-path/index.html

And you realize it could be a lot closer (at least in the EC) than you'd expect.

---

HeroicCrono posted...

Trump is back to 40% on PredictIt. My guess is that the market is pricing in uncertainty relating to so many people voting by mail. The polls show Biden is winning those voters with more than 70%, so if even say 5% of mail votes are rejected for not being signed, getting lost, etc., Biden could lose millions of votes. Not sure how else to explain the huge delta between the polling models and the prediction markets.

Why do you assume Biden is winning those voters with more than 70%?

---

Also is there a way to legitimately stop double voting from ballot to in person?

---

Corrik7 posted...

Why do you assume Biden is winning those voters with more than 70%?

That's what the polls are telling us. Trump is crushing it with in-person voters.

---

red sox 777 posted...

That's what the polls are telling us. Trump is crushing it with in-person voters.

What polls? I have yet to see a poll of who you voted for in a mail in ballot yet.

---

Corrik7 posted...

What polls? I have yet to see a poll of who you voted for in a mail in ballot yet.

Polls asking people if they intend to vote by mail or in person and who they plan to vote for.

---

Are mailed in ballots largely counted after the in-person ballots? I'm trying to get an idea of what the poll trends are going to look like. If in-person ballots tend to be counted first, Trump might have an L-Block style explosive early vote and then go into free fall hoping for the match to end early somehow.
---

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Are mailed in ballots largely counted after the in-person ballots? I'm trying to get an idea of what the poll trends are going to look like. If in-person ballots tend to be counted first, Trump might have an L-Block style explosive early vote and then go into free fall hoping for the match to end early somehow.

I think it's going to vary by state. For the states that count mail ballots first, Biden will probably have a huge lead as soon as the polls close and Trump will make a big comeback all night. And totally the opposite trend for states that don't allow opening of mail ballots until election day.

---

red sox 777 posted...

Polls asking people if they intend to vote by mail or in person and who they plan to vote for.

That is not what you said.

---

Florida and some other states will have all mail in ballots counted by election day. I believe. PA and Michigan won't because they can't even start counting til the day of and anything post marked to that date counts I think.

---

Are there any traditionally strong red states that count mail-in ballots early or strong blue states that count them late? Those two combinations seem like the ones to cause overreactions to a crazy early vote.
---

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-10-13/when-swing-states-can-start-counting-millions-of-mail-in-ballots

I don't think many care about the non swing states.

---

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vopp-table-16-when-absentee-mail-ballot-processing-and-counting-can-begin.aspx

Looks like that is every state. I still have no idea how they can possibly see if someone double voted.

---

nov is gonna be a mess of a month

---

Trump is up to 41% on PredictIt. We finally got some polls that show a very close election (notably from Investor's Business Daily). I think they have Biden +4 which is right around the breakeven in the Electoral College.

Something I thought of - it's actually really hard to send mail from many residences in a city. You have to go out and find a post office box to drop off mail in. It's much easier from the suburbs or rural areas - you just leave outgoing mail in your own mailbox and lift up the flag. I bet there's going to be some substantial percentage of people who intend to vote by mail but just don't find the time to do it by election day, the same way people intend to vote in person and end up not finding the time for it. That would mostly hurt Biden.

---

Rasmussen put out a Trump +1 poll today. Biden's lead in the 538 polling average down to 8.7%.

Corrik7 posted...

What are your current EC, Senate, and House predictions?

---

Haven't got them yet. Actually, I'd rather wait and see how the polls move over the next week.

---