I also follow 538. I think you are talking about the national polls. When it was around 9-10%, the chances of Biden winning didn't change. Same as it is today. That's because 538 didn't think it was around 9-10% nationally and because they weight the States polls heavier. There was a gap between the state and national for a period of a few weeks and now they are more aligned (nationally going down a bit, state remain the same). If you look at the chance of winning, that has remain the same since after the 1st debate. All in all, there is no tightening trend since after debate #1. We have polls after debate #2 this week and there is also no tightening. There is indication that it could be expanding with the latest round of polls (but that's just one day, so consider it as noise for now).
National polls mean squat, NY and CA should dominate national polls Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida are the only polls that matter at this point
Gerrymandering only can affect House and State House/Senate races. It can't impact Presidential, Senate, or Statewide races. This is correct. This was the last 6 months of polling in the Clinton race: This is the last 6 months of the Biden race:
Keep in mind also that half the electorate has already voted - meaning it's more difficult to make up ground even with a late shift in the polls towards Trump.
Ignoring polls, for Trump to win, he needs to exceed his 2016 numbers in almost every battle ground state cos Biden seems certain to significantly surpass Hilary's vote counts in those states. The math is then simple imo. - Add people that voted for against Trump in 2016, but will vote for Trump - Add people that did not vote in 2016, but will vote for Trump - Subtract people that voted for Trump in 2016, but will not vote for him this year The net gain has to be significantly positive for Trump to win fairly and I just dont see it, as the last group is almsot surely larger than the total of the first two. Given that we will likely see historical voter turn out, the only other way Trump wins is if a lot of ballots are not counted, and I belive that is what he is hoping for with all his actions to deligitimize the mail-in ballots and hopes the SCOTUS will be his accomplice. If that happens nullifying thousands (if not millions) of ballots, Americans can brace themselves for another civil war.
This is what happens when trump and his campaign isn't held to basic standards of honesty and decency...
Your 6% is pretty accurate for the House of Reps - or at least, it was prior to the shifts in coalitions due to Trump. In 2016, no one thought Dems could flip the House until 2022 at the earliest, because gerrymandering had created a situation where Dems could win the popular vote by 5-7% and still not win new House seats. Trump's loss of women and suburban voters changed the impacts of all the gerrymandering with Dems winning in places they were not supposed to be able to, but that has definitely been a concern there.
If you think about it the electoral college is really just gerrymandering on a large scale. Democrats after this election will have won the popular vote 7 of the last 8 elections. I mean at this point Kerry has to be thinking damn just how unpopular am I lol
Any concerns with mail in voting? Democrats have been pushing mail in voting and I'm concerned about the number of ballots that will be thrown out because they don't meet certain criteria. Or how about states that won't take mail-in votes after election day due to decisions from the courts. I am also concerned how Texas does not have to let voters know of mistakes in their ballots and can throw those out as well.
I think a bunch will get thrown out - or arrive late. But I don't think it will be determinative anywhere at the end of the day. The bet that Dems are making is that more people will vote if there's mail-in voting (and that's what we saw in the primaries) - so I assume they made the calculation that the votes gained more than make up for the losses? This is a great site that tracks stuff: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html In particular, North Carolina provides a treasure trove of data: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NC.html In Mail-in votes, Dems have a 47% to 20% lead (lots of independents). In rejection rates, Dems are leading 49% to 18% - so that's about a net of 1500 votes there that Dems are losing due to mail-in ballot rejection. I do think Dems are dumb for focusing on mail-in voting and, in particular, these court cases to extent ballot deadlines. They are all getting rejected and all it's doing is creating confusion. Dems keep celebrating lower court rulings that say "votes can be counted 6 days late!" - but they know those things are going to be overturned, and in the meantime might be encouraging voters to proscratinate. I'd have preferred they focused on in-person early voting, but I'm also biased in Texas since that's how we do it for the most part. Some midwestern states don't even seem to offer in-person early voting from what I can tell, so there at least it's nice to be banking votes as early as possible. For me, I keep going back to the basic idea that Dem turnout will be higher, suburban voters and women have dramatically shifted to Dems (seen in 2018), and seniors are shifting to Dems due to Covid (unproven yet). I'm not sure where Trump gets enough new votes to counter all that. Compared to 2016, I see lots of groups switching from Trump to Biden, but can't imagine people going from Hillary to Trump. I just don't see a path forward for him - but who knows. I could be way off, but I'm projecting a pretty clear blowout, with MI/WI/PA easily going Dem plus adding NC and AZ, and the playing field really just being about margin of victory - can Biden win Iowa, Georgia, Florida, Texas? I think he gets IA but I'd put the other 3 as tossups with Texas being the least likely but not out of the realm of possibility.
Thanks for your response, great website. From what I've read and tracked the last few weeks, it doesn't seem to me that you are not far off on your blow out prediction. The fact that so many historical red states are a toss up does seem to indicate that Biden should be able to win this easily. I know many fear the 2016 errors, but man, the data doesn't even correlate with that data at all and Biden appears to have a much more comfortable lead in general.
