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Like most of this post, from my Election Modeler. More about how it works here (though I've added a fair number of bells and whistles since then). |
It's Election Eve, and my models have been hard at work predicting how things are going to play out. And I'm not going to bury the lede: barring incredibly unlikely polling errors or hitherto unknown success by Trump in the courts, Biden is going to win, and likely by a large margin. If you like, you can look at the state-by-state predictions and probabilities [here] (though I definitely stand by the overall averages, not the particular outcome of one state or another). Here are the main stats:
- 97.4% - The odds that my model gives to Biden carrying the electoral college
- 358 - The median electoral votes I expect him to get
- 8.9% - The expected margin in the popular vote
- 7.1% - The expected margin in tipping point state (PA) -- which is essentially equivalent to how much the polls need to be off by in order for Biden to lose. They were off by less than 3 in 2016, by the way.
- Dems are probably going to get to 51 in the Senate (but you can look at my modeler if you want more on that)
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From the tracker. All of the states that are within 10 points. Well, technically Missouri got cut off. |
Biden's starting point, with only states that he leads in by more than 10, is 217. (I was too lazy to treat ME-02 and NE-02 separately, so for now, I'm assuming they vote with their state. As it stands, Biden will probably win both, bumping him up 1 EV. That happens not to matter in most scenarios). Including Missouri, there are 17 states in this category, Biden leads in most of them, and he needs to win 4 or so (depending on the 4) in order to win. Not to beat a dead horse, but Biden's lead in PA is slightly larger than Trump's in Alaska. And not to beat another dead horse, but it's equally likely that Biden outperforms his polls than underperforms.
It is, of course, possible that he loses PA, but then Biden needs to win any of AZ, FL, NC, OH, GA (all of which he's leading in), or TX, where he's behind. Put another way, even if Trump wins a long shot, he still needs to win 6 coin flips in a row (roughly 3% odds). It's possible, but tat this stage, far more likely that he's cheated.
For the sake of completeness, though I don't put any stock in it, here's my "winner take all" map -- assuming each candidate wins the states that they're currently ahead in:
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A fairly typical prediction, but I can absolutely imagine one or more of these are wrong, and in either direction. I'm personally kind of bearish on Ohio. |
We were burned by polls in 2016, so it's worth wondering if we really know how anything is different this time. There have been lots of analyses pointing out that Biden has consistently gotten over 50% in polling, and that the number of undecideds and third party voters are far smaller this time.
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From my polling trends widget. |
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Basically, Biden's lead has been between 8 and 11 since June, and Trump has never, at any point, been within 4 points. |
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