I will now accept my accolades megathread

[Asta]

I haven't made an official prediction but the closest I came to was in the thread: where do you feel more confident and less confident than Atlas?

-More confident about Biden losing OH, IA and TX, particularly TX. Beto ran an outstanding campaign by visiting every county. Biden won't replicate it without stronger ground game.

-Slightly more confident about Biden losing NC, GA and FL.

-AZ, NH, MI, WI and PA are states I roughly agree with Atlas on.

Deep down I knew Biden would lose TX by 4-5% or more. Beto was an outstanding candidate. IA and OH I knew were easily gone for Democrats once you adjust for polling error.

I was roughly accurate on Biden being quite likely to lose the south, though he may have a shot in GA after Atlanta votes come in.

After all is said and done, the only region Biden would win despite a huge polling error were the Midwestern states and possibly AZ.

[Asta]

I posted it in the early voting thread. Democrats keep insisting on raw # of votes lead to prove their firewall is getting sturdier.

But even in early voting, they have to be doing better. At least if the polls are to be believed, Democrats should be winning the early voting battle too yet Republicans are far outperforming in that category. 400-500k lead in the grand scheme of things, considering the # of Republicans that will be voting on the Election Day, really isn't much.

If the poll said Democrats will vote at a higher rate than Republicans in early voting and it doesn't reflect so, then how else would you interpret it? That the poll is way wrong? That it's too early? If latter, I agree but at least it does warrant some reasonable concern. I have no problem with states like PA where Biden legitimately seems to be doing well. But I'm not seeing the same optimism in FL.

Based on NYT/Siena poll, Republicans are roughly 2.5 times more likely to vote on Election Day in the state. If you think for a moment how lopsided that is, 400-500k lead that people are citing seem miniscule.

I said this back when early voting was taking place for a few days in Florida. I compared the early voting with NYT poll and believed it's clearly a red flag.

I expected Democrats to turn out more than Republicans in early voting as well yet Republicans consistently outvoted Democrats. Someone suggested that it's because Republicans tend to vote during weekdays and Democrats vote during weekends so I kept observing. Nope. Republicans outvoted Democrats again during the weekend.

Even still, there were posters that believed Biden will win the state. NPA? They rarely vote overwhelming for one party. It would break 54-46 at best for Biden. With that kind of number, I knew it wasn't good enough.

Was it because I'm a doomer that I called this out as a red flag? No, I call it out for what it is. Florida tends to side with winners. And Atlas had to at least take this as a warning sign yet they didn't. They preferred to call others doomers if we don't unequivocally agree with assessment of Biden's performance in Florida.

I'm now inclined to believe that Democrats were just cannibalizing their mail votes. Heck, if you ask me, I'm not even convinced that Democrats' lead before the Election Day was any better than 2016 when they had about 250k lead or so.