Bold Predictions for November

[jake_arlington]

-Trump wins Iowa by 15 points (53-38)
-Trump wins Ohio by 8 points (52-44)
-AZ votes to left of PA, but still votes R
-Biden loses PA by 3-5 points
-Biden struggles in NV and wins by 2-3 points
-Trump wins ME-02 by 20 points

No, every poll has Trump.losing by 5 to 10 even in Fox

That also was true in 2016. But Trump still won even when the polls said he was going to lose big time.

The polls were correct within the margin of error (except for Wisconsin). The pundits and the media incorrectly interpreted the polls.

Uh no lmao

-Trump wins Iowa by 15 points (53-38)
-Trump wins Ohio by 8 points (52-44)
-AZ votes to left of PA, but still votes R
-Biden loses PA by 3-5 points
-Biden struggles in NV and wins by 2-3 points
-Trump wins ME-02 by 20 points

No, every poll has Trump.losing by 5 to 10 even in Fox

That also was true in 2016. But Trump still won even when the polls said he was going to lose big time.

False.

False.

-Trump wins Iowa by 15 points (53-38)
-Trump wins Ohio by 8 points (52-44)
-AZ votes to left of PA, but still votes R
-Biden loses PA by 3-5 points
-Biden struggles in NV and wins by 2-3 points
-Trump wins ME-02 by 20 points

No, every poll has Trump.losing by 5 to 10 even in Fox

That also was true in 2016. But Trump still won even when the polls said he was going to lose big time.

The polls were correct within the margin of error (except for Wisconsin). The pundits and the media incorrectly interpreted the polls.

[jake_arlington]

But anyway, yes:



And of course, the regional numbers (especially demographic crosstabs) when you look at the individual polls themselves were innumerable degrees of magnitude worse in times with.

Uh no lmao

-Trump wins Iowa by 15 points (53-38)
-Trump wins Ohio by 8 points (52-44)
-AZ votes to left of PA, but still votes R
-Biden loses PA by 3-5 points
-Biden struggles in NV and wins by 2-3 points
-Trump wins ME-02 by 20 points

No, every poll has Trump.losing by 5 to 10 even in Fox

That also was true in 2016. But Trump still won even when the polls said he was going to lose big time.

False.

Would you care to elaborate?

First of all, would you?

[jake_arlington]

But anyway, yes:



And of course, the regional numbers (especially demographic crosstabs) when you look at the individual polls themselves were innumerable degrees of magnitude worse in times with.

Uh no lmao

-Trump wins Iowa by 15 points (53-38)
-Trump wins Ohio by 8 points (52-44)
-AZ votes to left of PA, but still votes R
-Biden loses PA by 3-5 points
-Biden struggles in NV and wins by 2-3 points
-Trump wins ME-02 by 20 points

No, every poll has Trump.losing by 5 to 10 even in Fox

That also was true in 2016. But Trump still won even when the polls said he was going to lose big time.

False.

Would you care to elaborate?

First of all, would you?

Did you even look at what you just linked? Michigan and Pennsylvania are both within a margin of error.

...

[jake_arlington]

The polls got Hillary’s numbers right

A by the sheer luck of coincidence.
When you actually delve deeper into the heading beyond simply topline numbers, that becomes clear is it was a bunch of errors cancelling each other out to produce that favorable "result" of course, in the end.

[jake_arlington]

Nice! What really stood out to me here was not so much GA voting dem while FL and NC go blue on this map (many users have predicted this trend, even though I disagree strongly with FL ftr) nor MN = GOP but AZ for Biden either.

Rather, the striking part that pops out to the eye is ME atlas-blue but NH red...interesting analysis. Though some on here discussed the possibility in the immediately aftermath of 2016 afaik, it seems to have faded away later as things shifted back toward a pre-year stasis of default standing. Would be interested to hear how you came to this conclusion. In either case, great work with the list!

[jake_arlington]

Florida votes to the left of Arizona.

The time travellers from 2000s and early 2010s need to see this

[jake_arlington]

Tied election, total chaos, constitutional crisis. Seems fitting.

I think this is a more likely tie scenario

Hat actually naw.

[jake_arlington]

Florida votes to the left of Arizona.

The time travellers from 2000s and early 2010s need to see this

Would it really be that shocking though? Arizona was hard right until very recently and Florida is a swing state.

If anything, wouldn't "AZ votes the left of FL" be a bolder take?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean. "Florida votes to the left of Arizona" was an iron-ruled law back then - so it would have been shocking for them to see it in a "bold takes" thread.

[jake_arlington]

- Trump destroys Biden with WWC voters by an even larger margin than 2016 while Biden does better among college educated whites than Hillary leading to him coming incredibly close to winning Arizona but loses by 1%. Biden pulls a big upset in GA based on doing even better with suburban Atlanta voters and wins GA by .5%.

T. H. I. S.

[jake_arlington]

AZ is not close and Trump wins there by about 6%.

VA will vote to the right of NV and CO. Trump wins VA by 1% while losing NV by 1% and CO by 3%.
COVID-19 will help Trump.

McSally squeaks by in the AZ senate race, Winning by 2% on the back of Trump.

Gardner loses but only narrowly by 1.5%.

NC and ME hold for the GOP while MI flips. The senate is 54-46.

Republicans come very close to taking the House but fall short. 221-214.

PA and MI could both vote right of WI.

NM is in play. Trump comes up only 3.5% short.

TX will shift heavily to the right and give Trump a 15% win.

Trump wins by 2% in the popular vote.

Yep, still a Trump optimist.

This is less optimism and more completely ignoring every single poll that has ever come out in the last year.

Polls didn't even mean anything during the end of the campaign in 2016 and they certainly don't exactly count for much of anything at this point. They were wrong in 2016, They were mostly wrong in 2018 and there's no evidence that they'll be right this year. Thus, I think Trump will defy the polls again.

I'm beating a dead horse at this point but.

The polls were mostly right in 2016. Excluding Wisconsin, the ones that were wrong were mostly within the margin of error.

The polls were mostly right in 2018, except for Florida.

You really need to pay attention to the actual polls themselves and not the pundit's interpretations of polls.

Polls: "Hillary leads by 2 points in 9/10 Michigan polls, with a margin of error of 3."

Media: (incorrectly) "HILLARY HAS A 90% CHANCE OF WINNING THE PRESIDENCY."

538 was the most accurate, giving Trump a 30% chance of winning, which was correct. He did have a 30% chance of winning. It's just that 30% happened. If the weather forecast said 30% chance of rain, you'd bring an umbrella.

Uh.........say what now?

Find me a single source that says most, let alone 90%, of the Michigan polls had Trump within 2 points.

Also, the claim that Trump had a 30% chance in 2016 is just total, pure BS sugared-up hindsight bias and/or narrative spinning.

Very emphatically, he did not - based on any reasonably interpretation of the empirically data availably.

It is plain false to say he had a 30% shot, especially not if because just Nate Silver said so. Heck you could sooner make the argument he was a 2/3 lock to win!

[jake_arlington]

I think Trump will win re election regardless of the EV count. However, I think It he will win big. He will definitely pick up NH and ME (at large) as well as Minnesota. Then, I think he could also take Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. I think that's about it, but it would not be too far out that he picks up a blue state like Oregon or Connecticut.

VERY BOLD prediction lol.

Welcome to the forum!

[jake_arlington]

After all the concerns about a 2016 redux and "underestimating Trump"; four years of bedwetting, overanalysis, and "learning lessons"; and excessive focus on/obsession over the "WWC" Obama/Trump voter, Donald Trump's presidency is ended by the "silent" suburban voter who couldn’t stomach voting for Hillary Clinton and considered Trump the lesser of two evils in 2016, record Democratic turnout across the country (but especially in metropolitan America, where we see unprecedented numbers for a Democratic presidential candidate in cities like Atlanta, Austin, and Bozeman ), and Biden's inroads among voters 65 and older. Biden flips MI, PA, AZ, NE-02, and two other states. States with the strongest D swings include MT, KS, TX, and AZ (which votes to the left of most, if not all, other battleground states). Everyone says that they saw it coming all along, that Biden was always far better-positioned than Hillary Clinton, that an incumbent like Trump never had a chance, that 2018 was an obvious sign of things to come, that Democrats did not hit a ceiling in Sun Belt urban/suburban areas in 2016 and 2018, and that they never doubted that Trump only won in 2016 because of the historic unpopularity of his opponent.

Biden doesn’t gain that much ground in most areas which trended strongly Republican in 2016 (with some exceptions like counties with a large number of Native American and "anti-incumbent" voters, especially in MT), but he manages to either make small inroads or at least hold his own in those states (e.g., only losing IA by 6-7 points, and losing OH by 4-5 points), which is more than enough to win the election. Democrats finally give up on Iowa as it turns out to be Trump's best swing state and Ernst wins reelection despite the Democratic onslaught, not least due to her #retailpolitics.

The Senate is incredibly close and not called on election night, with the closest races (decided by less than five percentage points) being MT (which is one of the last races to be called, as Daines does worse than Gianforte and Rosendale and the race is nip and tuck throughout the night until the wee hours), NC, GA-R, MI, TX, KS, and ME. MI and TX in particular are more competitive than initially expected, as Cornyn barely outperforms Trump and Peters actually runs behind Biden. Both GA seats go to a runoff, and Perdue just barely receives fewer votes than Ossoff in the first round as his Gwinnett GOTV Gang falls asleep at the wheel and his Cobb County Connections abandon him. There’s more split-ticket voting in smaller states (MT/AK/KS/ME) than expected. McSally and Gardner lose pretty badly (Gardner by more than Jones), and Tommy Tuberville picks up AL by an embarrassing margin after national Republican groups + Trump come to his rescue (he barely outperforms Roy Moore in urban AL and even slightly underperforms him in a few suburban counties, but is pulled across the finish line by presidential year turnout among Republicans/Republican-leaning independents, the absence of a lopsided enthusiasm gap, and Trump's 22-point margin in the presidential race in AL).

LOL That is a pipe dream.  You are basically saying 2016 was a fluke.

Yes it was.

Right all those WWC voters will magically flip to dems. The truth is both things are happening. GOP is continuing to lose more college educated whites while democrats continue to lose more WWC. Biden def does worse with WWC than Hillary which is why MN will flip and Trump keeps all the midwest states. He will lose GA or AZ before he loses the Midwest.

While I don't think Minnesota will flip to Trump, I nevertheless agree with the overall thrust of what you say here. Before I undertook my hiatus, I marveled on another thread how Tom Wolf won reelection in Pennsylvania by a wider margin in 2018 than in 2014, despite winning fewer counties overall. And for that observation, I was mocked. But now, I will bring it back again, so as to make a broader analysis of what we will see in the Midwest this fall.

If you look at Wolf's first gubernatorial victory in 2014, before Trump's upset in Pennsylvania, you'll notice that he carried the typical suburban counties that are now solidly Democratic (i.e. Delaware, Chester, Montgomery) and the other counties that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. However, he also won several rural, ancesterally Democratic working-class counties that were once a key part of their coalition:

You'll also notice that he did reasonably well throughout much of the interior regions of the state as well, breaking 40% in several counties where Hillary Clinton barely managed 30%.

In 2018, however, Wolf's coalition changed:

As one can see, he significantly improved in the Philadelphia suburban counties, breaking 60% in all of them except swing Bucks County (Bucks went to him by double digits, closely matching his overall statewide margin, as it matched the statewide margin in 2016). Chester County, in particular, went from being Wolf +4 in 2014 to Wolf +23 in 2018. He also significantly improved in Allegheny County, gaining 10 percentage points there compared to 2014, and flipped wealthy exurban Cumberland County. However, Wolf lost Greene, Fayette, Cambria, Schuylkill, Carbon, Lawrence, Northumberland, and Clinton Counties, which he had carried in 2014. He also did significantly worse in Luzerne County, winning it by 5 against Wagner while he had carried it by 12 against Corbett.

To summarize, Wolf gained college-educated suburbanites who are trending Democratic, but lost white working-class voters who are trending Republican. The exact same patterns will manifest themselves in Pennsylvania (and in Wisconsin and Michigan as well) this year. However, another critical point is that Wolf's gains among suburbanites outweighed his losses among white working-class voters, which is why he won by a wider margin last time than in 2014. I wouldn't surprised if this happens with Biden. If Biden can come close to replicating Wolf's numbers in the Philadelphia suburbs and Allegheny County, then he will win Pennsylvania, even if he loses further ground to Trump in the rural and working-class areas.

Clinton made those same types of gains against Trump though, and yet it still didn't guarantee her victory there. And so, what's to say any different chances will happen for Biden this year?

[jake_arlington]

Trump wins the election and is close in the popular vote despite mail-in ballots. In the immediate days before the election, news spreads on social media from young adults ranting that they didn't receive a ballot. Many others say they find out their parents voted Trump for them. This news continues to go on for weeks after the election and is allegedly widespread.

Voter fraud becomes alleged by the media now in an ironic reverse fashion, and they have another four years of Trump to deal with.

(the title said bold!)

This is honestly a worry of mine. Abusive husbands watching over their wives shoulders as they're pressured to fill in Trump to avoid a beating. Parents filling out their kid's ballots for them. Could get messy.

Now, I sure hope you're being sarcastic here...

[jake_arlington]

After all the concerns about a 2016 redux and "underestimating Trump"; four years of bedwetting, overanalysis, and "learning lessons"; and excessive focus on/obsession over the "WWC" Obama/Trump voter, Donald Trump's presidency is ended by the "silent" suburban voter who couldn’t stomach voting for Hillary Clinton and considered Trump the lesser of two evils in 2016, record Democratic turnout across the country (but especially in metropolitan America, where we see unprecedented numbers for a Democratic presidential candidate in cities like Atlanta, Austin, and Bozeman ), and Biden's inroads among voters 65 and older. Biden flips MI, PA, AZ, NE-02, and two other states. States with the strongest D swings include MT, KS, TX, and AZ (which votes to the left of most, if not all, other battleground states). Everyone says that they saw it coming all along, that Biden was always far better-positioned than Hillary Clinton, that an incumbent like Trump never had a chance, that 2018 was an obvious sign of things to come, that Democrats did not hit a ceiling in Sun Belt urban/suburban areas in 2016 and 2018, and that they never doubted that Trump only won in 2016 because of the historic unpopularity of his opponent.

Biden doesn’t gain that much ground in most areas which trended strongly Republican in 2016 (with some exceptions like counties with a large number of Native American and "anti-incumbent" voters, especially in MT), but he manages to either make small inroads or at least hold his own in those states (e.g., only losing IA by 6-7 points, and losing OH by 4-5 points), which is more than enough to win the election. Democrats finally give up on Iowa as it turns out to be Trump's best swing state and Ernst wins reelection despite the Democratic onslaught, not least due to her #retailpolitics.

The Senate is incredibly close and not called on election night, with the closest races (decided by less than five percentage points) being MT (which is one of the last races to be called, as Daines does worse than Gianforte and Rosendale and the race is nip and tuck throughout the night until the wee hours), NC, GA-R, MI, TX, KS, and ME. MI and TX in particular are more competitive than initially expected, as Cornyn barely outperforms Trump and Peters actually runs behind Biden. Both GA seats go to a runoff, and Perdue just barely receives fewer votes than Ossoff in the first round as his Gwinnett GOTV Gang falls asleep at the wheel and his Cobb County Connections abandon him. There’s more split-ticket voting in smaller states (MT/AK/KS/ME) than expected. McSally and Gardner lose pretty badly (Gardner by more than Jones), and Tommy Tuberville picks up AL by an embarrassing margin after national Republican groups + Trump come to his rescue (he barely outperforms Roy Moore in urban AL and even slightly underperforms him in a few suburban counties, but is pulled across the finish line by presidential year turnout among Republicans/Republican-leaning independents, the absence of a lopsided enthusiasm gap, and Trump's 22-point margin in the presidential race in AL).

LOL That is a pipe dream.  You are basically saying 2016 was a fluke.

Yes it was.

Right all those WWC voters will magically flip to dems. The truth is both things are happening. GOP is continuing to lose more college educated whites while democrats continue to lose more WWC. Biden def does worse with WWC than Hillary which is why MN will flip and Trump keeps all the midwest states. He will lose GA or AZ before he loses the Midwest.

While I don't think Minnesota will flip to Trump, I nevertheless agree with the overall thrust of what you say here. Before I undertook my hiatus, I marveled on another thread how Tom Wolf won reelection in Pennsylvania by a wider margin in 2018 than in 2014, despite winning fewer counties overall. And for that observation, I was mocked. But now, I will bring it back again, so as to make a broader analysis of what we will see in the Midwest this fall.

If you look at Wolf's first gubernatorial victory in 2014, before Trump's upset in Pennsylvania, you'll notice that he carried the typical suburban counties that are now solidly Democratic (i.e. Delaware, Chester, Montgomery) and the other counties that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. However, he also won several rural, ancesterally Democratic working-class counties that were once a key part of their coalition:

You'll also notice that he did reasonably well throughout much of the interior regions of the state as well, breaking 40% in several counties where Hillary Clinton barely managed 30%.

In 2018, however, Wolf's coalition changed:

As one can see, he significantly improved in the Philadelphia suburban counties, breaking 60% in all of them except swing Bucks County (Bucks went to him by double digits, closely matching his overall statewide margin, as it matched the statewide margin in 2016). Chester County, in particular, went from being Wolf +4 in 2014 to Wolf +23 in 2018. He also significantly improved in Allegheny County, gaining 10 percentage points there compared to 2014, and flipped wealthy exurban Cumberland County. However, Wolf lost Greene, Fayette, Cambria, Schuylkill, Carbon, Lawrence, Northumberland, and Clinton Counties, which he had carried in 2014. He also did significantly worse in Luzerne County, winning it by 5 against Wagner while he had carried it by 12 against Corbett.

To summarize, Wolf gained college-educated suburbanites who are trending Democratic, but lost white working-class voters who are trending Republican. The exact same patterns will manifest themselves in Pennsylvania (and in Wisconsin and Michigan as well) this year. However, another critical point is that Wolf's gains among suburbanites outweighed his losses among white working-class voters, which is why he won by a wider margin last time than in 2014. I wouldn't surprised if this happens with Biden. If Biden can come close to replicating Wolf's numbers in the Philadelphia suburbs and Allegheny County, then he will win Pennsylvania, even if he loses further ground to Trump in the rural and working-class areas.

Clinton made those same types of gains against Trump though, and yet it still didn't guarantee her victory there. And so, what's to say any different chances will happen for Biden this year?

Clinton did make the same kinds of gains against Trump, but not to the scale that Wolf (or Casey for that matter) did in 2018. It has been a gradual process, and Trump's position in the Philadelphia suburbs has not improved compared to what it was in 2016. 2018 shows that it's possible for the Democrats to win Pennsylvania off the backs of the collar counties alone, and Biden-whose connections to the state have been well publicized-stands to profit off these trends. He will also win back at least a few of the voters in the Scranton-Wilkes Barre area who went to Trump, and combined with his suburban gains, that will tip the state his way.

Well, Trump has similarly made gains in the rural and western/northern parts of the state which likely preclude the kind of collar regional-only win for a national Dem that you mention.

Of course, Biden does have strong roots in Pennsylvania which could (should) be more than enough to offset certain well-documented trends away from any other generic nominee as time passes to go on.

[jake_arlington]

-No one on this forum will predict the exact outcome correctly

Bam!  There it is.

I really find that one hard to believe. There's only so many plausible maps, and I'm certain at least one person has guessed the correct map, even when just screwing around on 270towin

Nah, not unless some group of users comes around who industrially pumps out like a load of different maps each and every single day

[jake_arlington]

AZ is not close and Trump wins there by about 6%.

VA will vote to the right of NV and CO. Trump wins VA by 1% while losing NV by 1% and CO by 3%.
COVID-19 will help Trump.

McSally squeaks by in the AZ senate race, Winning by 2% on the back of Trump.

Gardner loses but only narrowly by 1.5%.

NC and ME hold for the GOP while MI flips. The senate is 54-46.

Republicans come very close to taking the House but fall short. 221-214.

PA and MI could both vote right of WI.

NM is in play. Trump comes up only 3.5% short.

TX will shift heavily to the right and give Trump a 15% win.

Trump wins by 2% in the popular vote.

Yep, still a Trump optimist.

This is less optimism and more completely ignoring every single poll that has ever come out in the last year.

Polls didn't even mean anything during the end of the campaign in 2016 and they certainly don't exactly count for much of anything at this point. They were wrong in 2016, They were mostly wrong in 2018 and there's no evidence that they'll be right this year. Thus, I think Trump will defy the polls again.

I'm beating a dead horse at this point but.

The polls were mostly right in 2016. Excluding Wisconsin, the ones that were wrong were mostly within the margin of error.

The polls were mostly right in 2018, except for Florida.

You really need to pay attention to the actual polls themselves and not the pundit's interpretations of polls.

Polls: "Hillary leads by 2 points in 9/10 Michigan polls, with a margin of error of 3."

Media: (incorrectly) "HILLARY HAS A 90% CHANCE OF WINNING THE PRESIDENCY."

538 was the most accurate, giving Trump a 30% chance of winning, which was correct. He did have a 30% chance of winning. It's just that 30% happened. If the weather forecast said 30% chance of rain, you'd bring an umbrella.

Uh.........say what now?

Find me a single source that says most, let alone 90%, of the Michigan polls had Trump within 2 points.

Also, the claim that Trump had a 30% chance in 2016 is just total, pure BS sugared-up hindsight bias and/or narrative spinning.

Very emphatically, he did not - based on any reasonably interpretation of the empirically data availably.

It is plain false to say he had a 30% shot, especially not if because just Nate Silver said so. Heck you could sooner make the argument he was a 2/3 lock to win!

Exactly most of the polls showed Hillary up 4-5 pts in Michigan before the election and most election analysts were predicting 310 to 330 EV for Hillary in the electoral college and about an 80% chance of winning. 80 to 90%. Nate Silver was one of the least bad but he was still wrong. The reality is that Trump's chances were a lot higher than people thought probably at least 50 50 because of how unpopular Hillary was and disliked and the fact that Trump was appealing to WWC voters to a higher degree than even Reagan and still is.

The only one who gave Clinton between an 80% and 90% chance was the NYT, only 538 had her lower (Trump was in the 20s according to them.)

In fact, every other math/statistical model had Trump's odds *below* 10 percent.

But I still have to disagree that any plausible interpretation of the numbers could yield Trump with anywhere close to a 30% chance, frankly not even "half" that. The HuffPost, DailyKos, etc. were right (albeit only in their topline projections) imo.

[jake_arlington]

-No one on this forum will predict the exact outcome correctly

Bam!  There it is.

I really find that one hard to believe. There's only so many plausible maps, and I'm certain at least one person has guessed the correct map, even when just screwing around on 270towin

I actually remember searching for a while for the 2016 map shown anytime before the election, and I couldn't find even one example of it.

It probably wasn't an all-extensive search though.

In the 2016 prediction, no one got all the states correct; the closest person got NV wrong. I think one thing people tend to get wrong on this forums is that the whole country will swing in one party's favor universally, when that almost never happens. Hillary did decent in the sun belt, but really just underperformed in the rust belt. The map could be something we were pretty much expecting (like 2012) or unexpected (like 2016). Chances are, this time, the electoral map will be a bit less flimsy since we know the incumbent, and we know where they performed good and not so good in the previous election.

This.