As of tonight, September 24th, Joe Biden is significantly ahead of Donald Trump. Depending on what type of aggregator or projection system you prefer, the lead is anywhere from +6 to +8 points with projected electoral college central point estimates of Biden usually clearing at least 300 electoral votes.
As of tonight, voting has already started in several states and soon will begin in most of the country as absentee ballots are getting mailed.
If nothing changes and our information awareness systems perform well within normal tolerances, Joe Biden is highly likely to win the electoral college.
Each day where nothing changes on fundamental popularity and more people vote, we should update our priors slightly and become more confident in our predictions. Every early vote that is cast, every absentee ballot that is received and deemed acceptable reduces variance even if the caster of that ballot is someone who is both extremely likely to vote and extremely likely to not change their mind. That action turns a high possibility into a certainty and removes an ever so small amount of potential variance.
Each day going forward, the share of votes that have been cast increases. The share of the population that is information indifferent increases every day.
Things can change. But each day where the fundamental facts on the ground don’t change reduces variance and low variance is beneficial to the candidates and campaigns that have consistent leads outside the limit of litigation.
The Moar You Know
+7% popular vote is the number needed to beat the Republicans built-in electoral college advantage.
Martin
This is true, and I’ve been talking to Nate about this (knew him from back in Kos days) and the problem with statistical models is they assume an underlying set of rules. The odds of the Yankees beating the Angels based on player stats is one thing, but it’s a completely different thing when the Yankees cheat because the underlying set of rules is invalidated.
Polling reveals the sentiment of the electorate, but ignores the mechanics of how that sentiment can be expressed. An election is not a poll. It’s a series of specific policies and implementations that can either help reinforce that sentiment or undermine it.
TS (the original)
I just googled Jaime Harrison, South Carolina Senate
Top of the page – 3 pictures of Lindsay Graham
Next text – Jaime Harrison for the Senate
Next text – Could Lindsay Graham Lose
This is the political media – and google. This is why democrats have to raise twice as much money to get their message out. This is why trump won an election.
Martin
@The Moar You Know: The mistake in 2016 was that the polling delta isn’t the instrumental thing.
There’s a massive difference between 46/53 and 40/47. Both are +7 but one has no undecideds and the other has 13% undecideds.
Biden at 50+ is all that’s needed. Hillary never got to 50%, and all of the undecideds broke for Trump. My guess is that this cycle the undecideds break for Biden.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: What is the source of that number?
Marcopolo
This is why the most important thing we can all do to win the election is to vote ASAP in our own state. The second most important thing is to get as many of our family, friends, co-worker, neighbors, etc… to vote ASAP where they are. When we bank these votes early we also make it easier for campaigns to focus their energy on the smaller number of remaining voters.
Last but not least, I’ve seen reporting that ~15% of voters who self-report when polled that they are likely or highly likely to vote actual wins up not voting on Election Day.
debbie
At this point, only chumps rest easy. I’ll be wringing my hands until January 20th.
Miss Bianca
It’s getting to the point where pretty much at a glance I can tell which front pager it is just by the title of the post.
RSA
My intuition is that we update our priors based on incremental information about which way people vote rather than how many people vote. Is that wrong? Or are we getting the former information?
zhena gogolia
@TS (the original):
I have recently noticed how biased google is on political issues.
zhena gogolia
All I know is, my Biden-Harris sign came today and I took walk in my DUDE GOTTA GO T-shirt.
Marcopolo
@Omnes Omnibus: The source of throw the national number corresponds to winning sufficient electoral college votes is pollster comparing the R lean of the tipping point state to the national number. If you google tipping point state 2020 election you should get a list of the competitive states ranked by their current +\- D/D number.
Last time I checked the tipping point state was PA.
Baud
@Miss Bianca: Sometimes someone other than Tom will throw up artwork or someone other than Tamara will have a duck pic, and it throws everyone off.
dmsilev
@Baud: What about a painting of a duck?
Cheryl Rofer
Thanks, David! Interesting side effect of early voting.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: Only if it’s on velvet.
TS (the original)
@zhena gogolia:
And then I foolishly read the main page online from WaPo – I cannot find the name Biden anywhere within.
Cheryl Rofer
@Miss Bianca: Yes, I saw “variance” in the title of this post and wondered what David was doing posting this time of day.
Skippy-san
I remain extremely worried still. 1) Trump is cheating and will cheat more. 2) He is making it clear he will not respect the result. 3) and his supporters will attack anyone who dares to criticize him.
PsiFighter37
New polling makes it seem like Joe might be ahead in Ohio now. Fox News just put him at +5; other polls have basically had him even or slightly smaller leads. Winning OH would be awesome given how much of a right turn that state has been taking.
Kay
Ha! I didn’t think it would be competitive here! Oh, fun :)
The Biden sign up for election protection is pretty slick. Or maybe I’m just old – you used to have to email your info in.
trnc
@TS (the original): We also have what look like grifters trying to siphon up donations. I just unsubscribed from Turnout Pac because they keep sending OMFG HARRISON IS BROKE WE’LL NEVER WIN, even though Harrison appears to be taking in quite a haul. I was pretty close to blasting them in the unsubscribe comment, but figured it was better to just try to inform people. Anyway, I never donated to them. I do everything through ActBlue.
Baud
@Kay: OH and FL can hopefully make election night a short and happy night for everyone.
Al Z.
Interesting and helpful. But I can’t shake the feeling that I just read the statistician equivalent of whistling past the graveyard.
randy khan
@The Moar You Know:
I am pretty sure that the people who calculated that number were saying the +7 percent is the margin where there’s no meaningful chance that a Republican wins the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, not that a Dem needs to win by that much to win.
And empirically, in 2016 Clinton wouldn’t have needed to win by 7% – 3% probably would have given her a decent-sized EC margin and 4% almost certainly would have.
jnfr
Our ballots should be mailed to us Oct. 9th. I can’t wait, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.
This week and last I’ve been donating bits here and there. We’re writing letters too, for Vote Forward’s Big Send which is now scheduled for Oct. 17th.
randy khan
@PsiFighter37:
If Biden wins Ohio, the Electoral College is just a question of margin, not who has the majority. There’s no way he wins Ohio and loses Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin.
MP
Time as it relates to uncertainty of polling averages reminds me of time decay when it comes to call and put options in investing, which guarantee you the “option” to buy or sell a stock at a specified price. Option contracts have a specific term – they may be good for 90 days or 180 days or a year or longer before they expire. One of the factors that determine the price of the option is time to expiration and the closer and closer one gets to option expiration, the smaller a factor time plays in the price of an option. On the day of option expiration, the value of the option is the difference between the price at which the option allows you to buy or sell a stock and the actual price of that stock.
Geminid
@Kay: If Sherrod Brown could win a second senate term in 2018 by 300,000 votes out of 4.4 million cast, I guess Biden can win this year. I sure hope he does.
TS (the original)
@Kay:
And the typical media heading on your link!
Tight race in Ohio, Biden tops Trump in Nevada and Pennsylvania
So +5 is a tight race for Biden (for trump it would be a winning margin)
Nevada is +9 and Pennsylvania is +7 –
As always the only positive for trump is the economy. The message that the GOP is better for the economy is a lie, has always been a lie & will continue to be a lie, but it seems impossible to change.
J R in WV
All the committees trying to raise money are grifters trying to make a boat load before the election, and scoot to a remote island with the booty. When I get a phone call like that, I tell them I contribute to actual candidates, never to a committee with overhead the candidates never see.
The only org I contribute to is Four Directions [ fourdirectionsvote.com ] which helps Native Americans exercise their right to vote. Everyone else is the actual candidate…
Like Jaime Harrison, or Amy McGrath, or, or….
craigie
Not to harsh anyone’s mellow, but +8 points and 300 EVs are not “significantly ahead.” They are enough, but they are not the crushing blow we need here.
Ned F.
I won’t trust the polls till Biden is over 15% favored. Hillary was polling well too. People who poll don’t always vote. There are still too many young people, my son and his college friends who will protest but not vote because Joe is the establishment candidate. A gazillion trump signs in central PA. I want to believe, but man, I am distressed.
I think Joe needs to put more appearances in PA besides the cities, he hasn’t really made much of a push there.
dmsilev
@J R in WV: Yeah, at this point I’m only giving directly to candidates. Too many PACs that I’ve never heard of, and bombarding my inbox with 100 emails a day or more doesn’t exactly convince me to go off and research which ones are legit and which might be grifts trying to take advantage of the blue money firehose.
randy khan
@TS (the original):
Reporting on poll results is based, in part, on accounting for the margin of error of the poll, and basically reporters have decided to call races close if the poll result is within the margin of error. I can’t say this is wrong, although the caveat with margins of error is that the likelihood you’re off decreases the further away you get from the result, and MoEs are based on the probability the result falls within the range.
Unless the Pennsylvania poll has a gargantuan sample size ( which I guarantee it does not), the MoE probably is around +/-3%, which means that a 5 point lead is within the MoE. And so they report it as close.
Percysowner
And there’s Rick ScottRepublican Senator Proposes Bill That Would Make It Illegal to Count Votes It will never get through the House, but this is what we are fighting.
James E Powell
@TS (the original):
When pollsters ask people about “the economy” do they ask them what they mean by that word? Republicans have been outpolling Democrats on “the economy” for as long as I can remember. And this is very odd considering the facts. See also “the deficit.”
And another thing. Articles that consider the huge gap between men and women always seem to ask “Why do women prefer Biden?” instead of asking “Why do white men continue to support a corrupt, incompetent liar?”
randy khan
@craigie:
A lot of the sites put a ton of states in “toss-up,” so if they’re showing Biden with 300 EVs, that probably means Trump has around 200. Of course, you want the close states to break your way.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl Rofer: I find David’s political posts calming.
TS (the original)
@TS (the original):
Woops – Nevada is +11. Arithmetic failed me.
Bill Arnold
@Al Z.:
There are two tails to distributions. Think thoughts about a 350+ EV Biden blowout, and Trump in deep misery, or whatever emotion NPD people feel when they are rejected.
Trump has always been is a magical thinking guy (… more so lately) and he appears to have you convinced, which helps him with his … magic. Spreading such thoughts helps him even more…
2020 Crises Confront Trump With An Outage In The Power Of Positive Thinking (July 25, 20207, Ron Elving)
Baud
@Ned F.: I am glad I am childless.
Marcopolo
@Marcopolo: Always glad to see how a comment turns out (or not) when I am typing it on my phone (where as is often the case I could not actually see the words as I typed them) just before setting dinner on the table so no post comment editing.
Anyways, 538 has a tipping point state graphic (you have to scroll down a little bit that has PA as the state to put Biden over 270 and has Biden favored to win both OH & FL atm. That seems generous to me right now.
Cook Political is a little more conservative in their prediction. They don’t list a specific TP state but all their tossup states are ones that are ever so slightly lean Biden at 538.
Toldyouso
I really don’t understand what possible purpose can be served by posting things indicating that Biden is likely to win.
That is a tried and true method of depressing voter turnout.
I’m not suggesting that OP is wittingly trying to torpedo Biden, but I think that everybody on the left needs to be absolutely terrified until Biden is sworn in and anything that lessons democrat’s fears is bad praxis.
TS (the original)
@randy khan:
The Ohio poll was +/- 3%, as were the other two polls (details are available at the link from Kay) So it would have to be a stretch on both sides (Biden -3, trump +3) to give trump the lead.
Right or wrong – these polls give me hope.
Kay
@Ned F.:
Most Democratic comment ever :)
TS (the original)
@Toldyouso:
Everybody is terrified, with or without some positive feedback – the media is 100% behind trump – that is more than enough to get people to the polls. I hid under the bed for 3 days after the death of RGB, really thought that might give trump the election.
Fox commenters are talking about the “hidden trump voters” but this is NOT 2016, this is 2020, with a clown for a president and a pandemic still out of control.
The ONLY issue stopping Biden is voter fraud & suppression by the GOP. Having the odd day out to feel positive about the democratic candidate is a good thing for the soul.
zhena gogolia
Lot of commenters I never heard of on this thread trying to demoralize us.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: IKR?
Miss Bianca
@James E Powell:
Right?? We need a few more headline writers to think like you out there!
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: told you so’s comment reads like a spoof.
japa21
One thing that I have no knowledge of, but which is very important, is what models in terms of turnout the pollsters are using. If they are using 2016 turnouts, they are going to be way off. I think both the AA and youth turnouts are going to be much higher this year. And if that is the case, the polls, if anything, are understating Biden’s advantage.
@Toldyouso:
One can both feel positive about Biden winning and be very concerned about the opposite happening. What I see happening here is that people not only want to see Biden win but want to run up the score, which is fine with me.
J R in WV
@randy khan:
In my stats book, a 5% lead is 2 points larger than a 3% MoE.
Where did you learn to count? Did they make you use your toes, or were fingers enough? ;-) Rebublicant math…
Miss Bianca
@Toldyouso:
Stoking “terror” is also a means of depressing turnout.
And I’m not going to take your fucking say-so on what to be “terrified” about on anything. I don’t think anyone else is feeling fucking complacent here. Peddle your doom porn somewhere else.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Toldyouso from a few days ago…
l3000
@Toldyouso: Also possible that doom and gloom about Trump stealing election depresses Dem turnout. So calming posts are appreciated by me. And yes, I’m terrified still that Trump will win.
TS (the original)
@J R in WV:
If you give trump +3, and Biden -3 which is possible with the +/- 3, that is how trump gets ahead – which puts it inside the margin of error. I think that is how the pollsters do it.
WaterGirl
Looks like a hit-and-run from Itoldyouso. Not much point in continuing to reply.
edit: not that there’s much point anyway.
Amir Khalid
@Toldyouso:
Do you really believe Democratic voters are being complacent this election cycle?
Ubrigens, your current, gloating nym is even more offensive than “Amaranthine RBG”.
J R in WV
Any front pager should be alerted to Toldyouso — aka “Amaranthine RBG” — a formerly banned operative. Please ban Toldyouso, and delete all the comments posted by this Russian Drone…
Thanks,
me
randy khan
@Toldyouso:
Read Post #45 to understand why this kind of thing could be helpful with some people.
I have a friend who constantly posts on social media about how Trump is going to win – either the polls are turning bad (you should have seen what he said after yesterday’s Arizona poll) or Republicans will lie, cheat, and steal to reinstall Trump for the rest of his life. (And you can find those posts here, too.) So positive analysis can be helpful.
randy khan
@J R in WV:
MoE applies to both candidates, so you need to have a margin of double the MoE to be outside it. In other words 52-47 could be 55–44, but it also could be 49-50.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Cole saw him in that thread and replied with this:
So it doesn’t look to me like Cole plans to ban him right out of the gate. In the meantime, the best thing we can do with assholes is ignore them. Or pie them.
CatFacts
@J R in WV: Oh, “toldyouso” is actually the not-at-all-lamented Amaranthine? That makes a lot of sense, ha ha. Hey, at least we know the rightwing talking point du jour is “everyone on the left should be terrified”. Since everything Trump does is projection I guess that means he’s terrified.
Ken
And also runs a cannibal cult that drains children of their precious bodily fluids.
WaterGirl
@CatFacts: Excellent points. They want us to be terrified. Well, fuck them. Trump can be terrified, though, I’m good with that!
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Old troll, new name.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Interesting that he outed himself on his first or second day of using the new nym.
edit: “I’m the guy you banned before!” doesn’t seem like the smartest entrance I’ve ever seen.
stinger
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Thank you for this information. He’s now the Piper (pied).
David Anderson
@debbie: Big difference between resting easy (which I am not advocating) and freaking out and be ineffective in advocacy and mobilization because of ulcers.
David Anderson
@Cheryl Rofer: Telling people to not panic and keep on keeping on as what we’re doing is working.