(03-09-2020, 06:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The upshot being that Trump is old enough to win as a R, but Biden is too old to win as a D. Maybe........or Sanders. Gabbard is the last woman standing, but I wouldn't take a 100:1 bet that she'd win the nomination.
My "Trump gets 48.66% of the vote prediction and 294 electoral votes" prediction assumes a few things:
1) No Economic Downturns, including negative GDP growth, high unemployment, or double-digit inflation. You might think that a great economy would indicate a huge increase, but, if you study the examples, a great economy isn't anywhere near as helpful as a bad economy is destructive;
2) No Security Problems, including war, insurrection, and possibly crime. This doesn't seem to be anywhere near as important as an economic downturn, though. It's also a lot harder to come up with OBJECTIVE metrics for what constitutes a "security" problem;
3) 3rd Party or Independent Candidates whose runs a large enough to harm the incumbent's vote count. To some extent, this might be a symptom of other problems (see 1 & 2);
4) The incumbent VPOTUS candidate (in this case, Pence) is still on the ticket. This only really effects the VPOTUS's home state (IN), which otherwise would have about a 100% chance of going with Trump anyway;
5) Home State of the POTUS/VPOTUS candidates. Again, like 4, this is the home state advantage. Sanders is from VT, which I give Trump about a 0% chance of winning anyway. Biden is from DE (3 electoral votes), which Trump has about a 4% chance of winning; vs. Biden, that goes to 0%. Much more interesting would be if O'Rourke (TX: 38 EVs), Buttigieg (IN: 11 EVs), or Klobuchar (MN: 10 EVs), all of whom endorsed Biden, were VP candidates, although TX or IN would still be long shots for a "D" ticket.
One of these days, I put up my state-by-state analysis, but my Word doc doesn't translate well to this format. One virture of my system (assuming it pans out) is that I did most of the work in 2017.
Eric, where's your astrology based prediction? PBrower2a, any chance you could bring your prediction (with maps) over here? Anyone else? I figure we can consolidate all the predictions here. In November, we'll see who did the best.