(08-27-2020, 09:29 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 26-Aug-2020 World View: November
Guest Wrote:> Do you think Trump can win in November?
That question is outside my skill set. The Democrats are pointing to
polls that put Biden ahead. The Republicans are pointing to polls
that say that a lot of Trump supporters are afraid to say, even to
pollsters, that they favor Trump. So yes, Trump can win, and Biden
can win.
The strongest win that Trump had a chance of getting in 2020 as seen from 2016 was likely a win like Carter in 1980 (or Trump in 2016). Demographics favored Democrats enough, as the young voters strongly D in orientation were numerous enough to offset the usual deaths of older voters (Silent, Boom, and early-wave X over 55) within the electorate. That alone would require an offset.
He made promises of infrastructure, but most of it was to get infusions of small investments of capital in return for huge payoffs for investors -- basically privatizing on the cheap. His solution to the transportation sounded like "build anew and reconstruct", but it boiled down to "just add tolls". Iron miners heard allusions to new construction and rebuilding which imply more use of iron ore, more jobs, and easy overtime. The only iron that was to be used in such projects (and it would not be new concrete highways that devour iron as reinforcing bars) would go into toll gantries to collect money from travelers accustomed to driving the roads without paying tolls. Promises may sound like one thing and end as a different and not-so-popular alternative. Such happens. All politicians cherry-pick the likely results to fit the electorate of the time.
Polling in recent months has been relatively stable. Trump has kept his base intact, which every candidate does. It is worth remembering that voters for Goldwater in 1964 and McGovern in 1972 were as enthusiastic as any voters that you would have ever met. Winning an election, except in a super-safe bailiwick practically engineered to fit the pol, depends upon picking up enough not-so-enthusiastic voters. I see Biden and Harris casting Trump as a dangerous and capricious extremist, not only much for off-the-cuff remarks in a campaign that focused on making the base excited but also on erratic and objectionable deeds and language while President. Trump is trying to cast Biden as a dangerous radical much as Carter tried to cast Reagan in 1980. Such will resonate strongly with overt supporters of Donald Trump. It obviously did not work for Carter and it probably will not work for Trump.
Quote:Polling has been surprisingly stable, but at such a level that Donald Trump needs so many things going for him that are now unlikely in so little time. Three months is far too little for defeating a Biden lead that is about 7% more nationally than is necessary for a win, and we have now past the line of two and a half months away from the election. To be in a good position to close the gap, and he will need to close that gap by almost 2.3% per month for the next three months. I am not going to pretend that such is impossible. Just very unlikely.
Time to election |1 point|5 points||10 points|20 points|
one day............. |...64%|....95%|.....99.7%|.99.999%|
one week........... |...60%|....89%|.......98%|...99.97%|
one month......... |...57%|....81%|.......95%|.....99.7%|
three months...|.55%|..72%|....87%|.....98%|
six months..........|...53%|....66%|.......79%|.......93%|
one year.............|....52%|...59%|.......67%|.......81%|
The model is Senatorial elections (Nate Silver, The Sound and the Noise). Nate Silver has made his money doing sports probabilities, and perhaps using his knowledge in placing bets -- he does not say. I'm guessing that the bookies, the antithesis of gamblers, got tired of losing money to his betting and no longer want anything to do with him. Don't argue with this fellow on statistical models. Argue with me on trying to apply them to reality.
OK, it is Senate races between 1998 and 2008, and those may not be perfect analogues to Presidential races... but there is far more data on those. Winning the Presidency is like winning a certain share of Senatorial or Gubernatorial races. There are far fewer Presidential elections, and a Senator like Russ Feingold cannot seek help from voters in other states if he is running against a well-heeled heel with lavish funding behind that heel, as was so in 2010 and 2016. What the late oil billionaire H.L. Hunt said of politics and management often applies:
"I believe the Golden Rule. He who has the gold makes the rules".
Donald Trump well reflects capitalism at its worst, feudal entitlement with the irresponsibility that one associates with the old nomenklatura of the Soviet bureaucracy that became plutocrats after the end of the Soviet Union. Marx was wrong about associating ownership with exploitation; bureaucratic power is just as capable of egregious exploitation as one associates with absolute monarchs, feudal lords, and tycoons. Unlike a Gilded tycoon like John D Rockefeller, J P Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Milton Hershey, Andrew Carnegie, or E F Harriman he did not innovate, connect existing cash to industrial investment, or establish a new market. He isn't Henry Ford, Roy Kroc, Sam Walton, T. Boone Pickens, or Bill Gates, either. When things go perfectly for tycoons, the tycoons buy the politicians to look away from their rapacious greed.
To win, Trump must cut sharply into the high disapproval numbers against him. To be sure, he can inspire people -- but not enough people. He has been in campaign mood from 2016... and that is inadequate.
Politics is a timed contest, as much than almost all sports (in theory a baseball team down 17-1 with two out and the bases empty can get seventeen consecutive hitters reaching base safely, the last one hitting a home run). It is possible for an opposing team to beat an American football team up 24-0 or a basketball team up 30 points after one quarter. But late in a game, a deficit that may have been within reach of undoing if everything goes right becomes overwhelming. Teams adopt strategies to allow the opposing team to chip away at the lead but not win... maybe to look good losing, which might even be interesting play. A team whose leadership (the Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry as head coach -- twenty consecutive winning seasons) -- gets that down well keeps its wins. Landry was not known for running up the score; if he ended up with a blow-out win it was often the result of scores by his defense or special teams on returns of fumbles and interceptions. Landry forced the opposing team to play the sort of game of his choosing if it sought to keep some dignity.
OK. A presidential election is decided on fifty statewide elections (OK, only about a third of them are typically decided by 10% or less) as if a Gubernatorial or Senate race, five congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska (only two of those have gone both ways, and the other three are predictable in all elections), and one city-wide race, as if for Mayor (that is the District of Columbia, and it is even more predictable than anything else).
A Senator up 20 a year before the election has some chance of losing. Waves not then foreseen may form against that politician's Party, scandals are theoretically possible, and one does not know who the opponent will be. As an example, Blanche Lincoln was up by a huge margin over any imaginable opposition in November 2009... and lost Arkansas big in 2010. Still, being up 20 a year before the election is about as good as one can hope, as it gives one about an 81% chance of winning. In a Presidential race... Democrats must have thought that West Virginia was locked up fairly well in 1999 and Republicans must have thought that Virginia was a reasonable lock in 2007, a year before electoral results that shocked those who assumed around then that West Virginia was going to vote for any Democrat in a close race and that Virginia was going to a Democrat only in a monumental landslide. Such happens.
Any edge is an advantage, but the closer that one is to the election, the edge becomes increasingly decisive. A ten-point edge a week before the election is worth as much as a 20-point edge three months before the election. A Senator up 10% wisely (which is a huge assumption) typically wins by keeping that edge intact. A five-point lead on Election Day is worth as much as a ten-point lead three months before the election -- and even a 20-point lead some time between six and three months before the election.
Political backers of the conservative type are astute gamblers. They cut off the spigots for their favored pols when those pols' chances of winning become negligible. Liberals might keep throwing money away on quixotic campaigns. But the model smooths that out.
Another of my posts from Leip's Election Atlas:
Quote:I am ready to redo my seat-of-the-pants estimates of Biden and Trump chances based on match-ups alone. I would need to do some interpolations, and at this I take the dangers of interpolation (much less dangerous than interpolation. Obviously 50-50 is 50% for both.
State data is from here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-d...8-16-2020/
August 10.
three months..... |...55%|....72%|.......87%|........98%|
lead likelihood
0 50 10 87
1 55 11 88
2 59 12 89
3 64 13 90
4 69 14 91
5 72 15 92
6 76 16 93
7 80 17 94
8 83 18 95
9 85 19 96
The interpolation is nearly linear, and that may be inadequate for small leads. This model suggests that even a 3-point edge for Biden at this point (late August) is far from trivial.
Here is a map of the probabilities of a Biden win based upon the edge that one or the other has. Numbers are not electoral votes this time: Data is from August 10, so convention bumps do not appear:
Biden likelihood 0 to 9 (saturation 8 )
Biden likelihood 10 to 19 (saturation 6)
Biden likelihood 20 to 29 (saturation 4)
Biden likelihood 30 to 39 (saturation 4)
Biden likelihood 41 to 49 (saturation 2)
white -- tie, exactly even
Biden likelihood 51 to 59 (saturation 2)
Biden likelihood 60 to 69 (saturation 4)
Biden likelihood 70 to 79 (saturation 5)
Biden likelihood 80 to 89 (saturation 6)
Biden likelihood 90 or higher (saturation 8 )
It is already two weeks obsolete, because the numbers are based on Senators winning elections based upon their leads at three months (I have done linear interpolation). This is also the last polling data that both
(1) comes from all 50 states,
(2) from the same time, and
(3) from the same source.
Senatorial and gubernatorial elections for statewide contests for electoral votes by Presidential campaigns. This may be far from a perfect model. Biden has an 80% chance of winning Wisconsin, which this map shows as the most likely tipping-point state. He also has a 69% chance of winning North Carolina and Florida (each), a 64% chance of winning Arizona, a 50% chance of winning Ohio, and a 41% chance of winning Texas . These six states are dissimilar enough that they could as well be considered independent events. Trump has about seven chances in 1000 to win all six states in question. (I am not considering Iowa, as Biden is not winning Iowa while losing Wisconsin).
At this point, Biden is trying to consolidate the states that he needs or might need. Trump is trying to keep his hope alive in states in which he has as little as a 20% chance of winning.
Pennsulvania is the most likely state to be the difference between Trump barely winning and barely losing. Things are rough for Trump. At this point (it was August 10, so it is obsolete), the 5% edge for Biden in Pennsylvania, the same (tellingly) as the 7% edge that Trump has in Kansas) is good for an 72% chance of winning Pennsylvania. The model is symmetric (I love symmetry!) suggests that Trump has about as much chance of winning 270 electoral votes as losing South Carolina and ending up with about 115 electoral votes.
This is what one needs, and it is far better than "But Trump is so horrible that no non-evil person with an IQ above 90 will vote for him this time", "the only poll that counts is the vote recorded", "nobody would vote for an extremist radical like Biden", or "but Trump has such solid support". Look beyond what you love and loathe, and you will find out who will win and who won't. You may not predict by such for whom you will vote. On the other hand, Biden also has a 69% chance of winning Florida, Georgia, or North Carolina. If Pennsylvania does not go for Biden, maybe some other state almost as likely to go to Biden based on this model will seal the deal against Trump.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
