Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

i look at the above map and I notice that 202 electoral votes (the states in the two deeper-blue shades) are essentially out of reach for Trump and that only 94 electoral votes (the two darker shades of red) are essentially out of reach for Biden. In a close race those numbers typically have some symmetry; to believe that the 2020 election will be close is a poor characterization of reality. It's not that Trump has a huge number of electoral votes that he must defend; he has only 31 electoral votes in those states that are likely wins that he must defend.

The most obvious asymmetry of course is that Biden is up at least 4.9% in a contest for 290 electoral votes and that Trump is up at least (3? 4? 4.5)% in the contest for only 125 electoral votes.

It is easy to see how Biden wins. He can win if he wins all but one state in pale blue (if that state is Michigan or Pennsylvania, then he can't afford to also lose New Hampshire, and if the one of those that he loses is Pennsylvania, then he must win NE-02). Figuring that Trump must win every state in any shade of red (all of which have been easy for any Republican since at least 2012 (Indiana, Missouri, and Montana), 2004 (the arc from Louisiana to West Virginia through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky). Anything in the "neutral zone" is bonus over a bare Biden win.

So I look at this map and I see how Trump has to win -- everything in any shade of red, anything in the "neutral" zone, and based on likelihood

PA and anything else (even NE-02)
AZ and either MN or WI
MI and either NH and NV
WI and MN and anything else
AZ, NH, and NV

To win, Trump must essentially be the quarterback who successfully threads the needle against a nickel defense. Biden can trade potential electoral votes (probably in this order: Texas, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida) at a pace too slow for Trump to consolidate them into his column of wins. Remember: Biden can get away even with losing one of the states in pale blue (but likely nothing else) and still win.

(adapted from one of my posts on Political Wire today):


(The Hail Mary pass) will end up in the greedy and irreverent paws of a defensive back and be run back for good field position or a quick score. That is the once-innovative nickel (five defensive backs) defense that Tom Landry used if his team got an early, but not decisive lead. I've seen plenty of teams fritter away 20-0 and 27-3 leads because they think that they can keep doing what got them the early points... and they end up giving chances to the other team. That's not the Landry win. He will trade inadequate points for time and take whatever points he can get. It wins, barring some calamity rare even in NFL football.

So here is how it goes. Landry gets perhaps an early 17-3 lead, and he figures that one more score for his team will be enough to win the game. His offense will be good enough to get that, ideally in some long series of mostly rushing plays that ends in a touchdown. It's a slow score, but Landry is trying to slow the game and rush the clock. More importantly, Landry forces the opposing team to play a straight ground game that may grind out a score but also grinds down the clock. So with forty-minutes left the team behind 17-3 eats eight minutes of time to get a field goal. That leaves thirty-two minutes to go, and Landry's team gets the ball back and his team is up 17-6. Maybe his team gets a score of some time just before the end of the first half, and maybe he doesn't. Ten minutes pass, and the opposing team is down 20-6 or 24-6.

The next half, Landry calls for long series of rushes with perhaps an occasional pass that opens when some pass receiver gets open due to some defensive lapse. The quick score is good, but even at that Landry would rather that the play end after eight minutes than four. The quick score puts the opposing team in a bigger hole, and makes that team more desperate. Back comes the nickel defense, and if the opposing team tries to pass for quick long gains or a touchdown there might be a catch -- by one of the defensive backs. Or the ball might dribble from a pass receiver into the tentacles of the defensive back as a fumble. Drive over, and Landry's team has the ball back and gets to run his time-eating ground game.

So why can I speak of the late Tom Landry in the present tense? Because everyone (even I, who never played football as a competitive sport) knows about it. Landry got twenty winning seasons with that before everybody else caught up with him. Then he was through as a head coach.

Donald Trump is caught choosing between looking good and losing while playing an entertaining game... or taking big risks highly unlikely to succeed that put some states that by all rational logic he should win at risk of loss. So perhaps he goes after New Jersey or Oregon, only to lose the target -- and... what... Texas? Alaska? Montana? Missouri? Kansas? as well.

At this point I see him with at most an illusory chance of winning the electoral college, a reasonably-good chance of barely losing... but a chance about as good of losing to Biden getting 280 to 320 electoral points on the one side and Biden getting 360 to 430 points on the other. Oddly it is the middle zone between 320 and 360 electoral votes that is even less likely than a bare Trump win.

..................

Joe Biden does not look like a football player, but he does seem to be more like an effective head coach. Trump must get reckless to win. The difference between him losing to Biden and 290 electoral votes and losing to Biden and 380 electoral votes is that with the latter sort of loss nobody will believe him when he claims to be cheated. If there will eventually be 53 points in the game (why would I bring that number up instead of 53.8? Because there are no fractional points in football), then whether one gets 27 of the points or 50 of them matters not a whit in the standings.