Let’s go over electoral college math to justify my claim. 
Today the Silver Bulletin posts this interesting comment.
Last update: 12:15 p.m., Sunday, October 13. This has been a pretty good week of polling for Trump. A series of national surveys released on Sunday morning showed Kamala Harris ahead by an average of 1.7 points — a result consistent with the Electoral College being a toss-up or slightly leaning toward Trump, according to our model. At the same time, the vibes have shifted more than is really justified by the data. The election remains a toss-up.
I think Nate Silver is behind the curve, especially if his model is consistent with “being a toss-up or slightly leaning toward Trump.”
This is somewhat of a nitpick, but should Trump be slightly ahead or behind? It doesn’t matter. The question is really whether momentum will save the day for Trump.
Silver is not properly accounting for momentum. Nonetheless, let’s take a look at the math based on the odds that Silver provides.
Trifecta Odds
The odds of a Harris Blue Wall (PA, MI, WI) sweep are easy to calculate.
Let’s also calculate the Red Wall states (GA, AZ, NC)
Blue Wall Sweep
PA (0.556) * WI (0.559) * MI (0.582) = 0.181.
The odds of Harris winning the trifecta is only 18.1 percent.
However, we cannot presume Trump will necessarily win NC, GA, and AZ. Nor are all of those states totally independent.
Red Wall Sweep
Red Wall sweep math looks as follows: AZ (0.667) * GA (0.596) * NC (0.616) = 0.245.
But Trump has other options. If he wins PA (0.444) and NV (.448) = 0.199 then he can afford to lose one of NC, GA, or AZ.
Permutations
These permutations are more favorable to Trump than Harris because Trump is further ahead in the Red Wall States than Harris is in the Blue Wall States.
And whereas Harris losing Pennsylvania would be near-fatal to her campaign, Trump can afford to lose Georgia or North Carolina if he wins Pennsylvania and Nevada.
Presumptions
The above permutations depend on Silver being correct on the current odds.
I challenge that notion.
Polymarket has Trump 54.0 to Harris 45.5. Nate Silver has Harris 51.8 to Trump 47.9.
How Much of a Political Lagging Indicator is Nate Silver?
Yesterday, I asked How Much of a Political Lagging Indicator is Nate Silver?
Based on momentum and the idea that Silver using too many stale polls, I suggest that Polymarket has better odds. Either way, it’s close to a tossup. No one knows if Harris or Trump is overweighted.
I would rather be in Trump’s shoes. Silver says the opposite.
There are 22 days remaining. Don’t pretend you know who will win. You don’t. Nor does anyone else.
Republicans Increasingly Likely to Flip the Senate
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, please see Republicans Increasingly Likely to Flip the Senate According to NYT/Siena Poll
The best news for Republicans is not the uptick in polls for Trump.
Rather, the best Republican news is the likelihood they can avoid a devastating Democrat sweep if Trump were to lose.
Polymarket has Republican odds of taking the Senate at 77.5 percent. That seems about right.
The problem here is that you’re calculating each of those state odds independently, when they’re in fact correlated.
In other words, if Trump wins MI, he’s more likely to win PA + WI too. And vice versa. If Harris wins NC, then she’s more likely to win GA, and vice versa. Etc
Very aware of this – but they are not perfectly correlated. And importantly the percentage difference are small.
You would have a more valid point if it was 60-40 in each state rather than a 1 percentage point lead that can really go wither way, in each state.
I still don’t think that’s quite right. Let me put it this way: if Trump wins both Michigan and Wisconsin, his odds winning Pennsylvania would be *a lot* higher than 45%. It’s probably like 90%. So multiplying those odds out as independent values isn’t the thing to do.
in 2020 Emerson and atlas/intel were most accurate. Focusing on those pollsters show trump has much better chance than Harris of winning blue wall as described, plus big mo has been on his side for past few weeks. Imo Harris lost in butler.
Trump looks great, from the inside of an echo chamber.
Even though I like Trump more, when Kamala came on the scene, she was a breath of fresh air. She seemed to be caring, intelligent, and articulate. The thinking part of my brain was still convinced she was telling me what I wanted to hear but emotionally I liked her.
So this tone of voice and not being Trump may have made her president but then the hurricanes hit, the difference in the candidates was night and day. When the country was in crisis, Kamala was nowhere to be found and then came the finger pointing and equity in relief and claiming disinformation comments. OMG.
The emotional part of my brain heard the message: we care more about Ukraine and illegal immigrants and winning elections than you.
Before the betting markets moved, I thought the election was done as people got the news.
And now Kamala cannot get off the airwaves. She is so omnipresent, she is getting annoying. SNL had a field day mocking her.
The novelty has worn off and IMO Trump looked pretty good when the country was in crisis so the not Trump thing isn’t working either.
You got ads attacking men for being stupid for not supporting Kamala and with women, it is abortion all the time. Really? This is the best you can do?
Unless something else huge comes up, I think the election is in the bag for Trump and with a much bigger margin of victory than anyone thinks.
I’m always mystified by opinions of Kamala that include words like ‘caring’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘articulate’. To be clear I’m absolutley not poking fun at you or anything like that – it’s just endlessly fascinating to hear of opinions that diverge so drastically from my own about something I, personally, don’t see as open to subjective interpretation. To me Kamala seemed about as phony as a $3dollar bill. Her overall persona always struck me as one of a vapid, low level publlic school administrator.
I would bet she lies occasionally… but trump lies constantly, and is addled, compromised by foreign enemies, and incompetent to boot.
Watch the speeches, not the pundits. His brain is shot.
Well, she showed who she is and who you knew her to be. But if she could have kept that caring, sweet maternal mask on and went to North Carolina and put out the image she cared about the hurricane victims like a mother does her children and backed it up with some actions, I think she wins the election. Maybe you disagree, but in the end, she could not keep that mask on.
Are you kidding? During Hurricane Helene, Trump was telling lies about FEMA to the public. That’s what you want for President?
While Biden was at the beach and Kamala was lunching with her donors, Trump gathered up supplies as a private citizen and got his butt down to North Carolina and helped the victims. Damn straight that is what I want in a president.
“A breath of fresh air….”
“The novelty has worn off….”
Honestly, if this is part of how you analyze a candidate that’s going to run the most powerful country in the history of the world, you’ve got issues.
The problem Harris faces is, the more you see of her, the more you dislike her. She really is a cringeworthy individual.
I’ll take cringe over stupid and evil.
Harris is incredibly stupid and the country is seeing that now that she is doing interviews with softball questions. I don’t think Trump is evil one bit. He’s a narcissist, unlikeable, obnoxious, boorish, and an a**hole but there is no denying America will come first for him, he will have our backs and won’t take sh*t from anyone. When it comes to sitting in a room with an adversary would you rather have Trump the a**hole or Harris the dimwit with no clue what she is doing or saying? I’ll take Trump every day of the week.
The polls are about likely voters (or the population at large).
Very hard to predict who will or will not cast a vote in the end.
Almost nobody will vote for Harris: They’re voting against Trump or are just blind Dems. The vote will depend on how many non-voters Trump can inspire to cast a vote his way or just sit it out, and where those people live. A very hard call.
The fate of the next four years depend on Biden/Bibi. If Bibi will be the adult in the
room, ignoring the Ayatollah bullying, Lebanon might rise from the ashes and the ME will be stabilized. The Saudis will be an oil hub with arteries to/from Iran, Europe and Asia. Israel will be trading link East/West. Arabs will do the commerce Biden/Modi silk road. If China deflates it’s good for commerce.
Israel is a cry bully. Acting like a bull in a china shop while pretending to be the victim.
China’s third plenum is almost a declaration of economic war
Xi Jinping is doubling down on industrial policies that increase the risk of a global trade shock
Local governments raised half their revenues from land sales before the property bubble burst. This funding has collapsed, leaving them in various states of insolvency.
Professor Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center in San Diego, says 12 of the 31 provinces have monthly debt service costs that exceed their monthly income, and all but four were over 50pc. By the end of 2022 the debt service ratio had reached 200pc in Tianjin, 188pc in Jilin, 176pc in Guizhou, and so on.
Prof Shih says “shadow” finance may have pushed local government debt alone to $15 trillion, or 90pc of GDP. If so, underlying debt dynamics in China are on a par with Greece, and catching up with Japan. Beijing is issuing special bonds to keep local government afloat but it dares not launch bazooka-scale stimulus.
Local governments are cutting the wages of civil servants to make ends meet. They are issuing “tight life” regulations to official agencies and bodies. Banks are retrenching too.
Pervasive angst is spreading through the middle class, hitherto shielded from the bouts of austerity dished out to migrant workers when times are hard. They borrowed to the hilt to get on the property ladder but are now caught in the double vice of falling incomes and falling home prices.
“Chinese society is like a pressure cooker that could explode at any time,” said Chen Yingxuan, a labour expert at Taiwan’s defence research institute.
https://archive.md/O5ovM#selection-5405.0-5433.441
This f789er is gonna blow sky f789ing high!!!!
SSEC 3,700
‘Renewable’ energy Joke of the Day
The age of energy rationing is looming for Britain
The answer lies in the intermittent nature of renewables, which cannot produce power if the wind isn’t blowing or the sun doesn’t shine. This means the actual amount of power such projects generate is different to their theoretical capacity.
Wind turbines in the UK typically have a “load factor” – the percentage of the time they actually generate – of about 30pc, according to lobby group RenewableUK. For solar panels, the load factor is around 10pc, according to the Government.
https://archive.md/j5DLR
What do you think of that Green Fan Boys????
Oh BTW – the North Sea is into deep depletion …
Events which keep moving the needle towards Trump.
NYS higher court of five judges have posed some tough conditions on Letitia James and company. So tough that James is practically begging not to get sanctioned for that NYC case she brought.
Going to be proof positive that courts are being used to persecute not prosecute.
NYC Fraud case well on its way to being overturned.
Waiting on published Court decision which expected to come before election.
NYC Real estate is all about dealings between sophisticated participants. High Courts will not sacrifice that basis just for a political stunt.
Independent voters not accepting of abuse of courts as they understand that abuse could be turned against themselves.
The appellate argument looks good for Trump. But it wasn’t the government lawyers begging not be sanctioned. It was Trump’s lawyers (or other defendants’ lawyers). Apparently, the trial court did sanction those lawyers for continuing to raise certain issues which the lawyers felt they needed to raise to preserve for appeal.
Did you listen to the actual taped court proceedings when Appellate judges asked questions?
They destroyed the whole case in a few words.
Judges at that level do not do things like that unless totally repulsed by what is getting presented.
An abuse of power by James and Engoron.
add: When they issue decision will also be of significance. If it comes before election that is even worse for James as it sends a clear message to Real Estate community that Judicial branch will not tolerate this sort of action.
They only watch the pundits. Reality is for losers.
Will be seeing how this case plays out. However if Appellate still believes in Justice and that a great wrong has been committed they will act expeditiously.
Going to be hard for media to cover that up should it occur.
I do agree, that Trump has a much easier “Path to Victory” but while I agree that He does, it’s for a different reason.
I think it can be summed up in one simple word “Walz” as
It led the way for the path to show itself.
If you don’t overly care for Trump, but you are a Conservative Republican, then you can live with Him for 4 Years (or less) knowing full well, that he’s is backed up by “Vance” so your party stays “Strong & Conservative”
If you don’t overly care for Harris, but you are a Staunch Democrat, then “Can You Live” with Him for 4 Years, knowing full well, that She is backed up by “Walz” so your party stays on track.
That’s the rub, as they can’t possibly stand the thought of Biden 2.0 (perhaps Worse) staring them in the face! They don’t want Walz, or Kamala for that point, but she’s a puppet. Walz is off the wheels and heading straight for a wall if he’s in charge, and they ALL know it!
Most Independents need no other reason, to not vote for Harris, and would rather see Trump in there. The Undecided are Deciding in Droves Now for Trump, and even Some Democrats would rather see Trump/Vance for there Country than the 2 fools running for there party…
I can’t believe there is even a remote chance of Trump being in the White House again. His previous term was a dud and he has zero work ethic.
Believe what you want but Trump is no worse than a coin flip away.
And some would say what you just did about Harris
We saw Trump’s neglectful leadership in the White House, he worked less than any president before him, and now he’s senile like Biden was when the GOP was howling at the moon for him to be cast aside like smelly fish.
People saying that about Harris are forecasting, they have not seen her do squat as president. Anyone saying she did squat as VP can show the receipts of who did all those things as VP. It’s a straw man, as you know.
and yet the country was in much better shape during Trump’s term in office.
Some would say Harris makes blood sacrifices of christian babies under the full moon. That don’t make it true.
I’m curious to find out how you’re evaluating something like ‘work ethic’ for Trump vs, for example, Biden or any other politician.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that Trump’s term was indeed a ‘dud’ – I would rather have an ineffectual presidency than one that actively makes things worse.
Let’s try ‘not being on the golf course 4 days a week’ for starters.
His first term had the economy humming, low inflation, and a much more secure border, peace around the world, etc. No idea hat planet you were living on during Trumps first term but it wasn’t here on earth in the U.S.
Western PA and Philadelphia suburbs are mostly German, Irish, Scots and Italian white enclaves. They are catholic. They mate each other. They are fantastic people but they don’t like foreigners. Flooding this country with 20 million foreigners was a mistake. Lonely men who can toss up women on their back is their biggest threat. Trump is German/Scot. He is one of them. Kamala Harris is an Indian/black SF princesa married to a Jew is a foreign object foisted on them.
Mate with each other 😂 is this national geographic?
The most beautiful babies in the US are born in W.PA.
Spoken like a true Pennsyltuckian
I’m a WASP. I don’t think much about the DNA of candidates. Maybe each candidate should submit 23 and me results so we can decide properly.
I would rather they be submitted to an IQ test and then summarily executed should they fall below 50. KAMALA GOES FIRST.
While you’re patting yourself on the back, Melvin, Obama tells black voters to vote for the candidate who “looks like them”.
So 23 and me can track people? What are you, a totalitarian?
W Pa likes foreigners as long as they like the Black n Gold 🙂
I will submit that those of German,Scots, Irish ancestry are the principal culprits for the promotion of wokeness and DEI type ideology throughout the culture. Northern european type whites fall all over each other for the chance to eviscerate other whites at the slightest hint of something that can be pretzeled into being ‘racist’.
The worst are the Scandihoovians. They haven’t colonized anyone since the Viking days and yet they feel compelled to take in Somalis and such. What dumb Swede looked around Stockholm and thought “you know what this place needs? Somalis. “
Pennsylvania is truly the Keystone State for both Trump and Harris. If Harris wins PA and one of AZ, GA and NC, she can lose WI or MI. if Trump wins PA Harris cannot lose MI or MN and must win two of AZ, GA and NC. That is a very high bar. That being said, PA is a purple state, but more of a blue/purple state, whereas AZ, GA and NC are more red/purple states. No matter the polls, PA is not lining up well for Trump this cycle. Assuming PA turnout is equally higher than average for Democrats and Republicans, PA will be decided in the suburbs of Philadelphia, which are predominately college educated and a high female voter cohort, all which Harris will win decisively. The only way a Republican wins in PA is if that Republican has a higher than average turnout and the Democrat candidate has a below average turnout.
That’s why Trump should at least try in Nebraska’s CD2. If – by hook or by crook – Harris wins all of the blue wall states (which have voted together in the last 8 presidential elections) Trump would need to win all the other 4 swing states AND NE CD2 in order to be tied at 269-269. Barring a rogue elector, it would go to the House and be decided by the newly sworn-in House, with each state delegation getting one vote (unless that state’s delegation has a partisan tie). If Trump loses the Electoral College vote 268-270 and loses Omaha by < 2 points (which is very possible), that would be a major Trump screw-up. Why take that chance? He has time for dozens more rallies. Do one outside Omaha, FFS.
It feels like Trump has the momentum and should win without NE CD2, but why is he horsing around in California? He wants to win the popular vote, but he shouldn’t get cocky.
Trump has zero chance to win the popular vote. Republicans have only won the popular vote one time in the last 32 years. Trump lost the popular vote in 2020 by seven million votes and since then nearly 10 million over 65 white males have succumb to mortality and this is his strongest demographic cohort and he certainly did not pick-up the majority of newly minted young voters.
I don’t disagree, but even if he could win the popular vote, who f’ing cares? That’s not how we pick presidents. If Harris is declared the winner of all three blue wall states – as democrats have been in every election since 1988 except 2016 – he’ll need Omaha to pull her down to 269-269. His team seems to be exclusively focused on mood, momentum, feels, narrative – like they’re a bunch of interior designers. It’s about math, and “winning” the blue wall states gets her to 270 – unless Trump gets his ass to Omaha and puts NE CD2 back in the GOP column where it rightfully belongs.
The math says that if Harris wins PA and the other “blue wall” states, which seems more likely than not, all she has to do to is win one of NV, AZ, GA, or NC to seal the deal without a lot of drama. Given 2020 and the 2022 mid-terms, it seems more likely than not that she will win at least one of those states, if not two. This race looks very close by the polls, but it also looked like a Red wave in 2022 and it turned out almost the opposite. The same can be said for the abortion referendums that have taken place in ruby red states. Just last fall we had a school board election in my area, which is a red county in rural PA, where there were three board seats open and a strong slate of Mom’s for Liberty Republican candidates who made a lot of noise, but all three seats easily went to Democratic candidates.
I think Trump would win all seven swing states in a fair election, but the Blue Wall states will be closer and their big cities are more corrupt making it easier for Dems to stuff the ballot box. The only sunbelt state where a Trump win isn’t certain is Nevada. It would be a shame to win that and still lose 268-270 because he didn’t even try in Omaha and let Harris win there by a few votes.
Why would Trump ever focus on anything beyond his ego? Have you ever seen him once before?
When every state requires voter ID, then you can tell me who won the popular vote.
This is a great talking point! The problem is that it is a talking point that has been around for decades and over the decades both public and private sector investigations and studies have looked for any evidence that material voter fraud has existed and not one of these studies and investigations have turned up evidence that such fraud exists. The fact is that each election will have extremely limited individual cases where a voter attempts to vote multiple times using fraudulent actions, but these cases are very limited in numbers, not coordinated in any way and they are typically discovered and prosecuted. If you look back at 2020, you will find several cases across the country of such individual cases and you will discover that the majority of those cases involved Republican voters attempting to boost Trump’s vote count.
Are you sure the Dems did not cheat the vote, despite nobody ever finding evidence? Most other conservatives are dying on that hill, why not you?
Because I apply commonsense. The MAGA Republicans when pressed with facts back off the idea that election fraud changed the election results in 2020 and shift to the fact that certain key states changed election rules, specifically surrounding mail in voting and drop boxes because of the pandemic and these rule changes were not approved by the legislature and thus were illegitimate even though those rule changes were challenged and upheld by the state Supreme Courts as legal and constitutional. The sickening part of this narrative about a stolen election is really not about fraudulent votes, it is about the fact that certain states likely increased voter participation rates during a pandemic and these higher voter participation rates swung the election to Biden. The fact remains that a Republican Presidential candidate cannot win a national election unless there is a lower than average participation rate among Democratic voters.
It’s true that PA has in past election cycles been a blue/purple state. That’s precisely why looking at certain indicators — including new registrations & early voting — is key. The Hill observed on 10/13/2024 that Dem registrations in PA had fallen by about 300,000 between 2020 & 2024, while GOP registrations had increased by about 70,000. This may show a more-energized GOP voter base & less-enthusiastic Dem base this year.
In 2020 — the pandemic year — 2.7 million votes were cast by mail, per the PA Sec’y of State’s office. Based on partisan ballot breakdown, this gave Pres. Biden a 1.3 to 1.4 million vote LEAD heading into Election Day. Per the University of FL Election Lab, PA had about 1.6 million mail-in ballot requests TOTAL so far in 2024, about ⅔ from Dems. This translates into about 1.1 million Dem votes & about 500,000 GOP votes, a 600,000-vote lead going into election day (1.1 million – 500k) assuming all are returned.
If — as in 2020 — Pres. Trump gets a ~1 million vote NET margin on election day, then Vice-Pres. Harris would come up short by about 400,000 votes.
Of course, it’s also possible that Dem voters that voted by mail in 2020 come out in force on election day & make up the mail-in ballot deficit. However, this is a somewhat tenuous proposition, as vote-by-mail is physically easier than waiting in line at a polling site; even Pres. Trump & the GOP have been urging PA Republicans to vote early by mail this year. Moreover, I believe that we’d see an energized Dem PA electorate in the registration figures, but this hasn’t materialized so far.
All in all, I’d rather be Pres. Trump than Vice-Pres. Harris given these metrics, though we’ll get more info as more mail-in ballots trickle in this month.
Democratic voter registration may be down in PA during this cycle and Republican voter registration may be up, but by the most recent numbers, there are currently approximately 150,000 more active registered democrats in PA compared to active republicans. Unaffiliated active registered voters are another 1.2 million voters. Base case is that each candidate receives roughly 50% of the unaffiliated vote. All this being said, this is why as a lifelong PA voter living in a very conservative republican county I can say that it will come down to voter turnout and if both candidates have average or better than average turnout, it will come down to who outperforms in the densely populated Philly suburbs.
May your spirit find the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference!
The margins of error on the available polling data are too large and do not support this level of analytical detail.
For those who care strongly about the outcome, our best move is to persuade others to join our cause, while also preparing – emotionally and in any other ways necessary – for the possibility of defeat.
Did someone here think that Trump could win the popular vote? Delusional.
He will
I don’t even know whether to bother with this, but if I click Post Comment it means that I did.
I start with Real Clear Politics numbers, and make an adjustment for Trump’s overperformance of the RCP average in ’16 (2.5%) and in ’20 (2.9%), and add 2.7% to his numbers this year.
As I write, Harris is +1.7% at RCP and dropping. Adjusted, that puts Trump +1% in the popular vote. I think Harris will keep dropping. Her campaign is rich but clumsy. The air is slowly coming out of those tires, and I increasingly think he will win the popular vote by 1%-2%, which will put the kibosh on the liberal whining about the unfair electoral college.
In the EC, I think he is on track to win GA, NC, PA, MI, and AZ, which would give him 296-242. RCP recently moved NV to Trump. I look at WI, where I was born and raised, and note that there a LOT of Catholics there who are not too enthusiastic about the D policy of abortion on demand with no gestational time limit.
If Trump wins the popular vote, he’s going to win WI and NV, which would be a sweep of all 7 battlegrounds, making the EC margin 312-226. The Rs will flip at least two Senate seats and maybe 5, and will keep the House and add a few seats there.
If I am correct, and especially if T wins both the popular vote all 7 battlegrounds, this will put the Ds in a tight spot reminiscent of where they were after Reagan was re-elected in 1984. After that happened, the Ds created the Democratic Leadership Council and tacked to the center. Would they do the same now?
It would be the smart thing to do, but I think the Ds have been much more captured by their progressives than they were in the 1980s. They might just be sore losers and go into “resistance” mode, and get spanked hard in ’26 and ’28, the result being a 7-2 Supreme Court and eventually 8-1.
All of this hinges on a “narrow landslide” for Trump, and a truly stupid D reaction. Should be interesting.
I don’t think it’s valid to assess the odds of a blue wall sweep the same way you would flipping a coin three times and getting all heads. The last time there was a divergence among the three blue wall states was 1988. Ever since then, they’ve all voted together.
Would the fact that silver has strong leftist leanings have anything to do with his choice of stale polling numbers? Asking for a friend. Hard to keep personal opinions out of opinions.
I believe Silver’s model is totally unbiased.
Personally, he is supports Harris.
I don[‘t even believe he has a “model”. I think he just pulls it out of his ass, tacks on some verbiage and posts it.
His model is what it is: it relies disproportionately on polling data, which has its own issues depending on the pollster. The Concordia Model mixes in economic factors, which I think makes it more accurate.
Team Trump needs to not sleep on Omaha. Biden only won it by 6 and they’ve redrawn NE CD2 since then to include more Republican voters. If Harris wins all 3 blue wall states, Trump would need Omaha to get to 269-269. Not a likely scenario, but worth a rally.
Won’t happen. You will see.
Maybe not, but Dems control Philly, Detroit and Milwaukee, and all three states have democrat governors AND democrat AG’s. So if any ballot shenanigans take place, who the F is going to stop them? Nobody, that’s who.
Someone is getting ready for January 6th, part 2.
Absolutely. There is a 100% chance that Harris, Obama, Holder, Pelosi and Garland have war-gamed this out.