With The Conversation keeping this site’s regular US correspondent busy, a quick post of my own on the US election campaign, and a forum for the discussion thereof. The big news from my perspective is that, after all the noteworthy forecasters closed for refurbishment following Joe Biden’s withdrawal, Nate Silver has lifted the lid on his Harris-versus-Trump model.
The model launches with a 61.3% win probability for Trump and 38.1% for Harris, the balance presumably reflecting the possibility that one candidate or the other doesn’t survive until November. These numbers suggest a model with a judiciously wide zone of uncertainty around projections that superficially look very encouraging for Trump. Silver’s model records an essentially dead head on the national popular vote, and doesn’t credit Harris with a better than even chance unless she lands at least two points clear. State-level projections find Trump more likely than not to flip Wisconsin (just), Michigan and Pennsylvania (a little further ahead), Nevada (a little further again) and Arizona and Georgia (both about as strong for Trump as North Carolina, which he carried in 2020).
The Economist’s model is still on ice, but its page explaining its methodology is well worth reading. Its charts comparing the predictiveness of its poll-based and “fundamentals” models going back to 1948 are particularly interesting in finding that the latter have the superior record – certainly at predicting the result 150 days out, but even unto election day itself. However, one of its parameters does not seem to me to be quite as fundamental as all that, being a poll-based measure of presidential approval.
The question of polls-versus-fundamentals was the focus of a critique by Nate Silver of the new model developed by FiveThirtyEight, the enterprise formerly synonymous with Silver but now bought out, LucasFilm style, by Disney. Its new incarnation is overseen by G. Elliott Morris, of whom Silver says he is “not a fan”. This was producing remarkably bullish results for Biden up until it was put on ice, which evidently wasn’t persuading too many senior Democrats. As well as criticising a lack of transparency, Silver observes that the model seems to be overwhelmingly favouring fundamentals, despite its supporting data suggesting that fundamentals should in fact be viewed as less predictive than polls. Its thesis, Silver argues, is that – as of July 21 – “Joe Biden is a reasonably clear favorite to win the popular vote because he’s an incumbent, and it’s too early to really update that assumption based on the polling or anything else”.
FUBAR @ #96 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 1:52 pm
Only because they haven’t had a Senate majority. We’ve seen what would happen if we look at the overreach after the 2004 election delivered Howard an effective Senate majority.
Mavis: “Due to Trump’s grip on the GOP, and save for a few brave ones (eg, Chaney & Romney), if the cult leader falls on his sword, what does the cult do? I predict it will be in a shambles for some time to come.”
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I think the cult would simply find a new leader. Trump is far from being 100% sui generis: to some extent he just represents a more extreme version of where the Republican Party was being taken by the Tea Party movement and, to a certain extent, by Newt Gingrich a bit further back along the track.
Obviously Vance would like to be the person to carry the torch when Trump is gone, but I think he is fundamentally too unlikeable. And Kari Lake and MTG are too silly. Matt Gaetz is one who is worth watching: compared to him, Vance is a conviction politician.
Mavis
Highly likely to be chaotic and therefore highly unpredictable, IMO.
Team Katichsays:
Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 1:44 pm
MelbourneMammoth @ #93 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 1:12 pm
The leader of Hamas has just been assassinated in Iran, vindicating Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions of the past year.
or the exact opposite of “vindicating”
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My analysis is you replied to the 95% trolling part on that one.
Harris will hold her first rally in the company of the VP designate on Tuesday. Shapiro is firming as the favourite – Aunty.
frednksays:
Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 11:40 am
Trump has no hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g1nLZiUNps
+1
Harris making Trump look like the boring old drunk uncle at the Xmas bbq.
Entropy @ #104 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 2:01 pm
Well bugger me.
meher baba says Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 2:09 pm
Matt Gaetz has some skeletons that he really doesn’t want examined.</
Talking about a Kuhnian shift:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K4hM-lSXIo&t=201s
Weird
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7AAMM_f5g0&ab_channel=JabariJones
Interesting, a betting agency just suspending the Dem VP market.
.
Hezbollah commander killed in IDF strike on Beirut stronghold.
Israel’s military has carried out what it says is a ‘targeted’ strike against the Hezbollah commander responsible for the Saturday rocket attack on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children.The oz today.
Good week with todays strike the one above and Houthis gone very quiet since they had their fuel bombed inside Yemen.
Just watched Harri9s’ Atlanta speech, it was a good one.
The chant of “we’re not going back” was the highlight and encapsulated the lightning in a bottle which can just send a campaign stratospheric.
If you want to stop the positive momentum, pick Shapiro.
Sportsbet back up – Shapiro big favourite. Beshear shortening.
Rex Douglas @ #117 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 3:26 pm
Isn’t that half the fun? We here on PB love to speculate, some of us will end up right, some of us will end up wrong, and we will dissect each item until we die.
Josh Shapiro would be a good solid tactical choice, and he more than matches up against JD Vance, indeed anyone Harris might pick for her VP would wipe the floor with Vance.
Pete Buttigieg is the best communicator of the lot and I am sure the Harris campaign will still make good use of him in certain places.
Rex: so your objection to Shapiro is because he is Jewish, how small minded of you. I will remind you that Kamala Harris’s husband is also Jewish
ssassinated in Iran, vindicating Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions of the past year.
or the exact opposite of “vindicating”
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My analysis is you replied to the 95% trolling part on that one.
Well bugger me.
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I do it all the time too. If trolls were easy to ignore they wouldn’t exist.
Ignore me at your pleasure then. You won’t be ones laughing when MY predictions come to fruition.
“Josh Shapiro would be a good solid tactical choice, and he more than matches up against JD Vance”
In the eyes of the PollBludger Left, any mere non-Liberal/National local government mayor in Oz with a three-digit IQ more than matches up against JD Vance. In pratice, the reality is much more complicated.
MelbourneMammoth @ #124 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 3:51 pm
Possibly the most insightful thing you’ve said all day. Without trolling can you expand on this because I think it’s worth unpacking. Rex has me wavering on Shapiro but I still think the upsides outweigh the downsides.
MelbourneMammothsays:
Wednesday, July 31, 2024 at 3:49 pm
Ignore me at your pleasure then. You won’t be ones laughing when MY predictions come to fruition.
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I wasn’t a prediction. It was a morally flawed statement.
DOH!, now i’m doing it.
How some US sites are ‘rigging’ Olympic medal tally
https://amp-9news-com-au.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.9news.com.au/article/71b7eb04-0f98-4652-8e54-4df8117790d4?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_ct=1722406232882&_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17224062253513&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.9news.com.au%2Fworld%2Fparis-2024-medal-count-how-us-is-rigging-winners-table%2F71b7eb04-0f98-4652-8e54-4df8117790d4
@William
“State-level projections find Trump more than likely not to flip Wisconsin (just), Michigan and Pennsylvania (a little further ahead), Nevada (a little further again) and Arizona and Georgia (both about as strong for Trump as North Carolina).”
This sentence says that Trump will more than likely NOT flip any of these states.
But I don’t think that’s what you mean?
I meant “more likely than not” rather than “more than likely not”. Corrected.
oops sorry i put contribution in wrong area!
Thanks William – can see now it was an easy slip. Same 4 words used!
“How some US sites are ‘rigging’ Olympic medal tally”
Nothing new and nothing unique to America. China once said they topped the Olympic table because once they added Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan to their mainland total, they had more gold medals than the USA and therefore came first. In their opinion all three belong to the motherland.
The Chinese believe true citizenship is based on blood, not passport nationality*. If they could, they’d add the medals of Michelle Kwan and Margaret MacNeil to their totals. And they DID add the medals of Gu Ailing (formerly Eileen Gu)!
*This is increasingly not a Chinese phenomenon but a worldwide trend. In this century of nationalist nativism, naturalised citizens will be second-class citizens throughout the globe. We grew here, you flew here!
Hmmmmm….
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/black-journalists-trump-nabj-panel
https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/07/31/us-presidential-election-minus-14-weeks/comment-page-1/#comment-4339111
Agreed. She needs to tackle the border head on because it’s going to come up plenty.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/07/31/us-presidential-election-minus-14-weeks/comment-page-1/#comment-4339091
Ven, well clearly Laura Ingraham had no idea what Trump meant. He actually explained it quite well with the last part you quoted where he said “Christians don’t vote. . . etc” which I didn’t know but which would give the obvious context to his earlier comment re not needing to vote again if they come out this time as he will fix ‘their’ issues in 4 years.
Whereas the media have been reporting it as if he meant NOBODY has to come out and vote again in 4 years or thereafter.
You can see Trump’s wiliness in wresting back some of the news cycle with ‘controversial’ comments. This is how he sucks the oxygen out of the room.
However, he’s less of a novelty these days so won’t work to the same degree – never as effective in a GE as a primary campaign anyway, of course.
It still makes no sense to me. Christian RW’s won’t need to vote again because he’s going to fix what? Chain women to the kitchen sink & bedpost, lock up doctors who perform abortions, banish LGBTIQA people, expel all muslims? On that basis they’ll be voting for the rest of their lives to try & keep those draconian laws in place.
Everyone is missing the perfectly obvious thing that Trump was sharing with christians albeit in coded language. When the Rapture arrives there is no need to vote anymore.
Alternatively, we have seen yet another example of Trump’s increasingly demented brain failing to hold things together.
Beshear firming. Would be a good pick.
A poster floated his name a fortnight ago, because Kentucky is in the south so perhaps Kamala will look outside the usual blue states and try and go for the southern states. Gutsy.
Kelly unlikely as it will cause a special senate election. Starting to look like Shapiro v Beshear.
Not until 2026.
I think the plan is something that they were threatening to do in the leadup to 6 January 2021 which was to have state legislatures themselves vote for who they’re directing their electoral votes and not leave it to the voters for such a thing electorally.
The flaw in that plan is that there needs to be at least 270 electoral votes worth of states with Republican trifectas (House, Senate and Governor) willing to do this. Maybe if Project 2025 is in full swing then that’ll make the Republicans win enough in 2026 so that they can do this in November 2028 and not bother holding elections in the red states?
@Boerwar at 5.31pm.
You are spot on. Some of them are voting for the rapture. (So was Scotty from Armageddon with that moving the embassy stuff etc.) But Trump was talking about not needing to vote again for everybody. He has said it multiple times.
He also said “I’m not a Christian” in that clip.
If this was the first slip like this Trump would have some wiggle room – but it was not.
How many times does he have to say this stuff out loud before people actually hear it. Trump has form, and yet many people still make excuses.
He lost to Biden in 2020 because he was a dreadful candidate and a dreadful President. How quickly people forget. Inject bleach, anybody?
Good Grief.
Boerwar @ #134 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 – 5:01 pm
He speaks like Jo. Almost unintelligible to the uninitiated but meaningful to those trying to find meaning.
In that clip I reckon one of Trump’s few remaining neurons short-circuited and he said that line about Christians like he does with black supporters at his rallies. The usual routine is that “I love you black people, I’m not black, but I support you” or something like that.
“The flaw in that plan is”
Also, that there may be some resistance in the broader population to the idea of the Federal Executive being appointed by the States, rather than by a vote.
That said, the whole Electoral College thing is weird. I read long ago that it was set up by the “founding fathers” as a safeguard in case some populist demagog managed to convince / con the uneducated plebs to vote them into the Presidency.
Dont think that one has aged well though?? 🙁
Shapiro is the Tim Kaine VP choice of 2024 – a right-leaning, vaguely charismatic nothing who alienates Democrats and fails to win over anyone much thinking of voting Republican.
Which voters does Shapiro reach that Harris doesn’t?
Walz and Beshear have proven they can reach well beyond usual Democratic voters through approaches different from, but complementary to, Harris.
Anyone who thinks Harris is an elite or a world away from theirs is going to think the same of Shapiro (and probably Kelly). And Shapiro actively loses voters concerned about either Gaza or education.
Remind me how picking a generic conservative white guy who didn’t complement their specific weaknesses went for the two Democratic nominees who thought that was a great idea this century.
I noticed this too. Thought I was mishearing – I must have misheard. Or he Bidenspoke.
I mean, the dude sells bibles! And he definitely has claimed to be a Christian before.
It’s not really clear, he could have said “I’m uh Christian” alternatively. He’s very often incoherent like that.
I saw a clip of Beshear recently and he didn’t quite hit the message. He came off as trying too hard.
I’d never seen or heard from him before then so I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt if people are saying he’s a strong performer. But that interview he didn’t really sound on point.
I saw a clip of Tim Walz recently and he’s a pretty good political performer. He’s got a strong legislative record as well as Governor of Minnesota, even though Vice Presidents rarely are directly involved in policy making.
Kirsdarke:
Walz is growing on me. My initial impressions were that he is too laxadaisical. But I’ve heard a couple of interviews with him in the last week and he sounds like he has truckloads of common sense.
Project 2025 has not been ‘shut down,’ much to Trump’s dismay
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/30/2259368/-Project-2025-has-not-been-shut-down-much-to-Trump-s-dismay?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_5&pm_medium=web
“Trump has repeatedly denied any connection to Project 2025, fully sensing the damage it is doing to his campaign.
But the widespread disdain seems to have gone beyond the substance of the plan and morphed into much broader bad vibes. Anecdotally, I’ve had several people mention how terrible Project 2025 is. But when I ask them for specifics about what’s in it, they don’t know any details beyond some of the obvious targets (e.g. abortion restrictions) even though outlets as mainstream as People Magazine have jumped into the fray to inform readers.
Voters don’t need to know exactly what’s in it: Project 2025 has become a catch-all term for every horror that conservatives want to inflict on our country, and quite frankly, they’re not wrong. It is a horror show.
Trump picked up on that fact as soon as it started to go viral. So what to do?
In what seems like an orchestrated effort, Project 2025 director Paul Dans has reportedly stepped down, and talk of “pressure” from the Trump campaign has prompted political reporters like The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger to tweet, “This suggests Project 2025 will likely shut down.”
There are two problems with that. The first is that Project 2025 doesn’t consist of some guy sitting in an office at The Heritage Foundation’s headquarters. It’s an extremely detailed blueprint, and it has already been released. You don’t “shut down” a blueprint. Trump and his extremist cronies have their roadmap for the complete remaking of the federal government, and it’s ready to go if Republicans retake the White House in November.
Secondly, there is a lesser-known component to Project 2025: a database of 20,000 conservative minions ready to be hired and eager to implement the blueprint’s tenets. And according to The Washington Post, that terrifying list isn’t getting “shut down.”
Hilariously, the Trump campaign claims this news should put to rest any and all further discussion about Project 2025. “
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/30/trump-harris-play-toy-comment/
If world leaders can survive obese Donald with a weird comb-over and orange drag queen make-up, I’m sure they can survive a US president Harris who is better looking than just about all of them.
Lets compare with stump speeches.
Shapiro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh6LIWGpPn8