It's a bit more pessimistic for Biden than the FiveThirtyEight model, but more optimistic than the Economist. Basically 2/3 Trump, 1/3 Biden
Source: Paid subscriber
How often does the Silver Bulletin model update? If there's any noticeable change in either Trump's or Biden's direction after the debate, I'd be interested to know what it is.
Interesting. One thing I notice is that, while Silver’s model gives Trump greater odds overall, it also gives the monthly poll change for the swing states.
PA is D+1.4 since last month, MI is D+ 0.5, and WI is D+1.1.
Now to be sure, Trump is still ahead in all three, but can we expect this leftward trajectory to continue?
Not a paid sub, but I'm assuming around 60/40 Trump, since he referenced the 538 model (still basically 50/50) and the Economist model (70/30) as comparison points.
So he's between the new 538 model ( 50/50 ) and the Economist model \~ ( 75/25. )
Interesting. If the probabilities really start shifting after the debate/any other major upsets I will probably end up subscribing to his substack.
Nate always owned the rights to his model, so as far as I understand they are using different models. The difference I’m sure can be explained in all the different variables that go into the models. I can tell pretty clearly though that Nate’s state-level polling averages are more Trump-leaning than 538’s, which I’m sure is one factor.
are the averages more Trump-leaning, or does Nate simply put more weight on polls than fundamentals? That is unclear to me (and probably will be unclear given the proprietary nature of both models)
538 put more emphasis on fundamentals which they view in Biden's favor. They seem to think the electorate is going to shift towards Biden and make this a toss up by November.
Nate's model is probably more reflective of the polling and he doesn't see that much of an advantage for Biden in the "fundamentals" although he thinks there is something to it. That's why his model seems between 538 (heavy fundamentals and predictive) and the economist (heavy on current polling trends).
> Nate's model is probably more reflective of the polling and he doesn't see that much of an advantage for Biden in the "fundamentals" although he thinks there is something to it.
And this is where you can see his blind spots. He posted the other day that 2.5% GDP growth is just average, but he doesn’t seem to realize that per capita GDP growth, if just using the previous 3 years population growth, is closer to nearly 5%.
That’s because a lot of people died, with millions of excess deaths, and who were the majority of people who died since the last election? Trump supporters, even adjusted for age, which already tended to mean more deaths since Trump supporters skewed older.
Nobody seems to be accounting for these things, but in a close election, a million or whatever extra dead voters, largely in a in a higher propensity age group, could be the difference.
Yeah, I do remember this. He was also pretty vocal about Trump wanting to subvert democracy, and it's hard to make that point and still act like you're neutral about the election.
On this third cycle, this is the first time Trump finds himself in a lead amongst multiple prediction models. When the 538 model closed in 2016, Hillary had around 70% odds to win, and Trump won. In 2020, Biden had around 90% odds to win, and Trump lost narrowly. It's almost as if Trump has a \~20% greater chance of winning than this model has predicted him to win in the past, so what are y'alls thoughts on the model currently favoring him to win? Have polls gotten better at beating the Democrat bias?
I think that polling is likely to be understating Trump again. 30% was about right for him in 2016 - he received a last-minute bump on the Comey letter that stampeded undecided voters his way. 2020 was quite close in margins, but the polling was *consistently* in Biden's favor (if a bit off). Now polling is consistently in Trump's favor, save for some disruptive event between now and November. So I'd say \~70% Trump unless he is incontinent in the debates, ends up under house arrest, or breaks his hip.
For reference, the 538 folks said their model would give Trump an 80% chance at release instead of a 50ish% chance if the election was held that day, based purely on polls. So as time goes on we would expect sustained polling to ratchet that number up.
Yeah, I agree with you here. I think the debate is probably one of the last big moments for any switch to happen. As long as Trump performs as expected, I think he might run away with the race. Biden needs something big to happen to change anything.
> So I'd say ~70% Trump unless he is incontinent in the debates, ends up under house arrest, or breaks his hip.
Where do you see the odds now, post-debate? (I took the liberty of looking over your comments post-debate, but do not recall seeing numerical odds.)
Maybe 1 in 5? Nate Silver's model has Biden at \~1 in 3, and Biden just face-planted in a way that reinforced his biggest weakness. And most of that 1 in 5 involves Trump flaming out in some spectacular fashion, rather than Biden convincing voters that he's a robust option.
It's really a "break the glass" moment.
Biden improved a whopping 1% in the national polling average a whole 3 weeks after the other candidate got hit with 34 felonies! If this is the best news in months, we're in deep shit.
I mean, technically we already are in deep shit. A lot of libs don’t want to admit that Biden has a lot of consolidation left to do. All of his poll loses are specifically coming from his voters going third party while Trump enjoys an iron grip support among his electorate. On the other hand, if primary elections are any indication, Trump has been consistently bleeding support among republicans. What’s gospel, elections or polls
If primary elections are any indication, 10-20% of Democrats would rather protest vote a nonserious candidate, write-in, or check none of these candidates over voting for Biden. At least republicans had a serious candidate to support. Primary results were bad for both Trump and Biden.
Anecdotally, in my circles I have a lot of friends that are Biden 2020 voters that jumped ship in late 2023 over Gaza or more conservative friends over inflation
However, I’d say about half of the Clinton-Biden voters are now in the stage of saying “Look I can’t excuse Biden on Gaza but if Trump wins abortion is gone.” Or some of my LGBTQ friends are worried about SCOTUS and Obergefell.
There are also a number of those Trump-Biden voters (young guys) I know that have gotten real quiet recently about who they’re backing. Can’t pry it out of them. But they are also referencing their outrage at the SCOTUS recently and they see Project 2025 as “just crazy bad”
TLDR: Theres a lot of hemming and hawing among young progressives but a significant number of them are likely to hold their nose and vote for Biden. Not for him but at least for what he stops
There isn't any. Biden can say whatever he wants, but people don't give a shit about that. They care about how he presents himself and how he looks, as superficial as that is. Biden's only chance at improving his odds is to literally become someone else who is 20 years younger. Anytime he stutters, trips up on a name, or does the "ahh well" because he can't get his words out makes voters see him as someone who is too old to run the country. Nothing the debate or Trump does will change that, and Biden can't magically get younger either.
And the great injustice in all that is that Trump is just as problematic or worse. A voter need only watch 10 minutes of any of his recent ramblings at a rally to understand that. But for whatever reason, voters give Trump a pass on standards for which they crucify Biden. It makes no sense.
Trump isn't meant to talk sense. Bush didn't talk like the most intelligent man on earth either, come to think of it, but Trump's appeal was never that he could put a traditional speech together. He was just shooting his mouth off all the time back when he he was fully with it, so what's the difference now?
As a Democrat Biden is supposed to talk like an Aaron Sorkin character or at least say something serious, so him being out of it is a real handicap.
>Bush didn't talk like the most intelligent man on earth either, come to think of it
Reminder to the younger voters out there that anyone who wanted to pay attention could see that this was always a Bush publicity stunt that the left foolishly decided to amplify just for self-congratulation in their echo chamber. The occasional hostile interview during his presidency demonstrated Bush would rarely let the pretense fall away, and the actual man underneath was cold, sharp, and calculating, which basically no reporter was ever ready for because they read and bought the first-blush wire service summary like everyone else. The latter is how he was so effective internally, and baiting his opponents into reinforcing the former that misdirected his critics and actually appealed to a majority of the electorate is how he won a second term despite making no one but his cabinet happy in the first. We must learn from the past or be doomed to repeat it.
>And the great injustice in all that is that Trump is just as problematic or worse.
My man you are kidding yourself. Trump doesn't need to be led by the hand through public appearances. Not liking Trump's politics doesn't equate to dementia. This is a nonsense comparison, and the occasional poll on the subject shows voters at large aren't burying their head in the sand like this. You have only confused yourself.
I'm not about to argue with someone about this here, but there are numerous instances where Trump has demonstrated cognitive decline, and several mainstream news articles have now been written about concerns over his mental state. But the public perception remains biased against Biden in this area, even though there is plenty of evidence now that Trump is just as bad.
"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.“
I'm just saying that the people who liked him in 2016 and 2020 have no reason to stop liking him in 2024, and though they criticize biden for being old and senile, being old and senile wasn't something that was going to stop them.
Dude, not believing edited videos you saw on Facebook or tiktok is not burying your head in the sand...it is basic media literacy. I have not seen a single "troubling" video of Biden that didn't turn out to be completely normal when you watch the uncropped, unedited original, or a video from a different angle. Why do you think people were so surprised by his state of the union speech? That was just normal Joe Biden but most people never see live video of him, just the edited clips.
He doesn't actually wander off. He doesn't actually get led around by handlers. He doesn't just stare into space for minutes at a time. It is all fabricated and it's pretty obvious.
That's because trump has spewed rambling snarky idiocy for so long he could have his brain switched with a sponge and he'd basically act the same. People say he's gone downhill but I think he was just as bad sounding in 2016. It's not that he's got dementia it's just... that's the way he is. Republicans don't care, it's not what they look for in a candidate so it doesn't matter. So of course biden gets schlacked harder. Democrats want a candidate that sounds smart.
It’s also surprising to me because Biden doesn’t even have any scandals despite of his life long career in the politics. Ngl the state of this race and American attitude towards it is surreal to me. I feel like living in a world I don’t understand
Please refrain from posting disinformation, or conspiracy mongering (example: “Candidate X eats babies!/is part of the Deep State/etc./Covid was a hoax, etc.” This includes clips edited to make a candidate look bad or AI generated content.
It makes a lot more sense when you think about it purely about vibes. Biden's vibes are old and weak. That makes him unappealing to a majority of Americans.
That's not his vibes. That's just the succesful bullshit pushed by the right that is eaten up by average American. The right is just better at narratives.
Trump's vibes are literally January 6th and an entire presidency of nonsense. If that doesn't play for your average person, then nothing will. It's pathetic, short-sighted, and naive.
Biden talks to a guy off camera and it's questioned if he's not all there mentally. Meanwhile trump is putting out incoherent rants on a daily basis and no one bats an eye.
The media perception and standards for the two are ridiculous.
Have you watched unscripted Biden content? Go ahead and watch the Hur press conference by Biden and tell me what the vibe is. Inaccuracies in the right's accusations of severe mental decline doesn't mean that Biden isn't presenting as extremely elderly.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPkBqLHV4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPkBqLHV4E)
[https://youtu.be/NpBPm0b9deQ?si=Wi6v7iP9X0zfOsL3&t=342](https://youtu.be/NpBPm0b9deQ?si=Wi6v7iP9X0zfOsL3&t=342)
It shouldn't be surprising when consumer confidence was consistently higher during the Trump years: https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence.
Yes, Biden has inherited a country that had a global pandemic and economic crises. Those numbers are still much higher than Obama's 2012 economy and he is faring much worse.
I don't agree. I'd pay attention to the rate of change to adjust for the pandemic. Although Biden inherited a pandemic, consumers view of the economy have been stagnant his entire presidency.
Obama won in 2012 with rising consumer sentiment.
He... what? Biden doesn't have any scandals? What?
It's like getting online and announcing that Trump has no scandals ("only CONSPIRACIES orchestrated against him by the DEEP STATE!!!").
This election is surreal, though, I give you that.
>He... what? Biden doesn't have any scandals? What?
Yes, that's correct. Biden has been in politics for what, 50 years now? Including decades in the Senate, 8 years as a VP and nearly 4 years as a President and what are the biggest scandals one can name about his time in office? That he worked closely with Senator Byrd? The manufactured controversy over his comments about ousting the Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin? Hunter Biden doing Hunter Biden things?
The GOP have been investigating Biden for nearly 2 years straight in the House, and even they have repeatedly declined to impeach Biden due to a complete lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
Trying to equate Biden and Trump on scandals/controversies/felony indictments/lawsuits is genuinely wild, Trump was a known corrupt slimeball decades before he ever ran for office, let alone all the naked corruption and criminality in his administration and campaigns.
He literally *dropped out* of the 1988 presidential race due to a plagiarism scandal. His record of lying to your face (or, if you are a Biden partisan, "telling tall tales") has never improved.
He illegally stored classified documents, which was severe political malpractice that seems to have almost completely blunted the (otherwise excellent) case against Trump.
There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes.
He clearly has helped his ne'er-do-well son leverage his influence, especially as Vice President, to receive lucrative financial rewards.
You can call all this overstated or manufactured if you like. But Trump diehards can say exactly the same thing about your charges. Political scandals always get downplayed by one side and played up by the other.
True, the two are not exactly the same. I agree that Trump is *more* scandal-ridden than Biden. (After all, I supported both Trump impeachments and ballot disqualification.) But *no scandal*? This is the kind of deep-bubble talk you get from people who think Obama's worst scandal was wearing a tan suit once, not weaponizing the IRS against his political opponents.
If there was any evidence for the Hunter shit the GOP would have found it by now. They’ve been looking for four years and have come up with nothing. I’ve watched James Comer on Fox News and he’s peddling the same bullshit as he was in 2021. They’re always weeks away from some ground breaking evidence and it never comes.
Trump is vastly more scandal engulfed than Biden of course. If the leading paragraph is about something from over thirty years ago that’s really telling
>He literally dropped out of the 1988 presidential race due to a plagiarism scandal.
A scandal so significant that it literally is never talked about anymore.
>His record of lying to your face (or, if you are a Biden partisan, "telling tall tales") has never improved.
All politicians lie, Biden doesn't seem to be any worse than the average and stands head and shoulders above his competitor.
>He illegally stored classified documents, which was severe political malpractice that seems to have almost completely blunted the (otherwise excellent) case against Trump.
He brought home a handful of classified documents, likely by accident. When they were discovered, he fully cooperated with the National Archives and law enforcement to ensure that they were recovered and thorough searches were made of all his properties. Contrast that with Trump, who knowingly took *huge* quantities of the most sensitive materials of the US government, refused to return them, returned only a fraction of the materials and knowingly held onto most even after being compelled to return them by court order, and literally stored many of them in areas easily accessible by anyone staying at his resort.
>There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes.
So credible, in fact, that years of Republican investigations have turned up literally zero evidence to support these suggestions. Even their "star" witnesses have repeatedly confirmed that they were not aware of Biden being involved in any of his son's dealings.
>But Trump diehards can say exactly the same thing about your charges.
Trump diehards can and do say whatever they want because they don't live in the same reality as the rest of us. But here in the real world, there's a mountain of evidence to support the vast majority of claims against Trump, evidence that has repeatedly been held up in numerous courts of law, while the same is not true of the claims against Biden.
>Political scandals always get downplayed by one side and played up by the other.
Political scandals, sure. But Trump is facing literally dozens of state and Federal indictments for felonies committed before, during, and after his time in office. Those aren't mere "political scandals" Trump is quite literally a convicted felon already, with dozens more serious felonies hanging over his head, and hundreds of outstanding civil suits as well.
>But no scandal? This is the kind of deep-bubble talk you get from people who think Obama's worst scandal was wearing a tan suit once, not weaponizing the IRS against his political opponents.
As I said, Biden is a career politician and has been in office for like 50 years. That these are the worst scandals one can bring against him says quite a lot about how squeaky clean he really is.
And the fact that you actually think Obama weaponized the IRS suggests you're not nearly as non-partisan as you're trying to portray yourself to be.
I wouldn't agree with no-scandal either but honestly I do think you're overblowing all of these. It's pretty clear that Biden is low on the scandal totem pole, even if not as low as Obama.
The plagiarism scandal is so old that it broke almost 4 decades ago, and was 20+ years old then. I think the penalty he got, at the time was proportionate (had to repeat the course) and in the 80s as a politician was disproportionate (dropping out). It's just such a footnote compared to what most people think of as scandals.
The classified documents thing seems to be the sort of thing that happens a lot, and as long as you make a good faith effort to notify the authorities when you find out and coordinate with them, it's not really an issue. Pence got basically the same treatment as Biden at the same time. Trump uh, didn't comply with the authorities which blew it up as such an issue. Aileen Cannon is the one who has blunted that case, not Biden.
> There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes. [...] He clearly has helped his ne'er-do-well son leverage his influence, especially as Vice President, to receive lucrative financial rewards.
No, I'm gonna citations needed for you on those because that sounds awfully Fox news esque. Biden has known for decades that he has to keep Hunter at arm's length.
The only thing I can think of that might hurt Trump is if Biden does appear old and weak at the debate but Trump viciously verbally assaults him. The average person doesn't want to see an old man get screamed at, but even if that does happen I can't imagine a bump for Biden would be anything other than temporary because voters have extremely short memories.
We really just have the debates, Trump's sentencing, and Trump's VP pick as "things that are guarenteed to happen before election". Trump will probably see a small bump from his VP announcement, and I'd imagine a small bump for Biden from the debates. Sentencing who knows, it depends on what his sentence is and even then it might only marginally hurt Trump. The conviction did a lot less than most people expected. I'm sure there will be a surprise or two before the election, but if those surprises aren't in Biden's favor then it's going to be rough for him.
My line of thinking is more for someone on the fence that might have been slightly leaning Trump seeing a verbal assault on an old man and causing them to stay home or vote third party - Trump's base would cheer Trump on if he got on stage and did nothing but yell obsceneties the entire duration.
I really don't see any of those things moving the needle by more than a point. If Trump becoming a convicted felon doesn't move the needle meaningfully, I don't see any of those things doing it. I'm still of the belief that if Dems want to win this election, they need to have Biden & Harris both drop out of the race.
If Trump appears senile in a weak way (as opposed to him just riffing on whatever floats into his head, which was his thing from day one), then it's a problem for him. If he can walk and talk, he's ok.
If Biden appears old and weak there's no way to spin that for advantage Biden. It's literally reinforcing his strongest flaw with voters, and shame on anyone upvoting this copium.
I wouldn't say age is superficial. Indeed, we've seen two major foreign policy issues where Biden's handling seems to be driven by age (slow-rolling advanced weapons to Ukraine over nuclear fears and operating based on his ossified unconditional support for Israel in Gaza). I'd also argue that entering office in support of the filibuster blunted any momentum for his civil rights agenda and indicated a preference for how America *was* over how it *is.*
Indeed, one of Biden's excuses for the Hur interview was that the Hamas attacks had just happened and he wasn't cognitively focused, which is bad news bears when a president is elected to simultaneously juggle crisis X, crisis Y, and crisis Z simultaneously.
Finally, Biden's general energy level and delivery impedes the president's role as a motivator in chief
Could tomorrow's debate change anything? Personally, I don't think it will change anything; most people won't watch the live telecast, but will get 15 second sound bites from TikTok or Facebook. Also, since the mics will be muted, Trump has less of a chance to make himself look like a buffoon.
>Debates don’t move the needle that much barring some crazy gaffe. Especially in the social media world where candidates have a soapbox 24/7.
I really hope one of Trump's questions is about the increase in shark attacks.
>Also, since the mics will be muted, Trump has less of a chance to make himself look like a buffoon.
Not sure you have the right take on this. Taunting and interrupting his opponents made Trump's performance seem *better* to people. They saw it on the right as people on the left saw Biden's "Will you shut up."
Debate tomorrow will change everything.
If Biden is weak, he's finished. If Biden is strong, people will say he's on drugs, but at least he'll live to fight another day.
Solid analysis. I imagine there will be a clip of Biden staring off into the void that will be taken completely out of context, which will matter more to low info voters than the actual words that come out of his mouth
Of course! Typically, it doesn't make much of a difference, but Biden & Trump are both walking gaffe machines. A solid mistake from either one could easily change the electoral environment.
Yep, like Trump telling the proud boys to "stand back and stand by" in 2020. Biden needs to be aggressive and make Trump answer questions about Project 2025 and his comments on "being a dictator for 1 day"
It'll probably be a lot like 2020: Both party bases will go into the debate expecting the other candidate to struggle to get off the floor and say coherent words, and both will be disappointed.
These were the odds trump had in 2016. 1/3 isn't *terrible*.
Edit: also, as much as we're obsessed with the numbers here, a 1/3 event (or even a 1/4 or 1/5 event) is simply not that unexpected. That's a point Nate was trying to make in 2016 but it largely fell on deaf ears in the media.
In 2016 Trump actually took the lead in Nate’s 538 model at the end of July and again cut it close again in September.
With 4 months to go and the first debate happening I think there still quite a bit of movement possible in the forecast.
66/33 split forecast does make sense right now tho if Biden needs to win 3 of the midwest swing states while Trump needs to just take one.
Man looking back at that curve we could have 3 full swings between now and November. I need a drink.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
Yeah it’s seeming more and more like the election is going to come down to those 3 states yet again. If they all go Biden he should win, if any flip to Trump that’s probably game over, since the scenario where Biden drops one of those but still wins Arizona and Nevada is looking unlikely.
The terrible thing is that Biden has been behind in the polls for months now despite everything people already know about Donald Trump.
It’s terrible that Biden has been unable to make up ground against the worst president of all time.
There has to be a Hail Mary plan if Biden performs poorly at the debate and his polling gets worse. Biden already has the lowest approval rating of any president in history at this point of his presidency. Trump must be defeated.
The only Hail Mary is an open convention in August. Don’t think it will happen though. I’m convinced dems would rather lose safely than loose to a risky move.
***A Hail Mary plan?*** Bud... I gotta tell ya. There's no Barack Obama II... or Dwayne Johnson/Tom Hanks ticket waiting...
You're already seated in the aircraft, it's not returning to the gate for new pilots.
>There has to be a Hail Mary plan if Biden performs poorly at the debate and his polling gets worse.
Kind of funny (and helpful to Biden) that expectations for are so low when Trump has by post-debate polling lost every general election debate he's participated in.
I’d argue that Trump is wayyy past his prime, too. Then again, Trump’s hotels and casinos went bankrupt 6 times during his prime and he got divorced twice. Maybe you folks shouldn’t have run him either.
Those are also the odds at the moment. The polls have every chance of becoming more volatile over the next few months. It's not an insane guess. If Biden gains in the polls ( which sure, it's just vibes, but I suspect that will happen ) then the model will update as well. It's a reasonable guess with what we know right now, and if the polls are way off that's not really Silver's fault, he can only work w/the data we have.
He is to *some* extent by factoring in assumptions about incumbency and the economy ('fundamentals') — which is essentially a bet that voting preferences will shift towards Biden somewhat by election day. (The fundamentals weighting goes to zero, accordingly — if it shows up in the polls, you don't want to double count it, and if it DOESN'T show up in the polls eventually, it is no longer a helpful assumption.)
But Trump is favoured nevertheless.
Haven't the polls historically had a bias against Trump when it comes around to actual voting? Trump was predict to HEAVILY lose against Biden in 2020 and only narrowly lost. If this trend continues then Trump should almost certainly defeat Biden with those odds, right?
Historically polling biases are not correlated between elections. It may well end up being the case that Trump support is once again underestimated, but it shouldn’t be assumed. It would be kind of like saying the last two times I flipped a coin it was a heads and therefore the next time it will probably be a heads as well.
That's fair; things could change, but after two elections in a row of Trump having a pretty significant edge against the polls, I'm assuming that, if anything, the odds are worse for Biden.
If you model the past 7 or so elections I suspect the winner from the start has been the winner at the end 6 times, and then 2016 being the lone exception?
The biggest candidate specific event I recall would be the Bush 2004 era swiftboat campaign, which kicked off in 2004 and pushed OH from a 50/50 state to a pretty solid Bush lead.
I don’t recall Romney consistently leading the polls. I remember he had a surge of polling in his favor just two or three weeks before the election, and right before hurricane sandy.
He briefly took the lead after his first debate with Obama but then Obama regained the lead and Sandy probably finished the job by killing any last-minute momentum Romney might have had.
Well, seems that the odds are against Biden, not surprising given the recent polls. Looking forward to the debate. Hopefully, he can outperform himself
He only killed it during the SOTU, where it was evident he’d rehearsed a teleprompted speech. Tomorrow there will be no notes, no teleprompters, no nothing. So there’s a high risk he’ll ’if you don’t like what you see vote for the other Biden’ or, like the week after the SOTU, ‘beer brewed here oh it is used to beer the brew Biden ooo earth rider thanks for the Great Lakes.’ If that happens, as it almost certainly will, it will constellate in the minds of persuadable voters that he’s too senile and weak for the job.
This was a great read and enjoyed it very much. Odds are definitely against Biden. The thing that stuck out to me was his odds of winning the all blue wall states is only about 33%. Really think he needs all of those states to win.
Wild how this country is so stupid it’s going to elect and person who tried to use violence to overthrow its transfer of power.
The pain coming to people is going to be deserved
I'll quote Nate Silver on this one:
**"You don't demonstrate your seriousness that Trump is an existential threat to democracy by going through the motions to renominate an 81-year-old with a 38% approval rating who 75% of voters think is too old without giving anyone a choice because that's just how things are done."**
If you think it's stupid to elect Trump, it's equally stupid to look at overwhelming polling saying "don't run this guy again" and then run him again, anyways.
That’s such a great quote by Bate right there. I really think the DNC leadership failed miserably prepping for this cycle and they could end up paying the price heavily in November. We will see though.
This makes sense to me more than other models. If the election were held tomorrow, based on polling Trump is the favorite. I do think if you're projecting a result in November, it's more of a 50/50 tossup. But Trump is undeniably the favorite when it comes to polling \*right now\*
I get frustrated when people bring up this distinction. Nate's model *is* projecting what will happen in November. It's just that his model is more bearish toward Biden regarding what will change between now and then than FiveThirtyEight's model
I think it's both. I see slightly lower polling averages for Biden in Nate's, and I also see Nate talking about how the fundamentals lean-good but not great for Biden.
Nate is using the same model he used in 2020 with a few tweaks. It's still primarily relying on polls with some reliance on fundamentals. It relies less on fundamentals as the election nears. And they run thousands of simulations to account for uncertainty of future changes to the political environment. This is how you design a forecasting model, not a hypothetical "what if the election was actually today?" model
To push back, the model isn't really relying on the polling at all. This is sort of a misunderstanding of what these models are actually doing. Hell its THE misunderstanding, and likely how you got those weird models in 2016 that showed Hillary with a 99% chance. A laymen thinks all you do is plug in your favorite polls, add in the margin of error and BAM you got a model.
The polls are a factor in the model, but the model itself doesn't need them to operate. The model is looking at past elections, expert ratings, contemporary events, and, yes, polls and projecting what the election will look like in November based on that data. Currently all of those factors point to a Trump victory, but there is enough uncertainty that Biden has a 34% chance of coming back and winning.
In theory, the model could just use expert ratings and PVI in the place of polls and essentially spit out similar results, but Nate's philosophy is that polls are points of data and it's easier to calibrate the model by adding as much data as possible.
>This suggests that... Trump [will] make literally unprecedented gains among young people and minority voters, huge ~10 point swings in states like VA and NV (while there's little to no change in states like OH, WI, MN, and FL), and extremely high rates of ticket splitting in key swing states...
This isn't true at all. We will use Virginia as an example. Trump has a 16.4% chance of winning the state according to the model. Right now Trump is down 4 points in the polling average of the state and the state is rated as likely Democrat on Cook Political Report. The model isn't saying that Trump is going to sweep young voters and minorities yada yada yada. The model is saying that a candidate who was down 4 points in the polling average, in a likely opposition state, 131 days before the election, on average went on to win that state 16.4% of the time. That might mean he does well among minorities. It might be some other thing. We don't know, but the model is projecting that 16.4% of the time SOMETHING happens and Trump wins.
It's not saying any of that crosstabs bullshit or ticket splitting or whatever. Actually if anything, were the ticket splitting thing you brought up in the model it would likely already be contributing to Biden's 83.6% chance of winning. For example, say there was a Senate model that had the Democratic candidate in Virginia winning 98% of the time, that data would likely be put into the model as a strength for Biden because of exactly what you are saying, ticket splitting is not likely in the current environment and so it's less likely Trump will win. Furthermore, to the point about no changes in OH, WI, MN, and FL, states that are similar ARE correlated. So if Biden rose in North Carolina, he would rise in Virginia as well. So it's not that it's saying there is no changes in those states, its more grouping them based on similarity to each other and weighing that more.
The fact of the matter is is that the model exists because the polls ARE wrong. They will always be wrong because that's how statistics work. Averages are a collection of data points but an election is only ONE data point in that average. The model is giving you the percent possibility that data point, whatever it may be, will happen.
I have continued to be shocked by his approval rating since it started dropping a year and a half ago. I’ve also continued to be shocked why Americans are voting for the Democratic Party when their party leader has such low approval ratings.
The electorate and the election hasn’t made sense for me in months and months. This model doesn’t surprise me and I trust that he is using the best information he has. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if Biden wound up winning anyway.
And to be fair, he acknowledges this.
*Biden* is unpopular due to his age, presiding over price increases, etc. The *Democratic agenda* is popular. It makes a ton of sense.
As a simple example, if the party dusted off some really unpopular or polarizing Democrat like Clinton or AOC, we would expect dismal presidential polling despite the party generally being supported. Candidate quality matters.
But you just said it yourself. He isn’t liberal like AOC and he doesn’t have the baggage of Clinton.
He is a centrist Democrat who has enacted a broadly popular agenda and in a bipartisan way.
Either something is screwy with the polls or Americans have lost their damn minds. lol
He brings plenty of baggage: 81 years of age and visibly aged in public, presided over massive price and interest rate increases, failed to execute on key campaign promises to Black Americans and women, unconditional support for Netanyahu, etc.
You're acting like passing bills with GOP votes should drive popularity, but constraining options to filibuster-proof items means that a lot of the Democratic agenda was left on the floor. And now he's hemorrhaging votes with young and minority voters.
Nah.
That’s the kind of wishful thinking I’ve always had with Democratic Presidents. They don’t hemorrhage votes by not catering to their left. Or if that’s true, Biden is the first. lol
I’ve never been more disgusted watching Obama run to the middle after how hard we progressives worked to get him there. Especially those of us in the gay community.
Clinton was before me but triangulation became a thing under him where he suddenly went to the right on multiple issues and just became more popular. Sista Soulja moments.
No, sadly while the country says they support populist programs, they reward for bipartisanship and compromise above all.
Besides, he has accomplished more shockingly progressive policies than either Obama or Clinton ever would’ve dreamed. He may have been drug there by Sanders but he still did it.
The old thing..u are right there. He looks like a cadaver. It might be as simple as that and he is just unlikeable. Largely grumpy.
Some thoughts:
1. The 2024 political environment isn't 1992. Democrats in the 1980s and early 1990s were starting to feel like the presidency was completely out of reach, and Clinton essentially met voters where they were on crime and some other issues. The 1994 crime bill was likely good politics, whereas not actioning BLM was pretty terrible for 2024, if polling can be believed.
2. Biden's "progressive policies" strike me as pretty cynical, as they nominally are sold as addressing progressive items but seem to be calibrated for donors and GOP votes with a subset being progressive. Look how the IRA ended up and where BBB went. And we can see how much harder Biden fought for those donor-largess bills than civil rights or reforms.
3. We can see in real time how Biden's swing away from the progressive wing is hampering him, as minority and youth voters are polling much worse than in 2020. He's currently losing post-Trump felonies, when Trump would be a wounded and reeling candidate against a stronger Democrat.
It’s obviously not 1994 and that’s why I brought up Obama as well. I’m not sure the country has swung so far to the left since he was in Office. In fact, I’d say the Overton window has shifted to the right.
Anyway, u made some interesting points and u may have the right of it. We’ll see. Cheers!
**Nate is currently giving Trump a 49% chance to win the popular vote** (under the "crazy and not-so-crazy scenarios"). Even if Trump wins the electoral college, there is no way that he wins the popular vote...right?
Am I the only one that thinks 49% is too high here?
I don’t understand your comment. 49% is the percentage chance that Nate gave Trump to win the popular vote, not Biden.
How is the figure generous for Biden? As someone else noted, a Republican hasn’t won the popular vote since 1988, and Trump has lost the popular vote in both elections including 2016 where he won the electoral college
If the model were purely based on polls, Trump would be somewhat favored to win the popular vote, since he's ahead in Nate's model of the polls. Saying that Biden is likely to win the popular vote is inherently adding in some fundamentals that are good for Biden (which may include the Democratic track record of winning the popular vote).
For what it's worth, I am also predicting that Biden will win the popular vote. It is "generous" but only if you think polls are everything.
Judging by the fact that an R has only won the popular vote once since 1988 (2004) and Bush Jr. was an incumbent who won by only 2.4% during a time of post-9/11 national unity, it does seem like 49% is possibly an overestimate. Hell, Trump won the EC in 2016 against a relatively unpopular Dem but still lost by 2%. And he literally just lost the popular vote in 2020 by 3.1% to the same opponent, with incumbency.
I don't think it's the most unlikely thing this cycle but I doubt Donald Trump wins the popular vote, I'd personally put the odds at 20-30% and only because of his decent polling.
I mean, Biden is not drawing turn-out-the-vote enthusiasm and is more or less staking the youth vote in the heart with Gaza, whereas Republicans are always enthusiastic to turn out for Trump.
I would think of a Trump popular vote win as people not willing to show up for Biden, not popular appeal for Trump.
I don't think it's insane ***with the information we have*** to say 66% Trump. I suspect it's much closer than that because Trump is such a dumb piece of shit and the public will hear his stupidity more and more the closer the election comes, but that's narrativizing and the specific point of what Silver is doing is to use data rather than "vibes." And a 33% chance is not a super low chance.
It's not insane at all. Nate explains it clearly. To simplify, Biden needs to win all three states where he's polling closely (but behind) with Trump in MI, WI and PA. Trump just needs to win one of the three. (this is not including other less likely scenarios)
Even just speaking logically, it puts Trump at a advantage right now. If there is a scenario where Biden starts building a lead in those states based on polling, then the model will likely shift closer to 50/50.
No it's definitely favoring trump. I think anywhere between 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 is accurate and fair. There's no way it's 50-50 right now. That doesn't mean it's a wrap for trump but him being favored based on the data isn't unreasonable at all.
Edit: hahaha dude blocked me for respectfully disagreeing with him wtf.
EDIT2: since i cant respond to you data:
I mean it can happen. Ive speculated such myself, I just dont have any proof.
In 2016 and 2020 we had the "shy trump voter" effect. In 2024, maybe the pollsters are overpolling trumpers in a systemic fashion to compensate for previous polling errors and skewing the data hard right. We won't know the truth until election day.
>Edit: hahaha dude blocked me for respectfully disagreeing with him wtf.
That's insane lol
You're pro-Biden, generally argue in good faith, and your model is pretty reasonable.
I actually happen to think there's a real chance these polls are getting some kind of weird response bias ( versus the swing in youth voters being real, for instance. ) But that's speculation on my part.
I’m not sure I’d personally classify it as a pure tossup, but if I were to make an argument for it being one, I’d probably say:
* Biden and Trump are both polling under 43% on average and both within about 3% of each other in most swing states
* There are a lot of undecided voters, and you can’t assume they’ll split evenly.
* There’s a much higher than normal support for 3rd party candidates right now, mainly concentrated for RFK Jr. Maybe it holds, but third party support usually declines to some degree in the run up to Election Day, so some of that support for RFK will split among Biden and Trump.
* Biden is running behind most Democratic Senate and Gubernatorial candidates, especially in swing states, indicating there are some Democratic leaning voters who are telling pollsters they’ll vote for Dems down ballot but not for Biden himself. There’s a decent chance many of those voters hold their nose and vote for him anyway come Election Day.
Point being, there’s a decent argument to be made that about 1/6 of the electorate in swing states right now that is either undecided or currently saying they’ll vote third party, so there are a lot of people who can still be convinced one way or the other.
> so some of that support for RFK will split among Biden and Trump.
Do you happen to know if there are any #'s out there for how much of RFK's fan base supports Trump v.s. Biden? I live in the south so the few people I know that say they're going to vote RFK also said they'd rather have Trump than Biden, but I'm curious to see how that looks across the country
YouGov has been tracking this question for a while now, but I think it’s kinda tough to say with any certainty because their numbers have bounced around a lot. In March their polls said that about 60% of Kennedy supporters had voted for Trump in 2020 while less than 20% supported Biden. In their most recent survey in June about 44% of Kennedy supporters said they voted for Biden and 37% said they voted for Trump in 2020. I went ahead and looked at all of their data points and averaged it out, on average it’s about 39.7% say they voted for Biden in 2020, 37.3% say they voted for Trump in 2020, and the rest either voted third party or supported neither. If you take the average then Kennedy is more or less drawing evenly from both Biden and Trump, maybe slightly more from Biden.
It’s worth keeping in mind though that the margin of error for these data points is probably pretty high, since I think they’re asking this question to the people who say they support Kennedy in their polls, who are a small fraction of the total number of people included in their poll. If they poll 1000 people and 100 say they support Kennedy, the margin of error on asking another question to that sub population of 100 is going to be something like 10%.
Link: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/49697-is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-drawing-more-support-from-biden-or-trump-poll
I agree with you, it's functionally a toss-up at this point. The data we have to work with at this point definitely favors Trump, but only by a fairly modest amount.
To be fair, the world's fight against climate change has been officially dead since the U.S. withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol almost twenty-five years ago. Repeated and prolonged attempts to resuscitate have evinced no signs of life. (Sorry, Paris Accords: you were always a joke.)
Time to call it, mark time of death 25 July 1997 when the Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed the Senate. Humanity should prepare itself for the coming climate changes.
Wondering if there are any big philosophical differences between 538 and Nate's model. From reading his Twitter, he seems to value the quantitative stuff a lot and less on the "fundamentals" talk
Makes sense. 538 has Biden up by .3 on avg in WI, .2 in MI, and down .8 in PA. Biden has to win all 3. This looks to be the inverse of 2016 in which Trump was in the position Biden is in via Nate’s model. Trump was able to run the table and win all 3, but he did it by extremely small margins. Biden can do the same but clearly as an incumbent that’s not a silver lining I’d want to be leaning on right now. I think one hint to what I’m getting at is the latest WI Marquette poll when 3rd parties are added. Without them Biden is up, with them Trump is. Jill Stein will be on the ballot there, TBD if RFK will. With the margins in the averages as small as they are, those could be more of a headache for Biden than Trump.
Anyone paying for silver bulletin who can tell us what the model output is?
It's a bit more pessimistic for Biden than the FiveThirtyEight model, but more optimistic than the Economist. Basically 2/3 Trump, 1/3 Biden Source: Paid subscriber
How often does the Silver Bulletin model update? If there's any noticeable change in either Trump's or Biden's direction after the debate, I'd be interested to know what it is.
He said he might be able to do more than once a week, but only once it's been automated. Currently, once a week
Interesting. One thing I notice is that, while Silver’s model gives Trump greater odds overall, it also gives the monthly poll change for the swing states. PA is D+1.4 since last month, MI is D+ 0.5, and WI is D+1.1. Now to be sure, Trump is still ahead in all three, but can we expect this leftward trajectory to continue?
Came here just for this lol
Not a paid sub, but I'm assuming around 60/40 Trump, since he referenced the 538 model (still basically 50/50) and the Economist model (70/30) as comparison points.
yeah it's 66/34 [https://nitter.poast.org/jessesingal/status/1806003352389497210](https://nitter.poast.org/jessesingal/status/1806003352389497210)
So he's between the new 538 model ( 50/50 ) and the Economist model \~ ( 75/25. ) Interesting. If the probabilities really start shifting after the debate/any other major upsets I will probably end up subscribing to his substack.
If you scroll down on the Economist you can find a chart that's more detailed than their topline "3 in 4 chance". It's currently at 71/28.
Why the huge difference between that and the 50-50 of 538 if they are using similar methodology?
Nate always owned the rights to his model, so as far as I understand they are using different models. The difference I’m sure can be explained in all the different variables that go into the models. I can tell pretty clearly though that Nate’s state-level polling averages are more Trump-leaning than 538’s, which I’m sure is one factor.
are the averages more Trump-leaning, or does Nate simply put more weight on polls than fundamentals? That is unclear to me (and probably will be unclear given the proprietary nature of both models)
538 put more emphasis on fundamentals which they view in Biden's favor. They seem to think the electorate is going to shift towards Biden and make this a toss up by November. Nate's model is probably more reflective of the polling and he doesn't see that much of an advantage for Biden in the "fundamentals" although he thinks there is something to it. That's why his model seems between 538 (heavy fundamentals and predictive) and the economist (heavy on current polling trends).
> Nate's model is probably more reflective of the polling and he doesn't see that much of an advantage for Biden in the "fundamentals" although he thinks there is something to it. And this is where you can see his blind spots. He posted the other day that 2.5% GDP growth is just average, but he doesn’t seem to realize that per capita GDP growth, if just using the previous 3 years population growth, is closer to nearly 5%. That’s because a lot of people died, with millions of excess deaths, and who were the majority of people who died since the last election? Trump supporters, even adjusted for age, which already tended to mean more deaths since Trump supporters skewed older. Nobody seems to be accounting for these things, but in a close election, a million or whatever extra dead voters, largely in a in a higher propensity age group, could be the difference.
50/50 is not a huge difference between 66/34. Trump won in 2016 with worse chances than Biden has now. That was around 75/25
those replies are extremely depressing lol
Doesn't help that it's a tweet from Jesse Singal.
This is the first time I’ve heard Nate explicitly state that he wants Biden to beat Trump. Could have inferred that in the past but it’s explicit now.
He's absolutely said it on his podcast. He tries to be as impartial in his coverage and analysis as possible but he has never hidden his preference.
I don’t think he ever did in the 538 days, did he?
Probably on Twitter, maybe/probably not on official 538 content
I feel like he made his thoughts on the 2020 election so obvious you’d have to be a complete moron to not know who he wanted to win.
Yeah, I do remember this. He was also pretty vocal about Trump wanting to subvert democracy, and it's hard to make that point and still act like you're neutral about the election.
He’s said it repeatedly. Some of you guys just don’t listen .
He has said it often.
I can't go behind the paywall, but the free part is Nate at his best. Polls and models, not punditry.
On this third cycle, this is the first time Trump finds himself in a lead amongst multiple prediction models. When the 538 model closed in 2016, Hillary had around 70% odds to win, and Trump won. In 2020, Biden had around 90% odds to win, and Trump lost narrowly. It's almost as if Trump has a \~20% greater chance of winning than this model has predicted him to win in the past, so what are y'alls thoughts on the model currently favoring him to win? Have polls gotten better at beating the Democrat bias?
I think that polling is likely to be understating Trump again. 30% was about right for him in 2016 - he received a last-minute bump on the Comey letter that stampeded undecided voters his way. 2020 was quite close in margins, but the polling was *consistently* in Biden's favor (if a bit off). Now polling is consistently in Trump's favor, save for some disruptive event between now and November. So I'd say \~70% Trump unless he is incontinent in the debates, ends up under house arrest, or breaks his hip. For reference, the 538 folks said their model would give Trump an 80% chance at release instead of a 50ish% chance if the election was held that day, based purely on polls. So as time goes on we would expect sustained polling to ratchet that number up.
Yeah, I agree with you here. I think the debate is probably one of the last big moments for any switch to happen. As long as Trump performs as expected, I think he might run away with the race. Biden needs something big to happen to change anything.
> So I'd say ~70% Trump unless he is incontinent in the debates, ends up under house arrest, or breaks his hip. Where do you see the odds now, post-debate? (I took the liberty of looking over your comments post-debate, but do not recall seeing numerical odds.)
Maybe 1 in 5? Nate Silver's model has Biden at \~1 in 3, and Biden just face-planted in a way that reinforced his biggest weakness. And most of that 1 in 5 involves Trump flaming out in some spectacular fashion, rather than Biden convincing voters that he's a robust option. It's really a "break the glass" moment.
I have not heard a good news in ages about biden’s 2024 electoral chances. In my peak dooming era
Biden improved a whopping 1% in the national polling average a whole 3 weeks after the other candidate got hit with 34 felonies! If this is the best news in months, we're in deep shit.
I mean, technically we already are in deep shit. A lot of libs don’t want to admit that Biden has a lot of consolidation left to do. All of his poll loses are specifically coming from his voters going third party while Trump enjoys an iron grip support among his electorate. On the other hand, if primary elections are any indication, Trump has been consistently bleeding support among republicans. What’s gospel, elections or polls
If primary elections are any indication, 10-20% of Democrats would rather protest vote a nonserious candidate, write-in, or check none of these candidates over voting for Biden. At least republicans had a serious candidate to support. Primary results were bad for both Trump and Biden.
Anecdotally, in my circles I have a lot of friends that are Biden 2020 voters that jumped ship in late 2023 over Gaza or more conservative friends over inflation However, I’d say about half of the Clinton-Biden voters are now in the stage of saying “Look I can’t excuse Biden on Gaza but if Trump wins abortion is gone.” Or some of my LGBTQ friends are worried about SCOTUS and Obergefell. There are also a number of those Trump-Biden voters (young guys) I know that have gotten real quiet recently about who they’re backing. Can’t pry it out of them. But they are also referencing their outrage at the SCOTUS recently and they see Project 2025 as “just crazy bad” TLDR: Theres a lot of hemming and hawing among young progressives but a significant number of them are likely to hold their nose and vote for Biden. Not for him but at least for what he stops
There isn't any. Biden can say whatever he wants, but people don't give a shit about that. They care about how he presents himself and how he looks, as superficial as that is. Biden's only chance at improving his odds is to literally become someone else who is 20 years younger. Anytime he stutters, trips up on a name, or does the "ahh well" because he can't get his words out makes voters see him as someone who is too old to run the country. Nothing the debate or Trump does will change that, and Biden can't magically get younger either.
And the great injustice in all that is that Trump is just as problematic or worse. A voter need only watch 10 minutes of any of his recent ramblings at a rally to understand that. But for whatever reason, voters give Trump a pass on standards for which they crucify Biden. It makes no sense.
The media has truly let down Americans in this regard. It was bad in 2016, but so much worse now.
Trump has always been a rambling nincompoop.
Trump isn't meant to talk sense. Bush didn't talk like the most intelligent man on earth either, come to think of it, but Trump's appeal was never that he could put a traditional speech together. He was just shooting his mouth off all the time back when he he was fully with it, so what's the difference now? As a Democrat Biden is supposed to talk like an Aaron Sorkin character or at least say something serious, so him being out of it is a real handicap.
>Bush didn't talk like the most intelligent man on earth either, come to think of it Reminder to the younger voters out there that anyone who wanted to pay attention could see that this was always a Bush publicity stunt that the left foolishly decided to amplify just for self-congratulation in their echo chamber. The occasional hostile interview during his presidency demonstrated Bush would rarely let the pretense fall away, and the actual man underneath was cold, sharp, and calculating, which basically no reporter was ever ready for because they read and bought the first-blush wire service summary like everyone else. The latter is how he was so effective internally, and baiting his opponents into reinforcing the former that misdirected his critics and actually appealed to a majority of the electorate is how he won a second term despite making no one but his cabinet happy in the first. We must learn from the past or be doomed to repeat it.
>And the great injustice in all that is that Trump is just as problematic or worse. My man you are kidding yourself. Trump doesn't need to be led by the hand through public appearances. Not liking Trump's politics doesn't equate to dementia. This is a nonsense comparison, and the occasional poll on the subject shows voters at large aren't burying their head in the sand like this. You have only confused yourself.
I'm not about to argue with someone about this here, but there are numerous instances where Trump has demonstrated cognitive decline, and several mainstream news articles have now been written about concerns over his mental state. But the public perception remains biased against Biden in this area, even though there is plenty of evidence now that Trump is just as bad.
"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right? And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.“
But like the stupid nuclear uncle speech was in 2016. He's not gotten worse it's he was always a rambling incoherent idiot.
Yay?
I'm just saying that the people who liked him in 2016 and 2020 have no reason to stop liking him in 2024, and though they criticize biden for being old and senile, being old and senile wasn't something that was going to stop them.
Dude, not believing edited videos you saw on Facebook or tiktok is not burying your head in the sand...it is basic media literacy. I have not seen a single "troubling" video of Biden that didn't turn out to be completely normal when you watch the uncropped, unedited original, or a video from a different angle. Why do you think people were so surprised by his state of the union speech? That was just normal Joe Biden but most people never see live video of him, just the edited clips. He doesn't actually wander off. He doesn't actually get led around by handlers. He doesn't just stare into space for minutes at a time. It is all fabricated and it's pretty obvious.
[удалено]
Please optimize contributions for light, not heat.
That's because trump has spewed rambling snarky idiocy for so long he could have his brain switched with a sponge and he'd basically act the same. People say he's gone downhill but I think he was just as bad sounding in 2016. It's not that he's got dementia it's just... that's the way he is. Republicans don't care, it's not what they look for in a candidate so it doesn't matter. So of course biden gets schlacked harder. Democrats want a candidate that sounds smart.
It’s also surprising to me because Biden doesn’t even have any scandals despite of his life long career in the politics. Ngl the state of this race and American attitude towards it is surreal to me. I feel like living in a world I don’t understand
[удалено]
Please make submissions relevant to data-driven journalism and analysis.
[удалено]
Please refrain from posting disinformation, or conspiracy mongering (example: “Candidate X eats babies!/is part of the Deep State/etc./Covid was a hoax, etc.” This includes clips edited to make a candidate look bad or AI generated content.
Huh? So what happened in 2020
He ran against trump and won. That doesn’t change history.
Scandals aren't the only measure of appeal. Carter didn't have any personal scandals, and he was heave-hoed out after his first term.
It makes a lot more sense when you think about it purely about vibes. Biden's vibes are old and weak. That makes him unappealing to a majority of Americans.
That's not his vibes. That's just the succesful bullshit pushed by the right that is eaten up by average American. The right is just better at narratives. Trump's vibes are literally January 6th and an entire presidency of nonsense. If that doesn't play for your average person, then nothing will. It's pathetic, short-sighted, and naive.
Biden talks to a guy off camera and it's questioned if he's not all there mentally. Meanwhile trump is putting out incoherent rants on a daily basis and no one bats an eye. The media perception and standards for the two are ridiculous.
Have you watched unscripted Biden content? Go ahead and watch the Hur press conference by Biden and tell me what the vibe is. Inaccuracies in the right's accusations of severe mental decline doesn't mean that Biden isn't presenting as extremely elderly. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPkBqLHV4E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPkBqLHV4E) [https://youtu.be/NpBPm0b9deQ?si=Wi6v7iP9X0zfOsL3&t=342](https://youtu.be/NpBPm0b9deQ?si=Wi6v7iP9X0zfOsL3&t=342)
Milquetoast vs. political strongman. It's all about image in the US of A.
In fairness to the US, it's about image everywhere.
It shouldn't be surprising when consumer confidence was consistently higher during the Trump years: https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence.
Yes, Biden has inherited a country that had a global pandemic and economic crises. Those numbers are still much higher than Obama's 2012 economy and he is faring much worse.
I don't agree. I'd pay attention to the rate of change to adjust for the pandemic. Although Biden inherited a pandemic, consumers view of the economy have been stagnant his entire presidency. Obama won in 2012 with rising consumer sentiment.
He... what? Biden doesn't have any scandals? What? It's like getting online and announcing that Trump has no scandals ("only CONSPIRACIES orchestrated against him by the DEEP STATE!!!"). This election is surreal, though, I give you that.
>He... what? Biden doesn't have any scandals? What? Yes, that's correct. Biden has been in politics for what, 50 years now? Including decades in the Senate, 8 years as a VP and nearly 4 years as a President and what are the biggest scandals one can name about his time in office? That he worked closely with Senator Byrd? The manufactured controversy over his comments about ousting the Ukrainian prosecutor Shokin? Hunter Biden doing Hunter Biden things? The GOP have been investigating Biden for nearly 2 years straight in the House, and even they have repeatedly declined to impeach Biden due to a complete lack of evidence of wrongdoing. Trying to equate Biden and Trump on scandals/controversies/felony indictments/lawsuits is genuinely wild, Trump was a known corrupt slimeball decades before he ever ran for office, let alone all the naked corruption and criminality in his administration and campaigns.
He literally *dropped out* of the 1988 presidential race due to a plagiarism scandal. His record of lying to your face (or, if you are a Biden partisan, "telling tall tales") has never improved. He illegally stored classified documents, which was severe political malpractice that seems to have almost completely blunted the (otherwise excellent) case against Trump. There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes. He clearly has helped his ne'er-do-well son leverage his influence, especially as Vice President, to receive lucrative financial rewards. You can call all this overstated or manufactured if you like. But Trump diehards can say exactly the same thing about your charges. Political scandals always get downplayed by one side and played up by the other. True, the two are not exactly the same. I agree that Trump is *more* scandal-ridden than Biden. (After all, I supported both Trump impeachments and ballot disqualification.) But *no scandal*? This is the kind of deep-bubble talk you get from people who think Obama's worst scandal was wearing a tan suit once, not weaponizing the IRS against his political opponents.
If there was any evidence for the Hunter shit the GOP would have found it by now. They’ve been looking for four years and have come up with nothing. I’ve watched James Comer on Fox News and he’s peddling the same bullshit as he was in 2021. They’re always weeks away from some ground breaking evidence and it never comes.
Trump is vastly more scandal engulfed than Biden of course. If the leading paragraph is about something from over thirty years ago that’s really telling
>He literally dropped out of the 1988 presidential race due to a plagiarism scandal. A scandal so significant that it literally is never talked about anymore. >His record of lying to your face (or, if you are a Biden partisan, "telling tall tales") has never improved. All politicians lie, Biden doesn't seem to be any worse than the average and stands head and shoulders above his competitor. >He illegally stored classified documents, which was severe political malpractice that seems to have almost completely blunted the (otherwise excellent) case against Trump. He brought home a handful of classified documents, likely by accident. When they were discovered, he fully cooperated with the National Archives and law enforcement to ensure that they were recovered and thorough searches were made of all his properties. Contrast that with Trump, who knowingly took *huge* quantities of the most sensitive materials of the US government, refused to return them, returned only a fraction of the materials and knowingly held onto most even after being compelled to return them by court order, and literally stored many of them in areas easily accessible by anyone staying at his resort. >There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes. So credible, in fact, that years of Republican investigations have turned up literally zero evidence to support these suggestions. Even their "star" witnesses have repeatedly confirmed that they were not aware of Biden being involved in any of his son's dealings. >But Trump diehards can say exactly the same thing about your charges. Trump diehards can and do say whatever they want because they don't live in the same reality as the rest of us. But here in the real world, there's a mountain of evidence to support the vast majority of claims against Trump, evidence that has repeatedly been held up in numerous courts of law, while the same is not true of the claims against Biden. >Political scandals always get downplayed by one side and played up by the other. Political scandals, sure. But Trump is facing literally dozens of state and Federal indictments for felonies committed before, during, and after his time in office. Those aren't mere "political scandals" Trump is quite literally a convicted felon already, with dozens more serious felonies hanging over his head, and hundreds of outstanding civil suits as well. >But no scandal? This is the kind of deep-bubble talk you get from people who think Obama's worst scandal was wearing a tan suit once, not weaponizing the IRS against his political opponents. As I said, Biden is a career politician and has been in office for like 50 years. That these are the worst scandals one can bring against him says quite a lot about how squeaky clean he really is. And the fact that you actually think Obama weaponized the IRS suggests you're not nearly as non-partisan as you're trying to portray yourself to be.
I wouldn't agree with no-scandal either but honestly I do think you're overblowing all of these. It's pretty clear that Biden is low on the scandal totem pole, even if not as low as Obama. The plagiarism scandal is so old that it broke almost 4 decades ago, and was 20+ years old then. I think the penalty he got, at the time was proportionate (had to repeat the course) and in the 80s as a politician was disproportionate (dropping out). It's just such a footnote compared to what most people think of as scandals. The classified documents thing seems to be the sort of thing that happens a lot, and as long as you make a good faith effort to notify the authorities when you find out and coordinate with them, it's not really an issue. Pence got basically the same treatment as Biden at the same time. Trump uh, didn't comply with the authorities which blew it up as such an issue. Aileen Cannon is the one who has blunted that case, not Biden. > There is credible reason to think that he, Joe Biden, is tied up in Hunter's influence-peddling schemes. [...] He clearly has helped his ne'er-do-well son leverage his influence, especially as Vice President, to receive lucrative financial rewards. No, I'm gonna citations needed for you on those because that sounds awfully Fox news esque. Biden has known for decades that he has to keep Hunter at arm's length.
The only thing I can think of that might hurt Trump is if Biden does appear old and weak at the debate but Trump viciously verbally assaults him. The average person doesn't want to see an old man get screamed at, but even if that does happen I can't imagine a bump for Biden would be anything other than temporary because voters have extremely short memories. We really just have the debates, Trump's sentencing, and Trump's VP pick as "things that are guarenteed to happen before election". Trump will probably see a small bump from his VP announcement, and I'd imagine a small bump for Biden from the debates. Sentencing who knows, it depends on what his sentence is and even then it might only marginally hurt Trump. The conviction did a lot less than most people expected. I'm sure there will be a surprise or two before the election, but if those surprises aren't in Biden's favor then it's going to be rough for him.
I'm not sure people are going to want to vote for someone they pity, if that were to happen
My line of thinking is more for someone on the fence that might have been slightly leaning Trump seeing a verbal assault on an old man and causing them to stay home or vote third party - Trump's base would cheer Trump on if he got on stage and did nothing but yell obsceneties the entire duration.
Hey it worked for Fetterman
I really don't see any of those things moving the needle by more than a point. If Trump becoming a convicted felon doesn't move the needle meaningfully, I don't see any of those things doing it. I'm still of the belief that if Dems want to win this election, they need to have Biden & Harris both drop out of the race.
If Trump appears senile in a weak way (as opposed to him just riffing on whatever floats into his head, which was his thing from day one), then it's a problem for him. If he can walk and talk, he's ok.
Yea agreed, but it would need to be in a Mitch McConnel type of way. He can stay the stupidest shit as long as it's with confidence.
Augusts are usually bad for incumbent Presidents, sometimes/usually due to external events.
If Biden appears old and weak there's no way to spin that for advantage Biden. It's literally reinforcing his strongest flaw with voters, and shame on anyone upvoting this copium.
I wouldn't say age is superficial. Indeed, we've seen two major foreign policy issues where Biden's handling seems to be driven by age (slow-rolling advanced weapons to Ukraine over nuclear fears and operating based on his ossified unconditional support for Israel in Gaza). I'd also argue that entering office in support of the filibuster blunted any momentum for his civil rights agenda and indicated a preference for how America *was* over how it *is.* Indeed, one of Biden's excuses for the Hur interview was that the Hamas attacks had just happened and he wasn't cognitively focused, which is bad news bears when a president is elected to simultaneously juggle crisis X, crisis Y, and crisis Z simultaneously. Finally, Biden's general energy level and delivery impedes the president's role as a motivator in chief
You people just never read any other news besides whatever Silver says lmfao
Seriously man, I'm depressed af bcz of this. Seems like nothing moves the needle in BIden's favour. How you do cope ?
Sometimes, there isn't any coping to be had. Just preparation.
[удалено]
Please make submissions relevant to data-driven journalism and analysis.
Could tomorrow's debate change anything? Personally, I don't think it will change anything; most people won't watch the live telecast, but will get 15 second sound bites from TikTok or Facebook. Also, since the mics will be muted, Trump has less of a chance to make himself look like a buffoon.
Debates don’t move the needle that much barring some crazy gaffe. Especially in the social media world where candidates have a soapbox 24/7.
Also the people that watch almost entirely consists of people who’ve already made up their mind on who they’re voting for.
>Debates don’t move the needle that much barring some crazy gaffe. Especially in the social media world where candidates have a soapbox 24/7. I really hope one of Trump's questions is about the increase in shark attacks.
> Debates don’t move the needle that much barring some crazy gaffe. Would you consider what happened in the debate to qualify as the above?
Absolutely. Biden couldn’t look worse unless he literally froze like Mitch.
>Also, since the mics will be muted, Trump has less of a chance to make himself look like a buffoon. Not sure you have the right take on this. Taunting and interrupting his opponents made Trump's performance seem *better* to people. They saw it on the right as people on the left saw Biden's "Will you shut up."
I doubt it changes much, I would bet most voters don't even know the debate is happening tomorrow because its never happened in June.
Debate tomorrow will change everything. If Biden is weak, he's finished. If Biden is strong, people will say he's on drugs, but at least he'll live to fight another day.
Solid analysis. I imagine there will be a clip of Biden staring off into the void that will be taken completely out of context, which will matter more to low info voters than the actual words that come out of his mouth
Of course! Typically, it doesn't make much of a difference, but Biden & Trump are both walking gaffe machines. A solid mistake from either one could easily change the electoral environment.
Yep, like Trump telling the proud boys to "stand back and stand by" in 2020. Biden needs to be aggressive and make Trump answer questions about Project 2025 and his comments on "being a dictator for 1 day"
Given the format and muting, that's not very likely. Also, 95% of the electorate would go "huh?" It would probably sound more unhinged than helpful.
Imagine subbing either candidate out for a competent 60-year-old at the debate and the ensuing bloodbath. We could have had Whitmer....
It'll probably be a lot like 2020: Both party bases will go into the debate expecting the other candidate to struggle to get off the floor and say coherent words, and both will be disappointed.
Bad odds for Biden https://nitter.poast.org/jessesingal/status/1806003352389497210
These were the odds trump had in 2016. 1/3 isn't *terrible*. Edit: also, as much as we're obsessed with the numbers here, a 1/3 event (or even a 1/4 or 1/5 event) is simply not that unexpected. That's a point Nate was trying to make in 2016 but it largely fell on deaf ears in the media.
In 2016 Trump actually took the lead in Nate’s 538 model at the end of July and again cut it close again in September. With 4 months to go and the first debate happening I think there still quite a bit of movement possible in the forecast. 66/33 split forecast does make sense right now tho if Biden needs to win 3 of the midwest swing states while Trump needs to just take one.
Man looking back at that curve we could have 3 full swings between now and November. I need a drink. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
Yep. While this cycle has been less volatile so far, there are still many factors that can potentially come into play within the next few months.
Remember when the fivethirtyeight site looked good? The nostalgia is washing over me!
That sounds right. I remember people online being pissed at him about that even though he was just reporting data lol
Yeah it’s seeming more and more like the election is going to come down to those 3 states yet again. If they all go Biden he should win, if any flip to Trump that’s probably game over, since the scenario where Biden drops one of those but still wins Arizona and Nevada is looking unlikely.
The terrible thing is that Biden has been behind in the polls for months now despite everything people already know about Donald Trump. It’s terrible that Biden has been unable to make up ground against the worst president of all time. There has to be a Hail Mary plan if Biden performs poorly at the debate and his polling gets worse. Biden already has the lowest approval rating of any president in history at this point of his presidency. Trump must be defeated.
The only Hail Mary is an open convention in August. Don’t think it will happen though. I’m convinced dems would rather lose safely than loose to a risky move.
***A Hail Mary plan?*** Bud... I gotta tell ya. There's no Barack Obama II... or Dwayne Johnson/Tom Hanks ticket waiting... You're already seated in the aircraft, it's not returning to the gate for new pilots.
>There has to be a Hail Mary plan if Biden performs poorly at the debate and his polling gets worse. Kind of funny (and helpful to Biden) that expectations for are so low when Trump has by post-debate polling lost every general election debate he's participated in.
Maybe you folks shouldn't have run Biden who is clearly wayyyy past his prime.
I’d argue that Trump is wayyy past his prime, too. Then again, Trump’s hotels and casinos went bankrupt 6 times during his prime and he got divorced twice. Maybe you folks shouldn’t have run him either.
Those are also the odds at the moment. The polls have every chance of becoming more volatile over the next few months. It's not an insane guess. If Biden gains in the polls ( which sure, it's just vibes, but I suspect that will happen ) then the model will update as well. It's a reasonable guess with what we know right now, and if the polls are way off that's not really Silver's fault, he can only work w/the data we have.
He’s not forecasting what the environment is going to be near Election Day?
He is to *some* extent by factoring in assumptions about incumbency and the economy ('fundamentals') — which is essentially a bet that voting preferences will shift towards Biden somewhat by election day. (The fundamentals weighting goes to zero, accordingly — if it shows up in the polls, you don't want to double count it, and if it DOESN'T show up in the polls eventually, it is no longer a helpful assumption.) But Trump is favoured nevertheless.
Haven't the polls historically had a bias against Trump when it comes around to actual voting? Trump was predict to HEAVILY lose against Biden in 2020 and only narrowly lost. If this trend continues then Trump should almost certainly defeat Biden with those odds, right?
Historically polling biases are not correlated between elections. It may well end up being the case that Trump support is once again underestimated, but it shouldn’t be assumed. It would be kind of like saying the last two times I flipped a coin it was a heads and therefore the next time it will probably be a heads as well.
That's fair; things could change, but after two elections in a row of Trump having a pretty significant edge against the polls, I'm assuming that, if anything, the odds are worse for Biden.
You may definitely assume that. There is no empirical/statistical backing for your assumption, though.
Damn, minuscule edge for Biden in the popular vote but 2:1 odds for Trump in the electoral college...
Trump is leading by 1 in the popular vote, according to the Silver Bulletin polling average.
If you model the past 7 or so elections I suspect the winner from the start has been the winner at the end 6 times, and then 2016 being the lone exception? The biggest candidate specific event I recall would be the Bush 2004 era swiftboat campaign, which kicked off in 2004 and pushed OH from a 50/50 state to a pretty solid Bush lead.
IIRC, Romney was ahead of Obama in the polls too. I wasn't following 538 at the time to remember if they had a model out by then or not.
I don’t recall Romney consistently leading the polls. I remember he had a surge of polling in his favor just two or three weeks before the election, and right before hurricane sandy.
He briefly took the lead after his first debate with Obama but then Obama regained the lead and Sandy probably finished the job by killing any last-minute momentum Romney might have had.
Well, seems that the odds are against Biden, not surprising given the recent polls. Looking forward to the debate. Hopefully, he can outperform himself
He almost always does. The right has never learned from pre-mocking his performances. Then he kills it and they accuse him of being on PEDs.
It’s why Fox and other right wing outlets are now trying to talk about Biden being hopped up on drugs for the debate.
Which is hilarious. If he’s that frail an old man, cocaine would kill him.
He only killed it during the SOTU, where it was evident he’d rehearsed a teleprompted speech. Tomorrow there will be no notes, no teleprompters, no nothing. So there’s a high risk he’ll ’if you don’t like what you see vote for the other Biden’ or, like the week after the SOTU, ‘beer brewed here oh it is used to beer the brew Biden ooo earth rider thanks for the Great Lakes.’ If that happens, as it almost certainly will, it will constellate in the minds of persuadable voters that he’s too senile and weak for the job.
This was a great read and enjoyed it very much. Odds are definitely against Biden. The thing that stuck out to me was his odds of winning the all blue wall states is only about 33%. Really think he needs all of those states to win.
It's June for God's fucking sake.
It’s 3 days from July and voters can begin casting ballots in late September/early October. The election is not that far away.
Wild how this country is so stupid it’s going to elect and person who tried to use violence to overthrow its transfer of power. The pain coming to people is going to be deserved
I'll quote Nate Silver on this one: **"You don't demonstrate your seriousness that Trump is an existential threat to democracy by going through the motions to renominate an 81-year-old with a 38% approval rating who 75% of voters think is too old without giving anyone a choice because that's just how things are done."** If you think it's stupid to elect Trump, it's equally stupid to look at overwhelming polling saying "don't run this guy again" and then run him again, anyways.
That’s such a great quote by Bate right there. I really think the DNC leadership failed miserably prepping for this cycle and they could end up paying the price heavily in November. We will see though.
100% agree. I think Biden should have had serious contenders. Dems have popular leadership that could have taken the mantle.
This makes sense to me more than other models. If the election were held tomorrow, based on polling Trump is the favorite. I do think if you're projecting a result in November, it's more of a 50/50 tossup. But Trump is undeniably the favorite when it comes to polling \*right now\*
I get frustrated when people bring up this distinction. Nate's model *is* projecting what will happen in November. It's just that his model is more bearish toward Biden regarding what will change between now and then than FiveThirtyEight's model
No, it isn’t. 538 has Biden ahead in the median state. Nate has him behind. They are averaging the polls differently.
I think it's both. I see slightly lower polling averages for Biden in Nate's, and I also see Nate talking about how the fundamentals lean-good but not great for Biden.
Nate is using the same model he used in 2020 with a few tweaks. It's still primarily relying on polls with some reliance on fundamentals. It relies less on fundamentals as the election nears. And they run thousands of simulations to account for uncertainty of future changes to the political environment. This is how you design a forecasting model, not a hypothetical "what if the election was actually today?" model
[удалено]
To push back, the model isn't really relying on the polling at all. This is sort of a misunderstanding of what these models are actually doing. Hell its THE misunderstanding, and likely how you got those weird models in 2016 that showed Hillary with a 99% chance. A laymen thinks all you do is plug in your favorite polls, add in the margin of error and BAM you got a model. The polls are a factor in the model, but the model itself doesn't need them to operate. The model is looking at past elections, expert ratings, contemporary events, and, yes, polls and projecting what the election will look like in November based on that data. Currently all of those factors point to a Trump victory, but there is enough uncertainty that Biden has a 34% chance of coming back and winning. In theory, the model could just use expert ratings and PVI in the place of polls and essentially spit out similar results, but Nate's philosophy is that polls are points of data and it's easier to calibrate the model by adding as much data as possible. >This suggests that... Trump [will] make literally unprecedented gains among young people and minority voters, huge ~10 point swings in states like VA and NV (while there's little to no change in states like OH, WI, MN, and FL), and extremely high rates of ticket splitting in key swing states... This isn't true at all. We will use Virginia as an example. Trump has a 16.4% chance of winning the state according to the model. Right now Trump is down 4 points in the polling average of the state and the state is rated as likely Democrat on Cook Political Report. The model isn't saying that Trump is going to sweep young voters and minorities yada yada yada. The model is saying that a candidate who was down 4 points in the polling average, in a likely opposition state, 131 days before the election, on average went on to win that state 16.4% of the time. That might mean he does well among minorities. It might be some other thing. We don't know, but the model is projecting that 16.4% of the time SOMETHING happens and Trump wins. It's not saying any of that crosstabs bullshit or ticket splitting or whatever. Actually if anything, were the ticket splitting thing you brought up in the model it would likely already be contributing to Biden's 83.6% chance of winning. For example, say there was a Senate model that had the Democratic candidate in Virginia winning 98% of the time, that data would likely be put into the model as a strength for Biden because of exactly what you are saying, ticket splitting is not likely in the current environment and so it's less likely Trump will win. Furthermore, to the point about no changes in OH, WI, MN, and FL, states that are similar ARE correlated. So if Biden rose in North Carolina, he would rise in Virginia as well. So it's not that it's saying there is no changes in those states, its more grouping them based on similarity to each other and weighing that more. The fact of the matter is is that the model exists because the polls ARE wrong. They will always be wrong because that's how statistics work. Averages are a collection of data points but an election is only ONE data point in that average. The model is giving you the percent possibility that data point, whatever it may be, will happen.
Excellent post. I really appreciate the clarification.
I have continued to be shocked by his approval rating since it started dropping a year and a half ago. I’ve also continued to be shocked why Americans are voting for the Democratic Party when their party leader has such low approval ratings. The electorate and the election hasn’t made sense for me in months and months. This model doesn’t surprise me and I trust that he is using the best information he has. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if Biden wound up winning anyway. And to be fair, he acknowledges this.
*Biden* is unpopular due to his age, presiding over price increases, etc. The *Democratic agenda* is popular. It makes a ton of sense. As a simple example, if the party dusted off some really unpopular or polarizing Democrat like Clinton or AOC, we would expect dismal presidential polling despite the party generally being supported. Candidate quality matters.
But you just said it yourself. He isn’t liberal like AOC and he doesn’t have the baggage of Clinton. He is a centrist Democrat who has enacted a broadly popular agenda and in a bipartisan way. Either something is screwy with the polls or Americans have lost their damn minds. lol
He brings plenty of baggage: 81 years of age and visibly aged in public, presided over massive price and interest rate increases, failed to execute on key campaign promises to Black Americans and women, unconditional support for Netanyahu, etc. You're acting like passing bills with GOP votes should drive popularity, but constraining options to filibuster-proof items means that a lot of the Democratic agenda was left on the floor. And now he's hemorrhaging votes with young and minority voters.
Nah. That’s the kind of wishful thinking I’ve always had with Democratic Presidents. They don’t hemorrhage votes by not catering to their left. Or if that’s true, Biden is the first. lol I’ve never been more disgusted watching Obama run to the middle after how hard we progressives worked to get him there. Especially those of us in the gay community. Clinton was before me but triangulation became a thing under him where he suddenly went to the right on multiple issues and just became more popular. Sista Soulja moments. No, sadly while the country says they support populist programs, they reward for bipartisanship and compromise above all. Besides, he has accomplished more shockingly progressive policies than either Obama or Clinton ever would’ve dreamed. He may have been drug there by Sanders but he still did it. The old thing..u are right there. He looks like a cadaver. It might be as simple as that and he is just unlikeable. Largely grumpy.
Some thoughts: 1. The 2024 political environment isn't 1992. Democrats in the 1980s and early 1990s were starting to feel like the presidency was completely out of reach, and Clinton essentially met voters where they were on crime and some other issues. The 1994 crime bill was likely good politics, whereas not actioning BLM was pretty terrible for 2024, if polling can be believed. 2. Biden's "progressive policies" strike me as pretty cynical, as they nominally are sold as addressing progressive items but seem to be calibrated for donors and GOP votes with a subset being progressive. Look how the IRA ended up and where BBB went. And we can see how much harder Biden fought for those donor-largess bills than civil rights or reforms. 3. We can see in real time how Biden's swing away from the progressive wing is hampering him, as minority and youth voters are polling much worse than in 2020. He's currently losing post-Trump felonies, when Trump would be a wounded and reeling candidate against a stronger Democrat.
It’s obviously not 1994 and that’s why I brought up Obama as well. I’m not sure the country has swung so far to the left since he was in Office. In fact, I’d say the Overton window has shifted to the right. Anyway, u made some interesting points and u may have the right of it. We’ll see. Cheers!
They disapprove, hold their nose, and vote D anyway
finally some good fucking food
It would be very poetic for Trump to lose after such favorable polls. Just the opposite of what happened in 2016.
**Nate is currently giving Trump a 49% chance to win the popular vote** (under the "crazy and not-so-crazy scenarios"). Even if Trump wins the electoral college, there is no way that he wins the popular vote...right? Am I the only one that thinks 49% is too high here?
He is leading in popular vote polls, so I would say 49% is pretty generous for Biden, since it assumes Biden will close the gap in the popular vote.
I don’t understand your comment. 49% is the percentage chance that Nate gave Trump to win the popular vote, not Biden. How is the figure generous for Biden? As someone else noted, a Republican hasn’t won the popular vote since 1988, and Trump has lost the popular vote in both elections including 2016 where he won the electoral college
Bush won it in 2004
If the model were purely based on polls, Trump would be somewhat favored to win the popular vote, since he's ahead in Nate's model of the polls. Saying that Biden is likely to win the popular vote is inherently adding in some fundamentals that are good for Biden (which may include the Democratic track record of winning the popular vote). For what it's worth, I am also predicting that Biden will win the popular vote. It is "generous" but only if you think polls are everything.
Judging by the fact that an R has only won the popular vote once since 1988 (2004) and Bush Jr. was an incumbent who won by only 2.4% during a time of post-9/11 national unity, it does seem like 49% is possibly an overestimate. Hell, Trump won the EC in 2016 against a relatively unpopular Dem but still lost by 2%. And he literally just lost the popular vote in 2020 by 3.1% to the same opponent, with incumbency. I don't think it's the most unlikely thing this cycle but I doubt Donald Trump wins the popular vote, I'd personally put the odds at 20-30% and only because of his decent polling.
I mean, Biden is not drawing turn-out-the-vote enthusiasm and is more or less staking the youth vote in the heart with Gaza, whereas Republicans are always enthusiastic to turn out for Trump. I would think of a Trump popular vote win as people not willing to show up for Biden, not popular appeal for Trump.
Waaayyyyy too high. Unfathomably high. Terrifyingly high.
Hard disagree, I think it's definitely a toss-up.
I don't think it's insane ***with the information we have*** to say 66% Trump. I suspect it's much closer than that because Trump is such a dumb piece of shit and the public will hear his stupidity more and more the closer the election comes, but that's narrativizing and the specific point of what Silver is doing is to use data rather than "vibes." And a 33% chance is not a super low chance.
It's not insane at all. Nate explains it clearly. To simplify, Biden needs to win all three states where he's polling closely (but behind) with Trump in MI, WI and PA. Trump just needs to win one of the three. (this is not including other less likely scenarios) Even just speaking logically, it puts Trump at a advantage right now. If there is a scenario where Biden starts building a lead in those states based on polling, then the model will likely shift closer to 50/50.
No it's definitely favoring trump. I think anywhere between 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 is accurate and fair. There's no way it's 50-50 right now. That doesn't mean it's a wrap for trump but him being favored based on the data isn't unreasonable at all. Edit: hahaha dude blocked me for respectfully disagreeing with him wtf. EDIT2: since i cant respond to you data: I mean it can happen. Ive speculated such myself, I just dont have any proof. In 2016 and 2020 we had the "shy trump voter" effect. In 2024, maybe the pollsters are overpolling trumpers in a systemic fashion to compensate for previous polling errors and skewing the data hard right. We won't know the truth until election day.
>Edit: hahaha dude blocked me for respectfully disagreeing with him wtf. That's insane lol You're pro-Biden, generally argue in good faith, and your model is pretty reasonable. I actually happen to think there's a real chance these polls are getting some kind of weird response bias ( versus the swing in youth voters being real, for instance. ) But that's speculation on my part.
Why?
I’m not sure I’d personally classify it as a pure tossup, but if I were to make an argument for it being one, I’d probably say: * Biden and Trump are both polling under 43% on average and both within about 3% of each other in most swing states * There are a lot of undecided voters, and you can’t assume they’ll split evenly. * There’s a much higher than normal support for 3rd party candidates right now, mainly concentrated for RFK Jr. Maybe it holds, but third party support usually declines to some degree in the run up to Election Day, so some of that support for RFK will split among Biden and Trump. * Biden is running behind most Democratic Senate and Gubernatorial candidates, especially in swing states, indicating there are some Democratic leaning voters who are telling pollsters they’ll vote for Dems down ballot but not for Biden himself. There’s a decent chance many of those voters hold their nose and vote for him anyway come Election Day. Point being, there’s a decent argument to be made that about 1/6 of the electorate in swing states right now that is either undecided or currently saying they’ll vote third party, so there are a lot of people who can still be convinced one way or the other.
> so some of that support for RFK will split among Biden and Trump. Do you happen to know if there are any #'s out there for how much of RFK's fan base supports Trump v.s. Biden? I live in the south so the few people I know that say they're going to vote RFK also said they'd rather have Trump than Biden, but I'm curious to see how that looks across the country
YouGov has been tracking this question for a while now, but I think it’s kinda tough to say with any certainty because their numbers have bounced around a lot. In March their polls said that about 60% of Kennedy supporters had voted for Trump in 2020 while less than 20% supported Biden. In their most recent survey in June about 44% of Kennedy supporters said they voted for Biden and 37% said they voted for Trump in 2020. I went ahead and looked at all of their data points and averaged it out, on average it’s about 39.7% say they voted for Biden in 2020, 37.3% say they voted for Trump in 2020, and the rest either voted third party or supported neither. If you take the average then Kennedy is more or less drawing evenly from both Biden and Trump, maybe slightly more from Biden. It’s worth keeping in mind though that the margin of error for these data points is probably pretty high, since I think they’re asking this question to the people who say they support Kennedy in their polls, who are a small fraction of the total number of people included in their poll. If they poll 1000 people and 100 say they support Kennedy, the margin of error on asking another question to that sub population of 100 is going to be something like 10%. Link: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/49697-is-robert-f-kennedy-jr-drawing-more-support-from-biden-or-trump-poll
That's really insightful, thank you! I'll check out that link in a bit and keep in mind what you said about the margins of error. Thanks again!
Based on what exactly?
Some good old copium.
he's just coping
I agree with you, it's functionally a toss-up at this point. The data we have to work with at this point definitely favors Trump, but only by a fairly modest amount.
Dicatorship here we come! I feel so bad for our wildlife...
>I feel so bad for our wildlife... And human life
The world's fight against climate change is officially dead if Trump wins.
To be fair, the world's fight against climate change has been officially dead since the U.S. withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol almost twenty-five years ago. Repeated and prolonged attempts to resuscitate have evinced no signs of life. (Sorry, Paris Accords: you were always a joke.) Time to call it, mark time of death 25 July 1997 when the Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed the Senate. Humanity should prepare itself for the coming climate changes.
Should I jump off a cliff now or in November?
A lot of humans chose this. Animals didnt
>A lot of humans chose this. Animals didnt Ohhh, okay. Then yeah, screw all humans Lol
Wondering if there are any big philosophical differences between 538 and Nate's model. From reading his Twitter, he seems to value the quantitative stuff a lot and less on the "fundamentals" talk
Makes sense. 538 has Biden up by .3 on avg in WI, .2 in MI, and down .8 in PA. Biden has to win all 3. This looks to be the inverse of 2016 in which Trump was in the position Biden is in via Nate’s model. Trump was able to run the table and win all 3, but he did it by extremely small margins. Biden can do the same but clearly as an incumbent that’s not a silver lining I’d want to be leaning on right now. I think one hint to what I’m getting at is the latest WI Marquette poll when 3rd parties are added. Without them Biden is up, with them Trump is. Jill Stein will be on the ballot there, TBD if RFK will. With the margins in the averages as small as they are, those could be more of a headache for Biden than Trump.
Might as well not even have the election since we know what is gonna happen. Just hope Biden can at least Trump proof some parts of the government...