I am not a big fan of Joe Biden, for all sorts of reasons. But I so want this to be right:
This Economist page looks to be worth following. This election matters. It's about democracy, and so much more than that even.
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Lilly livered or not – we need the Democrats in for sure.
Ironically Trump as the former CEO of the TV series version of “The Apprentice” appears to have “fired” himself last night in the presidential debate. Today Biden is busy confirming the last rites!
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/09/30/trump-biden-proud-boys-biden-video.html
American TV version of course.
Trump ain’t going nowhere. Only trouble ahead.
Not many reasons to be cheerful right now, but I am rather looking forward to November this year.
Nate Silver makes the contest narrower:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
There’s an article on fivethirtyeight pointing out how the electoral college system favours republicans. I seem to recall fivethirtyeight had Clinton 67% likely to win four years ago. The election was decided by something like 70 000 voters in 3 key states winning the electoral college for Republicans despite Democrats winning the popular vote.
Clinton was 67% chance to win the electoral college. But her polling estimated average was below 50%. Joe Bidden is well above 50%, which makes it much harder for trump this time to beat ‘expert opinion’.
In Trump’s favour is the fact that it is a long time that a president was not reelected. In recent decades Americans have reelected their presidents, even when they were disliked.
In Biden’s favour; no president has been as unpopular in their first term as Trump. And Biden is probably the strongest candidate running against an incumbent president since Reagan.
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight is also worth a look.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/
Trump won four years ago. He is the incumbent. He can win again. But in the meantime he is likely to get his third nominee on the Supreme Court to skew its decisions for three or four decades.
Being smart is a big deal to Donald Trump and it’s easy enough to figure out that this was drilled into him by his sociopath father. However, by his own actions in the presidential debate, constant interruption and refusal to categorically condemn extremist groups of the right as well as the left, he’s allowed Joe Biden to play him like a not very bright fish. It will be Biden pointing this out in a wide variety of ways to independent voters and indeed traditional Republican Party voters during the remaining run-up to election day that will see the demise of president Trump.
I agree
If anyone thought Trump could win by being an oaf they were wrong
According to the Bookies, the odds on Biden have been cut slightly but not dramatically following the debate.
The reason for this according to the NY Times is because they anticipate the tampering of mail voting (this will sound familiar to some in Scotland) and Trump encouraging his supporters to turn up at polling places ‘to prevent fraud’. – yeah right (Trump has also installed one of his loyal supporters to head the US Postal Service).
I think it’s a certainty that Biden will win the coasts but it will depend on the interior where the conservative (note the small c) folk will have to balance their love for self sufficiency plus hatred of political correctness and red tape against Trump’s obvious incompetence.
I feel there are similar parallels here with installing a Government of National Unity. Could the conservatives with a small c tip the balance?
Although Biden wasn’t exactly scintillating, he came over as a normal empathetic human being with a sense of humour and an understanding of people’s everyday concerns and problems.This was a very winning contrast to Trump’s snarling empty humourless narcissism.
Firstly: 19 in 20 is not 98%, it’s 95% and 1 in 20 is not 2%, it’s 5%. I’d have hoped the Economist could do basic arithmetic.
Secondly: Trump will not lose the election. If he loses the vote count he will decree that the election was corrupted, annul the result and “for the good of the country” remain in office. If the Democrats take legal action against this it will be heard by the Supreme Court. That’s why he has been so diligent in stuffing it with his puppets.
Or maybe there will be a civil war. That would be the worst outcome for all of us (except Putin and Xi!?!)
In this presentation some data is abandon, and the rest is not
The Economist knows only too well that most people have not a clue what a percentage means and are appropriately offering multiple and near enough similar bases for interpretation as a result. I applaud them for doing so.
And you forget the role of the US military and that they hate him.
There is reason why Biden is talking up his late son as a military veteran
“The Economist knows only too well that most people have not a clue what a percentage means and are appropriately offering multiple and near enough similar bases for interpretation as a result. I applaud them for doing so.“
They are misrepresenting data.. and you support that?
Give your head a shake!!
I stand by what I said
Your comment suggests that it is you who does not comprehend data
I suggest you go and learn about it
I plead guilty to being a pedant on the stats and I do get it that the evidence strongly indicates a Biden win. My real concern is that such obvious errors risk undermining the essential message.
I hope you’re right about the US military. I don’t understand the US well enough to have a view of the likelihood of them turning against the Commander in Chief.
George –
The report says “Less that 1 in 20 or around 2%” and “Better than 19 in 20 or around 98%”.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. Less that 1 in 20 could be 0.4, i.e. 2%. Better than 19 in 20 could be 19.6… you get the idea. I hope.
Reading comprehension is a Good Thing.
Well, 2% is less than 1 in 20, and 98% is more than 19 in 20.
They don’t disclose the raw percentages, but if you look at the graph of “Modelled popular vote on each day” you’ll see that the 95% confidence intervals still show Biden getting more popular votes than Trump.
I suspect 98% and 2% are around the actual predicted percentage for each winning the popular vote, which they could have called “around 49 in 50” and “around 1 in 50” if their data allows that level of confidence.
Given the potential errors, they are probably right to say “better than 19 in 20” and “less than 1 in 20” – and to avoid confusion should have said “more than 95%” and “less than 5%”. You could think of it as inconsistency in rounding.
You could also just all it addressing the 95% who don’t understand percentages
Even amongst Economist readers