2020 Electoral College Predictions Discussion

It is admittedly pessimistic for Biden, and I don’t believe that it necessarily reflects the true preferences of the majority of eligible voters in some close states. But it does reflect my pessimism about the effectiveness of various voter suppression tactics and relative turnout and polling inaccuracies. I’m basically assuming that Biden or the Dem Senate candidate has to be up by 4% in the polls before I believe he/they will actually win the state/district.

Some good news?

Updating my prediction to include Nebraska’s 2nd district in Biden’s column. So that makes it 280-258.

Again… admittedly pessimistic. Which is kind of optimistic in a way. Biden can lose Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Arizona and still win with enough electoral votes to spare that we shouldn’t need to worry that a faithless vote will send things to the House/Senate.

Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina are all must wins for Trump and should be early reporters, so if any of them go for Biden we could be in for a relatively early call on the election (obviously not before midnight).

What’s the tipping point state?

Agree… it’s hard to imagine a Trump path to victory that doesn’t include all four of those.

According to www.electoral-vote.com it’s PA at Biden +6. Which probably means more like Biden +2-3, which means that Biden probably has it.

They are claiming that Nevada is down to Biden +4, but based on 2016 the polling was more accurate the further west you went. So I’m not sure I believe that Trump has a chance in Nevada. :woman_shrugging:

For Biden there are several possibilities. For Trump there is only Pennsylvania and he also has to win all the states that are possibly Biden tipping points. I think Biden is going to surprise and win one of Georgia, Florida, or Texas and that will be the big shock that basically ends the election.

Florida is a fast reporting state generally, so I’m hopeful it’s Florida and the results will be pretty well known on election night. I think there’s a 75% we know Biden won (after midnight) on election night. If trump ends up winning, we don’t know for sure until like Friday.

I can’t imagine there is any accurate model out there for this election.

I’ve very hopeful for a 350+ point electoral vote for biden as a striking rebuke to Trump and the current GOP. If dems get it, let’s hope they don’t screw it up by 2022 and lose a bunch of congressional seats.

This has been what I’ve been trying to figure out. If 150M+ People vote, does Trump come anywhere near 70M votes? He received 63M votes in 2016. I imagine a lot of voters (5%) aren’t going to vote for him again. So is he really picking up 9+M votes somewhere?

A shameless plug for my prediction contest since this is a similar topic thread: Contest! Predict the 2020 Swing State Winners and Margins!

So the question that my Dad keeps asking me when I tell him that Biden is going to win is this: Who voted for Trump in 2016 that will vote for Biden in 2020?

By election day 2016 we already knew that Trump was a foul-mouthed ass, so that won’t turn off very many of his 2016 voters. Some of them are dead. Some will have been affected by Covid-19 and think he did a bad job managing that. 5% of his supporters though? I dunno.

I think it’s more going to be his horrendous Presidency resulting in a massive uptick of Dem turnout and a small shift of 2016 3rd party voters to the Dem. I personally know both Johnson-Biden and Stein-Biden voters (and am a Johnson-Biden voter myself). Not too many, but I think there’s potentially enough such voters to help move the needle on some very close states.

I think there were people that broke late for him that regret it. Also some who didn’t realize how terribly he would run everything.

And yes, the 3rd party voters and more generally independent are going to break biden this year as well.

Half of them are deplorable, so no hope of switching their votes and stopping them from getting in their trucks to intimidate voters.
The other half? Well, Biden’s not black and not a woman. Might be all they need to hold their noses and vote out someone who’s lied 20,000 times to America.

Also, Hillary was a bad candidate that turned off voters.

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I voted for Johnson in 2016 and I voted for Biden in 2020.

But, I’m not claiming I’m a “typical” Johnson voter.

A few.

My uncle was horrified that I voted for Biden and I pointed out that Trump did himself a disservice by nominating ACB when he did. Because a vacancy on the Supreme Court would be one of the few reasons to vote for Trump, since I will probably like ACB better than a Biden nominee. (I’m not actually sure if this is true or not, but it was easier to just assume that it’s true in this particular conversation than get into a conversation with my uncle about how Biden would be nominating the devil incarnate.) But now that she’s already seated, what possible reason is there to vote for Trump? The possibility that Breyer will kick the bucket? Meh. So he gets replaced with another liberal.

So if there are others on the edge who also think they would prefer Trump nominees to Biden nominees, there’s one less reason to vote for Trump now. And yeah, perhaps he’s been worse than they thought, particularly with Covid.

I doubt he’s more crass than they thought.