Board 8 > Biden | 40,962,735 | 57.64% | Trump | 27,258,817 | 38.36% [Ng Election Tracker!]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yes just for fun I'm treating this more like a GameFAQs poll where only total votes matter, but as I mention in the opening post, in reality Trump would be in okay shape as long as he keeps it within 3%.

Gotta admit I don't quite understand Pennsylvania... both campaigns have made it their #1 investment and voter enthusiasm was very high in the polling, so I expected to see that at around 60% like all the other battlegrounds. The only headline I've seen said there's been a great turnout with younger voters and over 350k 35 years and younger have sent back their mail in ballots. Maybe they aren't making all their data available publicly for some reason, so what we're seeing is only a partial count.

LeonhartFour posted...

wow Ngamer taking shots at my profession

I was picking up mail-in ballots yesterday in fact

I appreciate your service!

UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://twitter.com/saletan/status/1322912856153739266?s=19

"But it's not a conspiracy"

Legit don't understand how anyone with even 1/9th of a brain doesn't think the Rs are gonna try to cheat this thing.

Yes, this is what really makes my blood boil. "He's going to steal the election!" "How?" "By counting every vote!"

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I predict Biden will be caught stuffing at a 2:1 rate over Trump

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People will be upset as polls stay open after the deadline and stragglers vote.

Ngamer64 posted...

Yes just for fun I'm treating this more like a GameFAQs poll where only total votes matter, but as I mention in the opening post, in reality Trump would be in okay shape as long as he keeps it within 3%.

Gotta admit I don't quite understand Pennsylvania... both campaigns have made it their #1 investment and voter enthusiasm was very high in the polling, so I expected to see that at around 60% like all the other battlegrounds. The only headline I've seen said there's been a great turnout with younger voters and over 350k 35 years and younger have sent back their mail in ballots. Maybe they aren't making all their data available publicly for some reason, so what we're seeing is only a partial count.

I appreciate your service!

Yes, this is what really makes my blood boil. "He's going to steal the election!" "How?" "By counting every vote!"

Theyre also suing in TX to try and get 117k totally legitimate votes that were cast using drive through voting thrown out. They failed in state court (because its obvious ridiculous; even if you were to for some reason conclude that they shouldnt have allowed that voting method the harm of throwing out those votes is way higher than the harm against the state legislature that theyre claiming exists), but theyre also trying in federal court and got an apparently notoriously partisan judge whos scheduled a hearing for tomorrow.

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If you cut off a friendship over politics, you have something seriously wrong with you. That is cult behavior. Miss me with that nonsense. I happily talk with anyone from any walk of life. You beat bad ideas with good ideas, not with youre an asshole and I will dig my heels in and never talk to you again.

Friendly reminder Ulti unfriended me on Facebook because I called him on his racist, right-wing bullshit AND has me blocked on here because he's too inarticulate to offer any defense of his opinions.

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I mean we have a population of 7 billion people.

I'm sure I could replace any Trump humper with a friend of equal quality.

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With mail in voting slowing and less mail being processed because it was a Sunday, today was Trump's best chance to earn a Daily W. Did he pull it off?

Results From The Last 24 Hours
New Votes Cast 1,967,744
Biden Votes (estimated) 987,074
Trump Votes (estimated) 879,876

...not even close! In fact given expectations, and how much ground he has to make up, this could be considered Trump's worst showing of the election season so far. Despite the votals being lower, Biden looked awesome in extending his lead by a further 107,198 votes. More importantly, Trump failed to make a dent in Joe's percentage, as he cut the lead by only 0.23% (after being closer to a full point the last two days).

Trump's problem is that early In-Person voting had already wrapped up in some of the largest states, so even though fewer mail in ballots were processed, he wasn't able to take advantage of it. (It was about equal today with 1 million of each type of vote being counted.)

That leaves us with an overall status of
94,006,161 Total Early Votes Cast
(68.2% of 2016's total)

52,589,513 Biden Votes (estimated)
37,451,585 Trump Votes (estimated)
15,137,928 Current Lead (estimated)

55.94% Biden Total Percentage (estimated)
39.84% Trump Total Percentage (estimated)
16.10% Current Lead (estimated)

Two bright spots for Trump. #1 he didn't lose too much in terms of Election Day % needed, thanks to today's lower vote total. He needs to pull down 63.6% of all remaining ballots- which is still crazy, but at least it's only up 0.6% versus yesterday.

And #2, Professor McDonald now predicts we're going to see 162 million votes cast in 2020, up from his original estimate of 150. That would come out to 67% of all eligible voters in this country, which is insane considering we usually struggle to get out of the 50s! If he's right it does give Trump more of a runway to stage a comeback versus what I've been plotting in the sheet.

Speaking of the Professor, if you have a minute I highly recommend reading his almost-final state by state predictions based on the early vote stats:

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/Early_Vote_Analysis_11_01.html

A summary would be that registered Democrats are significantly more engaged this cycle across the board, but their increased turnout is overshadowed by a huge surge in first time/infrequent/not-registered-to-any-party voters. This last group is what's driven the record setting totals throughout the country, and their preference will ultimately be what decides this election.

As always, more details in the sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NTMEI1vn58ET9WOWPUg2tOFnOOsQZFCqRvOvx68CpOs/edit?usp=sharing

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Ngamer64 posted...

Gotta admit I don't quite understand Pennsylvania

There's nothing really to understand. No votes will be counted until 7 AM tomorrow. You can't draw a conclusion from an absence of information.

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My predictions: https://www.270towin.com/maps/JndLz

If you believe 538's model, this is actually something like the modal outcome!

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Handing Trump that big a whooping might be the only way to keep him from contesting the results, but I think that's probably a little too optimistic. Giving Biden Texas and Iowa, while satisfying, seems unlikely. Even Ohio, I wouldn't really question.

However, even at that point, Trump still needs to run the table on Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. We'd need some across the board polling errors for that to materialize, since all the projections are based on local polling rather than national.

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Yes, but there's lots of states that aren't allowed to start officially counting the mail in ballots until tomorrow morning, Wisconsin is one of them. All the other battleground states are registering the ballots as "received" in the official database but not checking who they've voted for, which is where all these numbers come from. Penn isn't doing that part.

Ultimately it won't matter, it's just annoying right now because we're flying nearly blind on what might be the #1 most important state this year.


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Yeah, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania can't start counting mail in until tomorrow, and at least for Pennsylvania it is supposed to take forever to do it as they have to verify each ballot.

As mail in lean strong democrat and in person is likely to lean Trump, you have a situation where Trump may be leading Pennsylvania tomorrow night with a lot of ballots left to count. Trump has signaled he is going to declare victory in this situation, and have lawyers try to stop them from counting the mail in votes. There are six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three of which Trump appointed himself.

I'm not optimistic things will go well!

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Which is why I'm hoping some of that list I mentioned above go visibly democrat beforehand. Florida is the most likely, in terms of how early their results will be available.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/both-candidates-might-fall-short-of-270-electoral-votes-on-election-night-but-how-close-might-they-get/

Theres also Florida in the 8 p.m. hour. And while were not sure who will win here either, the state is different from Maine and Pennsylvania in that we shouldnt have to wait long to find out. Given how fast Florida counts votes, it would not be a surprise if we get enough results to know who won there shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern. ...That said, whoever wins Florida one of the likeliest tipping-point states, according to our forecast will tell us a lot about which way the race is heading. Case in point: If Trump loses Florida, our forecast believes he has less than a 1 percent chance of recovering to win the overall election.

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Counting on Florida is recipe for heartbreak, my friend.

2018 was the biggest wave year in US politics in recent memory. Democrats still lost the Florida governorship (with a really progressive candidate) and the Florida senate seat (with a really moderate, establishment democrat). I don't trust Florida for anything. I'd count on Arizona plus one of the NE or ME district to save us way before Florida.

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Oh, I'm definitely not counting on Florida -- I'm old enough to have voted in the '00 election -- but it would be a death knell to the Trump campaign if it goes the other way.

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Suprak the Stud posted...

Yeah, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania can't start counting mail in until tomorrow, and at least for Pennsylvania it is supposed to take forever to do it as they have to verify each ballot.

As mail in lean strong democrat and in person is likely to lean Trump, you have a situation where Trump may be leading Pennsylvania tomorrow night with a lot of ballots left to count. Trump has signaled he is going to declare victory in this situation, and have lawyers try to stop them from counting the mail in votes. There are six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, three of which Trump appointed himself.

I'm not optimistic things will go well!

Im curious as to what his reasoning is to stop counting mail in votes, beyond mail in votes and votes that arent for Trump are all fraud.

Does he have a real case there, or is he talking out of his ass like he always does?

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RaidenGarai posted...

Im curious as to what his reasoning is to stop counting mail in votes, beyond mail in votes and votes that arent for Trump are all fraud.

Does he have a real case there, or is he talking out of his ass like he always does?

He's talking out of his ass. They're real votes, they're legitimate, and they're legal. But he's been decrying mail votes for over a year now, and he might try to invent legal basis, which is scary.

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Especially since the SC ruled 4-4 on one state's ballots, which merely kicked it back to a lower court's ruling. They could easily bring it back with the full nine judges.

Its definitely a long shot, but not impossible that Trump successfully sues and gets ballots tossed.

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Id like to think that enough Republicans would realize that hes basically destroying democracy at that point, and theyd fight back against him even if it means losing the White House, but then I remember that the Republican Party wont do anything to risk pissing of Trump.

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RaidenGarai posted...

Id like to think that enough Republicans would realize that hes basically destroying democracy at that point, and theyd fight back against him even if it means losing the White House, but then I remember that the Republican Party wont do anything to risk pissing of Trump.

Remember, the historical origins of conservatism are in the preservation of monarchy and feudalism, not democracy.

RaidenGarai posted...

Id like to think that enough Republicans would realize that hes basically destroying democracy at that point, and theyd fight back against him even if it means losing the White House, but then I remember that the Republican Party wont do anything to risk pissing of Trump.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Republicans think democracy is a good thing.

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Yeah, thats my bad

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Ngamer64 posted...

With mail in voting slowing and less mail being processed because it was a Sunday, today was Trump's best chance to earn a Daily W. Did he pull it off?

Results From The Last 24 Hours
New Votes Cast 1,967,744
Biden Votes (estimated) 987,074
Trump Votes (estimated) 879,876

...not even close! In fact given expectations, and how much ground he has to make up, this could be considered Trump's worst showing of the election season so far. Despite the votals being lower, Biden looked awesome in extending his lead by a further 107,198 votes. More importantly, Trump failed to make a dent in Joe's percentage, as he cut the lead by only 0.23% (after being closer to a full point the last two days).

Trump's problem is that early In-Person voting had already wrapped up in some of the largest states, so even though fewer mail in ballots were processed, he wasn't able to take advantage of it. (It was about equal today with 1 million of each type of vote being counted.)

That leaves us with an overall status of
94,006,161 Total Early Votes Cast
(68.2% of 2016's total)

52,589,513 Biden Votes (estimated)
37,451,585 Trump Votes (estimated)
15,137,928 Current Lead (estimated)

55.94% Biden Total Percentage (estimated)
39.84% Trump Total Percentage (estimated)
16.10% Current Lead (estimated)

Two bright spots for Trump. #1 he didn't lose too much in terms of Election Day % needed, thanks to today's lower vote total. He needs to pull down 63.6% of all remaining ballots- which is still crazy, but at least it's only up 0.6% versus yesterday.

And #2, Professor McDonald now predicts we're going to see 162 million votes cast in 2020, up from his original estimate of 150. That would come out to 67% of all eligible voters in this country, which is insane considering we usually struggle to get out of the 50s! If he's right it does give Trump more of a runway to stage a comeback versus what I've been plotting in the sheet.

Speaking of the Professor, if you have a minute I highly recommend reading his almost-final state by state predictions based on the early vote stats:

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/Early_Vote_Analysis_11_01.html

A summary would be that registered Democrats are significantly more engaged this cycle across the board, but their increased turnout is overshadowed by a huge surge in first time/infrequent/not-registered-to-any-party voters. This last group is what's driven the record setting totals throughout the country, and their preference will ultimately be what decides this election.

As always, more details in the sheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NTMEI1vn58ET9WOWPUg2tOFnOOsQZFCqRvOvx68CpOs/edit?usp=sharing

Those early vote numbers are a lot better than I was expecting for Trump. Given his directive to his supporters to vote on election day, while Biden has encouraged his supporters to vote by mail and vote early, for Biden to only be outpacing Clinton by the amount he is seems good for Trump.

63% on election day feels quite obtainable. And it's not really 63%- as there are going to be substantially more mail votes than election day votes, to get the overall average down to Biden +3 Trump would probably only need something like 59%. Although, there will be additional mail votes being received after election day, so maybe somewhat more than that - 60-61%?

I'm going to assume the huge gap between the betting markets (where Trump is up to 43% this morning) and the 538 model (where is he below 10%) is based on these early voting results. Thanks for posting them!

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You have have a weeeeeeeird electoral system.

If the mail-in ballots lean as Democratic as some are saying and if Florida goes Republican I feel quite confident that Trump will by Wednesday morning be leading with more than 270 EVs. Pennsylvania will very likely be red at that time due to the slow counting while Arizona/Georgia/North Carolina are going to be close enough at the end that any significant chunk of uncounted votes will give Trump the lead.

https://www.270towin.com/maps/YXZno

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Pennsylvania actually could be blue Tuesday night, because Dems have a +43 advantage there in mail-in balloting and they start counting them at 7 am (not when the polls close like some states). Trump might have to shift from "we must know the election results by the end of the night" to "every vote needs to be counted."

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My final prediction map:

https://www.270towin.com/maps/jV7zm


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TheRock1525 posted...

Pennsylvania actually could be blue Tuesday night, because Dems have a +43 advantage there in mail-in balloting and they start counting them at 7 am (not when the polls close like some states). Trump might have to shift from "we must know the election results by the end of the night" to "every vote needs to be counted."

Biden might have a huge start at the beginning, but unless he's going to win by a lot (at which point he may not even need Pennsylvania), the in-person Trump votes are going to easily outnumber the mail-in Biden votes by the time we reach the end of the night.

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The thing about this election that amuses me the most is the ridiculous number of people (not necessarily in this topic, but just in general) that think it will be the highest level of voter fraud ever in a U.S. presidential election. Clearly a lot of people haven't been taught much about the history of presidential elections.

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What're the chances voting is way down on election day because of long lines (due to covid) preventing people from voting?
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I think biden has this, but the huge question mark is if he has it by enough to curtail Trump's accusations of voter fraud.

I don't want to see a narrow biden win that involves Donald trump refusing to concede. I don't think that ends with a peaceful transition of power

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Mac Arrowny posted...

What're the chances voting is way down on election day because of long lines (due to covid) preventing people from voting?

I think that's plausible. I dont know how much of an impact it would have, but it did have an impact, I think it would be more likely to favor Trump. Impossibly long lines would be more likely to reduce younger voter turnout. Older people are more likely to get out early and more likely to wait around all day and they tend to vote more Republican.

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masterplum posted...

I think biden has this, but the huge question mark is if he has it by enough to curtail Trump's accusations of voter fraud.

I don't want to see a narrow biden win that involves Donald trump refusing to concede. I don't think that ends with a peaceful transition of power

There is no situation that ends with a peaceful transition of power. Trump will continuously insist fradulance and try to overturn the election even if he's in doubt digits in the Electoral College.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

My predictions: https://www.270towin.com/maps/JndLz

If you believe 538's model, this is actually something like the modal outcome!

this is the super optimistic projection. technically still possible in the timeline where there's somehow a reverse embarrassed trump voter phenomenon.

in reality, there's no way ohio is going blue. I used to imagine the state as perfectly average america, but there's something off about it. georgia is plausible. texas would be possible but i think will ultimately succumb to the power of voter suppression. florida is eternally disappointing.

i'd be ecstatic to be wrong!

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

There is no situation that ends with a peaceful transition of power. Trump will continuously insist fradulance and try to overturn the election even if he's in doubt digits in the Electoral College.

I think a resounding rout would do it. If he loses florida, north carolina, georgia and Texas he has absolutely no argument. I think at best he is treated like a raving lunatic by the joint chief of staffs and he is unceremoniously escorted out of the white house.

Can't have a situation where generals in the military think he is right

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Relax guys nothing changes for the super rich. No one with real power has anything to gain for causing shit in America.


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A civil war might be worse for the super rich than Biden winning, I agree.

I'm here silently lamenting the fact I didn't sell all my stock a week ago when it was at an all time high and now I'm worried of what US elections may do to it.

cyko posted...

I think that's plausible. I dont know how much of an impact it would have, but it did have an impact, I think it would be more likely to favor Trump. Impossibly long lines would be more likely to reduce younger voter turnout. Older people are more likely to get out early and more likely to wait around all day and they tend to vote more Republican.

I'd heard older voters were a little more pro-Democrat than usual, due to Trump repeatedly mocking Biden for his age, but probably not enough to swing them entirely in favor of Biden I guess.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

I'd heard older voters were a little more pro-Democrat than usual, due to Trump repeatedly mocking Biden for his age, but probably not enough to swing them entirely in favor of Biden I guess.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/ 2020/10/09/the-trump-biden-presidential-contest/

tied nationally

kind of an irrelevant point anyway, since the impact of long lines are surely far more relevant for where the lines are than for who would be turned off by them, seeing as they're generally in urban areas that heavily lean blue

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Those maps with Trump winning scare me until I remember that he does have a chance to win - it's just a longshot whereas in 2016 it was merely unlikely by comparison.

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Fire Emblem has given me an irrational fear to the point where I might actually feel MORE comfortable if 538 had Trump at like 20%

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20% is the maximum chance Trump has of winning, and it's probably closer to 10%.

I'd say the maximum chance he had to win in 2016 was 40%. Obviously he did, but it was merely unlikely as opposed to flat-out long odds.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

20% is the maximum chance Trump has of winning, and it's probably closer to 10%.

I'd say the maximum chance he had to win in 2016 was 40%. Obviously he did, but it was merely unlikely as opposed to flat-out long odds.

The election does not actually have any randomness. This isn't like flipping a coin. The uncertainty of the election before the election arises entirely from the models not being a complete map of reality. The probability of him winning in 2016 was approximately 100%, which would have been known if the pollsters had polled every single person in America and collected additional information sufficient to detect when people are lying to pollsters. The error arises from the fact that the polls/models didn't collect enough information, or modeled the information they got incorrectly.

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In the same way, if we have a contest match - say, Link vs. Cloud 2004 - before the match the board felt that Cloud had a decent chance of winning. And that was correct, based on the information we had at the time, predicting Link with 100% chance of winning would have been realistic. But after the match took place, it's clear that if you reran the match in an alternative universe that was the same as ours the day before the match, Link would win again. And he would win in very close to 100% of such universes.

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red sox 777 posted...

I don't know how polls work.

Yeah, I agree you don't.


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The election outcome is not random, but even if you could poll 100% of the people truthfully, the result cannot be known beforehand based on factors that cannot be accounted for in advance, such as weather, accidents, errors in voting technology, deaths, etc..

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Also no poll can predict whether people will change their minds. Polls are just a snapshot of people's preferences the day they are made, but that can always change.

This is important because in my country people love to point out to polls taken 2 months before the election day that got the wrong result as proof that polls never work, but that's is illogical. Meanwhile the polls taken in the last week before the last election were very accurate, but anti-poll people don't seem to remember those when arguing.

Ashethan posted...

Yeah, I agree you don't.

Don't misquote me.

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just wait until the kiddies wake up

has anyone made this joke yet

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