This is a light week for economic data, so don’t be surprised if I take a break for a day or two.
In the meantime, I wanted to post a few graphs that I think give a good “macro” view of the Presidential election this year, and how it is different from 2016.
Aside from the fact that Trump now has a nearly 4 year record, and Presidential elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent President or party, the simple overriding fact is that Biden is viewed much more favorably, or perhaps much less *un*favorably, than Hillary Clinton was in 2016.
To refresh your memory, here are a couple of graphs showing how (dis)liked both Trump and Hillary Clinton were in 2016:
Both were historically more disliked than any other previous candidate of either party. Almost 50% of likely voters *strongly* disliked her, and majority did dislike her:
NOTE IMPORTANTLY: I am not making a value judgment that Hillary Clinton was dislike*able*. I am simply reporting that she was in fact historically disliked. When right in the middle of ongoing early voting, Comey insinuated that she might be a crook, that’s all it took to give Trump his inside straight win in the Electoral College.
Note that there were several brief periods where Trump actually led.
Here’s a smoothed out view of the year:
And here is the forecast probability of winning:
As I said above, there were wide swings in the race.
Before I go further, let me add into the mix this graph of the average deviation in polls depending on the time to the election:
Now let’s compare that with 2020 so far. Here’s Nate Silver’s summary of national polling for the past 6 months:
This has been a remarkably steady race for months on end. Even when Trump got the most benefit from his brief “rally round the flag” moment in early April, he still trailed Biden by 3.5%, 44.1% to 47.6%. For the past month, Biden has polled very close to 50% in either direction consistently.
In short, there’s every reason to believe that the polling this year is closer to the ultimate result than has historically been the case. I’m not even sure the thermonuclear bomb of Justice Ginsburg’s death is going to have much of an effect on the polling; at most I suspect it will increase the population of likely voters.
This time around we need to vote first, then celebrate.
yeah, but the point is who do the voting machines favor?
and, of course, who do the voter disenfranchisers favor?
and, i hate to ask, who do the stay at home voters favor?
(stay at home voter = non voter)
@Coberly,
Who do the mail-in voters favor?
@NDD,
FT’s polling project follows the same rules as yours. So, you might want to check out how your bottom lines compare.
https://ig.ft.com/us-election-2020/
Biden vs Trump: who is leading the 2020 US election polls?
See how the latest state-by-state polling data would translate into electoral college votes and use FT’s interactive calculator to zero in on the crucial battleground states…
ron
i imagine mail in voters favor anti-trump judging from his efforts to prevent it.
but just to demonstrate my non-partisan nature: i doubt very much there has been significant fraud in mail-in voting. but that doesn’t mean there COULDN’T be. like voting machines there is a lack of transparency. along with the various devices invented to disenfranchise voters, mostly those of low income, i don’t expect the election to be honest.
i think old fashioned paper ballots put in a box in front of witnesses, and counted in front of the same witnesses (voters), is the safest way to get an honest result.
i think we could also get an overnight grand total, since that seems to be so important to us, by expanding the number of polling places, perhaps using several “counting groups” (one for each ballot box) at each polling place, and reporting the results electroniclly to a central computerized counting station… not subject to fraud because each polling station has a record of its count.
but, lord, what if we still lost because Trumpism is what Americans want?
Coberly,
Yep, most mail-in voters believe in Covid-19 rather than Trumpism.
When it comes to what Americans want, then that is deep if we want to reach for the truth of it. Americans that bother to vote is a little more accessible, but then it is still not obvious which ones vote knowing what their vote actually means in terms of policy.
Conservatives rail about liberals and their feelings, but I have yet to meet a conservative layman that thought with facts and reasonable deliberation rather than feelings and emotions. This is not to say that liberals are different in that respect, even though they do have very different biases.
Despite that racism has been a convenient wedge issue throughout my life, then I still see little advantage in labeling people as racists to their faces or in absentia to bond with fellow liberals. Rather I see almost everyone as racist, just in varying degrees and with varying sets of biases. Reverse racism is still a choice to place race ahead of universality. If one wants to have any kind of useful discussion with others then leading off with offensive accusations is not the best tactic. I have always been one to be more comfortable with an honest and open discussion regardless of differences in POV than I am with emoting in an echo chamber. I also worked around mostly political conservatives for 47 years despite that I always lived around liberals. Besides, my wife and all my in-laws are Northern Republicans from NY state and CT.
That said then, history has shown the Southern Strategy to have been very effective at getting politicians elected all over the US, save a few of the most liberal bastions. Liberals played into this strategy. MLK would have forged a stronger bond between the NAACP and AFL-CIO. After MLK was murdered that bond was dissolved with assist from Nixon’s men and an unforced error by liberals. So, even if Trumpism appears to be what Americans want, then I would account those appearances as result of several contrivances, mostly designed by Republican Party elites, but with considerable assistance by Democratic Party elites that were short sighted and poorly informed with regards to sociopolitical evolution and their own future electoral prospects as they depended more exclusively upon minority voters. We needed peacemaking politicians and we got pandering politicians instead.
A little more direct answer about what Americans want is that voters rarely get what they want despite that they get what they voted for. Sorry, but I am not predisposed to believe that people generally know enough to know what they really want once past the age that they would watch Disney and wish upon a star.