The 2020 Presidential and Senate elections nowcast: reverting towards the mean Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. The theme this week is that Trump’s approval is reverting […]
Q2 GDP does not bode well for early 2021 There are two components of quarterly GDP that are long leading indicators, giving us information about the economy 12 months from now. If you think, as I do, that it is likely there will be a new Administration in Washington next year, which will competently follow […]
Catching up with wages, income, and layoffs Yesterday and today have seen several significant data releases. Let’s catch up. Wages The Employment Cost Index was released for Q2 this morning. This is a particularly important release because unlike the monthly “average hourly wages” number, this report normalizes by job category, e.g., it compares clerks’ wages […]
Three long-shot Senate races worth polling: Idaho, Nebraska, and South Dakota On Sunday I wrote that it would be really helpful to have statewide polling in some Senate races that look on the surface like safe bets for the GOP, but might actually be worth contesting. The reason for this is that, not only are […]
Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: the “pain threshold” exists, and leads to a decline in new cases Total US coronavirus cases: 4,275,188 Average daily cases last 7 days: 65,896 Total US coronavirus deaths: 140,309 Average daily deaths last 7 days: 1,004 (Source: COVID Tracking Project) Several months ago I wrote: my forecast over the past […]
June durable goods orders continue rebound Last week I wrote a synopsis of the short leading indicators and what they suggested about the ultimate Presidential election result in November. Basically, they have improved over the last several months and suggested the polls would tighten compared with the present. Among the missing June indicators were durable […]
The 2020 Presidential and Senate polling nowcasts: we need more small State polling! For the past five weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days, using […]
New home sales roar back to pre-pandemic levels At some point – probably three or four months after Joe Biden takes the oath of office on January 20 of next year, G*d willing – the coronavirus pandemic is going to be brought under control in the US. At that point the long leading indicators are […]
The short leading indicators and the 2020 Presidential election forecast As I pointed out on Sunday, polls and poll aggregations really aren’t forecasts, they are nowcasts. They tell you who would win and by how much *if the election were held today.* They don’t tell you whether or by how much that is likely to […]
Initial claims: a jolt of bad news, as Mitch McConnell and the GOP dawdle on an emergency benefit extension This morning’s report on initial and continuing claims, which give the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus on employment, was a jolt of bad news, as claims increased by over 100,000 […]