Election Electoral College predictions (2 Viewers)

To get our minds off of the virus, debates and campaign theatrics for a moment, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to post our predictions of the final Electoral College margin. Of course, any prediction made would be a moment-in-time snapshot of what we think will happen given the current circumstances. Any number of factors could influence the vote over the final month of the campaign.

There are sites that can help you arrive at your prediction. Real Clear Politics and 538 have polling data that can help you come up with a number. I use RCP mostly because they have a good interactive national map that's easy to use and they don't include polls conducted by companies like SurveyMonkey. They do, however include partisan polling, like Trafalgar and Change Research.

My prediction started with looking at a best case scenario for a Trump reelection. I started by putting all of the states shown to lean in one direction in that camp. RCP shows states like Indiana and Missouri leaning Trump and Oregon and Virginia leaning Biden when those states and others like them are certainly going to end up in those columns. That leaves 11 "battleground" states (and two one-vote congressional districts) that theoretically could go either way and gives a picture of a 226-125 Biden lead before assigning a winner in those states. In looking at Trump's best case scenario, I gave him every state in which he is marginally ahead and those he is behind by less less than five points, as well as the two congressional districts. That would provide Biden with a slim 278-260 win. To come out with a better scenario for Trump, you would need to assign one or more of Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or New Hampshire to Trump and he is trailing in all of those states by more than five points.

However, I don't believe that Trump will achieve his best case numbers and Biden could win several more states, like Arizona, Ohio, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas. I still think Trump will likely keep Texas, Iowa and Georgia, so my prediction as of today is 353-185 in favor of Biden.

If you choose to participate in this exercise, you are welcome to give different predictions over the course of the next month. I intend to post a final prediction on Nov. 2/3 and may even post a weekly prediction, depending on the level of participation.

My prediction if the election were held today is Biden 324-214.

I have it as 280-258 Biden, but I actually think Trump is going to win through a series of legal challenges. I'm not sure which states he'll be able to flip I have Biden winning, but I'm thinking Pennsylvania, which would put Trump at 278 on my map.

I've already accepted 4 more years of Trump.

Biden was up 9 points in polls in PA just before Trump got COVID, which shifts the conversation back to Trump's biggest weakness. Clinton led by 2 and lost very narrowly there as the most negatively viewed candidate in history. I don't think Trump can come close enough there for any legal shenanigans to work. I've been as afraid as anyone that Trump would win an election he has no business winning but if the electon was today it would be a Biden landslide.

I anticipate Biden losing any state he doesn’t have a 5 point lead going into Election Day. The reasons:

1. Unadmitted Trump voter - I expect 2% of Trump voters won’t admit it during polling.
2. Ballot spoilage - I expect Dems will overwhelmingly vote absentee and those ballots will see much higher spoilage rates costing them 2%.
3. Day of no-shows - Fear of Covid and long lines will see a 1% reduction of Dem voters actually voting.

Here is a 5% map:

I could see Dems losing 6-7 points due to these factors and costing Biden the election.

Saint by the Bay said:

I have it as 280-258 Biden, but I actually think Trump is going to win through a series of legal challenges. I'm not sure which states he'll be able to flip I have Biden winning, but I'm thinking Pennsylvania, which would put Trump at 278 on my map.

I've already accepted 4 more years of Trump.

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If you assume that Trump would have to pick up at least one of Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Nevada to win, he would have to make up over five points in the last month to carry that state. Each of them have Biden between 5-9 points ahead. If I were going to pick one that he could flip back to him, it would be Wisconsin. Michigan and New Hampshire are closer to a 10-point Biden lead than a tie and Nevada and Pennsylvania have been polling toward Biden for quite a while, only rarely tipping into the margin of error area. Wisconsin though has been below five points a number of times. Flipping that state to Trump would give him a win in his best case scenario.

The problem with that is that it also assumes that Biden will not take any of the closely contested states, including the ones that he is polling to lead. The latest polls have Biden leading in every battleground state except Texas, so it isn't hard to imagine that he will take at least a few of those. So Trump could move Wisconsin or even Pennsylvania into his column, but still lose due to other states moving to Biden.

This race is just way to early to tell. The virus and trump not gonna be on the road might have a impact on the turnout on his side without the chanting prep rallies.

The other thing is with the other republicans with the virus are not gonna be working for him either.

Quarantined or even worse actually really sick people don't work.

Trump went to the hospital for a reason he might have a real fight on his hands and might be incapacitated all the way to election day.

So many factors. The virus is exploding in states trump should win is that gonna scare people from voting?

At this point I would say biden wins by a staggering amount.

B4YOU said:

I anticipate Biden losing any state he doesn’t have a 5 point lead going into Election Day. The reasons:

1. Unadmitted Trump voter - I expect 2% of Trump voters won’t admit it during polling.
2. Ballot spoilage - I expect Dems will overwhelmingly vote absentee and those ballots will see much higher spoilage rates costing them 2%.
3. Day of no-shows - Fear of Covid and long lines will see a 1% reduction of Dem voters actually voting.

I could see Dems losing 6-7 points due to these factors and costing Biden the election.

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This ^ plus voter suppression, polling "monitor" intimidation, Russian interference. All of this has to remove at least 5 points at a minimum

zztop said:

This ^ plus voter suppression, polling "monitor" intimidation, Russian interference. All of this has to remove at least 5 points at a minimum

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Yeah, I think Biden’s lead has to really be overwhelming to win and I’m not seeing that, nor do I think that is possible with the current political climate in the country. He’s in the lead, but he basically has to lap him and he’s not even close to that.

So I am not going to try to predict every state just try to show really where the state of the race is and how hard it will be for Trump to win.

Below is the map from RealClearPolitics.com as of today. This is with 187 electoral votes considered “toss up.”

Now, with that in mind Biden is sitting at 226. I think we can all agree that those states are not in play. That leaves him 44 EV needed to win.

I looked at two factors when looking for winning states to put Biden over the line- Polling outside the margin of error, naturally but also where he was within a percentage of 50% of the total. Meaning Trump would have to peel a significant amount of votes away in the last three weeks to secure them.

Three states that fit were the first three I checked- Pennsylvania (49.6% and +5.7), Michigan (49.2 and + 5.2) and Wisconsin (49.8% and +5.5). Winning just those 3 states plus all of the ones he already has puts him at 278.

That doesn’t give him a single other battleground including Nevada (49.0% and +5.3).

That also brings us to Ohio (18 electoral) which no R has won the presidency without since the Whigs were a thing (not literally, like the 1920’s) - it is the true bellwether for the R’s. Biden is at 49.0 and +3.3. That is doable but severely in jeopardy if you are Trump. Quite simply he can’t win (realistically) without Ohio and he already needs to either peel a significant amount of voters and /or win the paltry 4.7% undecided by a 5:1 margin.

So while I am still fearful (once bitten twice shy) the math is seriously against Trump. And he isn’t going into Election Day where there are significant undecideds and an unliked candidate (Biden’s favorability is high). He will need a miracle imo.

And this is where voter fraud claims are going to majorly backfire. Say Biden is up 80,000 votes in Wisconsin at the end of the day on Election Day. Trump is going to need the mail-in to put him over. Hard to claim voter fraud when you need the majority of them to win. Even harder to “un-claim” voter fraud. Surely wont stop him from trying but Tweeting and getting the state to take it to the courts are bigly different

Just for the heck of it I will make the prediction of - Biden 329 / Trump 209

Florida, NC, Ohio and Arizona could go any direction imho. Biden was leading in all four locations, I gave Biden the smallest vote count state (Arizona) and Trump the largest three. Even if Trump won all four, he'd still be behind based on this map of course.

Edit: Alaska should be Red. Clicking error on my part.

xpuma20x said:

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I agree with this map except for Alaska going Democrat. However, I think Alaska, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa going to Biden is within the realm of possibility. As mentioned by others, my biggest concern is Democrats pushing absentee/mail-in ballots that are subject to a relatively high percentage chance of spoilage. Not just from coordinated suppression efforts but from people making silly mistakes and not following the proper procedure. I think it's still possible Trump wins because of spoiled mail-in ballots.

SaulGoodmanEsq said:

I agree with this map except for Alaska going Democrat. However, I think Alaska, Florida, North Carolina, and Iowa going to Biden is within the realm of possibility. As mentioned by others, my biggest concern is Democrats pushing absentee/mail-in ballots that are subject to a relatively high percentage chance of spoilage. Not just from coordinated suppression efforts but from people making silly mistakes and not following the proper procedure. I think it's still possible Trump wins because of spoiled mail-in ballots.

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Excellent point. My 84-year old mother requested an absentee ballot, but she is very confused about how to fill it out and the rules regarding the return of the ballot. Eventually, I had to tell her not to fill out anything until I got there and read the instructions. In talking with her, I can easily see her submitting a ballot that was incorrectly completed and it would be tossed out.

SaulGoodmanEsq said:

I agree with this map except for Alaska going Democrat.

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That was a clicking error on my part, I meant to have it go Trump.

Richard said:

Excellent point. My 84-year old mother requested an absentee ballot, but she is very confused about how to fill it out and the rules regarding the return of the ballot. Eventually, I had to tell her not to fill out anything until I got there and read the instructions. In talking with her, I can easily see her submitting a ballot that was incorrectly completed and it would be tossed out.

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Yeah. My boss, who's also a good friend, told me when the absentee ballot came for her 90-year old mother, she immediately called and told her she needed to stop by after work to help her because she's be passed if they disqualified her ballot.

Why are people using, what seems like a euphemism, "spoilage" instead of the more accurate and precise term rejection? Ballots don't spoil, they get rejected.

Right now I would predict Biden getting a minimum of 290 EVs - changing Penn, Michigan, Wisc, and Arizona along with the Maine district.
I say minimum because it would be far from a surprise if Biden won Iowa, NC, and Fla, and barely a surprise if he ended up winning Georgia.

Trump has several things working against him this time around that were not present in 2016:
- Trump fatigue: this will mean a small but significant number of former Trump voters do not vot for him;
- Biden's negatives are nowhere near Clinton's and I don;t see Trump as being able to make them rise uh more than where they are at.
- Trump's general demeanor ha turned off a good amount of suburban moderates who have voted Republican in the past; see 2018 election;
- Democratic enthusiasm is high to defeat Trump, REpublicans enthusiasm is high as well, but same as 2106 or less - Democrats much higher than 2016;
- State of country is going to mean less undecideds and late deciders will move to Trump


Trump might still have time to turn it around. I thought the SCOTUS nominee offered him an opportunity. That still might happen but so far his campaign is in more disarray than it was in the summer when it was absolutely terrible.