Models Trending Bidenward
A look at several models.
The 2020 election models have all been favorable to Joe Biden from the beginning. They are starting to look even more so.
For example, 538’s forecast has moved Biden’s odds to 80% for the first time since the model launched:
Indeed, the trend has been steadily Bidenward for the last month:
Keeping in mind that it can still rain, and rain hard, when the forecast says there is only a 20% chance.
Likewise, and perhaps more dramatically, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball now has Biden with 279 electoral votes when combining Safe D, Likely D, and Leans D states:
The Economist’s model is likewise bullish for Biden:
For those wishing for a trip down memory lane for comparison, here is 528’s final model in 2016:
Note: the popular vote prediction was pretty close.
From the FEC:
Federal Elections 2016
| Candidate (Party Label) | Popular Vote Total | Percent of Popular Vote |
| Hillary Clinton (Democrat, Women’s Equality, Working Families) | 65,853,514 | 48.18% |
| Donald J. Trump (Republican, American Independent, Conservative) | 62,984,828 | 46.09% |
| Gary Johnson (Libertarian, Independence, Independent) | 4,489,341 | 3.28% |
| Jill Stein (Green, Mountain, Progressive, Independent) | 1,457,218 | 1.07% |
| Evan McMullin (Better for America, Independence, Independent) | 731,991 | 0.54% |
(There are an additional 28 entries that account for another .84% of the vote).
Also, note the fluctuations and compare to 2020 above:
He’s served all his red meat, he’s tweeted all his rage and told all his lies, and it’s not working. So now what he’s going to do is go on TV, admit his failures, promise to do better, surround himself with a chorus of POC and sing kumbaya, while. . .
Nah. He’s a one trick pony. He has no other moves, all he can do is double down on his base. More hate! More rage! More lies!
If I believed in God I’d thank him for Trump’s limitations. Imagine the damage this walking Hefty bag of rotting meat could do if he was actually smart.
The “Debate” two nights ago did damage to Trump. Serious damage.
How do I know? My Trumpiest friends are no longer defending him. All six of the hardcore Trumpists in my immediate extended family (my wife’s family), have switched to Biden. It’s interesting as to why… It wasn’t the racism. It wasn’t the interrupting. It wasn’t the obnoxiousness. What turned them off were the attacks on Hunter Biden’s drug use. They all felt that was too low.
That goes to the idea that nothing is real until it’s personal. My wife has a cousin, who is smart, talented, and… an addict. He’s been fighting it since his teenage years and he’ s in his early 40’s. His mom and dad still love him with all their heart. He’s still their kid, even if he’s screwed up. So that attack on Biden for Hunter’s drug use felt, to them, like an attack on them.
Suddenly Trump wasn’t attacking those “others”. He was attacking them. That was a bridge too far for them.
It’s just an anecdote, but I think polls are going to show more movement towards Biden.
I’ve often wondered why Trump couldn’t be persuaded to reach out to a broader spectrum of voters, and it then occurred to me that, for Trump, a person doesn’t exist–literally doesn’t exist–unless he or she is loudly and visibly a cheerleader for Trump. I’m speaking of people who wear MAGA hats and Trump t-shirts and scream themselves hoarse at his rallies.
He doesn’t think he needs anyone else because anyone else isn’t real.
@Michael Reynolds:
All Trump’s dirty tricks are for naught because they rely on his target being Other: female, minority, disabled, disadvantaged, etc. Biden is, for better or worse, Trump’s social equal or better to his group; Joe’s only real downside is he’s a “lib” but even then they’re trying overtime to paint him with every commie tarbrush because he doesn’t really scream “lib”. He ticks off every Acceptable category: Old, Male, White, Paternalistic, Religious, Rich, Military-affiliated, Common Sense / Middle of Road, etc. How do you effective attack someone as Other when they are you?
All Trump’s tantrums and rage make him look like a toddler screaming at Daddy and even his followers are noticing. You’re not the Big Alpha when you try and talk over somebody only to be told to STFU. Nobody tells the boss to shut up, especially not on live TV. That hurt him in a way he may not recover from – supposedly weak, senile, stuttery Ol’ Joe told him to stuff it while Trump did nothing about it. They’re trying to bluff about dominance but nobody’s buying it.
On the betting markets Biden’s numbers have surged since the debate.
I repeat: Count no one happy until Trump is out of office.
I wonder what percentage of Trump’s rally goers are these:
President Trump Supporters Gather At Arnold Palmer Regional Airport Hours Before His Rally
@Scott:
My guess would be a very large percentage. I don’t think a Trump rally is something you go to for the hell of it, or because you think it would be an amusing way to spend an evening in the absence of any movies you want to see.
You have to be really committed to want to spend all that time waiting in line. They’re sort of like Deadheads.
@KM:
I had the same reaction. I almost thought maybe Trump didn’t hear it, because he let it go. Surround yourself with toadies and you tend not to know how to process a STFU.
Approximately 8 microseconds after Biden said, ‘Will you shut up, man,’ there were t-shirts.
@EddieInCA:
For some reason going after Hunter Biden has become Trump’s White Whale and yet he clearly did not read the novel because it does not end the way Trump thinks it does.
Trump is beyond frustrated that running a carbon copy of his 2016 campaign is not working, his attempts to “Benghazi/but her emails” Biden is just an epic fail. First the GOP tried to help Trump by getting sexual harassment claims to dog Biden all throughout the summer, then they tried to go after Hunter Biden and it is just not working. Even his Sleepy Joe nickname was a dud.
The thing is that going after Biden’s family was a really bad idea, what sunk Clinton were actions of her own, she did a lousy job securing emails, she may have said some tone deaf things when it came to the Benghazi situation, but it was not the GOP going after Chelsea Clinton that brought her down.
I always felt that going after Biden’s son would be a bridge too far even for some die-hard Trump supporters, and this seems to be the case.
I honestly think the GOP royally screwed up how they went after Biden and they (not just Trump) will pay the price at the ballot box this November.
@CSK:
It ain’t just Trump. And it isn’t about Trump’s personal characteristics. Republicans have been pursuing a divide-and-conquer strategy, as listed by @KM:, go back fifty years. Nixon followed the Southern Strategy. ‘Everything for the base’ and ‘Modern elections are all turnout elections’ goes back to Rove around 1980. It all worked pretty good, but they have the same problem Cadillac has, their customer base is literally dying off. They’re running out of angry old white guys, so Trump is getting desperate. The Rs are going to have to revisit their 2012 post-mortem
Obama is an obvious counter example to KM’s thesis, But he’s an exception that proofs (per the original phrasing of the adage, i.e. tests) the rule. He was nominated by Democrats, not the general electorate, and then the economy blew up under W during two failed wars after two terms of R prez. Any D would have won the general.
@gVOR08: Sorry about that third sentence. I can’t seem to get an EDIT function. iOS.
go backfor.@gVOR08: There’s another dimension to the Republican strategy: pursuing an uncompromisingly plutocratic agenda, and then simply lying about it. But even this was already stagnating by 2016, and Trump found a fresh new way to deliver it: he would just totally ignore GOP orthodoxy and claim against all available evidence that he was giving everyone free health care and he would cut taxes and he wouldn’t touch Medicare or SS and it would cost people nothing (or other countries would pick up the tab). It was essentially Jude Wanniski’s theory of the Two Santas that became the basis for Reaganomics, but it was taken to absurd extremes by someone who didn’t care about sounding remotely plausible. And he was perhaps the first Republican nominee in the modern age not to attack his Democratic opponent as a leftist or socialist. Instead, he depicted Hillary as a crooked shill for Wall Street.
I don’t think it’s been commented on enough that Trump is in some senses running a much more traditional Republican campaign than in 2016–one focused on fighting the damn dirty hippies and radicals. It’s basically just a more raw, explicit version of what they were throwing at Bill Clinton back in the ’90s (and before that, Michael Dukakis and George McGovern and so on). That’s not to say 2016 Trump was “reaching out” to a broad base of voters exactly. It didn’t come out of some carefully considered strategy, it was just Trump’s background as a con artist who would always promise great things for everyone. Now that everything’s centered on his record as president, which itself has turned out to be far more conventionally Republican than he made it out to be in 2016, he’s become more anchored in traditionally Republican themes while coalescing with the extreme racism that was always there.
@Scott:
The Broke Ass Trump rallies strike me as similar to the Two-Minute Hate. Only much longer and far less coherent.
@CSK:
So, you seem to be implying narcissism and solipsism are not the powerful combination Trump thinks they are.
1@Scott:
“I’m not kidding, I truly believe that Donald Trump was sent by God. True. He’s not perfect, he’s a sinner. But if you read the Bible, so was Moses, so was David, so was everybody,”
Just one little difference between the Biblical heros and Trump, they were all repentant, and he is not. I can’t believe that important detail is so elusive to so many Bible worshipers
@Kathy:
But Trump thinks they are. And, from his standpoint, he’s right. Only his fans exist for him.
@Kylopod:
Exactly. A normal political party collects a coalition and tries to give the coalition members what they want. The GOPs fear they’ll lose the Billionaire Boys Club funding if they give anyone else anything. So they’re locked into lying, faux populism, racism, and any other social division they can exploit. I think between us we’ve summarized Hacker and Pierson, Let Them Eat Tweets, pretty nicely.
@Scott:..rally goers…
*Today it is the Frederick Douglass – Greater Rochester International Airport.
What are you talking about??? Did you not see it when Jerry Falwell and Paula White did the laying of hands upon him? He glowed with the light of the lord!
“Map 1” above should be treated as an epidemiological map showing where urgent educational intervention is required.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Didn’t that “light” wind up being the glow from porn playing on a computer monitor in the foreground?
@ImProPer:
Oh, they may be right but not how they think – Trump might have been sent by God as a test for them a la Job. If so, they’ve failed miserably. I’ve mentioned this to some of more religiously-minded MAGAts and it disturbs them greatly. See, they like to blame all the bad stuff on Satan but that’s not how it works. In the Bible, God sends both blessings and trials upon his faithless flock to see if they can actually walk the walk…. and they never do. “Sent by God” usually meant you were Under Divine Review, not the Messiah has finally showed up.
Trump’s offering them all up everything they want on this earthly plane on a plate… at the mere price of worshipping him and wearing his mark on their heads. Subconsciously they’re aware of how that sounds in their own theology so they get very, very defensive when you question their “sent by God” attitude. If he’s *not* the heaven-sent hero who leads them to victory…. then who did they just sacrifice for?
@inhumans99:I 100% agree with your comment until we get to this, which I’m not so sure about:
As readers of the comment section know, I’m fairly relentless in pointing out that Trump is just a naked, loud Republican and the whole party is corrupt. But in this case, I suspect it is all Trump. Most of the GOP actually has pretty good political instincts and wouldn’t have gone down this path. This is all Trump. He has no one left around him to check any of his impulses and all of his impulses are bad. A year in I pointed out that in every other venture in Trump’s life, by this time he had stormed off and gone sulkily silent for a while (until he was ready to launch his next hare-brained scheme) but as President he couldn’t simply go silent or go home. I wondered what would happen when he was exposed as a failure day in and day out, month after month. So I guess this is what happens. He becomes incapable of keeping his bile from spewing forth.
@OzarkHillbilly: No, I’m sorry, they hallucinated that. I’ve seen the photographs, no aura, no divine light. And if God had done it we would have seen it.
@KM:
I find it more than a little ironic, that the most compelling evidence for the existence of Satan comes from the actions of the most vocal Christians. Worshipping a reflexive liar. Practicing hypocrisy, as if it were a virtue.
Treating the golden rule as if it were evil.
I must say they are definitely shaking my agnosticism
@KM: Interesting book, Job. Not specifically part of the Hebrew bible as I understand it. Has been questioned as to it’s origins and probably is the oldest book of the lot. And it describes a sort of royal court where the piety of the good servant Job is held up as witness. The Adversary disputes the evidence because the king of heaven has made Job rich. Whereupon that king hands Job over to The Adversary who does the actual tormenting.
It’s not specifically certain that the king – equals – God. And the king (who symbolizes God) does not personally do any nasty stuff. And isn’t it amazing that about as soon as human beings could record their thoughts, this eternal story appears? Why do the innocent suffer? How should we respond to suffering?
@ImProPer:
Oh, but Trump’s done better than that: he’s blamed others for his failures, and denied any responsibility.
I wonder if there are photos of him barefoot. I don’t believe in any gods or demons, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he has hooves rather than feet.
@Kathy:
I’ve seen one of him curled seductively on a bed, clad only in a short terrycloth robe. I think his feet are visible.
He has claimed never to wear bathrobes.
@Kathy:
Do you think he was unable to keep jungle boots on them, and used bone spurs diagnosis as a ruse, as to why he couldn’t serve?
@CSK, prosthetics?
@ImProPer:
If you Google “trump photo bathrobe” you can see the images. His feet are mostly visible in some of them.
@CSK:
Kathy: What is one of the top ten things no one ever wants to see as long as they live?
Alex: Correct. We’d also have accepted “What is EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW! Gross!?”
I’m reminded of that scene from “The Ten Commandments” while Moses is up on Mount Sinai and so many of the people start acting sinfully and creating a false idol with the orange, er, golden pig, er, calf…
That would be great for them if they were running against Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren…but Joe Biden? Good luck with that…
@An Interested Party:
I really have gotten the sense that they expected to run against Sanders or Warren, and they never prepared themselves on how to alter that script. But it’s not the first time Republicans have tried to paint a moderate as a far-right radical. As I mentioned, they did it to Clinton-Gore, perhaps the most ardently centrist Democratic ticket of modern times. (I remember Dan Quayle in 1992 saying, “If they’re moderates, I’m a world champion speller.” Ha, ha.) And they were gearing up to do the same thing to Hillary the first time she ran back in 2008. When Obama became the nominee, they then attempted to paint him as far-left. But when Hillary finally got the nomination in 2016, along comes Trump with a totally different script, pretending to be a populist and depicting Hillary as a plutocrat. Whether he realizes it or not, he’s now reverted to the old, stale Republican script of calling one’s opponent a socialist–the very thing his 2016 campaign was supposed to have turned on its head.
First poll in GA post debate has Biden up 47-45. Not on the debate. But on the election.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/following-rocky-debate-biden-takes-lead-over-trump-latest-exclusive-channel-2-poll/LFMKYZZ2C5DVFE3J7HKNK2653U/
Their previous poll, exactly a month ago, had Trump up 47-40.
@EddieInCA: In fairness, they’ve been neck and neck in GA for the past several weeks–he’s even leading slightly in 538’s and RCP’s average.
What really floored me was a poll last week showing them neck and neck in SC. It appears to be an outlier, though other recent polls in the state are still surprisingly close. Of course part of it has to do with the surprisingly competitive Senate race. It suddenly dawned on me a few days ago that Harrison is doing better than Beto O’Rourke was at any point in 2018. Even as I type these words, my pessimistic streak kicks in and it seems unlikely to me he’ll make it–but if you read the polls literally, it looks highly plausible.
If it happens, SC will become the first state since Reconstruction with two concurrent black Senators.
I still can’t believe it. The idea of SC as a battleground state, either on the presidential or Senate level, seems totally wild. It’s not a state that has been on Dems’ radar in recent years, the way TX, GA, and AZ have been. It’s unquestionably the reddest state on the East Coast, and while it doesn’t usually vote Republican by quite the overwhelming margins you see in much of the inland South, it’s still pretty consistently and reliably Republican. If Harrison wins–and if Biden somehow wins the state, which would make him the first Democrat to do so since Carter–it will be an outcome that seemed to have come totally out of nowhere.
@Kylopod: Might finally be the impact of the coastal retirees. They are not native South Carolinians or Southerners. May be conservative but not George Wallace conservative. Same thing happening in North Carolina.