The forecast is NOT by
It’s by David T.S. Jonas….
There’s no reason to think that popular electoral forecasts like those at The Economist or at FiveThirtyEight won’t serve you better than an underqualified observer’s qualitative approach, but since my goal is chiefly to guard against hindsight bias, I thought I would offer these predictions for 2020.
You can read my larger reasoning here, but in short:
- Democratic-leaning voters and Republican-leaning voters will both be extremely motivated to vote.
- The vast majority of “undecided” or wavering voters will fall back on old voting patterns.
- Electoral and legal shenanigans amid a pandemic are likely to cut (marginally) into Democratic vote share.
To oversimplify, there’s good reason to think that the polls are overstating Democratic vote shares in key battleground states. Prominent polling misses in 2018 in states like Iowa, Florida, Missouri, Ohio and other crucial states (see Sean Trende’s musings for more) seem likely for 2020 as well.
That said, Team Biden’s lead in battleground polling is so big, even major systemic polling errors and electoral shenanigans are highly unlikely to cost him the election. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are the big prizes, and while the final margins may be relatively close (especially in PA), the White House should be Biden’s from this base of 278 electoral votes….
Final electoral vote count: 319 for Joe Biden, 219 for Donald Trump.
More including and call for the House and Senate….