"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

Thanks for good thoughts, y'all. 💜

xxxxxxpost yes but the "700,000 unreturned ballots" stat is total, not Democratic ballots. Wisconsin doesn't report party affiliation for requested ballots, so we do not know what proportion of ballots that were returned for each party, as well as the proportion of the ballots that are outstanding for each party. as Wisconsin has never tracked that info, we can only guess.

Also, I looked at Wisconsin's stats, and they're confusing. they have in-person absentee voting, and their report for 10/27 shows 1,451,462 have been returned, and of that total, 352,073 were in-person absentee votes. the site Nate quotes (https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/WI.html) subtracts the in-person absentee votes from the ballots returned. but if these in-person absentee voters are counted in the ballots mailed, then there are only something like 362,000 ballots outstanding, not 700,000, if 352,073 person all just absentee voted in person.

the NYT ran a story several weeks ago explaining how Obama mildly offended her in 2013 by quietly insisting she retire.

Yes, leave us not forget Kennedy's strategic retirement giving us the gift of Captain Kegstand for the next several decades.

Kennedy was smarter and more ruthless than Ginsberg.

i tweeted at Nate and the ElectionProject (Michael McDonald) guy to ask how to properly interpret the returned ballots stats for Wisconsin. hoping I get a reply.

should also be noted that about 30,000+ new ballots get returned a day based on what I saw in this last week's reports.

weirdly about 5 other tweeters are asking him to check this as well. I think it's probably 362,000 ballots outstanding, which is a big difference (I think they're estimating that even if 100,000 Dem votes weren't counted, Biden would still win WI or PA)

Wisconsin doesn't report party affiliation for requested ballots, so we do not know what proportion of ballots that were returned for each party, as well as the proportion of the ballots that are outstanding for each party. as Wisconsin has never tracked that info, we can only guess.

Wisconsin doesn't track that information because it doesn't exist! There's no such thing as party registration and Wisconsin voters are free to vote in whichever primary they like (but not more than one.)

well that makes sense then, lol

sidebar, but is the chatter about Bill Barr's invisibility/absence a thing of substance or something truther-y?

https://www.axios.com/scoop-the-lincoln-project-is-becoming-a-media-business-f366aea2-d730-4ad3-a601-e8380ebf96e8.html

Going to steal some of those Pod Save ad dollars. If we’re real lucky... Rick Wilson biopic.

xpost I wish, but I think I came across a post that noted he has made a few speaking engagements in the last few weeks.

dammit

is the chatter about Bill Barr's invisibility/absence a thing of substance or something truther-y?

Was half wondering about that myself this morning.

along the same lines, when was pence's last negative test? did he skate out of it like usual?

Saw a post about a negative test yesterday IIRC

below-average pence wiggles his way out of another jam

Let us not forget that his wife's name is Karen. If Pence gets in trouble she'll demand to see the manager and that will be the end of THAT.

I haven't seen any official stats but I think he may be immune as I don't recall reading about any COVID cases among semi-sentient ventriloquist's dummies.

Oh no, I take that back, Mortimer Snerd succumbed a few months ago iirc.

Numbers numbers

With nearly 3 million early votes in a week before Election Day, more than 10% of Georgia's ~2,650 precincts have more than 50% of their *total* registered voters cast a ballot already.

I made a map of % turnout by precinct so far! #gapolhttps://t.co/LRGCqEVdTc

— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) October 27, 2020

Ah, so nice.

On Trump campaign call, @MikeKellyPA mocks Biden’s stutter and says voters should “Drop off some tapioca and let him make his way through that” instead of listening to the former VP.

— Gabby Orr (@GabbyOrr_) October 27, 2020

Also, not a surprise:

In recent days, registered Republicans have begun closing the early-vote gap among the total ballots cast in Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, ⁦@AmyEGardner⁩ and ⁦@PostRoz⁩ report. https://t.co/3QZVRqaOOc

— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) October 27, 2020

Couple of useful Wasserman things to read. First, his own piece:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/polls-could-be-wrong-may-help-biden-not-just-trump-n1244753

Then, him interviewed here:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/polling-guru-who-predicted-trumps-2016-win-is-betting-on-biden

Among other things, him on Florida and registration:

Voter registration is a feather in Trump’s cap, but it’s also critical to put (it) in context. Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen a lot of registered Democrats, who have voted Republican at the federal level for president for years, formally switching their voter registration from D to R. For example, there is a county in North Florida: Lafayette County, which is basically—it used to be a Dixiecrat bastion.

In 2016, Democrats had a voter-registration advantage in that county of 59 to 34%. The county voted 82 to 15 for Donald Trump. And over the last four years, we’ve seen that county completely flip, and now Republicans have a voter-registration advantage of 62 to 27. That’s a 64-point swing in voter ID in four years. It doesn’t mean that Trump is gaining new voters; those are existing Trump votes. So keep that in mind. That’s one of the reasons we’re seeing Republican gains in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida.

The other thing that’s happening is that Democrats are winning a disproportionate share of young voters, and a lot of them are registering as unaffiliated or independent. But it is true that just in the past six months or so, since the presidential primaries, Republicans have done a better job of hitting the pavement because Democrats have been unwilling to knock on doors in the pandemic. And it’s an understandable decision. But we are also seeing that the past success Democrats have had both knocking on doors and registering young people on college campuses—that’s been way down during the pandemic, and that has helped Republicans to this lead.

So keep in mind that in the past six months, Republicans have added a net 344,000 registered voters in Florida, and Democrats, 197,000. In 2016, Democrats were the ones with that registration advantage, but there are gonna be over 10 million votes cast in Florida. And so it might be worth a percent on the margins. And a percent’s a lot in Florida, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re talking about the same kind of trend line in the other states—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—would you rather be the candidate with a half-of-1% registration advantage? Or would you rather be the candidate who’s ahead seven points in polls? I’d rather be the Democrat.

thanks for posting those - digging through both

2.5 hours of waiting, I voted early in person, pig helicopter still circling my neighborhood even tho it's broad daylight and there aren't actions planned til tonight

xpost only thing I don't like about the second article is they claim Wasserman predicted Trump's victory, when, in the link to his article, he emphatically says it's not a prediction, but a possibility.

but a good article nonetheless

From the Vanity Fair piece:

Bottom line?

Trump would need to win all of the states that are really close in the polls right now: Florida, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina. Those are prerequisites for a Trump victory. And then he’s gotta break through in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Arizona to have a pathway to replicating his success in 2016. And right now that’s just very hard to see. I could actually see Biden doing better in Arizona than in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

…Keep in mind also that the piece of turf that, in my view, is most likely to flip from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020 is in Omaha, Nebraska: Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, where the district-level polling shows Joe Biden ahead in some cases by double digits.

despite everything having this panic set in yesterday and today, feeling like trump is going to win

it's happening to me too, it's probably because there's so much to lose in our minds now and our brains know all of the bullshit that's happened over the last 4 years that our faith has dwindled.

i'm trying to distract myself mostly.

One thing I appreciate about keeping an eye on both Wasserman and Elections Project is that while they're both providing some useful and sanguine info, they do have different areas of focus and don't always agree on what they're seeing -- they've sparred/subtweeted each other before -- so even though both are thinking this is Biden's, they can still snipe a bit. Thus:

Florida's early vote is sending a confirming signal the state will be close. Registered Democrats lead in the early vote:

2016: +96,450 reg Dem
2020: +302,282 reg Dem

Trump 2016 margin: +112,911

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) October 27, 2020

FL's early vote data tells us virtually nothing about the vote preferences of the final electorate. We do have plenty of other evidence, however, that the state will be close. https://t.co/LvRRx7Bv2D

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 27, 2020

And in response to that!

I honestly don't know why some people stubbornly refuse to look at all election data as a whole https://t.co/7cVYYPDTPu

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) October 27, 2020

I'm just operating under the assumption that Trump will be reelected and ignoring everything that happens a week from now and on Wednesday I will either wake up pleasantly surprised or preemptively resigned to life in hell.

Vegas odds (which have favored Biden since June 3rd) have gone even as of this morning.

Would recommend keeping eye on the Turnout as Percent of Total 2016 Turnout option on the main Elections Project map, BTW:

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

Unlike the basic raw numbers site, which is certainly useful but is just that -- it makes it seem like there's only three states with really heavy voting -- you get a better sense of how some states are really off to the races all over the place. Texas and Hawaii, for instance, are essentially tied in those percentage terms at 86% plus (Hawaii apparently had a notable switch to balloting by mail and it's clearly a success). It also explains a bit more clearly why Biden is tending to Pennsylvania, not merely due to relative ease of access from Delaware and home connections -- unlike, say, Wisconsin, which is on the verge of hitting 50%, PA is only at almost 28%, so there's more votes to hit up and try and bank in advance, as well as more room for persuasion either way.

I take that back, Trump is actually favored (-105) now.

Vegas odds (which have favored Biden since June 3rd) have gone even as of this morning.

Well, speaking of said state:

Joe Biden leads in Nevada, according to the final Times/Siena survey of the state.
Biden 49, Trump 43https://t.co/tazhwMwSM1

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) October 27, 2020

Certainly neither side is treating it as set, given upcoming visits.

Further noted re Times/Siena survey:

Well this is our first post-debate poll, so you'll have to wait and see. Our prior NV polls were
Post-RNC: 46-42
Post-debate 1: 48-42https://t.co/nO65X71Oge

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) October 27, 2020

So emphasizing the supposition that the final debate essentially did nothing numbers-wise.

I take that back, Trump is actually favored (-105) now.

where are you seeing that?

Remember that Vegas lines are not set and do not change based on what they think will happen, they are to balance the money coming in on both sides. Ideally they want equal betting on both sides, then they make money on the vig on the losing bets.

lol y'all look at that shit?

Can't find a source for those odds. Are you misinterpreting the graph on oddsshark (which cuts off on september 1)?

Meantime

New: Fort Bend, Collin and Comal counties in TX just became the 4th, 5th and 6th counties in the U.S., to my knowledge, to surpass their 2016 *total* votes counted (as with Hays, Denton and Williamson, TX, population growth since '16 is a big factor here).

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 27, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting_odds/2020_president/

Where does this notion come from that betting odds operate on some sort of secret knowledge unavailable to normies

lol probably from personal experiences of losing all bets by 1pt

Can't find a source for those odds. Are you misinterpreting the graph on oddsshark (which cuts off on september 1)?

― Dan I., Tuesday, October 27, 2020 11:16 AM (five minutes ago)

exactly, it was a hyperbolic tweet with that graph with the dates conveniently snipped off.

now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Unlike e.g. 538 model, betting markets can price in the (perceived) probability that the election will be stolen.

it's not a secret

http://www.betsmart.co/how-do-oddsmakers-set-lines/

To guarantee a profit, bookmakers need to ensure that the picks coming in for each team in each matchup are as close to 50/50 as possible (if you are unsure why, read up on What are Sportsbook Margins?). But what happens if something suddenly changes? A star player gets injured in training or a big trade happens? What if the bookmaker misread where people were going to put money and set the opening prices incorrectly?

Money will start coming in more on one side than the other and the oddsmaker becomes “exposed”. There is the potential for the oddsmaker to have to payout more than they took on the event if the side with the most action wins!

To help avert disaster scenarios like this, oddsmakers are constantly monitoring the picks that are coming in to ensure that they are as close to 50/50 as possible in order to preserve their profit margin.

And if there are a bunch of folks out there with secret knowledge (republican legislators who know exactly what they're plotting behind close doors), that might appear in the markets xpost