Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people who are directly involved in efforts to re-elect him, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as zero — and the likelihood of him taking down fellow Democratic candidates growing.Zero!
“He needs to drop out,” one Biden campaign official said. “He will never recover from this.”
And then there's this at FiveThirtyEight:
So Biden is more likely to win than Trump. Just slightly, but still. Call it a tie. That's infinitely more than zero. Now, FiveThirtyEight is working with actual polls, but the campaign officials saying zero are picturing the path of events in the next 4 months. They're also affected by their hopes and fears and capable of distorting and lying. They want Joe out. His own campaign officials! Well, they are, technically, Biden's people, hired to help him win, but they are also human beings with career aspirations of their own. I don't trust them. But do I trust FiveThirtyEight? Is FiveThirtyEight corrupt?
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But what about their ace in the hole - cheating in various forms? Worked in 2020, no?
is it really about voter enthusiasm for candidates or D enthusiasm/expense for cheating?
These are different ways of estimating the chances of winning.
538 uses mathematical models that combine data from a bunch of polls, the economy, historical voting patterns, etc. The model is only as good as its assumptions. Beware -- every investing get-rich-quick system "works" until it doesn't work any more. They are all brought down by the unexpected, the overlooked, or another tiny little "irrelevant" Achilles Heel.
Humans make estimates with heuristics, emotions, and memories for similar experiences. This method can be superior or it can be completely wrong (i.e., rigid dogmas; superstitious nonsense). What we are seeing now is (1) people who saw their mother/father/grandparents fall apart as they aged and who know that aging is a one-way street, and (2) Biden's autocratic resistance is forcing the end to TDS by ending a brief and temporary period of party unity. Democrats are well known for forming circular firing squads -- see Israel vs. Palestine. See Joe Manchin vs. AOC.
Trump won in 2016 at least in part because of the Green/protest vote against Hillary. Bill Clinton won in 1992 in large part because of the anti-G.H.W. Bush people voted for Ross Perot.
Given the widespread political learning that has occurred from 2016 to the Bidenomics era, In 2024 I trust human intuition more than computer models.
I trust the bookies more than polls OR computer models.
Many of the righties on this blog express frustration win the GOP because it is comfortable with being out of power.
They contrast the GOP with the Ds, who will do anyhing to keep power.
But the difference is because of this:
The GOP know their ideas are held by most people. So over time, they will win out.
The Ds know that almost no one believes intheir ideas. They can only get power to implement those ideas if they can gerrymander and build coalitions to cobble together a win. If they lose, then the momentum of what most peopple really believe reasserts itself and the tide of ‘progress’ recedes.
In a strange way, it’s the right that’s really making the long march through government.
JSM
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break
When the levee breaks, I'll have no place to stay
Thomas Andrews: Please, tell only who you must. I don't want to be responsible for a panic. And get to a boat quickly, don't wait. You remember what I told you about the boats?
Rose: Yes... I understand.
I think it was in the movie A Beautiful Mind where the really smart guy uses math at a bar to figure out how he and his buddies can all get laid.
Probably meant to be funny in an ironic inside joke kind of way but the mind reels.
Anyway, the woman he ends up with is beautiful, intelligent, virtuous, caring, and dedicated -- a major catch -- which was 100 % entirely predictable, if I'm remembering this right.
I'd say there's about a 46.2 % probability of that.
This all feels like the last days of the Nixon administration. Everybody knew, deep down inside, that the end was coming and what it would look like.* Still, many soldiered on as if it would all blow over, with appointments and meeting announcements which would obviously never happen.
*A major difference is that in this case, "our long national nightmare" will not end with Biden's dropping out, but grow in the chaos of replacing him. And then comes the election.
To Enigma's point, Nate Silver's latest post on Harris' plusses and minuses refered to models with incumbency bias. The incumbent should be favored to win but I'd at least argue that any incumbency bias Biden has is at least vastly diminished if not destroyed by the events of the last month. He's on the verge of being nominated and has members of his own party saying he should drop out. Add to that what is again at least great difficulty if not complete inability to do the normal stump speech/rally/shaking hands/kissing babies (well maybe not that last one in his case) campaign swings and yes, he likely has no path to turn around the states necessary to win.
[discussing his problems]
DNC: I don't know what to do, Godfather. His voice is weak, it's weak. Anyway, if I had this new candidate, it puts me right back on top, you know. But this... this man out there. He won't give it to me, the President.
Don Corleone: What's his name?
Don Corleone: Biden. He said there's no chance, no chance...
[Meanwhile, Hagen finds Sonny and summons him]
DNC: A month ago he locked up the nomination, all the delegates. The replacement candidate is a guy named Gavin Newsome. I wouldn't even have to resort to dirty tricks, just hold the convention. Oh, Godfather, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do...
[All of a sudden, Don Corleone rises from his chair and gives DNC a savage shake]
Don Corleone: YOU CAN ACT LIKE A POLITICAL PARTY!
[gives a quick slap to DNC]
Don Corleone: What's the matter with you? Is this what you've become, a Hollywood finocchio who cries like a birthing person? "Oh, what do I do? What do I do?" What is that nonsense? Ridiculous!
[the Don's unexpected mimicry makes Hagen and even DNC laugh; around this time Sonny comes in]
Don Corleone: Tell me, do you spend time with your family?
DNC: With my cats, yes.
Don Corleone: Good. I mean, “What?” Because a Party who doesn't form families and have children is going to be dependent on illegal immigration.
[gives a quick look at Sonny and nervously embraces DNC]
Don Corleone: You look terrible. I want you to call your donors, I want you to keep raising money. And a month from now this President’s gonna give you what you want.
DNC: Too late. The convention is in a month.
Don Corleone: I'm gonna make his wife and idiot son an offer they can't refuse. Okay? I want you to leave it all to me. Go on, go back to your made-up jobs.
[a gratified DNC leaves]
I’m curious as to what the demographic data used in the simulations is, exactly. Same for economic data.
Also, Silver never rated the race a toss-up, even before the debate debacle.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-presidential-election-isnt-a
Any way you look at it, the closer it is, the more violent the aftershocks will be.
It's not just that they think Joe will lose, but that Joe is listening to Jill and Hunter and is no longer reliable to carry out the bidding of the Democratic Elite. This is why he must be taken out. Notice the timing of the Clooney Letter after Biden came out defiant after the family meeting at Camp David.
He has to debate Trump again in September. He is only going to get worse.
Does Nate Silver poll illegal aliens who don’t speak English?
I live among Democrats. Almost everybody I know is a Democrat. Anybody who thinks that they are enthusiastic about Biden hasn't talked to any recently. They still say they hate Trump... but, you know he was president for four years and the world didn't end.
Kevin at 5:48 wins the thread.
Biden or his ventriloquist seem to accept in principle that he has to make public appearances and say a few words about issues. This is different from Woodrow Wilson, who suffered a stroke in October 2019, just over a year before what would have been his third presidential election. He made no appearances after that, and he was not a candidate in 2020, but he remained in office until 2021. Harding's inauguration was in March, not January. Presidents were not term limited at the time. The 25th Amendment was adopted so that an "incapacitated" person could not remain in the Presidency for any period of time.
A bit bizarrely, Biden said something about delegates at the convention being free to nominate anyone they want. This is no doubt contrary to the rules. We can all hope that serious negotiatios are underway somewhere. Bidenistas may want to control who the successor is. I would expect a substantial cash payment to the Biden family. Full pardon for past and future crimes for Hunter, Uncle Jim and Aunt Sara. Something nice for Jill, like the presidency of an Ivy League university. She can wear a nice robe, and possibly bring back "Fanfare for a First Lady."
Staying in office until next January is one thing; getting elected to another four-year term is something else.
The Prophecy of Pink (not George) Floyd:
BRAIN DAMAGE
The lunatic is on the grass.
The lunatic is on the grass.
Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs.
Got to keep the loonies on the path.
The lunatic is in the hall.
The lunatics are in my hall.
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paper boy brings more.
And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
The lunatic is in my head.
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade, you make the change
You re-arrange me 'till I'm sane.
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There's someone in my head but it's not me.
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear.
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.
Never underestimate Democrats and the power of the State. They'll keep Trump out of the White House, one way or another.
The Democrat hold on the voting apparatus is why I think this is a case of a power struggle and not an avoidance of electoral defeat. Someone thinks the Biden faction can be knocked off, and that Someone wants the job.
If I am betting, I will bet on the Democrat to win, and it's irrelevant who is the Democrat.
Democrat panic has just begun to build into an irresistible force that has zero chance of dislodging the immovable president but we all understand: something’s got to give. In the movies a writer employs a Deux ex machina. In reality what strange mechanism will resolve this dilemma?
Nate Silver, whom I trust, is no longer at 538, and he took his modelling software (which he owns) with him when he left. 538 is not under the same management or using the same model as in 2020 and their reliability should not be judged based on their performance in 2020.
Silver is providing analysis and projections at his own site, Silver Bulletin, at natesilver.net.
Silver is currently predicting a 65% to 70% chance of a Trump win.
they now see his chances of winning (more votes) as zero ..
So Biden is more likely to win (a higher vote COUNT) than Trump..
As The Most Famous Democrat Famously Said: it's Not who votes that counts.. it's who COUNTS the Votes
MJB Wolf asked..
In reality what strange mechanism will resolve this dilemma?
Well, i'll tell you.
Biden (TRAGICALLY!) dies by the end of the 1st day of the convention (possibly on TV)
a "Grieving Nation" rallies around a reluctant Moochelle O'Bama, who reluctantly agrees to run
Moochelle "wins" with a vote COUNT of well over a hundred million
Can the 538 model predict whether Biden will have a complete meltdown 1) before the convention, or [worse for Team D] 2) after the convention but before November? And by meltdown I mean even worse than the debate. One that even has Jill saying, "It's not your night"*.
Of course not.
Even close polls - that few believe - can't guarantee that hanging sword will remain aloft.
* And Joe saying, "I coulda been a contendah".
What the White House and Campaign insiders understand, that the polls don’t reflect, is that severe disarray in their ranks is not an independent variable. It will impact messaging, fundraising, get-out-the-vote. The campaign is doomed and they know it.
But do I trust FiveThirtyEight? Is FiveThirtyEight corrupt?
A better question is whether you trust Disney.
Southpark has a funny skit about what Disney did to Star Wars after they bought it.
Nate Silver is the smart guy. I don't trust ABC news, and the fact that they cut his funding and chased him out makes their polling even more suspect.
One of the obvious things Silver insisted on was to do polling via states, since popular opinions are irrelevant in an election. It sounds like Disney didn't want to pay for the state-by-state approach.
Unfortunately for Nate Silver, the state-level polls say otherwise. They show Trump is going to win in a landslide. Youtuber Election Time reviews the polls regularly, and the results show a consistent landslide win for Trump.
Thay also want to scare their voters to the polls. This year's version of "put y'all back in chains".
Nate Silver is playing poker and he knows the odds.
Am I wrong in just speaking the unspeakable? That no matter what the polls say (and let's face it, over the past 20 or so years, they have been magnificently wrong quite often), it really comes down to a handful of states and how the votes are manipulated, harvested, dumped, and finally- counted. And recounted. It comes down to when exactly the key precinct counting stations are closed down, with oversight staff removed, and all counting ceased. Until it's started up again and new numbers released a few hours later with hundreds of thousands of votes suddenly found for Joe Biden.
You can say, Temujin, you sound like a crazy man. Sure. I may be. But this is what I watched happen in 2020 and I cannot erase it from my mind. And as I watch Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and now Fulton County Georgia make changes to set up the night for Democrats, I cannot help but expect things to go a certain way.
Screw the polls. They don't even play into this.
Unfortunately for Nate Silver, the state-level polls say otherwise.
As others have implied, you’re mistakenly conflating Nate Silver and 538.
with illegals voting - and the ballot stuffing - the crook biden camp are fine with their husk puppet at the helm.
everything is fine!
Real Clear Politics has a summary of betting odds on the presidency. They all put the odds at about 60% Republican, 40% Democrat. So, while it is a little more likely that Trump or some other Republican will win, it is still pretty close to a toss-up. People saying there is zero chance are being either hyperbolic or innumerate. Nate Silver puts the odds higher for trump, around 65%, but that is still not too far from a toss up.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president
I will be more shocked if Trump wins in 2024 than I was in 2016, and I was plenty shocked then. This time, they've prepped the battlefield and will continue to do whatever it takes to have the D candidate take the presidency.
John Mosby@5:18am, your comment was so interesting that I had to just scroll directly down to tell you so.
I've long considered conservatism to be utilitarianism with a conscience: a conservative does, and keeps, what works, occasionally changing course because the thing that is currently working has bad moral implications. The move, at least in the United states, is toward a closer and closer reading of the principal of "all men [in the intended universal sense] are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." That move has been interpreted as a move to the left, and I don't discount the role of progressivism in pushing at the boundaries of the Overton window to bring about such moves.
But progressivism seems to start from "this principle seems good to me, and I believe in my heart that it can be accomplished by doing X," and then doing X, quickly and with few to no feedback mechanisms and certainly no mechanism to walk it back if it doesn't work - they just bolt on another correction for the original mistake and another correction for the correction for the original mistake that didn't fix the original mistake, and so on.
I'll give progressives the benefit of the doubt for good intentions - most of them, at any rate (there are psychopaths in every area of life who will take advantage of whatever they can) - but utilitarianism with a conscience works better than utopianism pretty much every time, it seems to me. And most people seem to know that.
Again, it seems to me.
3:2 odds in my favor? That ain't no toss up. I'll play blackjack woth those odds every single day.
2 weeks and they forgot all about it.
Imagine if Joey wins.
John Mosby and Jamie - Agree that John wrote a very interesting post. Enjoyed it. But the R's "gerrymander" also.
IMO, "gerrymander" has a bad rap. Someone has to draw the lines. At least when politicians draw the lines, we know there will be bias and in what direction. These "nonpartisan" outfits that draw lines are full of crap, IMO. We all have biases.
Plus - I thing R gerrymanders are viewed as "bad" and D gerrymanders are not. See the Massachusetts congressional delegation. Nine seats and all are D. The boundaries could be drawn to have at least one R, but that ain't gonna happen. Nobody says a word. Just "good ole" Mass doing their thing.
538 is using as one component economic data that you see Bich in these threads lauding every other day or so. That is probably why 538 is an outlier right now- it isn't actually incorporating consumer sentiment but rather the data the Biden Administration puts out every day.
Now, I am not saying 538's prediction is wrong, only explaining why it runs counter to the overall polling data.
Oops I got the century wrong. Good thing I'm not eligible to run for Pres.
Remind me of 538's prediction in 2016?
"Nate Silver, whom I trust, is no longer at 538, and he took his modelling software (which he owns) with him when he left. 538 is not under the same management or using the same model as in 2020 and their reliability should not be judged based on their performance in 2020. Silver is providing analysis and projections at his own site, Silver Bulletin, at natesilver.net. Silver is currently predicting a 65% to 70% chance of a Trump win."
Thanks. I do read Nate Silver's site and even reviewed what he had when I wrote this post. I know he's not at 538, but assumed 538 was still applying the formula/method that he'd worked out.
Silver says this about what he's doing now at his site: "The model is the direct descendant of the f/k/a FiveThirtyEight election forecast2 and the methodology is largely the same...."
He links to "Some personal news/An update about me, FiveThirtyEight and the future after the Disney layoffs" (from May 2023): "Much of FiveThirtyEight’s vital intellectual property — such as the election forecast models — is merely licensed to Disney. The license term for these models expires with my contract this summer. I still own these models, and can license or sell them elsewhere. To be clear, Disney does own some stuff. They own the trade name “FiveThirtyEight”, for instance....."
"Some stuff" = ??? But he owns the "the election forecast models."
I don't know what FiveThirtyEight is using now to produce its familiar, fox-festooned graphics. Did it get a license from Silver or rebuild the whole thing?
In any case, checking the site now, I see Biden now wins 51 times out of 100 and Trump only 48.
I put Biden’s odds at 100%. Where do I get in on those 0 percent odds?
538 was bought by ABC/Disney. Next question.
Is 538 a Monte Carlo simulation? I don't understand why that's appropriate to the task of predicting an election outcome.
538 appears to be corrupt. Consider 538's analysis of PA. If you click on the "snake" graphic, it shows that the average poll is Biden 48 and Trump 47. But then if you click on the polls, you will see that 5 PA polls going back to June 28, Trump leads by 3, 5, 5, 5 4. In what world does Trump leading in every PA poll since late June (by an average of 4.4 points) lead to a conclusion that Biden is expected to win PA?
You can find the same thing for WI, where the last 5 polls dating back to late June show Trump winning by an average of 2.7 but 538 forecasts Trump will lose WI.
It seems clear to me that 538 is doing what it takes to imply that Biden and Trump are even in the swing states. 538 appears to be doing what the so many media outlets do: telling its readers what they want to hear.
I don't know what FiveThirtyEight is using now to produce its familiar, fox-festooned graphics. Did it get a license from Silver or rebuild the whole thing?
In a recent interview Silver said when he left 538 he took his propriety model with him (thanks to first-rate intellectual-property lawyers), which explains why 538’s current product reads as generic mainstream-media Democratic Party hackwork.
When I hear "Biden has a zero percent chance of winning", I see Truman holding the newspaper with headline "Dewey defeats Truman".
Link to a year old post from Silver just after leaving 538, Polling Averages Shouldn't be Political Litmus Tests, which leads me to seriously doubt the reliability/accuracy of the post-Silver 538.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/polling-averages-shouldnt-be-political?utm_source=publication-search
I lie to polls. One should assume others do to.
"Is 538 corrupt?"
I can't tell if this is a rhetorical question, and I'm not saying that as some snarky, passive-aggressive criticism of Ann, but as a genuine response to the insanity of current political discourse.
Are all "informed" people supposed to know that 538 is obviously corrupt?
Are all "informed" people supposed to know that 538's integrity is beyond question?
10-15 years ago I would have had a sense of this, but now it seems there's always someone to swoop in, screeching "OMG I can't believe you quoted _______! They're owned by Space Lizards!"
Post-Covid, we know that we can't even trust the numbers that come out of government agencies who are just supposed to tabulate things. Probably that means we can't trust the numbers, much less the judgments, of any other organizations, either.
It used to be that you could get a general sense of reality by comparing extreme right and extreme left publications and then guess what was really behind the mainstream stuff. When I was in Journalism school and for a couple of years afterwards, I used to subscribe to both Mother Jones and the American Spectator, which both reported stories that the mainstream preferred to ignore. Their takes were crazy, but you found out stuff. Nowadays, though, that doesn't work, because everybody is singing from the same hymnal about most things thanks to the coordination that social media--particularly Twitter--enabled.
So "is 538 corrupt?" is for me a real question. I don't know.
“But do I trust FiveThirtyEight?”
Digging into their methodology, 538 would forecast Donald Trump winning in November based on polls alone, but Joe Biden winning even bigger based on “fundamentals, so they are saying fundamentals will outweigh the polls come November.
In a recent interview Silver said when he left 538 he took his propriety model with him (thanks to first-rate intellectual-property lawyers), which explains why 538’s current product reads as generic mainstream-media Democratic Party hackwork.
Good point. Sort of like Drudge.
There are polls- and then there are internal polls which the public never sees.
DemoncRAT party officials are privy to the internal polls.
What factors do the internal polls have that the public polls don't? Ah- I don't know. They're internal... Although I imagine they likely include more fine tuned turnout projections. Doesn't matter how people say they're going to vote if they don't show up.
538 understands that the Democrat cabal that put QuidProJoe in the WH will not allow Trump to win. If the 20 point edge created for Biden by the corrupt media and at least 10% more by the cheaters and riggers isn't enough, more drastic measures may be required.
Think about it. They foisted Joe Biden on us, four undistinguished decades in government and a mind like Swiss cheese. They foisted Kamala Harris on us, incompetent at the state and local levels and a cackling nincompoop as VP.
Is there any level to which they wouldn't stoop?
McCain's campaign staff tanked his chances after DC declared Palin beyond the pale. After all, they all needed to get jobs in DC after the campaign.
Nate Silver was 538 kind of like how James O'Keefe was Project Veritas. The brand doesn't really mean anything.
Look at the graph you posted. Those red and blue plot points are the results of the 1,000 simulations.
Notice how so many of them give absurd, almost impossible results.
Notice particularly how a large segment of the simulations group towards the far left side of the graph and show Biden winning with more than a 200 electoral vote margin over Trump.
Too many outliers. More outliers points than centralized points.
Their methodology stinks and is loaded with subjective impositions on the actual data.
Yes they're corrupt.
Polls don't matter. Likely voters' opinions don't matter. Only the harvesting of universal mail in ballots matters, and those votes aren't subject to any polling, just harvesting.
538 puts greater emphasis on history (e.g., state results in past presidential elections) and on underlying objective factors (e.g., current economic numbers) than do other predictive models that rely more heavily on current polling. Given that Democratic presidential candidates have generally done better than Republicans in toss-up states in this century and that the economic numbers seem to be in the process of improving, 538 turns out to have better news for Biden than do other polls (which are less rooted in "the fundamentals"). I believe that one other "fundamental" is the presence of an incumbent on the ballot and that incumbency is weighted as increasing a president's reelection chances. One needs to consider whether the weights assigned to the various factors in the 538 model work as well as expected (hoped?) in every election to which it turns its thoughts.
538 is addig in their best guess as to how much fraud the Dems will be able to pull off.
I believe they are over-estimating the Dems ability on that front
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