Writes Nate Silver, in "The presidential election is a toss-up/Kamala Harris is giving Democrats the race that Joe Biden couldn’t."
Silver's definition of "toss-up" is "where each candidate had at least a 40 percent chance of winning."
August 1, 2024
"As of this afternoon’s model run, Harris’s odds had improved to 44.6 percent, as compared to 54.9 percent for Trump and a 0.5 percent chance of an Electoral College deadlock."
"It’s not exactly 50/50, but close enough that a poker player would call it a 'flip': Democrats have ace-king suited, and Republicans have pocket jacks.... Harris has a 54 percent chance of winning Michigan, a 50 percent chance of winning Wisconsin and 47 percent chance of winning Pennsylvania, states that would suffice to net her 270 electoral votes, one more than she needs to win (assuming she also holds lean-blue states like New Hampshire). She also has a 40 percent chance of winning Nevada, where her polling has been much better than Biden’s so far, and roughly a one-in-three chance in Georgia and North Carolina, which gives her some backup options that Biden lacked."
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85 comments:
Let me know in a month.
Peak Harris at the moment, I suspect.
She will win PA with Shapiro but might sacrifice MN and MI.
Harris has two big advantages: (1) She's not Biden and (2) She's not Trump. If she hides in the basement like Biden did in 2020 and limits herself to interviews with friendly media outlets (which is to say, most of them), she just might pull it off...and the shadowy cabal that's running the country now will continue to do so.
Weak. Silver is devaled.
Oh, stop it with the horse race, horse shit. This is not a national election. A few swing states decide it. And maybe Omaha.
The media-industrial complex either declares the Dem inevitable (Hillary) or that it is a close race in order to push undecided voters to the Dems.
The betting odds continue to shift - Trump's at -112, Harris at +124.
Just before the debate, the odds were, if memory serves, around Trump -110, Biden +105. So not quite there yet.
One of the things I noticed in the Harvard-Harris poll the other day is that the percentages add up to 100. In other words, the number of undecided voters is very small, near zero, despite Harris entering late and not yet having a running mate. There are no more undecideds to pick up so Trump will have to concentrate on peeling off Harris and Kennedy voters. I can see Harris peeling off Kennedy voters, but not Trump voters. Keep in mind that Trump hasn’t really started his ad campaign.
Should be interesting.
According to James Carville, The Icepick Cometh, and Kamala will need a good cut man in her corner.
Harris has two big advantages: (1) She's not Biden and (2) She's not Trump. If she hides in the basement like Biden did in 2020 and limits herself to interviews with friendly media outlets (which is to say, most of them), she just might pull it off...and the shadowy cabal that's running the country now will continue to do so.
I don't think that she can pull off a basement campaign. That worked in 2020 because of the pandemic, but not anymore. 2020 was a referendum on Trump, and Biden could be portrayed as a return to normalcy. Neither will be the case this time around. She has to campaign, and she will have to defend this administration's record.
A 10.3% differential is not what any poker player would call a flip. That's significant when you're laying money down on the table.
RMc: Kamala has done puff interviews with very friendly media in the past. She's even terrible at those. She's simply incapable of giving an interview without going into word salad nonsense.
Oh, stop it with the horse race, horse shit. This is not a national election.
Silver’s odds are based on an electoral-college model, not on national polls. No one thinks Trump is ten points up on Harris.
Joe Smith said...
She will win PA with Shapiro but might sacrifice MN and MI.
8/1/24, 3:54 PM
She hates Israel and hates Netanyahu and wants Hamas to win the war and shows no concern for victims of terrorism. Or rather - she thinks the perpetrators are the victims.
MI has a large Muslim population. They were not motivated before. Now all those people shouting "Death to the Jews! Death to America!" are super motivated. The Jews in MI may be scared of growing antisemitism and growing Islamism in the world and the state, but these are Harris' people. Her at the top just improved her chances greatly in MI.
"She has to campaign, and she will have to defend this administration's record."
The strange thing is that everything her campaign has done so far looks like attempts to persuade Democrats. I don't think we're getting the whole story on what's happening among the Democrat powers-that-be.
Check out this post by Brent Scher on Twitter. It shows Air Force personnel saluting Kamala Harris, as if she is of higher rank than they are.
https://x.com/BrentScher/status/1819110038759219703
The Vice President holds no military rank and isn't saluted. Only the Commander In Chief is saluted, because of course, he is a member of the military chain of command. The Vice President is NOT.
So why is the Air Force saluting Kamala Harris?
And why is she returning that salute? As if she is a member of our Armed forces?
Stolen Valor
This is as good as it gets for Harris.
She still has not answered open unscripted questions from the press since she deposed Biden and took his place in the palace coup.
Trump went into a space dominated by black women most of whom are clearly Harris supporters and came out clearly ahead.
Harris couldn't even go to that space. She will lose voters if she is interviewed even by a softball tongue bath.
She will take MN with Shapiro. MN Dems have perfected, uh, "ballot harvesting" here.
The strange thing is that everything her campaign has done so far looks like attempts to persuade Democrats.
I've been wondering about this too. Working on the enthusiasm gap? That would go along with the Ka-mentum storyline - they have to make fetch happen.
RMc said...
"Harris has two big advantages: (1) She's not Biden and (2) She's not Trump."
She also has one big disadvantage: she's Harris
None of this matters for another month. Let's revisit at the end of August and see where we are.
Matt opined: "(Kamala) will take MN with Shapiro."
Imagine Kamala Harris selecting a Jewish man as Vice President.
How will she get out of Chicago alive?
I mean, lots of people don't make it out of Chicago alive on any given day, but how's she going to do it having snubbed black people and selected the AIPAC-hand-picked VP?
Tim Maguire suggested: "None of this matters for another month."
None of what Nate Silver does has ever mattered.
Dixcus said...
"...So why is the Air Force saluting Kamala Harris?
And why is she returning that salute? As if she is a member of our Armed forces?"
She thinks she's The General."
Silver's definition of "toss-up" is "where each candidate had at least a 40 percent chance of winning."
In my lifetime, by that definition, the only elections that weren't "toss ups" were probably 1964 and 1984 (I wasn't around in 1932, but I've read about it; probably not a toss-up). I know Silver has earned a good reputation, but this CYA statement means we should ignore him (and all other pollsters mediums, prophets, etc.) until Nov. 6 (or later, whenever the "late" votes are tallied).
The Vice President holds no military rank and isn't saluted. Only the Commander In Chief is saluted.
If you google US military customs and courtesies for saluting civilians, you’ll see you are mistaken.
Have you ever heard a “USA, USA, USA” chant at a Democrat rally?
Neither have I. Fuck these people. They not like us.
Climate change.
I would like to know who Silver sold his business to. Is this another Drudge Report case?
What is Harris’s top accomplishment to run on as president? Inflation, border/immigration, world conflicts resolution? There is nothing there so no press conference.
All you need to know about Nate Silver is that he had Hillary at something like a 66% chance of winning as of election day 2016. He should have folded up his shop at that point and gone into welding or some other useful profession.
Epstein’s clients are STILL running this shitshow.
Dixcus said...
"Check out this post by Brent Scher on Twitter. It shows Air Force personnel saluting Kamala Harris, as if she is of higher rank than they are...The Vice President holds no military rank and isn't saluted. Only the Commander In Chief is saluted, because of course, he is a member of the military chain of command. The Vice President is NOT."
Don't believe everything you read on Twitter.
For example, from Section 1.8.1.1. of Air Force Instruction 1, Air Force Policy Directive 1, aka AFI1-1 pdf file:
"Airmen salute the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Department Secretaries, all superior commissioned and warrant officers, all Medal of Honor recipients, and superior officers of friendly foreign nations."
"I would like to know who Silver sold his business to. Is this another Drudge Report case?"
No.
After the back and forth between the NYT and Disney/ABC for ownership Nates contract was not renewed in 2018 or 2019, I can't recall which year exactly. However, the rights to the 538 algorithm's and methodologies stayed with 538 under ABC's news division so Nate left and has started something a bit smaller now.
Different than Drudge who was bought out by lefty moneybags and took about 6 months to try and subtly transition from a conservative to at least a not captured lefty site to a full blown lefty site but still pretending to be "conservative". Like the LLR-democraticals here at Althouse blog. Which is why Drudge became irrelevant after just about 9 months but still soldiers on from a lefty perspective. 20 years of branding down the drain in months.
This was at the same general time as the lefty billionaires cranked up paying the other FakeCon sites and other properties that are now about half captured, like National Review:
- The Bulwark neocon democratical morons
- The Lincoln Pedophile Project
- Jonah Goldberg & Stephen Hayes over at their little left of center newsletter after they drove the Weekly Standard into the ground (thank you Phil Anschutz for not allowing these buffoons to run away with the donors and brand name!)
- Google guys and others becoming bigger funders at the National Review
In the same way the ChiComs and Qatari's and others have purchased our government, the Big Tech Money purchased the weak GOPe run media properties...and it wasn't even that difficult.
All you need to know about Nate Silver is that he had Hillary at something like a 66% chance of winning as of election day 2016.
I'm not sure people understand how odds work. 66% for means 34% against. meaning that if there were 1000 elections, 34% of the time the 66% person would lose. When you have 1 event, you cannot say that he is wrong because he had Hillary at 66%. He would only be wrong if he had er at 100%. even if he had her at 99.99%, he would not have been wrong. If I claim the odds are that if you flit a coin twice there is a 75% chance that it will not com up heads twice, and then it DOES come up heads twice does that mean my model is wrong?
The only way you could judge him is if, over many iterations, his odds disagreed with the results significantly.
I would like to know who Silver sold his business to. Is this another Drudge Report case?
I seem to remember we’ve been through this before. Silver left 538 (ABC News/Disney) and now does election prediction and analysis under his own name.
I am in agreement with StaticPing and MadisonMan.
Godfather @ 5:08pm.
"we should ignore him ... until Nov. 6 (or later, whenever the "late" votes are tallied)."
Umm, you misspelled "generated" Right at the end there.
I don't think that she can pull off a basement campaign. That worked in 2020 because of the pandemic, but not anymore. 2020 was a referendum on Trump, and Biden could be portrayed as a return to normalcy. Neither will be the case this time around. She has to campaign, and she will have to defend this administration's record.
Better to be silent and be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The best play here is probably to keep the trap shut and hope the media can spin a story that sells well enough and the machine can generate enough mail-ins to squeak by. The Obi-Wan vote harvesting plan.
(Harris) will have to defend this administration's record.
Defend it to whom? Every interview she gives will be to friendly media-types, who will proclaim her the greatest thing since sliced bread, protecting us from a looming fascist takeover.
https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1819122154895724758
James K said...
All you need to know about Nate Silver is that he had Hillary at something like a 66% chance of winning as of election day 2016. He should have folded up his shop at that point and gone into welding or some other useful profession.
8/1/24, 5:44 PM
Now TBH ... EVERYONE had Hillary winning. She was campaigning in states that hadn't been blue forever bec she, and EVERYONE, knew she was going to win. There were two and exactly two people who thought Trump would win. There is a clip of Ann Coulter saying it and she was roundly mocked, and Scott Adams (Dilbert). IIRC even the Trump camp knew he was going to lose. NO ONE thought Trump had a chance. EVERY poll showed him losing. To my mind this is why he won 2016 and how Joe became president in 2020. Since everyone knew and all the polls showed Hillary winning there was no need to spend money on the cheating machine. Then it turns out there were a LOT of people who liked Trump but he was attacked so viciously as were his supporters that they were in the closet. But they voted. In 2020 I think they realized they screwed up and didn't cheat in 2016 and they sure as heck were not going to let him have a second term so they took no chances and pulled shenanigans in 2020 to ensure their guy was installed.
Trump got more votes 2020 than he did in 2016 and Biden supposedly got more votes than OBAMA (!?!?) in 2020. No one wanted Biden in the presidency. No one voted for Biden. They voted against Trump. And you're telling me that the guy who had 50,000 people showing up for him at midnight in a cornfield in 0 degree weather was beaten by the guy who couldn't get 8 people to show up at a rally in Los Angeles? No way. They were not going to allow Trump to have a second term and turned on the machine just like they're going to do this time.
So Trump has to beat her by >3% in the battlegrounds. I bet the machine can crank 2-3%...
I'm not sure people understand how odds work.
For those who have difficulty comprehending Silver’s 2016 odds that Trump had roughly a one-in-three chance of winning, imagine playing Russian roulette with two bullets in the revolver instead of one: Would you be nervous?
There's a dark side of me that wants Kamala to win just to watch everything go to shit.
A refresher course
https://web.archive.org/web/20200901190454/https://www.doctoroz.com/episode/true-crime-philly-teacher-stabbed-20-times-was-it-suicide-or-murder?video_id=6113035736001
The Kamala makeover is amazing. Thomas Sowell said Americans today react to word reptation like a Pavlovian dog.
If Kamala wins it will be for the reason above... We are sailing on a ship of fools.
Forgive me. I'm emotionally preparing myself.
Do intellectual feminists really want Kamala to be the first female President?
For Kamala to win she needs to hire some more assassins... the last one didn't cut the mustard.
FWIW, Dana Loesch says it's Shapiro based on schedule changes.
Wa St Blogger said...I'm not sure people understand how odds work. 66% for means 34% against.
That’s the frustrating thing about Silver—so long as he doesn’t say “100%”, there will always be people explaining why he’s not wrong. The reality is, there are too few presidential contests for anybody to say whether his modelling is right or wrong.
Drago, your claim that "the rights to the 538 algorithm's and methodologies stayed with 538 under ABC's news division so Nate left and has started something a bit smaller now." is incorrect. Silver retained the rights to his modelling tools and took them with him when he was fired. 538 is using a completely new model. Silver is using an updated version of the old 538 model.
Thanks Drago. You didn't have to repeat it.
Kamala hasn’t been tested yet in the crucible of a campaign. Democrats tend to look worse the more you see them. Trump, on the other hand, has had everything but the kitchen since thrown at him for eight years. Not much downside left.
Wa St Blogger has a good explanation of this. THere are betting odds markets, and a “price” of 55 means that there is a very very slight edge for Trump, and a Harris win would be no more unexpected than flipping a coin and it coming up tails. (just about). Trumps betting odds have fallen from (about 65, just after the disasterous for Biden debate) to about 55 today. So Trump is still the favorite, but it is a slight favorite and the favoritism has been reduced by the Harris honeymoon.
Now TBH ... EVERYONE had Hillary winning.
I put money (and not a small amount) down on Trump. Not to say that I really thought he had better than a 50-50 chance, but that he was a good buy (he was at 22 cents on predictit.org). I'm not privy to Silver's model, but it wouldn't surprise me if he takes the outcomes in different states as independent, which is a mistake if you think the polls might all be biased in the same direction.
I understand odds and probability quite well, thank you. But Silver's models are only as good as the polls they are based on, and his methodology for turning them into probabilities, and I don't put a lot of stock in them.
James K,
I bet on Trump the first time, but ever since I would bet on "Democrat to win". All of this is rhetorical. The election needs to be rhetorically close. Defendably close. Biden was pulled to stop the down ticket damage. The top of the ticket is secure.
Saw video today of the Kamal sitting in her SUV for 30 minutes, gets out & hands her phone to some lackey/SS agent, walk to a propositioned podium, open a binder, read from binder, walk away ignoring all press. BTW, it's comforting to know the FBI is once again advising "social media" companies of what the FBI considers "foreign mis/disinformation". You know, things like the Steele Dossier or Hunter's laptop.
Here's Mamala - the weird scold.
Weird.
So weird ... and creepy - turn up the volume.
"Drago, your claim that "the rights to the 538 algorithm's and methodologies stayed with 538 under ABC's news division so Nate left and has started something a bit smaller now." is incorrect."
I'll take another look.
Thanks.
Michael K: "Thanks Drago. You didn't have to repeat it."
Blogger glitched and removed the first 2. Althouse likely went back thru the filters and re-released the first 2, hence the repeats.
I usually take care to not have repeat posts.
I'm not privy to Silver's model, but it wouldn't surprise me if he takes the outcomes in different states as independent, which is a mistake if you think the polls might all be biased in the same direction.
Quite the opposite. If I remember correctly, he's stated a number of times that there are strong correlations between certain states and certain groups (e.g., a strong turnout among white working class in MI usually also shows a strong turnout among white working class in OH, or the FL panhandle).
And on August 1 2016, Nate Silver and 538 put the projected electoral votes at 303 Clinton, 235 Trump.
Chances of winning: 64.8% for Clinton, 35.1% for Trump.
And on Nov 8 2016, Nate put Clinton's odds at 71.4%, and Trump's odds of winning at 28.6%
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
Great track record in early August you got there with your models, Nate. Likewise November.
Darn: that real world is quite the troublesome thing, isn't it?
All these calculations assume that the Democrats won't cheat. And therefore all these calculations are worthless.
It is all downhill for Kamala Harris.
Still quite possible they remover her before the convention. All her "VP" choices are bailing on her.
Gotta keep the polls in line to make the steal plausible.
Sounds right. I wouldn't be surprised if she crests 50% during the convention with journalists desperately propping her up at every turn. On paper, she's a great candidate for the Democrats, just like in the 2019 primary.
The challenge for Republicans is that there's only about 60 days to the start of early voting, probably only about 35 days after the end of the convention bounce. Is that enough for the voting public to remember that Harris is kind of a dingbat in reality? Democrats are gambling that it's too short, and they might be right!
LOL show of hands. Who thinks this honeymoon bump will last through the convention?
Who thinks this honeymoon bump will last through the convention?
Actual or reported?
My guess is that Trump really won’t begin to highlight just how bad Harris is until after she is officially nominated. If he demolishes her any sooner the cabal running the DNC will nominate someone else.
A deadlock would be decided by a joint session of Congress and the procedure that Trump tried to use on J6, which was the subject of Season 5 episodes 1-2 of Veep.
Quite the opposite. If I remember correctly, he's stated a number of times that there are strong correlations between certain states and certain groups (e.g., a strong turnout among white working class in MI usually also shows a strong turnout among white working class in OH, or the FL panhandle).
Ok, good to know--if he said that prior 2016. But then he must bring in some sort of behavioral model in addition to polling. All the more surprising that he got 65-70% for Hillary.
So, we've had the media campaign. Let's see how people like The Cackler once they start paying attention.
Touche Kevin. Well played. Based on her history it won't last and the public will grow tired of her hiding while the Media peddle a hagiography.
The thing is, this time it's different. She's got money. She's got handlers. She's got for years more experience on the national stage, with a lot of feedback about her word salads* and creaky voice. She's going to be the Democrat nominee, so she's got the press. I agree that she's shown no particular signs of incisive intelligence, but she's not stupid, no matter what some would like to believe.
I can't see her being the train wreck of a candidate that she was in 2020.
* My husband does finance for a private foundation and attends two conferences a year held by a professional organization for his ilk; he says that every one of the women (and they're majority women) who presents at these conferences talks exactly like Harris, and all the other women eat it up with a spoon. Furthermore, he's always believed that she absolutely killed it as VP - by doing nothing useful but using those word salads to cover effectively.
This is all going to come down to turnout. And Republicans are heavily disadvantaged by the lickspittle media.
Ok, I just watched a brief video of Harris and Biden on a nighttime runway in the immediate aftermath of the prisoner swap, in which Harris held forth on the power of diplomacy, and... maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Harris will continue to sound like a doofus even though she's got all the advantages right now.
But then the question is, re my husband's observations about the very similar speech patterns of quant women at private foundations, will her sounding like a doofus even register?
So - still turnout.
Jamie IMO that has limited appeal. That's a pretty narrow slice your husband described, possibly containing a majority of Affluent White Female Liberals. They do in fact "eat that up."
Not much of a bounce, but from the way they tell it, it's monumental. Did Nate call Trump/Clinton a toss up? Anybody got way back fix on his view of the 2016 race. Trump was closer than this conventional wisdom and even pollsters said she was runaway lock. Opps
She's going to be heavily scripted through the convention. After that, I don't think she can hide, and the debate will expose her as the dimwitted airhead she is.
Polls don't mean anything compared to the ground game of each party in harvesting universal mail in ballots. The winner will be the one whose party wins the collecting of mail in ballots for their candidate, and suppresses the collecting of mail in ballots for the opposition.
Senior citizens in old folk's homes, prepare for your moment of importance in this election! A Democrat (most likely) operative will be coming around with all your ballots for you, prefilled for you if they can get away with it, and possibly presigned for you if you can't do it yourself. Perhaps if you're in a home for really bad dementia cases, the operative won't come by at all, but your votes will still count!
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