The November elections are still months away, but more and more media outlets are coming forward with predictions. One of the latest predictions comes from The Economist, a media outlet that is generally not well-disposed towards Republicans. It is likely to bring a cautious smile to the Trump campaign team. On Wednesday, the media outlet published its first forecast for the presidential election, according to which Donald Trump will beat Joe Biden in the Electoral College. with odds of two to one.
Our survey tracker suggests that Biden and Trump are neck and neck in the popular vote. However, our forecasting model, which estimates the chances of various outcomes, puts Joe Biden’s chance of staying in the Oval Office at 33%. That’s only slightly higher than, say, the probability of it raining in London on any given day.
Our forecast combines opinion polls and “fundamentals,” data points from the past that have predictive value, including the president’s approval rating and various economic indicators. Because victory depends on the Electoral College rather than the popular vote, the model also incorporates state-level data. It then generates 10,001 possible scenarios each day to determine the chances of various outcomes. Read our analysis of the model.
First, let us clarify one point: there is no such thing as a “referendum”. None. It has no meaning, and although it is a statistical curiosity that is of no employ to campaigns that seek a very broad assessment of the Zeitgeist, it has no electoral significance. None. It’s irrelevant; that’s not how we elect presidents, and it’s pretty tiring when media outlets that should know better keep repeating it. We elect presidents through the Electoral College, which makes state polls the appropriate data points.
And The Economist later confirms this.
Things are looking bleak for Biden at the moment. He is about five percentage points behind in the polls for the contested Sun Belt areas of Arizona. Georgia And Nevadaeven though he won them four years ago. If Mr Biden loses those three, he will have to win all three Rust Belt states instead MichiganPennsylvania and Wisconsin. Mr. Trump is only one or two percentage points ahead there, so the election in these states is a gamble.
In other words, it’s starting to look like Christmas for the Trump campaign, when it had better prepare to sprint to the finish line. These swing states aren’t called swing states for nothing, and there’s no reason to believe that the Biden campaign will follow Hillary’s example and simply ignore states like Wisconsin, blithely assuming they’ll fall into the Democratic column like good children. We should also note that Trump is taking the fight to the Democratic states, striving to expand the electoral map and, incidentally, put the Biden campaign behind. It’s never a good idea to let the opponent dictate the terms of the fight, but the Biden campaign seems, at least for now, to be ceding the initiative to Team Trump.
It has also not yet been announced who Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate might be, and that could make a difference.
See also: Trump’s vice presidential election continues with more names on the list
Biden cannot run on the grounds that “I am not Trump.” Trump, on the other hand, …
Of course, The Economist, well, The Economist, has to land another swipe:
The election is five months away, and a lot can still happen. And there’s always the possibility of polling error that could favor one or both candidates. The polls may not accurately reflect the fact that the Democratic Party’s well-educated voting base is more likely to turn out to vote than Trump’s less-educated coalition. Or they may underestimate Trump, as they did in 2016.
Less educated? Excuse me? First, I have an MBA in technology management; my wife has a master’s in accounting and healthcare management. I think that identifies us as “educated,” and in November we will be Trump voters. But more importantly, there is education and education. Too many of the left-leaning, highly educated managers tend to think that college education is the only education, and dismiss people with more practical experience, like some of us who have been through the college of life, the school of life, and the kindergarten of whipping. Just because someone doesn’t have a college degree doesn’t mean they don’t have a brain. It doesn’t mean they can’t see interest rates rising along with their heating bills, grocery bills, housing costs, and pretty much everything else. It doesn’t mean they can’t see their country’s military being weakened, their president becoming a laughingstock in the other nations of the world, and millions of unknowns pouring across the southern border.
The Economist makes a pretty good prediction here, at least for now. It agrees pretty well with RealClearPolitics’ poll averages for the swing states, which also point to a Trump victoryBut while they What pretty well understood, they have to take another close look, Whybecause it looks like they miss it.
As my grandfather always said (when it came to education), “You can teach them, but you can’t teach them what to do.”
