The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election

Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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69 Responses

  1. North
    Ignored
    says:

    I’ll start us off!

    Harris/Walz win with the blue wall: MI, PA and WI. I’m not confident about the new purple AZ or GA to be able to even to predict anything but red for them. https://www.270towin.com/maps/KmypG

    I’d say the big surprises are that there aren’t any big surprises.

    Dems take the House but the GOP seems very likely to take the Senate 50-49. Tester needs a miracle to win and we don’t have a replacement pickup for his seat.

    No further assassination attempts- the SS has been tightening up and the two moronic loons who made the attempts didn’t get the kind of media attention or adulation that might encourage more moronic loons to try.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to North
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      says:

      Interesting!

      My thoughts are still percolating (though I stand by both of my “Let’s Face It” posts).

      If I were going to make a bet about The Blue Wall, it’d be that two of the three states would go one way and the third would go the other. I don’t know which two and I don’t know which way. But we’re going to have two one color and the third will be the other.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird
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        says:

        Well right now, polling wise, it looks like PA would be the most likely to flip red which also makes intuitive sense since Wallz is popular in MN and a lot of people in WI commute into MN to work so that support may well bleed over. I still think the blue wall states will hold though.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to North
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          says:

          Yeah, maybe. I think I had PA and WI red and MI blue, in my head. But I failed to take into account commuters.

          So here. I think I think that Trump wins due to PA and NV flipping. BUT DANG IT IS CLOSE.

          Republicans pick up 2 in the senate, pick up 8 in the House.

          https://www.270towin.com/maps/jPvkEReport

          • North in reply to Jaybird
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            says:

            Thanks, I hate it! Also, it’s basically next door to my own prediction, just one tick to the right.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to North
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              says:

              There’s this weird undercurrent of “we don’t know anything”.

              Even as we look at the polls, we don’t know anything.

              Even as we look at North Carolina, we don’t know anything about North Carolina.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Yes, polling has just been thumped around the last couple electoral cycles- it gets close in hindsight but is always close enough that the margin of error of the aggregate predicts either outcome without hindsight.

                So, the polls say, to the educated reader, “it could go either way” and the educated reader says “we already knew that!”

                The question is, is it 2020, in which case Harris is in trouble, or is it 2022 in which case Trump unambiguously fished. Or is 2024 new?Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North
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                says:

                Biden was able to resonate with a lot of undecideds. He was affable and goofy and funny. Does Harris resonate with those same people?

                I don’t know. I mean, my inclination is to say “probably not” because of a couple of things but we’re also seeing very favorable coverage and maybe that’ll be enough to make up the gap between what was organic about Biden and what Harris wasn’t able to capture during the primary back in 2020.

                All this data and no information.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Biden resonated more with certain groups of people that Harris doesn’t- no denying it. Harris, however, also resonates more with other groups of people than Biden did/does and that can’t be denied either. The question is if the boost is the same or more and if the respective supporters are geographically located in an electorally efficient manner which we do not know.

                But, that being said, I think it’s a moot question because the Biden we have now isn’t the Biden we elected in 2020, he’s clearly slower and there were so many concerns about his age that he had to drop out. I’m dubious we’d be in a better place if he’d stayed in.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North
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                says:

                I’m not arguing for Biden. I thought that Biden would lose back then and I still think that he’d lose if he were running today. In a choice between “Biden and What’s In The Box”, Biden is guaranteed to lose and WITB is not.

                Harris is WITB. I still think it should have been Pritzker but…

                Anyway.

                If she resonates with women better than Clinton did (I mean, the other Clinton), she should do okay.

                But we still have a fairly sexist society.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Abortion is the question that should have the right up at night. Not just because of women (though they’re a big deal) but also due to barstool conservatives who worry that Dobbs will impact their all important ability to get laid. The Dems have been overperforming since Dobbs and, guess what, this is a post Dobbs election.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to North
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                says:

                Doubt it moves any votes in the ‘barstool right’ … those folks are fine with Trumps signalling on being pro-choice.Report

              • Slade the Leveller in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                As much as I’d hate to lose J.B. as a governor, I think he’d make a fine president.Report

          • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird
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            says:

            NH going Red is a bold prediction… I have friends in NH that are pretty plugged in to local politics… and just when you think maybe NH will flip red, they never do.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to North
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      says:

      That’s kind of my expectation as well; the electoral map will be “Obama 2012” and the popular vote will be 53-46 with a higher turnout than the past two years. Less some new mandate for a future and more A Return To Normalcy.Report

      • North in reply to DensityDuck
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        says:

        I’m good for a Return to Normalcy personally. It’d be fascinating to watch when the GOP/right does if Trump loses. They obviously wouldn’t “want” to go Trump again but how the getting there happens would be very interesting to see.Report

        • InMD in reply to North
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          says:

          I think if he loses chances are high he does at least some prison time, maybe remains a cause celebré in the alt/hard online right, but is quickly memory holed anywhere that butts up against the mainstream.

          I can already read the quizzicle piece at WSJ or wherever that treats the everything Trump as if it was somehow a creation of the left wing media.

          If he loses.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to North
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      says:

      Harris is up +2 in North Carolina and Josh Stein is up a whopping +13.

      https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/north-carolina/

      If this continues, it is not a good trend for Republicans.Report

      • North in reply to Saul Degraw
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        says:

        from your lips to God(ess?)’s ear Saul me lad. what is your prediction?Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to North
          Ignored
          says:

          I think Harris probably wins and it is probably pretty apparent on Nov 5. I can still have moments of anxiety of Trump getting a 2016 victory again. Democrats probably retake the House and do fairly well in the Senate. Tester is a almost likely a goner. Brown and Baldwin get reelected. Hogan is not a contender. Slotkin wins. There is a plausible but outside chance Allread wins. A less likely but not completely implausible chance Scott gets taken down.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to Saul Degraw
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        says:

        I think the fact there’s a bunch of random (probably paid) misinformation on Twitter about how the Helena disaster recovery is going horribly is an indication that the Republican are getting somewhat worried about how, by all actual accounts, the Biden administration is pretty much on the ball there.

        So much so that Governor Kemp had to issue a correction and point out that the White House was, in fact, providing disaster relief. (I think I’ve made this point before, but there’s something interesting about Georgia Republicans because, being the sole party in power, they sorta understand how they actually have to govern, and that they don’t have to to Trumpism, because they’re staying on power regardless.)

        It’s a huge disaster, and it’s still in ‘cleanup’ and hasn’t gotten to ‘recovery’ yet, but it really is amazing how Republicans seem to think and hope that every natural disaster will be that administration’s Katrina, when in reality Katrina requires absurd levels of hyperincompetence and moronic meddling with the very competent organizations we have for disasters, and doesn’t just happen. So they just sorta resort to lying.

        Anyway, here in Georgia, Trump decided to go to Valdosta for a ‘briefing’, and pull Governor Kemp there too. A city that is, uh, in ruins. It does not need a presidential candidate visit. It didn’t even need the governor visiting!

        I’m on Facebook with a bunch of people in Georgia (Generally not in the effected areas, but everyone sorta knows what is going on.), and even the conservatives are…not particularly happy about some of this. They’re not happy about Trump lying that Biden isn’t sending emergency assistant, they’re not happy with idiots going into a disaster zone for photo ops, they’re just generally not happy.

        I mean, they show it by demanding that Biden give people in the disaster zone more money, but I’ve read Facebook long enough to know ‘Making weird complaints about Biden is what they do when they’re not happy about Trump’s behavior and want to think about something else’.Report

  2. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    I wrote this yesterday but I think the polls are over weighing Republicans and we have already entered the Republican partisan “polling” outfits flooding the zone with S##T stage.

    The most recent polling from Pennsylvania already comes from three Republican Partisan outfits. One of which is run by two college students. Patriot Polling and the Trafalgar Group were part of the outfits that predicted 2022 very poorly.
    Atlas Intel is run by a right-libertarian think tank called The Atlas Network. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/pennsylvania/Report

  3. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    You can see the same flooding of the zone with s*@t in Michigan at both the President and Senate level. Senate polls have had Slotkin, the Democratic candidate consistently up by +4 to +6. Trafalgar group declared the race EVEN. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/michigan/

    Another poll taking by Mitchel Research at the same time had Slotkin up by 5. Mitchell Research was started by a Reagan-Bush guy and also has a partisan lean but not as obvious as Trafalgar or Patriot Polling and they try to be a bit more accurate. Trafalgar could be correct theoretically but it looks more like an outlier and outliers require extraordinary evidence.

    So we might be at a point where individual polls are more reliable than the aggregates.Report

  4. Greg in Ak
    Ignored
    says:

    Harris takes the “Blue Wall” states and at least one of NV, AZ or NC. Maybe 2 of those 3. Wins popular vote easily of course. R’s take senate, D’s take house. Nothing really surprising

    Big questions are:
    What does trump try to sell after his loss?
    Where will his riot/coup attempt be this time?Report

  5. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    Harry Enten believes that Harris has a +18 lead among white college grads. Clinton was +5 in 2016, Biden was +9 in 2020:

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4f9a71f76923dcbee702992ea2d06494ec1d10ed10eb8e60642cfc059cfa97bf.pngReport

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw
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      says:

      Basically, more and more educated people can’t bring themselves to vote for the Republicans.Report

      • North in reply to LeeEsq
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        says:

        But do enough of them live in the swing states or will they just pad out margins in safe blue ones?Report

        • Joe in reply to North
          Ignored
          says:

          The share of the voting public that has at least a bachelor’s degree has also shot up. It was ~20% in 1980 and it’s over 40% now. So there is a self-reinforcing trend thing at play too.

          The suburban belts around Phoenix and Atlanta were super-white and GOP as recently as 2010. In 2024 they have both many more people and are more politically and racially diverse (lots of reporting on Cobb and Gwinnett counties in GA). In Wisconsin almost all the net state population growth is happening in Dane County/Madison. It is both ~80% D and 80% voter turnout as of the 2020 election.Report

          • North in reply to Joe
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            says:

            Encouraging, but the Dems erosion among other population groups offers a countervailing cause for alarm since men without college degrees are thick on the ground in the swing states, always have been, and seem to be swinging to the GOP in ever greater numbers.Report

  6. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    In the online survey of a representative national sample of likely voters in the United States, 52% of decided voters would support the current vice president or have already voted for her, while 47% would back the former president.

    “Harris holds a 15-point lead over Trump among female decided voters (57% to 42%),” says Mario Canseco, President of Research Co. “Trump is ahead of Harris among male voters (52% to 47%).”

    On a regional basis, Harris holds sizeable leads over Trump in the West (58% to 40%) and the Northeast (55% to 43%). Trump is first in the South (51% to 48%) while the two candidates are virtually tied in the Midwest (Harris 50%, Trump 49%).

    Only 5% of decided voters say they could change their mind and support a different candidate in the presidential election. The proportion of undecided likely voters with four weeks to go in the campaign is 4%.

    More than half of white decided voters (54%) would cast a ballot for Trump or have already done so. Harris leads among decided voters who are African American (71%) or Hispanic / Latino (61%).

    Harris is the top choice for American decided voters who get their news from MSNBC / CNBC (81%), CNN (67%) or a local network (53%), while Trump is ahead among those who watch Fox News (68%).

    Harris holds a five-point lead over Trump among decided voters who have a cat in their household (52% to 47%). The race is closer among decided voters who have a dog at home (Harris 50%, Trump 49%).

    Decided voters in the United States cite the presidential candidate’s ideas and policies (43%) as the main reason behind their choice, followed by the candidate’s political party (24%), desire for stability (14%), desire for change (also 14%) and disgust with other candidates (8%).

    These findings are very similar among decided voters who are backing either Harris or Trump, with one exception. While 10% of Harris voters say their main motivator is “disgust with other candidates”, the proportion is lower (5%) among Trump voters.

    American likely voters were asked which of the two main presidential candidates is best suited to deal with 13 different issues.

    Harris holds the upper hand over Trump on five issues: health care (52% to 36%), education (52% to 36%), the environment (52% to 35%), race relations (50% to 35%) and government accountability (47% to 41%). Trump leads Harris on two issues: immigration (50% to 39%) and national defence (48% to 41%).

    https://researchco.ca/2024/10/07/us-nationwide-oct2024/

    Don’t take anything for granted but this does not seem like good news for TrumpReport

  7. Chip Daniels
    Ignored
    says:

    I’ll say the same thing I’ve been saying.
    The outcome will rely on a razor thin margin in a handful of states.

    The one new note is that with so many states at the tipping point, a sizeable electoral college victory is possible, in either direction.

    But the battleground state margins will be tight.

    Which means there will be no Return To Normal, not for a decade at least.And the Normal on the other side will be very different than it ever was.

    This election no matter how critical, won’t resolve the divide in America because no matter which way it goes, the losing side can plausibly say “If only we had worked just a bit harder!”Report

  8. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    Election related news/anecdata:

    1. I am doing postcards to swing states for the election. These are apparently good/decent at giving a gentle nudge to irregular but likely on your side voters to get out and vote. I received Ohio which probably will not go Democratic unless there is a real blue wave but could reelect Brown to the Senate. I went to purchase my postcard stamps today and was told they were sold out and it was all postcards to voters apparently. As far as I know, this is an exclusively Democratic or heavily Democratic project.

    2. Harris is doing a media blitz of places where she is more likely to connect with people who need a push to the polls. Today she did a podcast called Call Her Daddy this is apparently the 2nd biggest podcast on Spotify and is a sex-positive one aimed at women in their 20s or 30s.Report

  9. Marchmaine
    Ignored
    says:

    There’s only one word to describe Trump winning: Inconceivable.

    Senate: R+1 (too many Blue seats to defend)

    House: Red if Trump wins, maybe even red if Harris wins depending on *how* she wins; that is, if R’s quiet quit Trump and split the ticket, then Red; if Harris pulls votes and builds coattails, then potentially it goes Blue.

    At this point, I think an assassination would make Vance president… so probably no more assassination attempts.

    Wildcard: The Harris Candidacy is unique in that it is both an incumbent and an outsider; it has a record when it wants it and doesn’t when it doesn’t. I think they are playing this sort of null vector candidacy pretty well… as long as the rest of the world can sit tight for 30 more days, it might just work.

    Now, if you’d like to see me act as an official Presidential Elector, then vote as hard as you can for the Pelicans.Report

    • InMD in reply to Marchmaine
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      says:

      I’m sure Jeffrey Katzenberg appears to Harris every morning in shaolin monk robes encouraging her not just to think like the generic Democrat, but to be the generic Democrat.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Marchmaine
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      says:

      If you think the polling in PA is too close to call, so is the polling in AZ, GA, and NC. AZ and NC have races which might have an upballot positive for Harris. Gallego polls 6-10 points above Lake consistently. Josh Stein polls 8-13 points above Robinson consistently. I don’t think there will be that many ticket splitters and it seems more likely than not that Harris’ support would be undercounted.Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Saul Degraw
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        says:

        Yes, I think that if we run the election through simulation models multiple times accounting for margins of error and simulate relational effects, sometimes Harris will win and sometimes Trump will win.

        You may be right that there won’t be ‘ticket splitters’ but, I think you’re wrong in your reasoning; that is, IF there’s a reason to split a ticket its to NOT vote for Robinson and NOT vote for Lake, while still NOT voting for Harris… it’s exactly because Robinson and Lake are even more odious than Trump, especially in a LOCAL sense.

        It’s a weird reverse split, but it wouldn’t surprise me.Report

        • InMD in reply to Marchmaine
          Ignored
          says:

          That’s also how I’d see the scenario playing out of it were to go that way. Lean R people voting for the GOP house rep they have in the past and whatever other state offices but not making any selection for president or governor.Report

  10. InMD
    Ignored
    says:

    In July I bet Biden remained the nominee, so already not boding well for me.

    Still I’m going to hold firm on:

    Democratic House, odds 90% it is 5 seats or fewer, 10% 5-10 seats, 1% more than 10.

    GOP Senate 52-48

    I had Biden winning 277 to 261 (holds PA, MI, AZ, NV, loses WI, GA, NC, dgfa the carved out districts, they won’t matter). I’m giving Harris WI back based on recent polls, changing outcome to Harris victory, 287-251.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to InMD
      Ignored
      says:

      I gave Harris 35% odds of being nominee, so my being wrong was less wrong.

      For simplicity’s sake I kept PA as the tipping point… but my alternate path to Blue victory goes through NC and AZ where MAGA nutters could potentially impact the Presidential vote in somewhat unpredictable fashion.Report

      • InMD in reply to Marchmaine
        Ignored
        says:

        I have pondered that possibility as well. My (nevertheless totally uncertain) take is that if the down ballot situation is so bad it’s actually losing Trump states he would otherwise win, the result is more likely to be >300 electoral votes for Harris, rather than an alternative path to narrow victory. But who knows.Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to InMD
          Ignored
          says:

          Agreed… I’m guess most models assume that if NC or GA goes Blue, both will and if both do, then good chance AZ goes, etc.

          But that’s just generally the case in either direction… that is, if WI goes Red, then MI and or PA may go that way too.

          I guess that’s why we open the votes and don’t just guess at what the crosstabs imply…Report

  11. Burt Likko
    Ignored
    says:

    Here’s where things are today if the polls are accurate.

    https://www.270towin.com/map-images/lrQB4

    What would change over the next 28 days? Hurricane relief, for one. If it goes well, affected states will presumably have good feelings about the government helping them out and sway blue. Not enough in Florida, I’d think, even if Florida is hit really hard tomorrow and even if FEMA does a great job responding. And while there’s no real disaster abrewing in Arizona other than Kari Lake, that may well be enough to drag things down. Arizona has voted D, by narrow margins, for President and Senate recently. So I think it could look like this…

    …which is 2020 again, except NC flips D.

    NARRATOR: FEMA is not going to do a great job responding, and even if it does, it’ll be portrayed as doing a bad job responding because SOMETHING is going to go wrong. So, there’s going to be no post-disaster blue shift in the southeast, and that leaves us with my actual prediction:

    And there, there is my marker.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko
      Ignored
      says:

      NC is allowing western counties hurt by Helene to modify their voting procedures if done with a bipartisan majority of the local voting boards. FEMA is stretched to the limits but Harris just received more positive polling thereReport

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Burt Likko
      Ignored
      says:

      There is also Milton about to rip through Tampa and apparently DeSantis refused to take calls from Biden and/or HarrisReport

  12. Joe
    Ignored
    says:

    My forecast FWIW:

    Harris wins the Blue Wall states , NV and one of the other Sunbelt states (AZ, GA, NC – my pick is NC). Andrew D. said on a podcast the other day that it will be two weeks before we know the winner. I think it will be much sooner than that.

    The Senate will have a narrow R majority but Dan Osborn (I-NE) will win his race and help to keep things interesting in that chamber.

    House flips to the Democrats but not by much. There are seats in NY state that should flip D if the NY Democratic Party wasn’t such a hot messReport

    • North in reply to Joe
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      says:

      Hmm does anyone recall how fast NC counts their votes? They’re very eastern and if they count fast it could be a good bellwether state.

      Hmm 538 in 2020 said:

      “Timing of results
      Initial results will come very fast, but the rest will take time. Election officials estimate that up to 80 percent of the total vote could be announced right after polls close at 7:30 p.m., including in-person early votes and all mail ballots received by Nov. 2. Election Day returns will then trickle out over the course of the next several hours (those results are expected to take longer than usual because equipment must be sanitized after polling places close). However, North Carolina counts absentee ballots that arrive as late as Nov. 12, so there will definitely be some counting for at least nine days after Election Day. The question is whether there will be enough late-arriving ballots to keep any races uncalled.”Report

  13. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    A Republican outfit has Harris up by +1 in Arizona and Galego is up by +13. I am going to assume this means Harris is actually doing better: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to Saul Degraw
      Ignored
      says:

      My back of the envelope model for AZ’s long-term trend puts Harris at +2.5 even before considering the stuff specific to the current election cycle (Gallego vs Lake, the abortion rights initiative polling near +20). The East Coast pundits want desperately for AZ and NV to be toss-up statesReport

  14. Joe
    Ignored
    says:

    I took a peek at Stillwater’s 2020 270toWin map posted in the 2020 post comment thread. They got it mostly right – picked NC rather than GA for the Dems.

    That comment thread in general was a doozy. So many folks thought the aftermath of George Floyd would scare people into the Trump camp and give him an easy victory.Report

  15. Jesse
    Ignored
    says:

    ACTUAL GUESS – President – Harris – 51.2, Trump 48.1, Assorted 0.7, 319-219
    HOPEFUL GUESS – (ie. Trump’s turnout drops because his supporters are bored) – Harris 52.9, Trump 46.2, 359-179 – ie. Blexas

    SENATE ACTUAL GUESS – GOP 51, DEMS 49
    HOPEFUL SENATE GUESS – DEMS 50 GOP 49 INDY 1 (Allerd + Osborne win)Report

  16. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    Another weird thing about the polls is that if you bore down to crosstabs, they have some weird results.

    I will believe that Michigan is very competitive, even, or even that Trump has a slight lead.

    I will not believe that Trump wins the youth vote in Michigan (or anywhere except the reddest states) because that defies all evidence we have from 2016, 2020, and 2024.Report

  17. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    Trump’s team is now releasing polls showing them ahead in swing states. Usually by + 1 but +3 in Nevada and + 5 in Georgia. Generally, I think it is bad when campaigns do this and I have to think that Nevada and Georgia are worse internally because they have higher numbers.

    TIPP/American Greatness is also releasing questionable polls showing Trump ahead: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/Report

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