As promised, I took a deeper look at the two Georgia Senate runoff elections.  Assuming that Biden foils the Kansas City Shuffle, Democrats need to win both Georgia races for a 50/50 split in the U.S. Senate – and thus claim the narrowest possible Senate control with VP Harris as the tie-breaker.  Conversely, Republicans need to win only one of the races to give McConnell and company virtual veto power over all Democratic appointments and legislation.  The stakes are high.

While there are two distinct races in Georgia, the two candidates from each party are obviously joined at the hip in the eyes of many voters.  We can thus primarily focus on the political dynamics in Georgia that aren’t race-specific.

It seems clear that there are precious few minds that could actually be changed in Georgia.  The state is even more polarized along party lines than the rest of the country – and that’s a significant accomplishment.  Looking at the top of the last two statewide tickets (Governor in 2018, President in 2020), only one of 159 counties changed their party preference.  [Washington County, with about 10K votes in 2020, saw a very narrow R win in 2018 and a very narrow D win in 2020.]  As of this writing, Biden won Georgia by only about 14K votes – or about 0.3%.  It’s thus also clear that the party polarization is a pretty even split.

The New Georgia Project does claim to have identified around 100K potential new voters to register ahead of the 12/7 runoff voter registration deadline.  The Civics Center says that around a quarter of them are young voters who were ineligible to vote on 11/3 but will turn 18 in time to vote in the runoff.  The assumption is that a vast majority of these new voters would favor Democrats and, given that about 4.9M Georgia votes were cast in 2020, a potential 2% additional votes could well make a difference.

In any case, the runoffs will be all about turnout.  The problem is that, despite public confidence on both sides, no one has the slightest clue who has the upper hand.

Georgia’s Republican candidates do have a very long history of winning runoff elections.  Most notably, in 1992, the popular Democratic Sen. Fowler won 49.2% of the vote in the general election, beating his Republican opponent by 6 points.  However, Fowler lost the runoff 49.4% to 50.6%.  That said, the 2020 election is so different on so many levels that history is likely not a valid predictor.

Will 2020 Republicans turn out without Trump at the top of the ticket?  For that matter, will 2020 Democrats turn out without Trump at the top of the ticket?  Will local issues overshadow control of the U.S. Senate or will it be completely the opposite?  What will be the impact of the massive amounts of out-of-state money and surrogates on both sides?

It remains to be seen what involvement Trump himself will have in the Georgia runoffs.  As with everything, it will be all about him either way.  We know that Trump doesn’t give a crap about Senate control at this point.  However, if he thinks he can claim credit for wins in Georgia, he’ll be there.  If not, he’ll be occupied elsewhere.  Trump’s involvement would likely motivate turnout from both parties but with the net advantage going to Republicans.  While it’s unlikely that any other non-Georgia Republican could be a major factor as a surrogate, Republicans do have Karl Rove leading their fundraising parade.  Despite being an asshole, he’s pretty good at that kind of thing.

Stacey Abrams will continue to play a leading role for Georgia Democrats – and she did a phenomenal job in the general election. The party will hopefully feature Barack and Michelle Obama as the external draws with Harris liberally deployed to represent the Biden administration.  Biden himself might make a token appearance but, frankly, Biden’s personal involvement will have little impact on turnout and he should now focus more on governing than politics.

Individually, the two Georgia Senate races in the general election were quite different.

In the “standard” 2020 election, there were three candidates on the ballot.  Perdue (R) received 49.7% of the vote.  Ossoff (D) has a tough road to increase his 48.0% to a majority.  While it’s likely that the bulk of the Libertarian’s 2.3% will favor Ossoff in the runoff, Ossoff really needs a sweep of those votes.

In the “special” 2020 election, there were a whopping 20 candidates on the ballot.  Warnock (D) got a plurality of 32.9% and he’ll face Loeffler (R) in the runoff.  While Loeffler got only 25.9%, all of the Republican candidates together got 49.2% of the vote.  Democrats combined for 48.4% with 2.4% going to a smattering of other parties.  Warnock also needs most of the third-party votes.

In both head-to-head races, the Republican is not only the incumbent, but the opposing Democrat starts from a vote deficit in the general election.  Again, however, it will be all about turnout.  If Republicans can attract the most repeat voters – as they’ve done in the past – they’ll win.  If Democrats have the most repeat voters – and bring in new voters – they’ll win.  If both parties produce the same voters that they did in the general election, the race could be decided by the fringe party voters.  However, it’s not at all clear that these voters will make the effort to show up for either major party candidate.

I thought about trying to build a predictive model for both races, but there’s just too many variables that don’t lend themselves to analytics. Polls will continue to be conducted in Georgia but all will be worthless.

Intuitively, I’d guess that Republicans have significant advantages in both runoff races.  However, since Georgia was the one state that I got wrong in the Presidential election, I’m not inclined to listen to me.

Instead, I’ll just throw some money in the general direction of Georgia and pray to whatever Gods might still care about the truly pathetic political situation that engulfs my country.

For those that might also be inclined to pitch in, I’m donating to:

• The two Democratic campaigns:
  • Jon Ossoff
  • Raphael Warnock
• Abrams’ organization, focused on general Democratic turnout:
  • Fair Fight

 

Democrats are falling for the Kansas City Shuffle.

No, neither Missouri nor Kansas are somehow in play in the 2020 Presidential Election.  The Kansas City Shuffle is a con game that requires its marks to be aware that they are being conned but being wrong about how they are being conned.  The fake con is actually a misdirection trap for the real con.

Here’s the set up:  Excluding five states, the Electoral College count is pretty even at 233 for Democrats and 232 for Republicans.  The five states, with their Elector counts and the popular vote differences as of 11/11 – ALL favoring Democrats – are:

We can ignore the facts that the deltas all show big leads by Biden and that all of the states except Georgia have been called for Biden.  Facts, you see, are irrelevant to the con.

The Republican misdirection comes from four angles:

Misdirection #1:  Fraud Allegations

Republicans – at least the ones with multi-digit IQs – know that they have zero proof of any significant fraudulent activity that could swing even one of the five states.  If there was such evidence, we’d be hearing it repeated 24×7 on Fox News.  Besides, if Democrats were brilliant enough to pull off widespread election fraud – changing the Presidential election results in five different states by over a quarter of a million votes – why the hell didn’t they swing the House, Senate, and State Legislative elections while they were at it?  Were Democrats unbelievably clever enough to conduct the fraud but too damn stupid to realize that there were other races on the same ballots?

The answer is that Republicans aren’t actually trying to prove any fraud whatsoever.  The substance of the allegations is irrelevant; only the volume of the allegations is important.  They serve to keep the GOP base enraged that Democrats are trying to steal what they are being told is rightfully theirs.  On the other hand, the involvement of the Justice Department to investigate these spurious allegations – blithely politicizing a department that is supposed to be apolitical and causing the resignation of career officials in protest – isn’t actually meant to identify any fraud.  It serves only to further enrage Democrats and keep them occupied.

Misdirection #2:  Process Lawsuits

Republicans are also in court with non-fraud lawsuits.  The most public of these is in Pennsylvania where Republicans have challenged the arrival extension of mailed ballots that were postmarked by election day.  This has gone through both the state and U.S. Supreme Courts and isn’t yet fully resolved.  The fact that these ballots have been segregated and aren’t counted in the published totals doesn’t matter to Republicans.

The GOP is batting zero thus far with process lawsuits, but again, it doesn’t matter.  They are only looking to generate noise, command news cycles, and keep both camps angry.

Misdirection #3:  Recounts

Republicans will demand every recount they can.  In some cases we’ll have recounts of the recounts.  Under pressure from Republicans, Georgia is even conducting a very time-consuming manual recount that is much more prone to error than automated counts.  No one, however, actually expects any results to change.

In the past 20 years, the average shift in votes from all statewide recounts nationwide is 430 votes.  The largest shift was less than 2,600 votes.  To change the results in the closest state (Arizona), Trump would require a shift of about 5X the largest recorded in two decades.  To change the results in the state with the most Electors (Pennsylvania), the shift would need to be over 18X.  Michigan would require a 56X shift.

No, the purpose of the recounts is not to win the recounts.  They serve only to kill time and to enable bogus claims that even small count differences provide “evidence” supporting the narrative that all of the vote counts are questionable.

Misdirection #4:  Transition Drama

Trump and Company are going out of their way to flip off Biden and the Democrats.  By actively politicizing the Departments of Justice, Defense, and State, by withholding transition funding from Biden, by refusing to even provide briefings to Biden and his team, by not even putting a contingency plan in place for an Executive Branch hand-off, Republicans are getting a ton of media attention, feeding their base, pissing off Democrats, and issuing warnings to any Republicans that may feel wary about participating in the con.  Governing isn’t on the table.  It never was.  The only thing that’s surprising is that this crap still surprises us.

All of the above misdirection attempts may themselves seem important.  They are not.  While trying to turn the U.S. military into a political tool is obviously concerning, I trust our senior military officers to defend the Constitution, not Trump.  No, the misdirection attempts merely support the fake con.  They are intended only to take everyone’s eyes off of what Constitutionally happens next.

Legislatures in each state need to certify their Presidential elections and choose which slate of Electors will represent their state in the Electoral College.  Each state has their own date by which they are required to certify a Presidential election but none can be later than the federally-mandated “Safe Harbor” deadline of December 8.  The Electoral College votes on December 14.

While the selection of Electors has always mirrored a state’s popular vote, states are not Constitutionally bound to do so.  Note at this point that both legislative chambers in all of the above five states are controlled by Republicans.  Current legal theory suggests that a state legislature would have had to claim the right to select Electors themselves prior to a popular election that was specifically conducted to select them.  However, a final ruling on that would be made by the U.S. Supreme Court – which was recently stacked by Republicans.  While the Court might be at least a bit hesitant to produce such a blatantly partisan ruling, they could claim that the above chaos dictates that each state should be allowed to set their own rules as they see fit, and Trump would be re-elected.

Alternatively, if the chaos in a given state isn’t sufficient for their legislature to avoid the political fallout of completely reversing the will of their voters, they could simply fail to certify the election and thus choose no Electors at all.  If enough states fail to identify Electors, it is possible that neither Biden nor Trump would get the necessary 270 Electoral votes to win.  In that case, the election would be thrown to the U.S. House – with each state getting one vote.  Since Republicans have a majority in a majority of the state delegations in the House, Trump would be re-elected.

The bottom line is that the Republican Party holds the necessary cards to simply disregard the will of the voters.  They just need everyone to be looking elsewhere while they do it.

The Republican con is to delay, obscure, enrage, and delay some more until the state legislatures need to certify their Electors.  Everything they are now doing is purely to provide cover for the Republican-controlled legislatures to claim that, since the popular vote count isn’t yet resolved in their state, they are “forced” to act themselves and will expect the U.S. Supreme Court to back them.

Republicans only need the con to succeed in enough states to get them to 270 or to make sure that no one gets to 270. That implies legislative action – or inaction – in at least three of the five states.  If they can do it, Trump gets a second term.

So what can be done to derail the Shuffle?  It may not be sufficient, but Democrats at least need to recognize the fake con and focus exclusively on the real one.

The Democratic response should not be to fight fraud allegations in the media, delay lawsuits with legal tactics, oppose recounts, or demand transition assistance.  In fact, the Democratic response should be exactly the opposite.  They should loudly proclaim:  “Okay.  Bring it.  Bring it now!”

• You have serious allegations of fraud?  File as many lawsuits as you want.  Just file them now and we’ll concurrently file to expedite the cases in court.  If there really is widespread fraud that can be proven, we want to know about it just as much as you do.  We’re not fully convinced we didn’t win by even bigger margins.  In fact, we’ll go to court ourselves in each of the five states – and to the U.S. Supreme Court – to force the quick filing of all fraud lawsuits so that there will be sufficient time to resolve every last one of them well before the Safe Harbor deadline.
• You want to do a manual recount in Georgia?  Cool.  Let’s concurrently do an automated recount as well so that we’ll have three totals.  We want the most accurate count as well.  We’ll also go to court here to require that all state recounts be highly transparent and completed by the Safe Harbor deadline.  That’s already the law – we’re just making sure.  In fact, if there’s a cost issue, we’ll pay for the recounts.
• You want to argue about ballot arrival extensions?  Fine.  In fact, let’s fast-track all process issues directly to the Supreme Court right now.  We want every issue quickly resolved.
• You don’t want to provide any transition assistance?  Okay.  It’s not a law.  A smooth transition is certainly in the best interest of the country, but yeah, we know you don’t give a shit.  We’ll do just fine without your help.  We know you intend to burn the place down if you’re forced out.  Do what you’re going to do.  We’ll rebuild.

In no case should there be any Democratic obstruction of any of the Republican delaying tactics.  Democrats won and have nothing to hide.  By the time each state legislature needs to certify the election results, Democrats will have done everything in their power to finalize the popular vote totals in each of the five states while shining a spotlight on everything.

Unfortunately, Democrats can’t take away the Republican cards.  They can only make Republicans pay to play them and hope that’s enough.

One of my first posts in this iteration of my blog was an open letter to Trump.  I stated my opposition to both his agenda and his approach, but I also explicitly noted that, despite a closer election in 2016, I was “not looking for ways to call into question the legitimacy of your presidency.  That’s the way our democracy works.”

I may be seriously naïve, but I want to believe that enough Republicans still understand the meaning of democracy as well.  Republican “leadership” appears to be gleefully complicit in the execution of the con since its success would be best for them.  All of them were apoplectic over Hillary Clinton having the audacity to wait until the day after the 2016 election to concede; all of them will remain fully supportive of Trump’s refusal to do so for as long as he wants.

Perhaps, however, enough of the rank-and-file still believe that accepting the results of free elections is a cornerstone of the American experiment.

We’ll see.

I composed a post in the wee hours of 11/4.  It was an incoherent mess of incredulous, pissed off, and suicidal.  It was not my best work.  I’m thankful that some internal voice quietly suggested that I delay publication.  That draft has since been deleted.

I made the decision to not try again until there was a bit more certainty.  Like Toby Ziegler, I had no desire to “tempt the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing” by making hasty assumptions about final outcomes.  I’m still processing all that has transpired and I remain quite anxious to see how things will progress from here.  Trump will not go gentle into that good night.

I’ll have more to say at a later date.  For now, I’ll simply share some big picture thoughts in the form of an early review of my own predictions.

Presidential Election

Earlier this year, as I tweaked my own predictive model of the 2020 Electoral College, I made a conscious choice to underweight polling.  In our current world, I was unconvinced that any pollster could correctly define a “likely voter” upon which to base a valid sample.  I thus over-weighted state-level data on voting histories, party control, demographics, the 2016 & 2018 elections, etc.  In the end, my final predictions were pretty close.  Georgia currently appears to be the only state that will be an outlier from my model – and that vote count will be ridiculously close.

I also accurately predicted the timing shifts for the vote counts in some swing states – although the amplitude of the initial R shifts surprised me to the point of panic.  Luckily, at least some of them were later offset by D waves of equal or greater intensity.

All that said, I simply cannot bring myself to excessively celebrate my model’s decent accuracy.  Indeed, none of my analytical efforts prevented me from secretly harboring a desire that my model would be proven wildly wrong.  I found myself hoping – with zero data to back it up – that America would send a resounding message that, even in our polarized political world, there were clear limits to what we would tolerate from a President of the United States.  While I’m certainly thankful that the message appears to have been delivered, it was hardly in the full voice that I expected from my country.  I’ll need some time to ponder that.

U.S. Senate

My Senate model – again with polling averages under-weighted – was also fairly accurate.  The outliers skewed to Republicans.

• While I’d noted that Cunningham’s extramarital affair could hurt him, I didn’t alter my model to take it into account.  My bad.  Frankly, if I lived in North Carolina, I couldn’t have voted for him, either.
• I was wrong about Collins in Maine.  I did not see an easy path to her re-election – particularly given Maine’s ranked choice voting.  However, Collins won by an impressive margin. For curiosity’s sake, I might dig into the numbers at some point to see where my model went awry.

Both Georgia Senate seats appear headed to a run-off and, if Democrats can somehow pull off two wins, the resultant 50/50 split would give Democrats control of the chamber.  I’ll take a closer look at these races later but, for now, I’m not holding my breath.

U.S. House

The R wave in the House caught me completely by surprise.  Here, I was mostly lazy.  I failed to do the district-by-district research that I did for the competitive 2018 races and I casually assumed that polling averages at the district level would be more accurate than their broader cousins.  In retrospect, that was a rotten assumption on many levels.  Apparently, Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leadership in the House were similarly lazy.  There’s just one difference: IT WASN’T MY JOB.

I don’t know yet if the problem was bad messaging, flawed candidates, lack of focus, or some combination of the above.  However, it’s already obvious that leadership tried too hard to expand their majority at the expense of defending the one they had.  With a more-than-sufficient pile of cash and a winner at the top of the ticket, losing that many House seats is inexcusable.

Texas State House

I knew it was a very long shot for Democrats to fill the double inside straight necessary to win this chamber.  However, I also didn’t expect them to just fold.  Democrats won zero of the seats they targeted.  Ouch.

Other State Legislative Chambers

I didn’t weigh in here except to note the seven chambers that were in play.  Democrats failed to flip a single one.  Long term, this is probably the most important result of the election.  Republicans will be able to gerrymander the crap out of multiple states (Texas included) to guarantee their party a decade-long advantage at both the state level and in the U.S. House.  Ouch again.

Coda

Democrats do appear to have prevented another four years of a Trump administration.  That is a very good thing and is worthy of some celebration.  Overall, however, Democrats got their butts handed to them.  They just haven’t fully realized it yet.

Republicans, on the other hand, had a really, really good election.  They just won’t see it that way.

2020.

Two days remain until Election Day in the United States. I’ve done the math, but I’m still crossing my fingers and wishing on every star I can find.

In addition to the Presidential election, there are 35 U.S. Senate races, 435 U.S. House races, 11 Governor’s races, 5,876 races in 86 state legislative chambers in 44 states, an abundance of state and local races for judges, commissioners, sheriffs, school boards, etc., and a slew of state and local ballot initiatives.

While many local elections aren’t of massive concern outside of their jurisdictions, this year’s state legislative races can have national implications. The newly elected state governments will be redrawing voting districts across the U.S. in our one-a-decade gerrymandering circus.

I’ll personally be watching the returns all night on 11/3, flipping between several national and local TV news channels while surfing multiple websites. Each of the major outlets will be providing their own spins as the night progresses – some based on analytics, some based on opinions, none with any chance of being 100% correct. While the probability that everything will be decided the evening of 11/3 is quite low, the consensus of various perspectives by the end of the night could at least give us a decent idea how close things are, how long we’ll be dealing with the aftermath, and how painful the experience will be.

There’s a lot to follow but, since many races simply aren’t that competitive, we can narrow our focus quite a bit.

Below is the national version of my 2020 elections “cheat sheet” with the states and races that I’ll be most closely following. I’m not addressing any U.S. House races since, barring any massive miscalculations, the U.S. House should remain under Democratic control.

Click the table for a larger version; use the browser’s back button to return here.

• Polls Close:  This is the latest time (CST) that polls close in the states that I’ll be following. Some states stagger their closings across time zones but initial results will mostly be withheld until the whole state is closed. Each state will report results in their own unique ways. See below.
• State:  These are the 17 states that I’ll personally be monitoring for at least one reason as noted herein.
• 11/3 Results:  This is my oversimplified take on the amount of total votes that will be counted by midnight on 11/3.
  • Almost All:  Only a virtual tie at midnight should take longer to resolve.
  • Most:  If the results are within a couple of percentage points at midnight, things could change as the final votes are counted.
  • Incomplete:  It’s unlikely that elections will be called by midnight, regardless of the reported results at that point.
• Probable Timing Shifts:  This is my very oversimplified take on how the state’s results may shift as votes are counted over time. It is based on when and how absentee, mail-in, early, and same-day voting results are counted and reported in each state. The probable D & R timing biases are noted as “Initial”, “Late”, and “>11/3”. For example, a D/R/D shift means that the first reported votes will likely favor Democrats, Republican will be favored in votes counted late on 11/3, and Democrats will be favored in votes tabulated after 11/3.
• Electors:  The number of Electoral votes that are up for grabs in the state.
• Electoral College:  My analytic categorization of the state, matching my 10/20 post – except for Texas. I moved Texas from Safe D to Likely D not because my model says it actually changed. It’s purely wishful thinking on my part. The two Split states aren’t winner-take-all and, since every Electoral vote could count at this point, my model has Maine with 3 Safe D & 1 Likely D and Nebraska with 4 Safe R & 1 Likely D.
• U.S. Senate:  While I haven’t changed any projections from my 10/20 post, I will be watching several races that may be pretty close. In Georgia, for example, both Senate seats are on the ballot and both are worth watching. (I’ll frankly also be hoping for true miracles in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas with excellent Democratic candidates defeating McConnell, Graham, and Cornyn. Those wins, however, are unlikely at best.)
• State Senate:  These are the state upper chambers that could flip control.
• State House:  These are the state lower chambers that could flip control.

Of particular concern are those states that will have incomplete counts (for various reasons) until after 11/3 but that could have an early bias towards Republicans.  This include Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada – all states that are likely to vote Democratic when all of the votes are finally counted.  Trump and Company, however, have made it quite clear that they intend to go to court to stop counting votes if they’re ahead and appear to be in trouble.  Indeed, they’re already in court in multiple states (Texas included) trying to invalidate votes that have already been cast and/or votes that are processed after 11/3 – even if postmarked by 11/3 in accordance with state laws.

The possibility of having our President and control of the U.S. Senate determined by one Supreme Court justice who has been newly rammed onto the court by Republicans isn’t just a nightmare.  It’s a real possibility.

The best hope for Democrats is a blowout – taking all of the Likely D states by large margins and picking off a couple of the Likely R states.  I don’t see it, but I’ll definitely be wishing for it.

I was revising the analytics behind my prior post when two things quickly stopped me.  First, it was quite apparent that not much has changed based on my model.  Second, I was boring the crap out of myself.

While I consider myself a political junkie, even I am SO READY for this election to be over:

• I’m tired of constant campaign emails literally begging for my money.  I’ve donated a lot of money to many campaigns… and I’m done.
• I’m tired of people telling me to vote.  I voted the morning of the first day of early voting in Texas.
• I’m tired of people telling me that everything is going to be fine.  I seriously doubt it.
• I’m tired of people telling me that the end of the world is near.  Okay, maybe, but let’s just get it over with already.
• I’m tired of swing state polls.  No one has any clue how to build a valid polling sample in today’s world and thus every one of these polls could be absolute garbage.
• I’m tired of national polls.  For the love of God, why is anyone still conducting these?
• I’m tired of pundits, pollsters, politicians, anchors, campaign operatives, and bloggers (yeah, me included) touting the accuracy of their mathematical models and/or gut feelings.  No one knows a damn thing and everyone is just throwing darts in the dark.

I’m ready to move on.

Of course, until the election is actually over, it’s just not a good idea to look too far beyond it.  I’m not superstitious, but ya’ know, … just in case.

While election returns are being tabulated and litigated, I may comment on the associated vote-counting and brief-filing processes.  I suspect it could get quite ugly in the days (weeks?) following the election and a close Electoral College could well be decided, once again, by the Supreme Court along party lines.  While I’ll hold good thoughts for an early, decisive Trump defeat, any posts that assume a Biden victory will have to wait until, well, Biden is victorious.  And, no, I won’t even acknowledge the possibility of an alternative outcome.

Post-election, I could happily return to discussions of important political issues rather than just raw politics. I would enjoy thinking about the composition of a Biden cabinet, how some significant Trump-induced damage could be quickly undone, how Democrats should respond to the GOP’s Supreme Court power-grab, why preparations for the 2022 and 2024 elections need to start on November 4, etc.

In the very near term, I could certainly opine on the considerable chaos that a defeated Trump could inflict on our nation between 11/3 and 1/20.  That 78-day “transition” period could well prove to be the toughest test yet of American democracy – particularly with a newly stacked Supreme Court backing up a lame duck President who would undoubtedly pursue a scorched earth, Trump-first response to a forced retirement.

But I digress.

Despite the paralyzing fatigue, the only topic deserving of any focus at this moment is the winning of elections.  That includes winning the Presidency with enough of a margin that no legal avenues are open to effectively challenge the results.  It includes winning the Senate by even a small margin.  It includes retaining a majority in the House.  Finally, as a Texan, it also includes winning the Texas State House.

If Democrats don’t win, our national nightmares continue.

Note, by the way, that I still don’t consider myself a Democrat.  I remain an independent who is so anti-Trump that I guess I do look an awful lot like a Democrat.  However, I pray for the day when Republicans find their way back to their small-government, deficit-adverse, world-leader, morality-focused roots.  Our government works best when we pursue compromises between sane, opposing viewpoints.  However, the Party of Trump is not the Republican party of Rockefeller, Reagan, nor either Bush.  The current bastardization must be extinguished and rebuilt from scratch.

I personally voted for Biden without reservation – despite the fact that a few of his policies send chills up my spine.  I can thus understand if some lifelong Republicans cannot bring themselves to vote for any Democrat.  I can respect someone who casts a third-party vote or simply refrains from voting in this election.  However, I cannot understand how any educated, politically-aware, moral person could vote FOR Trump.  He does not deserve to be the President of the United States and he will destroy our country if he is re-elected.

Yes, I’m tired.  But I’ll fight through the fatigue and I encourage others to do the same.

Change is imperative.

It’s the final stretch.  The bottom of the ninth.  The last lap.  The closing chapter.  The happy ending.  Or insert your own culmination idiom here.

Anyway, since we’re only two weeks away from Election Day, I revisited my election models for the Electoral College, the Senate, and the House.

Fair warning:  My analysis yields slightly different results than I’ve been reading elsewhere.  While I certainly find no fault with the more professional models used by others (538, Cook, Sabato, Politico, etc.), my mathematical models somehow seem to reflect my non-mathematical outlook – which, at the moment, resides somewhere between a default pessimism and a very cautious optimism.  That said, my models take into account weighted polling data, but also consider the each state’s voting history, party control in each state, state demographics, 2018 election data, and few other factors.

Presidential Election

Here’s my current landscape map of the 2020 Electoral College (using 270toWin‘s build-your-own map feature):

While things have definitely moved in Democrats’ direction since I published my initial 2020 landscape post way back in December of 2018, the movement hasn’t been massive.  My current analysis says that forty states are now baked.  Biden has 217 solid Electoral votes (dark blue) to Trump’s 182 (dark red).  Sure, some models show a few of those states (e.g. Texas, Kansas, Ohio) are still within reach for Biden.  My model says otherwise.

Of the remaining ten in-play states, Biden is likely to win six of them (light blue) and Trump is likely to win the other four (light red). That split would give Biden a 290/248 win in the Electoral College.

All ten of these states, however, could move into the other camp – with varying probabilities of doing so within the next two weeks.  Pennsylvania and Florida appear to be the states on each side most likely to move.

The good news?  If my model holds, Biden wins.  The win is largely the “Middle America” strategy I discussed in a February 2019 post with a focus on winning the Great Lakes states that currently lean toward Biden.  Note that even if Biden loses any one of his “likely” states, he’d still be just over the threshold of the required 270 Electoral votes.  Conversely, Trump needs to not only hold all four of his “likely” states, he needs to move at least two Biden states to his column.

The bad news?  Nothing is over.  Trump could still win or could at least get close enough that the election results get thrown into the courts and/or the House – which wouldn’t end well for anyone.  A Biden blowout is possible, but it looks unlikely to me.  A close Electoral College split is the more probable outcome.

U.S. Senate

I don’t understand the rosy predictions I see everywhere for Senate Democrats.  Yes, Democrats will see a net gain of seats and things may be very slightly better for Democrats than they were when I discussed the Senate last month.

However, my model currently has the most probable outcome to be a 50/50 split – with the winning VP casting the deciding Senate votes.  That wouldn’t be at all pretty regardless of the VP.

Democrats should flip Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina; Republicans will likely flip Alabama.  That D+3 net is the 50/50 split.

The best path Republicans have to retain their majority is to pull out a win in North Carolina – which is only recently a possibility after the NC Democratic candidate insisted on pulling out something himself.  That’s right.  Democrats could actually lose the Senate because one guy couldn’t keep his pants on.  How 2020 is that?

The best paths Democrats have to secure a majority are through Iowa and/or Montana.  Both are within reach but both are far from sure things.

The other races on some radars as potential R-to-D flips (South Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, Texas, and both Georgia races) just ain’t happening in my model.  In this regard, I sincerely hope that my model is wrong.

U.S. House

I didn’t need to do the math here, but I did.  Democrats will easily retain control of the U.S. House.  In fact, they’re likely to see a small net gain of 5-8 seats.

You know the wheels are off and quickly rolling away from your political cart when you entrust your campaign’s “October Surprise” to Rudy Giuliani.

Let’s recap.

In July of 2019, Trump called the Ukrainian President to pressure him for “a favor” by launching an investigation into Joe Biden – Trump’s then-presumptive 2020 rival.  Of course, that seriously improper conversation prompted impeachment proceedings that produced the politically predictable result.  Still, one would think that Trump would want to move on from that particular narrative.  One would be wrong.

Trump had made the call hoping that an investigation would prove that Biden abused his position as Vice President to push for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated Burisma – an energy company on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter, served from 2014 to 2019.  The facts, however, have never supported an allegation of improper influence.

In 2015, Biden did indeed threaten to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine unless the prosecutor was fired.  That wasn’t a secret.  In fact, the firing had long been publicly sought by numerous officials – from the U.S, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank – due to corruption charges.  Furthermore, there was no active investigation into Burisma when the prosecutor was finally fired in 2016.

When Trump’s Ukrainian government approach fizzled, a GOP-led Senate committee devoted a ton of U.S. government resources to produce a political hit piece in September that even Republicans thought was over the top.  So, when that report landed like a wet dog, Giuliani gleefully stepped into what the dog left behind.

And here’s where it gets fun.

The New York Post published a story this week based on Giuliani’s “research” claiming that Hunter left his laptop at a repair shop but never came back for it.  You know… as one does.  The repair shop owner frighteningly made a copy of the hard drive which somehow made its way to Giuliani.  Giuliani, in turn, claimed it contained a “smoking gun” email from a Burisma exec who thanked Hunter for the “opportunity to meet your father.”

So.  Let’s ignore the fact that the presumed chain of events with the laptop reads like a cheap espionage novel.  Let’s also ignore the fact that the Post is a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch (who also owns Fox News) and that the story’s reporter is a former producer for Sean Hannity.  Let’s further ignore the fact that this soap opera has all the markings of a poorly executed Russian hack.  And let’s finally ignore the fact that Trump’s own intelligence analysts warned him in September that Giuliani was a targeted pawn in a Russian disinformation effort directed at influencing the November elections.

Here’s what the political pundits on all sides are missing:

No one gives a shit.

Most Americans couldn’t find Ukraine on a map even if you spotted them Eastern Europe.  Most Americans are worried about their own jobs and not the job of some obscure prosecutor from Kiev.  Most Americans aren’t focused on catching Hunter Biden for something that happened years ago; they’re focused on not catching COVID-19 now.  Most Americans think Rudy Giuliani is the punchline of a bad joke.  Hell, even his daughter is voting for Biden.

So why was Hunter given a position on the Burisma board in the first place?  The answer, of course, is that his Dad was the Vice President of the United States.  Duh.  So what?  If anyone thinks that many board members of most major companies don’t have their positions because of their names and/or their contacts, they don’t understand how corporate boards work.  Even if Hunter did introduce his father to a Burisma exec (which is itself questionable), an introduction is far from evidence of anything improper.

Look.  I’m not complaining.  But if this is the best the GOP can do, I’m a bit embarrassed for them.  And I’m even more embarrassed for the Russians.