The US Presidential, Senatorial and House of Representatives Elections Today
November 3rd, 11 AM
When the Democratic Primaries started in February earlier — and even much before that (as early as last December — I predicted (based on data and analyses) that Joe Biden will be Democratic Nominee. I made this argument even after Biden’s uninspiring showing in Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries.
After the primaries, I have been predicting — since about March/April — that Joe Biden will be the next President of these United States of America. Over the last 2-3 months, I have been persuaded even more of this forecast.
Over the last few months, it has become increasingly clear that Democrats will win the majority in the Senate.
The majority in the House of Representatives for Democrats has never been in question. But over the last month it has become evident that the Democrats will increase their majority.
Here are my Final Forecasts.
Joe Biden will win the Presidency. I expect him to get about 330 electoral votes (most likely). It is quite possible that he wins 380 electoral votes.
The Democrats will gain majority in the US Senate. I expect the Democrats to have 51-52 seats (most likely.)
I expect the Democrats to gain about 8-10 additional seats in the House of Representatives.
How and Why?
Joe Biden: Consider the five most recent non-partisan and independent polls (different pollsters/agencies) of all the states where Biden leads in each one of them. Only those states where he leads in each one of them. For instance, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin fall in this category. . But not Florida or Texas. Add the electoral votes of all the states as defined, and that should do it.
This is not to say that Joe Biden will not win Florida or Texas. He may, he is even likely. But we are focused on a modal and/or most likely estimate.
Here is the probabilistic arithmetic. If Joe Biden leads in each one of the most recent five non-partisan and different polls, then the probability of Biden not actually leading (in truth) is less than 3 percent. What if Joe Biden is leading only by one point? And what about consideration of standard error/margin of error? Well, we are looking at this as binary and independent events. Across five different polls, the sample size is large enough and the standard error diminishes. We are looking for convergent validity.
Senate: I forecast that the Democratic candidates in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina will win. Republican incumbents will lose them. But the Democratic incumbent in Alabama will lose, the Republican challenger will win.
The logic is the same. If we examine the most recent five non-partisan and different polls (not from the same pollster), then we find that in each one of the five cases cited the predicted winner is leading in each one of these polls. Sure, sometimes the lead is as small as one point. But the probabilities are overwhelming in favor of the prediction.
So, that would give Democrats 3 net gains and place them at 50 seats.
This is not to say that Democrats cannot or will not win in Alaska, or Georgia, or Iowa, or Montana, or South Carolina, or may be even Kansas or Texas. They can, and they will. Again, we are estimating the most likely out comes.
House of Representatives: Here, the polls are more limited. But the analyses of the numbers and the consideration of the fundamental clearly show that the Democrats are likely to add 8-10 seats to their majority.
Footnotes:
Probably the best source of all the polls is: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
But this source includes partisan polls. They have to be filtered/set aside for our analyses. A reasonable characterization of the polls can be found here: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
References:
https://twitter.com/Kalyanaram_G/status/1323418030551027712?s=20
https://twitter.com/Kalyanaram_G/status/1323415501612240896?s=20
https://gkpolicybriefs.com/briefs/1cs3bybcop2ueofw6ornkxt5j8c972
https://gkpolicybriefs.com/briefs/the-state-of-democratic-presidential-primary-joe-biden-is-a-very-credible-candidate
https://gkpolicybriefs.com/briefs/what-does-the-data-tell-us-about-democratic-party-presidential-primaries-joe-biden-is-the-clear-and-even-compelling-leader-he-is-most-electable-and-all-other-inferences-are-not-robustfor-now
