"The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.
And the statistics unit at Cambridge University has produced far more up-to-date projections, with far lower figures, the Telegraph can reveal.
These forecasts, dated October 28 - three days before the Downing Street announcement - far more closely track the current situation, forecasting 240 daily deaths by next week, and around 500 later this month. "
It was a press conference of lies. We're going into a lockdown based on nothing but lies and out of date data models.
None of these scientists will ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Millions of people are facing desperate circumstances while they lie to the public and scare everyone into supporting unnecessary measures. They are a disgrace.
The Telegraph report was comprehensively trashed on the BBC this evening.
In any profession you have to produce a range of outcomes. They are usually known as P90/P50/P10 in industry. The point being that the P90 and P10 ratios are at the extremes of what is likely - it is into that area that the 4000 a day will have fallen. But it was made clear that this was not the advice that the Government used to make its decisions. Rather it was looking at the P50 and what that would mean for the NHS. When your P50 is enough that you will run out of hospital beds at the beginning of December you don't even have to look at the extremes to know you have to do something radical.
I do not know if the Lockdown is the right thing to do. Certainly if they don't have a plan in place to deal with the virus when we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks then all it will have done is delay the inevitable. But the Telegraph has long been part of the lunatic fringe when it comes to its Covid reporting and they have not shied away from misrepresenting both the scientists and the politicians when it suits their very partial agenda.
I know we don't often agree Richard but you're spot on here.
The Telegraph has gone off the deep end over the last few years and it is not getting any better with its showing over COVID, going back to the days at the beginning of this pandemic saying we would all be fine with herd immunity, or that it would never come to the UK.
It seems to me that those who don't want this lockdown and then find "evidence" for it are doing the equivalent of reading tea leaves.
"The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.
And the statistics unit at Cambridge University has produced far more up-to-date projections, with far lower figures, the Telegraph can reveal.
These forecasts, dated October 28 - three days before the Downing Street announcement - far more closely track the current situation, forecasting 240 daily deaths by next week, and around 500 later this month. "
It was a press conference of lies. We're going into a lockdown based on nothing but lies and out of date data models.
None of these scientists will ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Millions of people are facing desperate circumstances while they lie to the public and scare everyone into supporting unnecessary measures. They are a disgrace.
The Telegraph report was comprehensively trashed on the BBC this evening.
In any profession you have to produce a range of outcomes. They are usually known as P90/P50/P10 in industry. The point being that the P90 and P10 ratios are at the extremes of what is likely - it is into that area that the 4000 a day will have fallen. But it was made clear that this was not the advice that the Government used to make its decisions. Rather it was looking at the P50 and what that would mean for the NHS. When your P50 is enough that you will run out of hospital beds at the beginning of December you don't even have to look at the extremes to know you have to do something radical.
I do not know if the Lockdown is the right thing to do. Certainly if they don't have a plan in place to deal with the virus when we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks then all it will have done is delay the inevitable. But the Telegraph has long been part of the lunatic fringe when it comes to its Covid reporting and they have not shied away from misrepresenting both the scientists and the politicians when it suits their very partial agenda.
I know we don't often agree Richard but you're spot on here.
The Telegraph has gone off the deep end over the last few years and it is not getting any better with its showing over COVID, going back to the days at the beginning of this pandemic saying we would all be fine with herd immunity, or that it would never come to the UK.
It seems to me that those who don't want this lockdown and then find "evidence" for it are doing the equivalent of reading tea leaves.
This doesn't explain the slides I highlighted. The say they made the decision based on the latest data, fine, so why did they show charts with misleading out of date data, rather than the data with the correct most up to data predictions.
The eggheads are engaging in the sort of political spin you expect from politicians.
I am not even anti-lockdown, just pissed off at continued piss poor science on show.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
What I find particularly odd is the idea the scientists are trying to justify a lockdown by making up the numbers.
Why would they want to do that? Sounds a bit tinfoil hat for me
Well we know that the Cambridge 4,000 deaths per day model is out of date and the current projection is for a peak of 1,000 deaths per day as produced on the 28th of October. You fell for it Horse, the scientists scared you into submission with their scary graphs of lies.
Actually, I find 1,000 deaths per day pretty scary.
Every day must be pretty scary then, the average is about 1600
Well, yes: 1,000 extra deaths would be an enormous increase in the number of people dying.
Extra ones would be. The average of the last 2 years is roughly the average of the preceding half a dozen
Well yes, that includes about two months of horrendously high deaths, c. 75% above normal levels. If you take a 12 month average, of which two are 75% above normal levels, and the rest are in-line, you will get about 15% above for the 12 month period. See: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/22268/ (and they are hardly lockdown fanatics).
@isam - you're clearly a very bright guy. But the UK went through a terrible period of excess deaths earlier this year. Now, it wasn't iuniversal, but some parts of the country were seeing more than twice the normal number of deaths for a couple of months.
That doesn't mean that "more lockdown" is the answer, but the chart you posted is incredibly misleading, and you must know that.
On topic: widespread economic collapse has yet to occur. Toleration for endless lockdowns may start to fray at the edges when millions of people are trying and failing to feed their kids and pay the mortgage off Universal Credit.
EDIT: this is a general observation, not an endorsement of the old blusterer. Though FWIW, absent a vaccine that can be deployed in very large quantities very very quickly, which we do not have, the latest lockdown is merely a classic example of (exorbitantly costly) can kicking.
You do realize that places without government lockdowns still have de facto lockdowns, right?
I'd much rather have a de facto lockdown than a government mandated one. I'm about to be prevented from doing a number of almost zero risk activities by law.
I'm all in favour of sensible personal risk management. If I was an obese 70 year old bloke I'd probably keep out of the Nottingham student bars at the moment. As a healthy 33 year old, going to church for an hour, wearing a mask, in a huge drafty building with a fairly small number of other people is probably my lowest risk hour of the week (other than time spent asleep). My work is a massively more risky place (and there is nothing we can do about it)
It's because government lockdowns are a blunt instrument that they are such a terrible idea. We now have this farce where spread is mostly driven by the school system, which will stay open, but lots of negligible risk activities will be forceably closed. I'm not in favour of locking down, but if we are going to, we should at least do it in a way which will actually stand a chance of working.
"The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.
And the statistics unit at Cambridge University has produced far more up-to-date projections, with far lower figures, the Telegraph can reveal.
These forecasts, dated October 28 - three days before the Downing Street announcement - far more closely track the current situation, forecasting 240 daily deaths by next week, and around 500 later this month. "
It was a press conference of lies. We're going into a lockdown based on nothing but lies and out of date data models.
None of these scientists will ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Millions of people are facing desperate circumstances while they lie to the public and scare everyone into supporting unnecessary measures. They are a disgrace.
The Telegraph report was comprehensively trashed on the BBC this evening.
In any profession you have to produce a range of outcomes. They are usually known as P90/P50/P10 in industry. The point being that the P90 and P10 ratios are at the extremes of what is likely - it is into that area that the 4000 a day will have fallen. But it was made clear that this was not the advice that the Government used to make its decisions. Rather it was looking at the P50 and what that would mean for the NHS. When your P50 is enough that you will run out of hospital beds at the beginning of December you don't even have to look at the extremes to know you have to do something radical.
I do not know if the Lockdown is the right thing to do. Certainly if they don't have a plan in place to deal with the virus when we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks then all it will have done is delay the inevitable. But the Telegraph has long been part of the lunatic fringe when it comes to its Covid reporting and they have not shied away from misrepresenting both the scientists and the politicians when it suits their very partial agenda.
I know we don't often agree Richard but you're spot on here.
The Telegraph has gone off the deep end over the last few years and it is not getting any better with its showing over COVID, going back to the days at the beginning of this pandemic saying we would all be fine with herd immunity, or that it would never come to the UK.
It seems to me that those who don't want this lockdown and then find "evidence" for it are doing the equivalent of reading tea leaves.
One of the great mysteries is why people still read the Telegraph. Not as much of a mystery as why they read the Express which yesterday had an 'exclusive poll' that suggested trump was heading for a landslide. '42/49 in the key swing states' says David Maddox political editor. Has he no self respect? Was Richard Desmond holding a gun to his head? Surely he could have avoided a credit.
"Britain’s Covid authoritarians have nothing on Italy’s European governments are better at controlling their people than controlling the virus BY ZOE STRIMPEL"
On topic: widespread economic collapse has yet to occur. Toleration for endless lockdowns may start to fray at the edges when millions of people are trying and failing to feed their kids and pay the mortgage off Universal Credit.
EDIT: this is a general observation, not an endorsement of the old blusterer. Though FWIW, absent a vaccine that can be deployed in very large quantities very very quickly, which we do not have, the latest lockdown is merely a classic example of (exorbitantly costly) can kicking.
You do realize that places without government lockdowns still have de facto lockdowns, right?
I'd much rather have a de facto lockdown than a government mandated one. I'm about to be prevented from doing a number of almost zero risk activities by law.
I'm all in favour of sensible personal risk management. If I was an obese 70 year old bloke I'd probably keep out of the Nottingham student bars at the moment. As a healthy 33 year old, going to church for an hour, wearing a mask, in a huge drafty building with a fairly small number of other people is probably my lowest risk hour of the week (other than time spent asleep). My work is a massively more risky place (and there is nothing we can do about it)
It's because government lockdowns are a blunt instrument that they are such a terrible idea. We now have this farce where spread is mostly driven by the school system, which will stay open, but lots of negligible risk activities will be forceably closed. I'm not in favour of locking down, but if we are going to, we should at least do it in a way which will actually stand a chance of working.
On balance, a de facto one is probably better than an excessively harsh government mandated one.
That being said, I've travelled round a number of US states. During the height of the Arizona de facto lockdown, it was much worse than California that had a government mandated severe one. The problem with the de facto ones is that businesses can't plan, because next week no-one might be going out because they're terrified. And the knock on effects in weeks when the hospitals get overcrowded are pretty awful.
It seems to me - as I said downthread - that by far the best response is mandated moves that make *big* differences, but otherwise allow people a reasonable amount of freedom.
"The modelling presented on Saturday night, which suggests deaths could reach 4,000 a day by December, is so out-of-date that it suggests daily deaths are now around 1,000 a day.
In fact, the daily average for the last week is 260, with a figure of 162 yesterday.
And the statistics unit at Cambridge University has produced far more up-to-date projections, with far lower figures, the Telegraph can reveal.
These forecasts, dated October 28 - three days before the Downing Street announcement - far more closely track the current situation, forecasting 240 daily deaths by next week, and around 500 later this month. "
It was a press conference of lies. We're going into a lockdown based on nothing but lies and out of date data models.
None of these scientists will ever have to live with the consequences of their decisions. Millions of people are facing desperate circumstances while they lie to the public and scare everyone into supporting unnecessary measures. They are a disgrace.
The Telegraph report was comprehensively trashed on the BBC this evening.
In any profession you have to produce a range of outcomes. They are usually known as P90/P50/P10 in industry. The point being that the P90 and P10 ratios are at the extremes of what is likely - it is into that area that the 4000 a day will have fallen. But it was made clear that this was not the advice that the Government used to make its decisions. Rather it was looking at the P50 and what that would mean for the NHS. When your P50 is enough that you will run out of hospital beds at the beginning of December you don't even have to look at the extremes to know you have to do something radical.
I do not know if the Lockdown is the right thing to do. Certainly if they don't have a plan in place to deal with the virus when we come out of lockdown in 4 weeks then all it will have done is delay the inevitable. But the Telegraph has long been part of the lunatic fringe when it comes to its Covid reporting and they have not shied away from misrepresenting both the scientists and the politicians when it suits their very partial agenda.
I know we don't often agree Richard but you're spot on here.
The Telegraph has gone off the deep end over the last few years and it is not getting any better with its showing over COVID, going back to the days at the beginning of this pandemic saying we would all be fine with herd immunity, or that it would never come to the UK.
It seems to me that those who don't want this lockdown and then find "evidence" for it are doing the equivalent of reading tea leaves.
This doesn't explain the slides I highlighted. The say they made the decision based on the latest data, fine, so why did they show charts with misleading out of date data, rather than the data with the correct most up to data predictions.
The eggheads are engaging in the sort of political spin you expect from politicians.
I am not even anti-lockdown, just pissed off at continued piss poor science on show.
On topic: widespread economic collapse has yet to occur. Toleration for endless lockdowns may start to fray at the edges when millions of people are trying and failing to feed their kids and pay the mortgage off Universal Credit.
EDIT: this is a general observation, not an endorsement of the old blusterer. Though FWIW, absent a vaccine that can be deployed in very large quantities very very quickly, which we do not have, the latest lockdown is merely a classic example of (exorbitantly costly) can kicking.
You do realize that places without government lockdowns still have de facto lockdowns, right?
I'd much rather have a de facto lockdown than a government mandated one. I'm about to be prevented from doing a number of almost zero risk activities by law.
I'm all in favour of sensible personal risk management. If I was an obese 70 year old bloke I'd probably keep out of the Nottingham student bars at the moment. As a healthy 33 year old, going to church for an hour, wearing a mask, in a huge drafty building with a fairly small number of other people is probably my lowest risk hour of the week (other than time spent asleep). My work is a massively more risky place (and there is nothing we can do about it)
It's because government lockdowns are a blunt instrument that they are such a terrible idea. We now have this farce where spread is mostly driven by the school system, which will stay open, but lots of negligible risk activities will be forceably closed. I'm not in favour of locking down, but if we are going to, we should at least do it in a way which will actually stand a chance of working.
On balance, a de facto one is probably better than an excessively harsh government mandated one.
That being said, I've travelled round a number of US states. During the height of the Arizona de facto lockdown, it was much worse than California that had a government mandated severe one. The problem with the de facto ones is that businesses can't plan, because next week no-one might be going out because they're terrified. And the knock on effects in weeks when the hospitals get overcrowded are pretty awful.
It seems to me - as I said downthread - that by far the best response is mandated moves that make *big* differences, but otherwise allow people a reasonable amount of freedom.
The other angle to this is whether you regulate individual behaviour or businesses. Generally there's already a lot of business regulation over health and safety, and if you leave it to the market there's a risk that irresponsible places will out-compete responsible places, and you'll end up with an entirely arsehole-run economy. So I think the sweet spot is probably to shut down and compensate the highest-risk places, pile safety requirements onto the middling ones, and give clear but non-binding advice to individuals.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
I have a very simple rule: if you're ahead by four points on the night, you're the President. And if you're in the 2.5% to 4% range, you're probably still the favourite.
I call this rcs1000's rule.
The current Biden lead is 8.6%, and he's averaging 52% in the polls. To get down to a 2.5% Biden lead requires a 3% "swing".
There will be a polling error. But it's only 50/50 whether it'll be in Trump's favour (indeed, in both the UK and the UK polling errors tend to oscillate, so 50% may be generous).
National polling misses don't tend to be that big - most are 2% or less (that's a 1% swing). But let's be generous and say there's a one in three chance of the polling error being 5% or more.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Where are you getting the gender breakdown on early voting? The stats here have race and party ID but not gender.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
Yes, that's all true - however one point to stress is that Trump needs all five of those states (unless he wins something else).
Even if there was a swing of 2.4% across all USA from the 538 forecast it wouldn't be the same swing in every state - so Biden might still win one of these states on random variation.
One route that could save Biden if he suffers the huge blow of losing PA would be for him to win AZ.
Gaining MI, WI and AZ from 2016 gives a 269-269 tie. Then if Biden wins one of the individual Congressional districts in ME or NE then that gets him to 270.
I just realized the Dem primary for 2024 is going to be absolute bananas. Assuming Biden wins and doesn't run again, Kamala is likely to be the defacto moderate next-in-line. She can only be defeated by another woman, and you're going to have to come at her from an angle, you won't be able to beat her by being a more plausible centre-left candidate.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Where are you getting the gender breakdown on early voting? The stats here have race and party ID but not gender.
I just realized the Dem primary for 2024 is going to be absolute bananas. Assuming Biden wins and doesn't run again, Kamala is likely to be the defacto moderate next-in-line. She can only be defeated by another woman, and you're going to have to come at her from an angle, you won't be able to beat her by being a more plausible centre-left candidate.
It's gonna be Kamala vs AOC vs Tulsi Gabbard
why do you put so much emphasis on "another woman" defeating KH?
I just realized the Dem primary for 2024 is going to be absolute bananas. Assuming Biden wins and doesn't run again, Kamala is likely to be the defacto moderate next-in-line. She can only be defeated by another woman, and you're going to have to come at her from an angle, you won't be able to beat her by being a more plausible centre-left candidate.
It's gonna be Kamala vs AOC vs Tulsi Gabbard
why do you put so much emphasis on "another woman" defeating KH?
I think Dem women feel like they're owed since Hillary, and if Kamala already looks like the next in line that'll be very hard for a man to overcome.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Where are you getting the gender breakdown on early voting? The stats here have race and party ID but not gender.
Thanks. Judging by the registration stats I would guess most of the 'undesignated' gender ballots are actually from men so it's probably not quite as dire for Trump as it looks.
I just realized the Dem primary for 2024 is going to be absolute bananas. Assuming Biden wins and doesn't run again, Kamala is likely to be the defacto moderate next-in-line. She can only be defeated by another woman, and you're going to have to come at her from an angle, you won't be able to beat her by being a more plausible centre-left candidate.
It's gonna be Kamala vs AOC vs Tulsi Gabbard
What happens if Kamala become President before WH2024? My guess is she'd choose Pete Buttigieg as VP and he would be a player
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
I have a very simple rule: if you're ahead by four points on the night, you're the President. And if you're in the 2.5% to 4% range, you're probably still the favourite.
I call this rcs1000's rule.
The current Biden lead is 8.6%, and he's averaging 52% in the polls. To get down to a 2.5% Biden lead requires a 3% "swing".
There will be a polling error. But it's only 50/50 whether it'll be in Trump's favour (indeed, in both the UK and the UK polling errors tend to oscillate, so 50% may be generous).
National polling misses don't tend to be that big - most are 2% or less (that's a 1% swing). But let's be generous and say there's a one in three chance of the polling error being 5% or more.
That gets me to a one-in-six shot.
At the midterms in 2018 65.3m women voted to 56.9m men
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Where are you getting the gender breakdown on early voting? The stats here have race and party ID but not gender.
Thanks. Judging by the registration stats I would guess most of the 'undesignated' gender ballots are actually from men so it's probably not quite as dire for Trump as it looks.
I'm sure this has been said on here before - but there has been a very noticable upswing in ambulance sirens in East London over the last few weeks.
I heard from someone in ICU last night. She said they are at capacity and this time it's full of people in their 40's fighting for their lives.
I'm only passing on what she said.
My niece works in the ambulance service and says it has never need as busy as it is at the moment. People are having to wait hours and hours for assistance.
I'm sure this has been said on here before - but there has been a very noticable upswing in ambulance sirens in East London over the last few weeks.
I heard from someone in ICU last night. She said they are at capacity and this time it's full of people in their 40's fighting for their lives.
I'm only passing on what she said.
My niece works in the ambulance service and says it has never need as busy as it is at the moment. People are having to wait hours and hours for assistance.
It's grim, Mike.
And yet still the Daily Mail headline writers are in denial.
I'm sure this has been said on here before - but there has been a very noticable upswing in ambulance sirens in East London over the last few weeks.
Fireworks innit.
Fireworks might explain the last couple of nights but not the last few weeks.
There has been less traffic on the road creating less background noise, so sirens sound louder.
It is possible there have been more ambulance journeys, owing to fireworks or other factors.
It is also possible that LAS guidelines on when to use sirens has changed. I do get the impression round here that ambulances are turning their sirens on to negotiate the temporary traffic lights around road works far more than they used them for the permanent lights at the same junction.
But it is probably mostly just that they sound louder because of the quieter streets.
Trump seemed to hint at it but simply asked the crowd to wait a while after the election. Dr Fauci will be 80 in December, so it is possible he plans to retire anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
Trump seemed to hint at it but simply asked the crowd to wait a while after the election. Dr Fauci will be 80 in December, so it is possible he plans to retire anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
The problem here, apart from time - by the time there are elections to fight, his central policy will probably be redundant - is his target market.
Whereas BXP, like UKIP before it, was targetting the elderly and those of working age with less education, the target group for an anti lockdown party is completely different. Farage’s image and backstory make him entirely unsuitable as the person to harness the discontent younger and more educated are likely to have with a policy ironically driven by prioritising the protection of his previous voters.
Which tells us that this is simply a stunt to put some pressure on the government right now, and not a longer term proposition.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
It’s easy to support it if you are financially unaffected (or even better off), as are most pensioners and a vast swathe of managerial and professional workers.
Try polling again with a proposition which doesn’t involve a paid break from work for very many? Then you’d test how far ‘basic common sense to assess the situation’, in terms of combatting the virus, would stretch when up against self interest.
The problem yet again is that those suffering are predominantly the young. Who would have mostly breezed through catching the virus anyway.
A few really useful links from across the pond that may help some of us limeys on election day and night (I never knew that 'limeys' came about because of sailors drinking lime juice to beat scurvy).
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Unless women are simply less gung-ho about mixing with crowds of people on the day.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
It’s easy to support it if you are financially unaffected (or even better off), as are most pensioners and a vast swathe of managerial and professional workers.
The journalists agitating against these measures are, I believe, more motivated by protecting their personal stocks and shares than they are in the health of the nation.
A few really useful links from across the pond that may help some of us limeys on election day and night (I never knew that word came about because of sailors drinking lime juice to beat scurvey).
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
The GOP has not lost the battle to exclude the 120,000 votes. This was the decision of the Texan Court, but the Federal Court will make a call tomorrow.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Unless women are simply less gung-ho about mixing with crowds of people on the day.
That's a good call. A lot of truth in that I suspect.
A few really useful links from across the pond that may help some of us limeys on election day and night (I never knew that word came about because of sailors drinking lime juice to beat scurvey).
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
The GOP has not lost the battle to exclude the 120,000 votes. This was the decision of the Texan Court, but the Federal Court will make a call tomorrow.
Good spot.
Even the former Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson said he has no association with the lawsuit but believes it should have been filed sooner. The system has been approved of weeks ago.
You never quite know with the US, but I'm fairly relaxed that the second filing will also be thrown out.
Thinking more on this decision by Trump to abandon his election night Trump International hotel party and stick inside the White House ... it really does smack of Führerbunker mentality.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Unless women are simply less gung-ho about mixing with crowds of people on the day.
I'm sure that's part of it, but some of those men are going to turn out to be busy (and therefore won't end up voting on Tuesday), and there are going to be at least some women who cast their votes too.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
Good morning everyone. I think the best thing one can say about this morning, at least her, is that it's not actually raining! I'm clinging to the hope that by Thursday Trump will have accepted defeat and there will be at least some good news. And, on a personal note, that our niece will be really be on the mend from her attack of Covid-19.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Unless women are simply less gung-ho about mixing with crowds of people on the day.
I'm sure that's part of it, but some of those men are going to turn out to be busy (and therefore won't end up voting on Tuesday), and there are going to be at least some women who cast their votes too.
As 538 (almost) put it in their latest article, on stuff like that, we’re in the realm of who the fuck knows. There’s all kinds of ways Trump’s 10-15% chance of winning might come about, and none of them are particularly well determined.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
You really do need to consider the difference between something that happened once and something that can be considered normal.
It won’t, because Biden will score a clear win. The point that CNN - and others - are making is that IF it is close, it may all come down to PA
15% would be higher than even the 12% UKIP got in 2015 and the highest voteshare ever recorded for either UKIP or the Brexit Party, so for Farage that would be enough, especially if an EU trade deal did not regain control of our fishing waters or prevented subsidies to ex industrial areas he could target fishing ports and red wall areas too.
Given the Brexit Party's reliance on support from the elderly, I wonder whether he has really thought this through.
Normally politicians try to bribe their supporters, not kill them.
Good morning everyone. I think the best thing one can say about this morning, at least her, is that it's not actually raining! I'm clinging to the hope that by Thursday Trump will have accepted defeat and there will be at least some good news. And, on a personal note, that our niece will be really be on the mend from her attack of Covid-19.
Down here in the front line - against the wind, at least - we have yet another day of 40-50mph winds. Although the rest of the week may at last bring a respite to the relentless breeze.
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
A few really useful links from across the pond that may help some of us limeys on election day and night (I never knew that word came about because of sailors drinking lime juice to beat scurvey).
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
The GOP has not lost the battle to exclude the 120,000 votes. This was the decision of the Texan Court, but the Federal Court will make a call tomorrow.
Good spot.
Even the former Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson said he has no association with the lawsuit but believes it should have been filed sooner. The system has been approved of weeks ago.
You never quite know with the US, but I'm fairly relaxed that the second filing will also be thrown out.
I've just found the DuckDuckGo Browser which works wonderfully and fast with PB on my Android phone. it loads the comments almost instantly - that is totally different from my experience on Chrome and other more established browsers
DuckDuckGo works well with PB.Com because it blocks Twitter by default. Unfortunately it blocks Twitter completely, so posts that only contain a Twitter link appear as blank posts.
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
It won’t, because Biden will score a clear win.
That's my stance. I think it will all be over long before Pa. declares. Some commentators are assuming it will all come down to Pa. I don't think it will.
Good morning everyone. I think the best thing one can say about this morning, at least her, is that it's not actually raining! I'm clinging to the hope that by Thursday Trump will have accepted defeat and there will be at least some good news. And, on a personal note, that our niece will be really be on the mend from her attack of Covid-19.
Down here in the front line - against the wind, at least - we have yet another day of 40-50mph winds. Although the rest of the week may at last bring a respite to the relentless breeze.
I can cope with wind, just about, although I shall not be sorry when the tree surgeon comes to work on the apparently elderly silver birch in the garden.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
It's not bloody normalcy, it's bloody recency. Normalcy would be PA has behaved like this every election since 1800. Expecting something unusual to happen again because it happened last time round is the OPPOSITE of normalcy bias. It is the irrational expectation that an ABNORMAL event will recur.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
It's not bloody normalcy, it's bloody recency. Normalcy would be PA has behaved like this every election since 1800. Expecting something unusual to happen again because it happened last time round is the OPPOSITE of normalcy bias. It is the irrational expectation that an ABNORMAL event will recur.
To be fair, Mr Z, it's surely not, in the present circumstances, irrational to expect that an abnormal event will recur? Or that a different abnormal event will?
F1: Ladbrokes has a 2021 market up (teams). Most tempting for me is Ferrari at 11 and McLaren at 81.
Red Bull believe they can change the car sufficiently with the interseason rule changes to get on par with Mercedes. But they still need a good number two driver and we don't know who that will be.
Ferrari's deficit is substantially due to the engine nonsense, which shouldn't recur next year, and Leclerc/Sainz will be a strong lineup. However, McLaren's also a dark horse, having improved significantly in recent years and with a great new driver in Ricciardo.
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
Trump needs a 2.4% swing to win, using FiveThirtyEight's projections. I don't think I would interpret that as being consistent with an 89% chance for Biden. I'd put it at more like 70%. He needs a swing of 0.5% in Georgia, 1.0% in NC, 1.1% in Florida, 1.5% in Arizona, 2.4% in PA.
There are a few oddities in the polls that make me think Trump may not be out of it. The Des Moines Iowa poll with Biden on 41% in Iowa suggests his support may be weak.
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
He's not out of it, but one-in-six is probably about right.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
Isn't part of the point that Trump can't afford for there to be even a single exception?
Of the six states where 538 has the Biden-Trump difference between 0 and 5.5 points, assuming Biden takes the states where he has a larger margin, Trump needs to win every single one of the six to get to 270.
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
That's, sadly, a lie. They came down to Evens within two hours of my hot tip. I got on him at 2/1 twice. Don't believe me, I'll send you the betting slip.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
Anti-lockdown might really take off, but it only has any kind of medium term appeal if there is no vaccine next spring and we are still in Johnson's lockdown/unlockdown repeating trap.
More likely Farage will seek to use the hurt and anxiety around the economic depression that is coming to cause trouble.
It gives something for Farage to do so that he doesn't have to come out in support of Johnson's deal or no deal, or oppose the same and flop.
The most significant thing about this refashioning of the Farage ego vehicle is that it is happening while Brexit negotiations are in progress.
F1: Ladbrokes has a 2021 market up (teams). Most tempting for me is Ferrari at 11 and McLaren at 81.
Red Bull believe they can change the car sufficiently with the interseason rule changes to get on par with Mercedes. But they still need a good number two driver and we don't know who that will be.
Ferrari's deficit is substantially due to the engine nonsense, which shouldn't recur next year, and Leclerc/Sainz will be a strong lineup. However, McLaren's also a dark horse, having improved significantly in recent years and with a great new driver in Ricciardo.
Haven't bet yet. Might be one for a free bet.
Some good trading bets there. The problem is that I'd take anything better than 1.1 on Mercedes winning again in 2021.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
It's not bloody normalcy, it's bloody recency. Normalcy would be PA has behaved like this every election since 1800. Expecting something unusual to happen again because it happened last time round is the OPPOSITE of normalcy bias. It is the irrational expectation that an ABNORMAL event will recur.
To be fair, Mr Z, it's surely not, in the present circumstances, irrational to expect that an abnormal event will recur? Or that a different abnormal event will?
Not irrational at all, it's just about mislabelling. Recency bias says "x is not what usually happens, but it happened last time, so it's the new normal;" normalcy bias says "x is what usually happens, so it will probably happen again." Both can be valid and correct reasoning; it's the persistent switching of the labels that I am on about.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
What I find particularly odd is the idea the scientists are trying to justify a lockdown by making up the numbers.
Why would they want to do that? Sounds a bit tinfoil hat for me
They clearly aren't and they clearly believe that what they are recommending is both necessary and right. Indeed you pick up impatience with how long it has taken to bully Boris into this.
Whether they are right is a different matter. Their forecasts to date have been enormously pessimistic about the continued spread of the virus projecting numbers we have not got near. And yet the numbers are bad enough. I personally believe that the case is being seriously overstated and yet it remains fundamentally solid. I do not see how we let a virus that would kill hundreds (at least) a day let rip indefinitely and so dominate our NHS that far more than were necessary die of everything else as well.
It would obviously be better if we were able to use test, trace and isolate effectively but we are where we are and the government has to use the tools actually available.
A few really useful links from across the pond that may help some of us limeys on election day and night (I never knew that word came about because of sailors drinking lime juice to beat scurvey).
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
The GOP has not lost the battle to exclude the 120,000 votes. This was the decision of the Texan Court, but the Federal Court will make a call tomorrow.
Good spot.
Even the former Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson said he has no association with the lawsuit but believes it should have been filed sooner. The system has been approved of weeks ago.
You never quite know with the US, but I'm fairly relaxed that the second filing will also be thrown out.
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
That's what my prediction has been for a long time. Also it's been the tipping point state with 538, RCP, Economist and YouGov for ages.
I think this is another example of normalcy bias (sorry IanB2). Because Pa. fulfilled this role in 2016 there's an assumption it will do so again. I bet you it won't.
It's not bloody normalcy, it's bloody recency. Normalcy would be PA has behaved like this every election since 1800. Expecting something unusual to happen again because it happened last time round is the OPPOSITE of normalcy bias. It is the irrational expectation that an ABNORMAL event will recur.
To be fair, Mr Z, it's surely not, in the present circumstances, irrational to expect that an abnormal event will recur? Or that a different abnormal event will?
That’s not the point, though. We are simply trying to counter a virus of incorrect usage.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
What I find particularly odd is the idea the scientists are trying to justify a lockdown by making up the numbers.
Why would they want to do that? Sounds a bit tinfoil hat for me
Well we know that the Cambridge 4,000 deaths per day model is out of date and the current projection is for a peak of 1,000 deaths per day as produced on the 28th of October. You fell for it Horse, the scientists scared you into submission with their scary graphs of lies.
You make it sound like only 1,000 deaths a day are ok.
I've just found the DuckDuckGo Browser which works wonderfully and fast with PB on my Android phone. it loads the comments almost instantly - that is totally different from my experience on Chrome and other more established browsers
DuckDuckGo works well with PB.Com because it blocks Twitter by default. Unfortunately it blocks Twitter completely, so posts that only contain a Twitter link appear as blank posts.
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
Yes, the slow loading is always down to the Twitter embeds. It might be sensible for the site admins to disable them, especially when they are expecting a busy few days ahead.
(Avoids sarcastic comment about Twitter being disabled being a good thing in general).
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
That's, sadly, a lie. They came down to Evens within two hours of my hot tip. I got on him at 2/1 twice. Don't believe me, I'll send you the betting slip.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
You don't need to send me your 'betting slip' (whatever that might be) Betfair's own recorded betting odds history clearly shows that Ossoff's odds NEVER reached 2/1. Check it out yourself! You simply don't understand decimal odds do you?
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
That's, sadly, a lie. They came down to Evens within two hours of my hot tip. I got on him at 2/1 twice. Don't believe me, I'll send you the betting slip.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
Please don't call highly respected posters liars, and it's true. You palpably confused decimal 2.0 with 2/1.
Not that that makes you a bad person. I'd like to say I have never done the same myself, but my lying circuits are out of commission.
We seem to be in the middle of a bizarre political moment.
How often is it that a Govt announces a major policy affecting the whole nation which has overwhelming and almost equal support from both Con and Lab voters?
Yet we have a very small, vociferous minority trying to create the impression there is substantial opposition to what's being done.
Well there isn't. Sure the Govt can be accused of incompetence on a massive scale. But whether they are incompetent or not, the public right across the board massively supports the lockdown.
The vociferous minority are doing mental gymnastics desperate to manipulate or distort data in a forlorn attempt to persuade people to support their view that the lockdown should be opposed due to a bizarre sense that it goes against their definition of "freedom".
The great British public, right across the political spectrum, has enough basic common sense to assess the situation.
And, as was alluded to on here earlier today, I wouldn't mind betting that if the vast majority of those opposing the lockdown were actually the PM taking the decision they would then go for a lockdown.
It’s easy to support it if you are financially unaffected (or even better off), as are most pensioners and a vast swathe of managerial and professional workers.
I've just found the DuckDuckGo Browser which works wonderfully and fast with PB on my Android phone. it loads the comments almost instantly - that is totally different from my experience on Chrome and other more established browsers
DuckDuckGo works well with PB.Com because it blocks Twitter by default. Unfortunately it blocks Twitter completely, so posts that only contain a Twitter link appear as blank posts.
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
Yes, the slow loading is always down to the Twitter embeds. It might be sensible for the site admins to disable them, especially when they are expecting a busy few days ahead.
(Avoids sarcastic comment about Twitter being disabled being a good thing in general).
Seconded!
We can also urge those PB’ers who like spamming endless cut and pastes from twitter (you know who you are) to, please, stop.
I've just found the DuckDuckGo Browser which works wonderfully and fast with PB on my Android phone. it loads the comments almost instantly - that is totally different from my experience on Chrome and other more established browsers
DuckDuckGo works well with PB.Com because it blocks Twitter by default. Unfortunately it blocks Twitter completely, so posts that only contain a Twitter link appear as blank posts.
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
Yes, the slow loading is always down to the Twitter embeds. It might be sensible for the site admins to disable them, especially when they are expecting a busy few days ahead.
(Avoids sarcastic comment about Twitter being disabled being a good thing in general).
Seconded!
We can also urge those PB’ers who like spamming endless cut and pastes from twitter (you know who you are) to, please, stop.
Have to say, for the second time this morning, I agree with you. I'm going to point a particular finger but I do find Malmsebury's massively long cut and pastes of in depth coronavirus figures every afternoon really tiresome. Pages and pages of them (if you're on a mobile) and if I want to see those I'll go elsewhere than a political betting site.
Some twitter posts are useful but they just clog up everything especially when endlessly repeated in quotes.
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
That's, sadly, a lie. They came down to Evens within two hours of my hot tip. I got on him at 2/1 twice. Don't believe me, I'll send you the betting slip.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
Please don't call highly respected posters liars, and it's true. You palpably confused decimal 2.0 with 2/1.
Not that that makes you a bad person. I'd like to say I have never done the same myself, but my lying circuits are out of commission.
I'm sorry but that's palpably untrue. He was 2/1 with Betfair. End of. Send me your email and I'll send you my two betting slips, the second made just exactly when I posted the tip. Ossoff shortened very quickly. I doubt it had anything to do with people on here taking up the tip (though it may have). Almost certainly as a response to his evisceration of Perdue in the 2nd debate.
So sod off yourself for calling me a liar.
p.s. unless I'm on spreads I always bet in fractions not decimals so I know exactly what I'm talking about, ta very much. 2/1 is what I got and 2/1 is what it was.
Plural Vote has an interesting model, and is a project of a registered Democrat. His latest gives a 62% chance of a Biden win, with WI, PA, FL and AZ all going red.
Not sure that I buy it with NC and GA going blue at the same time, but he tries to adjust poll data with Internet search data as a means of measuring enthusiasm.
I am sticking with my prediction of less than 200EV for Trump though.
By the way, I should have made clear when tipping Jon Ossoff to win his battle with David Perdue in Georgia that he needs to cross the 50% barrier. Otherwise there's a run off January 5th. The same applies to the other Senate Special election in Georgia.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
You also incorrectly quoted his odds on Betfair as being 2/1, when in fact they were actually just above evens.
That's, sadly, a lie. They came down to Evens within two hours of my hot tip. I got on him at 2/1 twice. Don't believe me, I'll send you the betting slip.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
You don't need to send me your 'betting slip' (whatever that might be) Betfair's own recorded betting odds history clearly shows that Ossoff's odds NEVER reached 2/1. Check it out yourself! You simply don't understand decimal odds do you?
I'm sitting here with both my 2/1 Betfair betting slips open in front of me.
I can't drop my screenshots into here I don't think but send me your email address or belt up.
The big unknown tomorrow is Election Day turnout . Anything could happen on that front . The interesting aspect of the election so far is how many who didn’t vote in 2016 have already voted this time or definitely plan to vote , those voters going by the polls are breaking 2 to 1 in Biden’s favour.
I've just found the DuckDuckGo Browser which works wonderfully and fast with PB on my Android phone. it loads the comments almost instantly - that is totally different from my experience on Chrome and other more established browsers
DuckDuckGo works well with PB.Com because it blocks Twitter by default. Unfortunately it blocks Twitter completely, so posts that only contain a Twitter link appear as blank posts.
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
Yes, the slow loading is always down to the Twitter embeds. It might be sensible for the site admins to disable them, especially when they are expecting a busy few days ahead.
(Avoids sarcastic comment about Twitter being disabled being a good thing in general).
Seconded!
We can also urge those PB’ers who like spamming endless cut and pastes from twitter (you know who you are) to, please, stop.
Have to say, for the second time this morning, I agree with you. I'm going to point a particular finger but I do find Malmsebury's massively long cut and pastes of in depth coronavirus figures every afternoon really tiresome. Pages and pages of them (if you're on a mobile) and if I want to see those I'll go elsewhere than a political betting site.
Some twitter posts are useful but they just clog up everything especially when endlessly repeated in quotes.
Local images aren't a problem with regard to the slow loading, as they load directly from the Vanilla server. It's the third-party embeds (mostly Twitter) that take time.
If I were to guess, it's that Twitter's servers see 50 or 100 instant requests from the same url (repeated many times across multiple PB users refreshing the page and multiple other Vanilla sites) and throttle them accordingly, to reduce their own load peaks. Hence the page taking up to half a minute to refresh, especially on mobile devices. Sometimes it hangs for so long the whole thing times out and the page starts to reload.
@rcs1000@MikeSmithson please can we disable the Vanilla Twitter embeds, it's making the site almost unusable at times.
Comments
The Telegraph has gone off the deep end over the last few years and it is not getting any better with its showing over COVID, going back to the days at the beginning of this pandemic saying we would all be fine with herd immunity, or that it would never come to the UK.
It seems to me that those who don't want this lockdown and then find "evidence" for it are doing the equivalent of reading tea leaves.
The eggheads are engaging in the sort of political spin you expect from politicians.
I am not even anti-lockdown, just pissed off at continued piss poor science on show.
That doesn't mean that "more lockdown" is the answer, but the chart you posted is incredibly misleading, and you must know that.
I'm all in favour of sensible personal risk management. If I was an obese 70 year old bloke I'd probably keep out of the Nottingham student bars at the moment. As a healthy 33 year old, going to church for an hour, wearing a mask, in a huge drafty building with a fairly small number of other people is probably my lowest risk hour of the week (other than time spent asleep). My work is a massively more risky place (and there is nothing we can do about it)
It's because government lockdowns are a blunt instrument that they are such a terrible idea. We now have this farce where spread is mostly driven by the school system, which will stay open, but lots of negligible risk activities will be forceably closed.
I'm not in favour of locking down, but if we are going to, we should at least do it in a way which will actually stand a chance of working.
European governments are better at controlling their people than controlling the virus
BY ZOE STRIMPEL"
https://unherd.com/2020/10/britains-covid-authoritarians-have-nothing-on-italys/
That being said, I've travelled round a number of US states. During the height of the Arizona de facto lockdown, it was much worse than California that had a government mandated severe one. The problem with the de facto ones is that businesses can't plan, because next week no-one might be going out because they're terrified. And the knock on effects in weeks when the hospitals get overcrowded are pretty awful.
It seems to me - as I said downthread - that by far the best response is mandated moves that make *big* differences, but otherwise allow people a reasonable amount of freedom.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast
It will all come down to differential turnout. What does the silent majority really think? Do they think Trump is an embarrassment who is not fit to be President, or that the 'establishment' should be punished for thinking people were idiots in 2016 - "We voted MAGA and we meant it!"?
I call this rcs1000's rule.
The current Biden lead is 8.6%, and he's averaging 52% in the polls. To get down to a 2.5% Biden lead requires a 3% "swing".
There will be a polling error. But it's only 50/50 whether it'll be in Trump's favour (indeed, in both the UK and the UK polling errors tend to oscillate, so 50% may be generous).
National polling misses don't tend to be that big - most are 2% or less (that's a 1% swing). But let's be generous and say there's a one in three chance of the polling error being 5% or more.
That gets me to a one-in-six shot.
Let's look at North Carolina's numbers. Early voting was... ooohhh... almost 100% of last year's voting. And the Male-Female split is utterly horrendous for the President. Trump does very badly with women (and while the numbers are less clear probably not very well with the 'non-binary' either).
Self identifying men made up less than 41% of voters - that's down more than four points from 2016. (Let me put this another way - there have been around 110% of the number of votes cast by women in 2016 already, against slightly under 90% for men.)
Unless men make up substantially all the voters the voters on the day, then there's going to be a 11-13% male-female gap.
Now, North Carolina may be the exception. And it may be that all the new female voters are HS educated and lean towards the President. But I think those numbers are pretty ominous for the President.
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NC.html
Even if there was a swing of 2.4% across all USA from the 538 forecast it wouldn't be the same swing in every state - so Biden might still win one of these states on random variation.
One route that could save Biden if he suffers the huge blow of losing PA would be for him to win AZ.
Gaining MI, WI and AZ from 2016 gives a 269-269 tie. Then if Biden wins one of the individual Congressional districts in ME or NE then that gets him to 270.
It's gonna be
Kamala vs AOC vs Tulsi Gabbard
Lots of data here https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf
Much simpler to look at it like this:
Women are a larger share of the electorate than men (due to living longer), and female turnout is four to five points higher than men.
I'm only passing on what she said.
I didn’t always agree with him but he was fearless and always worth reading.
And yet still the Daily Mail headline writers are in denial.
There has been less traffic on the road creating less background noise, so sirens sound louder.
It is possible there have been more ambulance journeys, owing to fireworks or other factors.
It is also possible that LAS guidelines on when to use sirens has changed. I do get the impression round here that ambulances are turning their sirens on to negotiate the temporary traffic lights around road works far more than they used them for the permanent lights at the same junction.
But it is probably mostly just that they sound louder because of the quieter streets.
https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1323136758301839361?s=20
Trump seemed to hint at it but simply asked the crowd to wait a while after the election. Dr Fauci will be 80 in December, so it is possible he plans to retire anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
He looks bloody good for it.
Whereas BXP, like UKIP before it, was targetting the elderly and those of working age with less education, the target group for an anti lockdown party is completely different. Farage’s image and backstory make him entirely unsuitable as the person to harness the discontent younger and more educated are likely to have with a policy ironically driven by prioritising the protection of his previous voters.
Which tells us that this is simply a stunt to put some pressure on the government right now, and not a longer term proposition.
Try polling again with a proposition which doesn’t involve a paid break from work for very many? Then you’d test how far ‘basic common sense to assess the situation’, in terms of combatting the virus, would stretch when up against self interest.
The problem yet again is that those suffering are predominantly the young. Who would have mostly breezed through catching the virus anyway.
First, this is a great little video clip by the excellent John King of CNN on the battleground states and when they may declare. Note that he says North Carolina may be an early result and an indicator:
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/11/01/trump-biden-election-battleground-states-polls-king-magic-wall-vpx-ip.cnn
Second, an excellent summary in the LA Times on how all the battleground states vote, deadlines for voting, when they count and the rules:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-11-01/vote-counting-absentee-ballot-rules-battleground-states
Third, as I'm sure has been commented on, the GOP lost their battle to exclude the 120,000 Texan votes. That is a sure sign that Texas is in play. But Donald Trump's latest gambit, neatly explained on NBC, is that he is going to 'send in the lawyers' after the vote closes tomorrow. This is a developing story that we need to watch. It tells us several things. One is that his decision to relocate on election night to the White House indicates he will seek to undermine the legitimacy of the result. Another is that he and his team are not on course for a 2016 result. He's hoping that if he can get close enough to re-election by, say, 3 or 4 narrow state losses then he will challenge those results and refuse to leave the White House. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-begins-rally-blitz-playing-hits-lamenting-cold-n1245691
For the sake of democracy, America and the world let's hope that tomorrow is decisive one way or the other.
Even the former Harris County Republican Party Chair Paul Simpson said he has no association with the lawsuit but believes it should have been filed sooner. The system has been approved of weeks ago.
You never quite know with the US, but I'm fairly relaxed that the second filing will also be thrown out.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/11/02/harris-county-judge-lina-hidalgo-reacts-to-texas-supreme-court-decision-on-drive-thru-voting/
We're less than 24 hours from the first results (Dixville Notch?) of the 2020 US Presidential Election!
Real voters, real votes, real results.
In 2016, DN went 4 Clinton, 2 Trump, 1 Romney, 1 Johnson.
My guess is that Biden will get all the Clinton vote, plus one of the Others (for 5 votes), while Trump does similarly (3 votes).
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/01/politics/us-election-2020-week-ahead/index.html
Having your home state as the key one must be good for Biden,
If there's one person most responsible for Georgia’s emergence as a competitive state, and most likely to benefit from a Democratic victory, it is her.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/01/stacey-abrams-biden-georgia-433799
I'm clinging to the hope that by Thursday Trump will have accepted defeat and there will be at least some good news.
And, on a personal note, that our niece will be really be on the mend from her attack of Covid-19.
There’s all kinds of ways Trump’s 10-15% chance of winning might come about, and none of them are particularly well determined.
In contrast, early voting numbers are hard fact.
It won’t, because Biden will score a clear win. The point that CNN - and others - are making is that IF it is close, it may all come down to PA
Normally politicians try to bribe their supporters, not kill them.
In both cases there are third party candidates making the 50% threshold harder to achieve in the first round.
I think Ossoff will win but whether he crosses 50% tomorrow is more in the balance.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/texas-drive-through-voting-throw-out-ballots.amp
Is this prior expecting the worst? Or first instance or republican friendly courts getting involved?
If you use the Android Firefox Browser coupled with the uBlock Origin add-on, and configure the add-on to block platform.twitter.com then PB.Com loads just as quickly as with DuckDuckGo but posts containing Twitter links will show the link, albeit without opening it. The reader then has the option of clicking the link to read it if desired. The same solution works with Firefox on Windows.
Twitter links are definitely the source of slow and erratic loading.
This is how to configure uBlock Origin settings...
F1: Ladbrokes has a 2021 market up (teams). Most tempting for me is Ferrari at 11 and McLaren at 81.
Red Bull believe they can change the car sufficiently with the interseason rule changes to get on par with Mercedes. But they still need a good number two driver and we don't know who that will be.
Ferrari's deficit is substantially due to the engine nonsense, which shouldn't recur next year, and Leclerc/Sainz will be a strong lineup. However, McLaren's also a dark horse, having improved significantly in recent years and with a great new driver in Ricciardo.
Haven't bet yet. Might be one for a free bet.
https://twitter.com/rupert_pearse/status/1322806770771906560?s=19
Of the six states where 538 has the Biden-Trump difference between 0 and 5.5 points, assuming Biden takes the states where he has a larger margin, Trump needs to win every single one of the six to get to 270.
Sorry you weren't quick enough out of the trap on this occasion.
The most significant thing about this refashioning of the Farage ego vehicle is that it is happening while Brexit negotiations are in progress.
Whether they are right is a different matter. Their forecasts to date have been enormously pessimistic about the continued spread of the virus projecting numbers we have not got near. And yet the numbers are bad enough. I personally believe that the case is being seriously overstated and yet it remains fundamentally solid. I do not see how we let a virus that would kill hundreds (at least) a day let rip indefinitely and so dominate our NHS that far more than were necessary die of everything else as well.
It would obviously be better if we were able to use test, trace and isolate effectively but we are where we are and the government has to use the tools actually available.
(Avoids sarcastic comment about Twitter being disabled being a good thing in general).
Not that that makes you a bad person. I'd like to say I have never done the same myself, but my lying circuits are out of commission.
We can also urge those PB’ers who like spamming endless cut and pastes from twitter (you know who you are) to, please, stop.
Some twitter posts are useful but they just clog up everything especially when endlessly repeated in quotes.
So sod off yourself for calling me a liar.
p.s. unless I'm on spreads I always bet in fractions not decimals so I know exactly what I'm talking about, ta very much. 2/1 is what I got and 2/1 is what it was.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/13/politics/can-trump-fire-fauci/index.html
http://www.pluralvote.com/article/2020-forecast/
Not sure that I buy it with NC and GA going blue at the same time, but he tries to adjust poll data with Internet search data as a means of measuring enthusiasm.
I am sticking with my prediction of less than 200EV for Trump though.
I can't drop my screenshots into here I don't think but send me your email address or belt up.
If I were to guess, it's that Twitter's servers see 50 or 100 instant requests from the same url (repeated many times across multiple PB users refreshing the page and multiple other Vanilla sites) and throttle them accordingly, to reduce their own load peaks. Hence the page taking up to half a minute to refresh, especially on mobile devices. Sometimes it hangs for so long the whole thing times out and the page starts to reload.
@rcs1000 @MikeSmithson please can we disable the Vanilla Twitter embeds, it's making the site almost unusable at times.