Obviously, it would be very bad to get your hopes up. We’ve all learned our lesson over the past 8 years. But still, there is a bit of a case to be made that things could go very well on election day for Harris and the Democrats. I think it’s ok to fantasize a little bit about that, just for kicks.
Here’s an article in Fortune about the possibility of a big win:
In late 2020 and early 2021, this reporter wrote several stories focusing on the election predictions advanced by Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University. I was intrigued by the highly original methodology Miller deployed in calling the trends, and outcomes, first in the presidential race, then for the two Georgia senatorial contests, where the surprise twin victories gave Democrats control of the upper chamber.
[…]
In all three 2020 contests, Miller beat virtually every pollster, and modeler parsing multiple voter surveys. He missed the size of Biden’s win in the electoral college by just 12 votes, tagging every state for the correct column save Georgia. For the two senate runoffs, Miller refined his approach to sorting data on the Peach State, and scored again. A week before Election Day on December 6, 2020, the polls gave Republican David Perdue a wide lead over Democrat Jon Ossoff, and showed the GOP’s Kelly Loeffler in a dead heat versus opponent Raphael Warnock. By contrast, Miller’s numbers had Loeffler heading for a big loss, and Ossoff en route to a modest victory. Once again, the contrarian academic nailed it: Miller was just 0.2% short on Warnock’s 2.0% margin, and precisely on target in forecasting Ossoff’s 1.0% final bulge at the ballot box.
Ok, so now you know who this is and why we are listening to him. Miller doesn’t rely solely on polls but also uses the betting markets. He says the right question isn’t “who are you voting for” but “who do you expect to win.” Ok.
Here’s how it worked in 2020:
For the 2020 Biden-Trump face-off, Miller deployed the pricing posted on the largest U.S. political betting site, Predictit. He took the Predictit odds in the 56 individual voting jurisdictions, tracked the hourly changes, and used his proprietary model to roll the data into daily odds that were extremely current given that folks were posting bets for one candidate or the other 24-7 on the site. For the Senate races, Miller took a different tack. He assembled a group of about 1,200 Georgians whom he lured by agreeing to pay them a few dollars to participate, and extra dollars if they named the contender most likely to win—not the necessarily one they planned to vote for, as well as predict the margin for victory. The method he developed, called a “prediction survey” taking the best parts of the polling and the betting market guided Miller to a near-perfect reading of the voting shares.
He’s using Predictit again this time. He tracked the Biden-Trump race over the course of many months and it had Trump winning “bigly.” The Democrats odds went up after Harris took over and ended up at about 400 electoral votes by the end of the DNC.
But…
Then, Trump staged a comeback. In the days before the September 10 Trump-Harris debate, Harris was still ahead, but Trump had nearly caught up. “At that point, the race was essentially a tossup,” observes Miller. “The forecast for the Democrats was 288.” It was the onstage battle in Philadelphia that wrecked the 78-year old former POTUS, according to the Miller numbers. Within a day after the candidates left the podium, Harris had jumped to exactly over 400 electoral votes. The Harris endorsement from Taylor Swift, secured the day of the debate, probably helped sink Trump’s chances, according to Miller. Since then, Harris has maintained for 400-plus vote total.
As of September 16, Predictit is showing a price of 55 cents for Harris, and 45 cents for Trump, the reverse of the scenario before Biden’s departure. Once again, those odds translate in 55% of the popular vote for the Democrat according to Miller’s model. If the situation persists, Trump faces an absolute rout. “It would be somewhere between the defeats of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Bob Dole by Bill Clinton in 1996,” says Miller. “We’re talking about a blowout where Harris gets over 400 electoral votes and wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and every other swing state.”
Miller notes that at least in recent history, America’s never witnessed a reversal of fortune remotely as dramatic as this one. “It’s gone from a drastic landslide in Trump’s direction to a drastic landslide for Harris,” he marvels. The distance is now so great that only another epic swing would bring Trump back into contention, and Miller predicts that right now, it looks like Harris will win big on November 5. As a coda, he recalls a slogan the Johnson campaign used to bash Goldwater: “In your gut you know he’s nuts.” Miller’s markets-based analysis posits that the people betting their own money are right in predicting that by the time the candidates left the stage on September 10, millions of voters likely to back Donald Trump abandoned the ex-President, starting the shock waves that could cause an avalanche for Harris that as of now, few see building
Is that all bullshit soothsaying? Could be. And even if it’s all true, the wild swings are concerning, especially since we know the late swing against Clinton in 2016 from the Comey letter probably precipitated the loss. Who knows what might happen in the next month and a half?
Still, it’s kind of fun to contemplate. If she pulled out every swing state, including North Carolina and Georgia it would be so, so sweet. Trump will say it was stolen, of course. There is no scenario in which he won’t. And there will no doubt be post election shenanigans with the electoral vote and the courts and maybe even violence. But if she could win them all it would make it all look even more ridiculous than it already does.
Personally, I’m not putting any money on any of this because I’m paranoid and assuming it’s going to be close. But wouldn’t it be great if it wasn’t?