Category: Recurring Columns

Watching Foundation: “When A Book Finds You”

Episode 2 will be next, so I can hopefully get on track for publishing these before the next episode.

You remember how these work. These are Joseph’s reactions, reflections, and ruminations while watching the episode. Also some light summary. Beware. Here be spoilers.

Simultaneously published at Stars End: A Foundation Podcast.

Watching Foundation S3E03

Book! I assume we’re talking about Foundation and Empire here. We’ll see.

Trantor, 3 years ago

Do you ever notice that on TV shows, nobody knows the Dewey decimal system? They just ask the librarian to find things for them.  No, not Noah Wyle.

Absolutely love the look of the reserved section.

Is that thing about the gloves true?  It’s nice that Dawn shows a certain amount of skepticism here. (Edit: I bought some nitrile gloves for handling old comics and then never used them. I must have come across this fact at some point.)

“The Empire has three heads. Do they all have room for thoughts like this?“

I’m pretty sure that this librarian would’ve been vaporized had this been season one.  Is that part of the cognitive decline?

Returning a library book from practically beyond the grave is above and beyond the call of duty.  And the librarian just implied that she has a connection to a power outside of the Empire.  These guys really are getting lax!

The Dawns collectively are getting better at sneaking out of the palace. This guy basically put on a raincoat and minimal, patchy facial hair.  That’s not going to fool anyone. Clark Kent’s glasses were a better disguise.

I thought this Dawn was more deliberative, but here we are again: Dawn + pretty girl = trouble. Possibly treason.

“Mathematics is the language of angels.”   It’s prettier, but it’s still too close to math is magic.

“Is it treason if you’re the one making the rules?”  Of course it is!  This is just Nixon‘s “If the president does it, it isn’t a crime” in fancy dress.  And don’t get me started on today’s newspaper.

“… just men who started to think for themselves.”  There’s a bit more to it than that. But the Dawns have shown this interesting spark since the little kid in S1E02.

That was a perfectly timed bit of static.

“Now,” whatever that means in a show set millennia in the future.

I like that the little texting device seems like something Asimov would have imagined 80 years ago. In fact, he did imagine it 80 years ago. This is from Foundation.

“The tiny, gleaming sphere changed hands, and Gorm added, “It’s confidential. Super-secret. Can’t be trusted to the sub-ether and all that. Or so I gather. At least, it’s a Personal Capsule, and won’t open for anyone but you.”

Ponyets regarded the capsule distastefully, “I can see that. And I never knew one of these to hold good news, either.”

It opened in his hand and the thin, transparent tape unrolled stiffly. His eyes swept the message quickly, for when the last of the tape had emerged, the first was already brown and crinkled. In a minute and a half it had turned black and, molecule by molecule, fallen apart.”

My current theory on the message? “Personal 210: The Vault is awake. We call.”

We were stuck on “Vault” for a while because I was stuck on “Mule.”

Nice!  Great shades of Mission Impossible! It’s nice to know that somebody is reading the books.

Once again, we get a perfect recreation of a scene from the previous episode that pins Gaal’s timeline to everything else.

Gaal wants Dawn to call for an “enclosure“ on Kalgan.  He doesn’t want to do it, and he evidently can’t do it without council approval. No hint about that in season one or two.

Dawn doesn’t think controlling people’s minds is possible; Gaal doesn’t answer.  I wonder if she is influencing his mind. I wonder if the librarian was from the Second Foundation. I wonder whether a lot of people are Second Foundation.

Kalgan

At the party, Pritcher is very serious.

And we finally see Magnifico with the visi-sonar.  “The mule brings him everywhere he goes, even into battle.”

Pritcher sees the Mule. “Now, I just have to get close to him.“  I wonder why that is sufficient.  He’s certainly 2F.  In a psychic attack from the Mule, we hear “you are like me,” and “Who is Gaal Dornik?”  Han flees with a bloodshot eye.

If he is 2F, maybe he won’t spend the rest of the book as a puppet.

“The Mule” is kind of a dick to Magnifico.

“Roughing my flanks?”

Bayta and Toran decide to investigate “the Mule” themselves.  They’re more serious than when we first met them, but they are very overconfident.

Toran’s encounter with “The Mule” is ugly, and Toran runs away, licking his wounds.  It’s notable, though, that, although “The Mule” threatens to toy with T’s mind, he does not follow through (maybe).

Bayta approaches Magnifico with concern, but the condescending baby talk is annoying.  Does she sense that Torin is in trouble?

“That’s not information!” Is funny.

Their ship is definitely an homage to the Millennium Falcon, even though they aren’t topologically equivalent.  

More letters, consistent with the message tape.

“Things have a way of working out how they’re meant to.”  Seems an out-of-character reaction (unless?).

Trantor

Brother Dude is back at the Claviger Barracks.  He wants to escape the palace and get to Mycogen with both Song and her memory.  We learn the clavigers’ families are all held hostage.  Dude claims he will bring the first claviger’s family along and will reward him generously for his help.

Song presses Dude for information, especially why he refers to Demerzel as “it.”  He tells her Demerzel’s a robot.

Why isn’t that an “open” secret?  Hasn’t she been in the public eye for centuries?  I suppose the official story is that she was also being cloned.  I guess that could work.

Dawn is contacting “The Mule.”  Dawn = Cleon XXV by the way.  

He’s trying to bring Kalgan back into the Empire and offers “The Mule” protection and some other things.

“ You already failed to protect Kalgan.  I am the proof.”  It goes downhill from there.

Some Jump Gate Somewhere

“The Mule” and his men captured a jump gate.  They’re keeping it quiet.  But he says something interesting as he dispatches the final guard.  “Normally, I would let you enjoy it at least.  But someone took my balladeer from me.”  He called Gigantigo “it” multiple times.

Maybe this is the Mule, but he is not the one with the mind control powers.  Could Magnifico be Giskard?  “Do you ever feel like your life is not your own?”  “It’s sort of a transcendent feeling you have to kill your way out of.“

The Palace Garden

Dude and Song are planning their escape.  Song’s affect is wildly different.  She’s now introspective and judgmental about how Dude talks about Demerzel, and she wants to stay near Demerzel.  Dude replies with a verse of Pulp’s “Common People.” 

Demerzel arrives, and Song makes an odd gesture for Demerzel to see.  Could she have been a plant all along?

The Imperial Palace

Dawn is worried about “The Mule.”  “He took Kalgan in a day… yada, yada, yada.”  He is trying to create the enclosure that Gaal recommended.

Dude and Dusk want none of it, and Demerzel is more worried about the council than about “The Mule.”

“The middle thrown says, no.”  

The tone changes dramatically when the Cleons start to discuss Dawn‘s robing ceremony.  The bit about strength, wisdom, and fortitude is the Cleon’s at their most human.

…A Bit Later

The first clavager seems to be on board.  He brings a plan to Dude.

But when Dude returns to the garden, Demerzel awaits.  She explains Song’s strange gesture.  It’s from an ancient religion in Mycogen where they worship robots called the Inheritance.  The sect believes the robots will return and remove all cruelty, injustice, and misery from the world.

Demerzel sends Song back to Mycogen with her memory wiped.  She would have killed her but for Dude.  He doesn’t appreciate the gesture. Also, it’s worth considering whether Demerzel is lying or not.

I’m hoping that the first clavager and his daughter aren’t just collateral damage here.

This Mycogenian religion will play a huge role in the rest of the season, I bet.  That would explain the prominence of Song’s name in the title of episode one.

(Edit: Song could be a major player in what’s coming if Demerzel didn’t actually wipe her memory.)

Review:

Slightly stronger than the first two episodes. We’re hanging some meat on the bones of some of the plotlines already introduced, with some nice character moments.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

All Images from Foundation on Apple TV+.

You can find our podcast here:

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 04 November 2024

The Finish Line.

Here we are at Election Day. It’s been a long road. At some point along the way I thought I’d be doing one of these every night as the election got close. Unfortunately, that ran straight into my need to make a living. But here’s one final probabilistic analysis as the campaign draws to a close.

The Traditional Version

Let’s remind ourselves how these work. I took data for electoral-vote.com either averaging the polls from the last fifteen days or taking the single latest poll if there are no polls in the last 15 days.

We ran 40,000 simulated elections and tallied the results. We ended up with almost 73% of victories going toward Kamala Harris. Running all the states it looks like Harris has at least a 70% chance of winning with less than a 30% probability. I’ve talked about why that is likely an overestimate of Harris’s chances.

That’s why we started running a second simulation.

In our swings-only projection we give every state that is not a swing state to either the Democratic or Republican candidate. That means Harris starts at 226 electoral votes and Trump builds from 213. That’s a slight advantage for Harris.

These simulations give us a 59% probability of a Kamala Harris victory and about a 40% chance of winning for Donald Trump. That’s close but not so close as projected by other sites. It’s going to be a long night but Harris has an edge.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 30 September 2024

Catching up.

Having a day job can be a drag, I promised myself that I would keep up with these but, as usually happens that intention was trampled by the sheer amount of work generated by the college and my classes. If I publish these as much as I’d like as the election draws nearer, most updates will need to look more like this.

Any commentary I would offer would be stale, but here is the map (in the featured image), the shifts, and the results for the 30 September Data.

You can get a better look at the featured image on the blog.

Shifts:

StateChange
New MexicoStrongly Democratic to Leaning Democratic
StateChange
Nebraska 2ndLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
MichiganBarely Democratic to Leaning Democratic
NevadaToss Up to Barely Democratic

Results

It’s reasonable to characterize this as roughly 3 to 1 in Harris’s favor.

An Electoral Map showing results from our 30 September 2024 data.

Last Words

These probabilities are still mostly driven by Harris’s advantage in the Dark Blue vs. Dark Red categories. Florida and Oregon are also probably shifting back and forth more than is reasonable.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 22 September 2024

Consolidations and a bit of a Debate Bump

Let’s get right to it. This is the first time since 14 August that one of the candidates had led in a victorious number of electoral votes.

The State of the Race

It’s been another crazy week.

It turns out that the happening at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach wasn’t random passersby engaging in gunplay. There was someone with an AK-47 at the edge of the golf course as Trump approached the fifth hole. The only gunfire though came from the Secret Service. The perpetrator was quickly apprehended. This is certainly an incident, but lots of folks are stopping short of calling it an “assassination attempt.”

Most of the polls this week have been very helpful for Vice President Harris. In fact, of the 12 polls that showed up on electoral-vote.com on Thursday, Donald Trump only led in one. There was a tied result in Pennsylvania, and the rest favored Harris. We could be seeing a debate bump finally taking hold.

In light of this, we notice that there has been a spate of anti-democratic stories this week. The Georgia elections board has mandated that ballot be counted by hand. That will grind the process to a halt and create chaos. In Ohio, the Secretary of State has written a very misleading description of an anti-gerrymandering amendment that will be up for a vote. And Senator Lindsay Graham has gone to Nebraska in hopes of convincing their legislature to switch the way, they allocate electoral votes to a winner-take-all system. Part of running a free and fair election involves not changing the rules late in the game, making this Nebraska thing seem like dirty pool. There’s more that I’ll leave you to hunt down.

Results:

As always we ran 40,000 simulations of the election as though it were being held today based on this week’s polling data from electoral-vote.com. Harris won 75% of these simulations, Trump won 24% and the remaining 1% were tied. In other words, it looks like the odds of Harris winning the election are at 3 to 1.

You can understand why Lindsay Graham went to Nebraska. If this map is correct, even if Donald Trump were to win every state marked as a tossup Harris would win 270 to 268. Changing how Nebraska allocates its electoral votes turns it into a 269 to 269 tie.

Probably not though because Harris is slightly ahead in Nevada and North Carolina. If we add in how the tossup states lean, this becomes a victory for Harris 292 to 246 EV.

That’s not a great way of looking at it though because in addition to the tossup states, the light blue and light red states are all close to or inside the margin of error. That excludes Oregon. We only have one poll from Oregon and it’s not as light blue as it seems.

The optimum way of looking at this might be Harris: 226, Trump: 189. Harris’s 3 to 1 odds notwithstanding this could still go either way.

Trends:

Digging in state-by-state, we can see that the bulk of the shifts this week are good news for Vice-President Harris. Let’s start with the states that have a redshift.

StateChange
IndianaLeaning Republican to Strongly Republican
Maine 2ndLeaning Democratic to Leaning Republican
MaineStrongly Democratic to Leaning Democratic
Virginia Strongly Democratic to Leaning Democratic

Like Colorado and Arkansas last week, the shift in Indiana doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. Last week’s result was based on one that was months old and just didn’t capture how red Indiana really is.

The shift in Maine’s second district is a big one, but it puts the Maine 2nd more or less back where it had been before the previous poll. That’s not really a surprise. Because of the change in the Maine 2nd, Maine as a whole seems a little less blue. Virginia’s shift is a small one right at the borderline between those two categories.

StateChange
IowaStrongly Republican to Leaning Republican
FloridaLeaning Democratic to Barely Republican
PennsylvaniaToss Up to Barely Democratic
New HampshireLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
New MexicoLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
Rhode IslandLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic

Looking at these states with a blue shift the one non-story here is Pennsylvania. That’s just a happy little dance within the margin of error.

Iowa though was a surprise. Donald Trump had an 18 point lead that shrunk to meager four points. The race in Florida, meanwhile has looked like it’s been tightening for a while. Perhaps it really is.

New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Rhode Island all could be the same story as Indiana. All of the states though have been polled multiple times; New Hampshire and New Mexico were looking downright swingy for a while. If these three are legitimately safely blue that frees up some resources that could be better used in, to pick a couple of states at random, Iowa and Florida.

Last Words

As much as I would rather continue to pontificate here, there is unfortunately other work I need to get to. We’ll check in again next week and see if these trends continue.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 14 September 2024

Drifting Towards Harris

This is my first update on my new schedule. I downloaded the data from ElectoralVote.com yesterday, the 14th, at around noon and I’m processing it today on Sunday. With luck, I’ll have this out tonight.

The State of the Race

It’s been a bizarre 10 days! Monday seems like a lifetime ago. It was on Monday when I clicked on a “Cats for Trump” hashtag on Twitter or whatever the hell it’s called now. It struck me as pitiful. It seemed like Trump’s people were out of ideas and were trying anything to move the needle or slow Harris’s momentum.

Tuesday was the debate. It was a solid and clean win for Harris. We got the Trump we saw in the first debate and his furious firehose of falsehoods. That should have been disqualifying then, but we and the media were too busy realizing that President Biden is an octogenarian. In the second round, we got more of the same from Donald Trump with the added bonus that Kamala Harris was really able to piss him off. That led to some crazy, incoherent rants. It turns out it’s pretty easy to push that guy’s buttons as Vladimir Putin and a bunch of others figured out long ago. The only people I saw arguing that Donald Trump won the debate were on right-wing websites where they probably didn’t have the option of saying anything else.

Unfortunately, there are so few undecided voters at this point that the debate didn’t move the needle immediately. As things get played over and over over on the teevee machine some stuff will reach critical mass and start to sink in. A debate bump does not need to be instantaneous.

Oh. Also, the debate and a crudely made AI likeness inspired Taylor Swift to finally endorse Kamala Harris. Trump responded by saying that he hates her while making a knockoff of one of her concert T-shirts. This will eventually be hilarious, but not for Trump.

The latest news is that there was gunfire this afternoon near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach. I knew that neighborhood or did 20 years ago. It’s fine, but gunfire isn’t all that surprising. The Trump campaign tried to color this as a second assassination attempt. I guess we’ll see.

Results:

We ran our usual 40,000 simulations of the election. If the election were today it looks like Harris would win about seven out of 10 times. Trump’s chances are close to three out of 10 and as usual we’re seeing about one percent of the results turn out to be ties.

An Electoral Map showing projected results based on the 14 September 2024 Data.

That seems to track. Harris’s collection of “safe” votes is growing and is nearly twice as large as Trump’s. That’s a big driver of the probability. Make no mistake, there are enough toss-up votes that this thing could go either way.

Trends:

We can go back to tracking the individual changes because we’re on our second week of taking polls back 15 days. We have apples-to-apples comparisons. I’ve split the shifts into the moves toward the left and the moves toward the right.

Colorado and Arkansas don’t really show us any recent changes. Those states have probably been in the strong columns for months. It’s just that they haven’t been polled in a long time. We’ll see the same thing when we finally get new polls from Oregon and Indiana.

StateChange
ColoradoLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
VirginiaLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
MichiganToss Up to Barely Democratic
OhioStrongly Republican to Leaning Republican

Michigan and Wisconsin don’t tell us too much either. These are small shifts on the edges of the categories. Light blue, light red, and taupe are all mostly inside the margin of error.

StateChange
WisconsinLeaning Democratic to Barely Democratic
ArkansasLeaning Republican to Strongly Republican

Virginia and Ohio on the other hand are pretty big shifts and are mostly in Harris’s direction. Ohio doesn’t look likely to turn blue, but if it shifts into a place where it’s competitive and Virginia settles into being safely blue that could inspire a potentially game-changing shift of resources.

Last Words

Kamala Harris having a seven out of 10 chance of winning the election if it were held today seems pretty reasonable at this point. Nate Silver this week has those probabilities almost exactly backward, with Trump having about a seven out of 10 chance of winning. On the other hand, I spent some time this afternoon listening to Christopher Bouzy on Spoutible, revealing his new electoral map. That one seems wildly optimistic in Harris’s direction.

But both of those guys are trying, something more robust than a polls-only estimate. They’re trying to factor in other information, which is more subjective. That might explain why these two projections differ so strongly. The two approaches should theoretically converge as we get closer to election day. In the meantime, I should take a dive into their reasoning to see if I can assess it. Right now I’m comfortable being in the middle.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 04 September 2024

Stubbornly Stable.

Yeah, it’s taken me a while to get this one out, again. Sorry. It’s been tricky settling back into the academic year.

Starting this week I will download polling data on Fridays and, with luck, will have a post for you on Saturday. Look for our next update on or around the 14th.

That thing about a week being an eternity in politics has never seemed more true. Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery was a bit more than a week ago, but that’s still within the data collection for this update. It’s been a crazy week or so.

The State of the Race

One thing that surprised me was Nate Silver’s announcement on Thursday that according to his model, Donald Trump had about a 60% chance of winning the election. Silver is doing something fundamentally different than I’m doing here. He’s trying to bring fundamentals and other factors into his probabilities while I’m just looking at poll numbers.

https://twitter.com/DrKolacinski/status/1832141454195429591

I just do not see it. And whereas good poll numbers are based in fact, I worry that trying to factor in other fundamentals doesn’t. A lot of it, I believe, is guesswork at best and wishful thinking (or existential terror) at worst.

Let’s look at what happened over the past few days over at electoral-vote.com. On Thursday Pennsylvania shifted from barely Democratic to toss-up. Friday’s map had Pennsylvania back at barely Democratic, while Georgia moved from barely Democratic to toss-up and North Carolina moved from barely Republican to toss-up. Yesterday, Texas moved from leans Republican to barely Republican. That sounds like a big deal until you dig into the data. In this case, the margin shrank from five points to four. It is, to paraphrase the Bard, much ado about very little. The website 270 to Win moved Texas and Florida from red to toss-up on Friday. Here’s their “Polls Only” Map.

If this is correct there’s a lot of open ground where either side can grow. Are Trump’s chances of victory improving? That’s harder to say.

Results:

I was pondering a change in methodology last week. I’m only making one change. I’m now reaching back 15 days to gather my polls rather than 10. Some of the polls on Electoral-Vote.com collect data for a month. Since the date on EV’s polls is the midpoint of the data collection, those would never get included with any window shorter than 15 days.

This will also keep more polls in the data set and reduce the chance that one extreme or outlier poll will skew the data.

As usual, we entered the polling data into our model and ran 40,000 simulated elections. Here’s what we get.

More states are showing as “Toss Up” than our recent updates, but light red, light blue, and taupe are very close together; this is not a dramatic change.

The results of the simulations tell us that the probability of Harris winning if the election were held today sits at 60% while Trump’s likelihood of victory is about 39%. One percent of the simulations ate ties.

This is where our results have been for a while, Harris still has a slight lead and the odds of her winning remain at about 3 to 2. But wait.

Trends:

I shifted methods so I’m not going to list the week-to-week changes. In the Electoral-Vote.com data, there’s some slight tightening in the race as evidenced by the larger number of toss-up states. Since I collected this data there was Nate Silver’s election probability, Trump’s pulled ahead on at least one betting site and Trump led the latest NYTimes/Siena College poll. Contrarily Harris is ahead in the FiveThirtyEight analysis with a 54% chance of victory.

We might be looking at a 50/50 race in out next update, but from our vantage point, the race as a whole seems stubbornly stable. In our model Harris’s advantage is driven by how many more electoral votes remain in the “Strongly Democratic” column vs. it’s “Strongly Republican” counterpart. Want to move our numbers? Get us a fresh poll in Indiana or Oregon depending on which side you’d like to help.

Last Words

I looked at something a little different this week and it’s interesting. While most of our analysis seems centered on the close races, let’s look at the ends of the red/blue spectrum. I ran a set of 1000 simulations and looked at the biggest landslides. The best result for the Republicans was a victory of 353 EVs to 185. The biggest win for the Democrats was 398 to 140. The maps for these might look something like this.

Neither of these are are going to happen; we won’t get close to either without a systematic polling error. Still, these look a lot more reasonable in the light of 270-to-Win’s polls only map; if you assume all the Toss Ups fall in one direction you get a Democratic victory of 390 to 148 or a Republican victory of 328 to 210. Stay tuned.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 28 August 2024

No DNC Bump & Dancing Inside the Margins

Quicker than usual; I have to be ready to Teach on Monday. There are actually two sets of results here. I’ll explain.

Results for 28 August 2024:

The projected electoral map between Harris and Trump based on the 28 August data.

As usual, we collected data on Wednesday. We’re in virtually the same place as we were last week. Here Harris wins about 62% of the simulations and Trump takes about 37%. The likelihood of a tie is still at about 1%. Let’s look at the state shifts.

StateChange
ArizonaBarely Democratic to Barely Republican
Maine ALLeaning Democratic to Strongly Democratic
Maine 2ndBarely Republican to Leaning Democratic
North CarolinaBarely Democratic to Toss Up
WisconsinToss Up to Leaning Democratic

There is more dancing of the results that live inside the margin of error. The Maine shifts are the most significant here and that’s why the probability barely moved even though Trump pulled ahead with the electoral count. The light blue, light red, and tan states all have probabilities at or near 50/50; those will bounce back and forth in the simulations but the dark blue and the dark red? Those stay on one side for the majority of the trials. If something moves into one of those categories we’re likely to see it.

So, we’re holding steady with the odds of a Harris victory sitting at 3 to 2; there’s no real evidence of a bump from the Democratic convention. Globally the numbers still seem to be trending in Harris’s direction.

Results for 29 August 2024:

Several polls that showed a movement towards Harris in the swing states arrived on 29 August. Here are the results from that next day. I won’t give these results their own write-up because I played with the parameters; there are no apples-to-apples comparisons.

Last Words

These results are making me think about my methodology; I’d like to tamp down the variance and I’m not sure the colors are giving the best indication of the state of the race. Still, I don’t want to switch things up too many times.

So, I’m pondering. I may just let the status quo ride and make changes for 2028. If I make more alterations I’ll use them until Election Day. My plan is to have everything sorted by Wednesday.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 21 August 2024

This is what the stock market calls a “correction.” Harris Still Favored

I’m watching night 3 of the Democratic National Convention and Oprah just exited the stage. It was electric; the crowd was as energized as it has been all through the convention. Today we’re looking at a set of data that was collected almost entirely before the convention.

The State of the Race

The slowdown in the campaigning is over and the DNC seems to be sucking up all the air in the election. Well, maybe it’s just sucking up all of my attention. (Boy, that was just a hell of a response for Mayor Pete.) The excitement in the Arena is palpable and infectious. There was little to no bounce coming out of the RNC. I don’t think the same will be true of the DNC.

Trump and Vance are on the campaign trail, and Trump seems more active than last week, but I don’t know if it’s enough. More on that after the analysis.

Results:

A minor change in the methodology; with this update, I’ve separated out the congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska. Those are modeled separately and this will make the projections a bit more accurate. Since Electoral-Vote.com doesn’t have that data I’ll be taking it from Projects.FiveThirtyEight.com. Plus the first and third districts in Nebraska needed a smidgen of algebra because I only had separate polling on District 2. Aside from that, as always, an explanation of how the map was created and our scheme for finding our polling averages can be found here: Methodology.

You probably know how this goes by now. We entered the polling data into our model and ran 40,000 simulated elections. If the election were held today, Vice President Harris would have roughly a 62% chance of winning while Donald Trump would win about 37% of the time. The likelihood of an Electoral College tie is still approximately 1%.

This is a “polls only” approximation and so it’s sensitive to changes in polling numbers. That leads to some volatility. For example, let’s look at Virginia which moved from “Leaning Democratic” to “Barely Democratic.” Here’s what that looks like in their data.

From electoral-vote.com: a graph of presidential polling in Virginia.
From electoral-vote.com: a graph of presidential polling in Virginia.

That is not a dramatic change, we’re looking mostly at the result normal of statistical variation.

Given this data, Harris still leads and the odds of her winning the election are about 3 to 2.

Trends:

The averages have shifted back in Trump’s direction and it’s put the odds for Harris and Trump back to where they were two weeks ago. Here are the changes from last week.

StateChange
GeorgiaToss Up to Leaning Democratic
MichiganBarely Democratic to Toss Up
NevadaBarely Democratic to Barely Republican
North CarolinaToss Up to Barely Democratic
PennsylvaniaLeaning Democratic to Toss Up
VirginiaLeaning Democratic to Barely Democratic

As I mentioned above most of these look like what happens with results within the margin of error. The possible exception there is Georgia where the new poll looks a lot different from the previous one. My best guess is that this is merely a more accurate description of the state of the race than a rightward shift but it could be either. More polling will determine that. It turns out that one consequence of my choice of using a ten-day window for poll numbers is some volatility as we’re frequently replacing a single poll with a different single poll. I hope we get more state polls as election day draws closer; that will tamp down the variation.

The odds of a Harris winning sitting at 3 to 2 seems more reasonable than the 3 to 1 we found last week.

Last Words

I’m now writing on Thursday Morning. The end of Night 3 at the DNC was nearly flawless. Walz gave a powerful “pep talk” that received what might have been the best crowd response of the day. It was also steeped in Americana. A high school football coach who loves his family, helps his neighbors, and helped win a state championship surely has appeal to voters all across the political spectrum. And watching his family was heart-warming. Trying to reconcile that with a “soulless communist who will destroy America” just does not compute.

Neil Young’s “Keep on Rocking in the Free World” is a perfect song to end the evening.

As I mentioned, I haven’t seen much coverage of the Republican campaign. I’ve seen a tiny rally featuring Vance, part of a small, weird, appearance by Trump in Howell, Michigan, and an AI-generated image implying that Taylor Swift is endorsing Trump. In addition, a Trump staffer released a now-deleted video of Trump backed by Beyoncé’s song “Freedom,” Trump had claimed that he is better looking than Kamala Harris and that there’s no way Harris’s acceptance speech will get better ratings than his speech to the RNC. Trump’s interest in crowd sizes remains an ongoing theme. Maybe I’ve seen more than I thought.

Let’s take those one at a time.

  • The Vance rally just seems like more of the same.
  • In his appearance in Howell, Michigan Trump seemed lethargic. If any other candidate had made that speech Trump would have been all over them for being “low energy.” Also, “Kamala crime wave?” Seriously?
  • I’m pretty sure the Taylor Swift thing was a misstep.
  • I’m certain using Beyoncé’s “Freedom” was a misstep. There’s already a cease and desist order. A lawsuit will probably follow.
  • “I’m better looking than Kamala Harris” is just sad.
  • And bragging about the ratings of his acceptance speech is just dumb. There will be objective evidence tomorrow and my money here is on the new kid. If Trump’s right this is a non-story. If he’s wrong it’s an embarrassment. There’s no upside.
  • Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes is getting funny. The best example of that is probably Walz and Harris appearing remotely to the DNC after the roll call vote from the very same venue that hosted the RNC. Both venues were packed and there was no footage of anyone leaving early. If nothing else this was some world-class trolling.

Trump had a pretty effective line of attack against President Biden, but it’s now been a month since the president dropped out. The Trump Campaign still does not have a coherent strategy to run against Harris. Falsely calling her a communist or blaming her for a nonexistent crime wave might play to his base but it won’t play with independents and it won’t bring any new voters to his cause. We’ve seen it all before.

A Probabilistic Look at The Presidential Election: 14 August 2024

Harris’s Momentum Continues

Let’s GO!

The State of the Race

The campaign seems to have slowed down somewhat while the Democrats gear up for their convention. Vice President Harris and President Biden will appear together today (8/15) in Maryland while Governor Walz is on his own tour of the Northeast. JD Vance is in Pennsylvania today while yet another controversial quote has surfaced.

Donald Trump has been a bit more active than he had been. This week we’ve seen his interview with Elon Musk on X and a last-minute rally in North Carolina which was supposed to be focused on the economy. The economic content was sparse while Trump frequently veered off-topic and attacked his opponents.

Results:

An explanation of how the map was created and our scheme for finding our polling averages and can be found here: Methodology.

As usual, we entered the polling data into our model and ran 40,000 simulated elections. If the election were held today, it appears Vice President Harris would have about a 74% chance of winning while Donald Trump would win about 25% of the time. The likelyhood of an Electoral College tie is roughly 1%.

Remember that this is an estimate and it is only based on the current polling numbers. As we’ve seen these can change dramatically over three weeks; and we’re nearly three months from the election.

Given this data, Harris leads and the odds of her winning could be as high as 3 to 1.

Trends:

The race continues to move in Harris’s direction. This is evident if we look at the movements of the state polls between last week and this. There’s one exception to the trend;

Michigan changed from Strongly Democratic to Barely Democratic. This was expected; the polling average last week was based on a single poll that was a clear outlier. That poll, which had Harris up by ten fell out of the average was replaced by two more typical results.

The other shifts tell a consistent story.

  • Texas: Strongly Republican to Leans Republican
  • North Carolina: Barely Republican to Toss Up
  • Arizona: Barely Republican to Barely Democratic
  • Pennsylvania: Toss Up to Leans Democratic

These all show movement toward Harris. In addition, within the last week, Harris is now leading:

  • in national popular vote polls and polling averages,
  • in states with a total of more than 270 electoral votes,
  • on forecasting sites like 538 and The Cook Political Report, and
  • on betting sites like Polymarket.

The comparative attendance and enthusiasm at Democratic vs. Republican Rallies also speak in Harris’s favor.

The momentum remains on Harris’s side.

Last Words

The Harris campaign has consolidated its lead over the last week. It’s no surprise; just over three weeks ago most voters believed that the presumptive nominees of both major political parties were too old to effectively serve as president. The voters wanted a new candidate in the race. With President Biden’s decision to withdraw his candidacy, they got one. The political landscape shifted and the Democrats are capitalizing on that by running an effective, aggressive, and positive campaign. Likely, they will further strengthen their position throughout their convention. But conventional wisdom would then suggest that things will shift back toward being competitive as the campaign begins in earnest and Harris and Walz have to add some specifics to their policy proposals.

But maybe not.

Donald Trump spent months attacking President Biden and implying he should withdraw from the race. He should have been prepared when it happened. But he wasn’t.

At the RNC, with the possibility of Biden’s withdrawal growing more likely, Trump could have picked a running mate that could bring more voters into their base. But he didn’t.

In the aftermath of an assassination attempt, Trump could have changed tactics, eschewed political violence, and become a candidate aiming to unite the nation. But he couldn’t.

Trump could have gone on the campaign trail to court voters and make the case for the Republican ticket every day since 21 July. But he wouldn’t.

Instead, he picked a running mate who appealed to the extreme edge of his base and who is alienating voters, childless cat ladies, and post-menopausal females.

And he didn’t turn away from political violence. When he mentioned Paul Pelosi at the RNC he pantomimed a hammer. “Bam, bam, bam!”

And there’s nothing new in his rhetoric. He hasn’t even bothered to change his talking points. the “Worst President in American History,” became the “Worst Vice President” and “Lyin’ Joe Biden” has turned into “Lyin’ Kamala Harris.” Simplistic.

And the lies are all the same no matter what Trump wants to tell us. The 2020 Election wasn’t stolen. Trump didn’t have the biggest inaugural crowd ever. He wasn’t the best President for African Americans since Abraham Lincoln. We are actually better off than we were four years ago. The list goes on.

This election could still go either way, but it’s getting close to the point where it will take something as dramatic as a major party candidate withdrawing from the election for that to happen. But it’s getting late to try that; ballots are closing.

If Donald Trump doesn’t get back on the campaign trail and give the country something more than the same old grievances, the same old falsehoods, and the same old show this election could be a rout. We’re tired of it.

Adventures in Punditry

Exploring the Question: Has American Politics Gone Insane? | Political Pundit Night

It’s funny how your sense of time changes as you get older. In my head, this whole “going on the internet and saying stuff” thing is pretty new, but I’ve actually been at it for a while. My first gig on Coleman and Company was, unbelievably, about five years ago, and Stars End: A Foundation Podcast is over three years old!

The Coleman and Company Header

There’s a bit of a gap. That first gig on Coleman and Company was in September 2019, just as the 2020 Election was heating up. I was unable to Join Dr. Coleman and his Company again until March 2023, about three-and-a-half years later. When Steve asked me to pitch in again and told me the topic was “Has American Politics Gone Insane,” I couldn’t say “no.” The new status quo is a very different format than my first appearance, with many more voices; looking at the Zoom screen I felt like I was on Hollywood Squares. It was also two hours long instead of thirty minutes. This allowed us to explore the question with more depth.

You can watch the first hour right here.

The first hour of Dr. Coleman’s Political Pundit Night: Has American Politics Gone Insane. 23 March 2023

My favorite bit might have been in Steve Sprague’s opening statement (and I’m paraphrasing here) where he opined that perhaps American politics aren’t clinically insane, but it sure seems like a bunch of people have rabies and a bunch of other people are in a cult. My short answer to the question was “Of course it has,” but ultimately I am more interested in the cure than the mere diagnosis.

If you’re interested in finding my bits, I’m at about 22 minutes and 49 minutes in hour one.

Here’s the second hour.

The second hour of Dr. Coleman’s Political Pundit Night: Has American Politics Gone Insane. 23 March 2023

In hour two, about six minutes in, Steve asks “Has journalism let the American people down?” An interesting discussion ensues. This is all the more relevant as we saw in the recent Biden/Trump debate that some national news organizations are not fact-checking the candidates in real-time. The conversation winds through the weaponizing of journalism, court cases against major cable news outlets, and the War on Woke. It continued into the balkanization of the American public into political camps. We wrap the hour up on some fundamental structural issues like how we vote and gerrymandering. I pop up at 20:30, 25:15, 44:20, 55:05, 55:55, and 57:55 but all of those need some context.

This was a great group of people to have this conversation with! I’m honored to have been included and even happier to have become a regular contributor. The next Political Pundit Night is at 7:00 pm EDT on 15 August 2024 and can be found on <MyTwinTiers.com/coleman-and-company>.

The images and videos above are the property of WETM-TV and <MyTwinTiers.com>.