Election outcome prediction?
A Dutch friend asked me, during a weekend WhatsApp, to predict the election outcome. (He also asked “Why couldn’t the Democrats have run Tutankhamun or Elvis? They’re at least as alive as Joe Biden.”) I responded that it was impossible for anyone to predict anything because (1) people who support Trump would be afraid to give an honest answer to a poll-taker, (2) the U.S. “news” is now mostly propaganda designed by the editors to achieve their desired electoral results. “It’s impossible to get unbiased information about what people outside of one’s immediate neighborhood actually think.”
But maybe for fun we can have a bragging rights pool on this blog!
I will go first. I’m a big fan of the “tomorrow will be the same as today” method of weather forecasting and also that people vote their personal interest. So a Ph.D. who works in a government-funded university, a physician who benefits when the government directs more money to health care, and a lawyer who gets paid to help companies navigate the regulatory landscape will all vote for the Democrats and the promised bigger government. A working-class native-born American who is being financially injured by low-skill immigration (Harvard study) will vote for the Republicans. A small business owner who can’t afford the lawyers necessary to thrive in a heavily regulated high-tax environment will similarly vote Republican.
The one factor that I think could drive change is that Americans have been convinced that the federal government can control whether or not people become infected with COVID-19. The raging plagues all over Europe, in countries with governments previously considered excellent (if costly), can’t compete against American media constantly reminding us that Trump is personally responsible for every COVID-19 death on U.S. soil. Also, a lot of Americans are depressed after being locked down for nearly 8 months. Depressed people are willing to try almost anything to escape depression (even the antidepressant drugs that don’t work). Finally, the coronapanic and associated governor-ordered shutdowns have left more Americans than ever dependent on the government. People on welfare tend to vote for Democrats. The “Trump has no empathy” attack has been common in 2020 and it makes sense only if voters expect that the government will be their primary source of housing, health care, food, etc.
I’m going to consider WalletHub’s ranking of states by coronavirus restrictions as a guide to where Americans are eager to surrender what had been considered their freedoms and have the government take care of them. Two Trump states from 2016 that have meekly submitted to lockdowns and school closures are Texas and Pennsylvania. Florida, on the other hand, ranks high in freedom and the governor ordered teachers to teach. So I am going to predict a Trump victory in Florida and a loss in Texas. (Maybe this will be wrong because Bloomberg’s $millions for felons changed the electorate in Florida so much?) The locked-down-and-rioting population in Pennsylvania accepted Rachel Levine (“an American pediatrician currently serving as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health. … She is one of only a handful of openly transgender government officials in the United States”) as their guide so they’ll accept Joe Biden.
Let’s look at the results from 2016: 304/227 in electoral votes. We subtract 58 for the cower-in-place folks in Texas and Pennsylvania and now Donald Trump goes home to tax-free Florida at 246 while President Harris comes in with 285.
Summarized by our unkind friends in lockdown across the pond:
Backup prediction in case the above is spectacularly wrong: Trump won’t win any state that he didn’t win in 2016. Joe Biden’s promise to lock everyone down will be too compelling for a nation that was risk-averse and is now fleeing to what it perceives as security.
Potential second theory: social media companies will deliver this election to the Democrats by driving high turnout (thought to help Democrats and hurt incumbents). I opened Facebook yesterday and almost the entire page was obscured by the company’s in-house ad urging me to vote:
Related:
- Election 2008 Prediction: Obama wins by 5 percent; we will all be depressed
- “Boston Businesses Board Up in Preparation for Potential Protests on Election Night” (NBC): unhappy Trump supporters will drive in from Indiana to riot in Boston if Biden-Harris win?
- “Shops in downtown San Francisco boarding up ahead of election” (SF Gate): angry Republicans will come from Idaho to riot?
- “NYC businesses board up stores in preparation for unrest on election night” (ABC)
- Citizens for a Planned Economy, my 2012 take on what Americans from both parties say that they want