When it comes to predicting the future results of elections, I have an 15/21 record on this blog. That kind of margin indicates that I am really good at picking foregone conclusions; for once you remove those, the margin falls to 6/12 and that means that as a political pundit I am really no better than a coin toss. If media companies would to pay me for my obviously brilliant analysis, then by all means please do so but you'd get about as much sense if you put lipstick on a pig and set it loose in the newsroom.
What makes this problem an especially difficult one is that a presidential election in the United States is not merely on the basis of the popular vote but rather it is the result of 51 contests which then apportion instructions to an arcane body called the Electoral College¹; which then votes on behalf of the people and even then isn't necessarily bound by those instructions. The Electoral College awards as many 'electors' per state as there are members of the House of Representatives and Senate which that state send to Washington plus 3 Electoral College votes from the District of Columbia which is what it would have gotten in it was a state.
Those 51 separate contests mean that overall popular opinion isn't the determinant of actual results and by design, the opinions of smaller states have an outsized view. Say what you like about the political ramifications of that but I think that in principle, it is a good idea despite the system itself being immensely stupid. The architect of the United States Federal Government, Alexander Hamilton, probably arrived at this as a compromise after the smaller states delegates in the original thirteen colonies complained loudly about being completely ignored. The Electoral College deliberately overeggs the pudding in favour of smaller states for that reason.
If there actually was a concerted effort by the bigger states, then every election could be decided by decree by the twelve biggest, as they together control just over half of the Electoral College votes. Of course getting California, Texas, Florida and New York to agree on what ingredients should go on a Tuna Melt Sandwich would be nigh on impossible and even if you could get some kind of agreement, then the two pieces of bread would most likely be different and Texas would still want barbeque chicken and bacon on it; thus ruining the point of a Tuna Melt Sandwich. If these states can't agree on a sandwich, then the actual balance of power lies elsewhere.
In 2016, Trump won the Presidential Election by a minority of the popular vote which by virtue of geography translated into a majority of Electoral College Votes. Herein lies the crux of the problem.
The United States of America, in terms of its politics, is only true in one aspect of its name. It is not and has not ever been United. It is not and has never been a uniform America. The key word here is the States which determine everything and in that aspect, America could be as many as 12 countries and certainly no fewer than 6: New England, New York, The South, The Mid-West, The West, California. Presidential Elections are turned on the basis of those six countries at bare minimum.
Countries like New Zealand, Australia, and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, are reasonably predictable when you use the political device known as a Uniform Swing Calculator. Broadly speaking, those countries have a relatively uniform electorate and once you work out what the national swing is, you have a pretty good idea of how far the county falls in one direction or the other and you can pick out the number of seats that are going to change hands with a fair degree of accuracy. The United States of America on the other hand, has at least six sets of swings going on and they do not all point in the same direction.
This means that if one is going to play the prediction game with anything approaching part way sensible as a bare minimum condition, then one may as well plug 51 sets of swings into 51 swing calculators and then hope that it spits out a result.
I shan't bore you with the details of the spreadsheet which I used but suffice to say, it looks like the results of putting lipstick on our imaginary pig and set it loose in the newsroom. I should point out here that the one insane anomaly is everyone's favourite superhero, Florida Man². Florida is like God's Waiting Room of America. Florida is where old people go to retire and because old people come from all over the country to retire, Florida tends to blink red and blue like a malfunctioning police car. I don't know if Florida is a bellwether state because it controls 29 Electoral College votes but it has the power to be the hinge on which Presidential Elections turn.
This time around, the two blinking lights are Virginia and Florida. Together they are worth 42 Electoral College Votes and that is easily enough to turn the election red or blue. At the moment I have Biden/Anyone beating Trump/Pence 276-262 and that margin is simply too small to make any meaningful prediction.
Four years and six months ago, Donald Trump said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” We now know that that is absolutely true and that the percentage of the vote that that equates to is 38%. Likewise, a generic Democratic candidate could probably have said exactly the same thing and that percentage of the vote that that equates to is 41%. The 21% left over isn't uniformly spread; which is why looking at a uniform swing is useless. The actual margin of competitive votes is less than 100,000 people; spread over about four states.
I'm going to predict a Biden victory but even then, I think that my reliability at picking a winner i July is really no better than a coin toss.
¹which has been copied by exactly zero other countries.
²Google "Florida Man" and especially the "news" section and you'll see that Florida Man is the worst superhero ever.
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