Just wondering what information we have before the official results get called.

Can we get precint level counts, or county level? Are they available online somewhere?

For example, if on election data the news channels say NC is Trump +1 with 55% counting, what exactly is that 55%? Does it mean 55% of precincts or counteis have fully reported their results? If so, where are these result first available?

I've been waiting for this one as it is a 57k panel and breaks down every state with various degrees of MOE. Harris leading in 5 of 7 swings with a smaller than expected lead in NE-2.

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50854-kamala-harris-leads-donald-trump-narrowly-in-yougovs-final-mrp-2024-presidential-estimates

One thing that I have wondered is what would be the outcome of the current NYT/Sienna and other high-quality pollsters if they were still weighting by 2020 methodology. Would it show a race similar to last time or somewhere in between? I understand the reasoning for evolving the methodology to be more accurate. And I hope they've succeeded this time.

But at the same time, the lack of ability to compare one general election to another makes me question the verisimilitude of the results overall of the whole industry.

It's probably double the work, but if Pollsters would submit side by side of their old methodology results with their new methodology results for at least the following election from a change, it would definitely improve my opinion of the industry as a whole.

Wondering if others feel the same way.

A really interesting article in the Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/47c0283b-cfe6-4383-bbbb-09a617a69a76

Relevant excerpt:

There are five days to go, but even the best coverage of the US presidential election cannot give us any sense of which way things will go. If you believe the polls, the race is a dead heat. If you believe the so-called prediction models, Donald Trump is slightly more likely to win than Kamala Harris.

I believe neither. I decided to treat polls as uninformative after the 2022 midterm elections, where many people whose judgment on US politics I trust more than mine took the polls to show a “red wave”. It didn’t happen, and I have seen no totally convincing explanation as to why that would make me trust US political polls again. (My own attempt to make sense of this concluded that not just abortion, but the economy counted in Democrats’ favour — on which more below.) The 2022 failure came on top of the poll misses in 2016 and 2020.

Not that I’m less of a poll junkie than the next journalist. Polls are captivating in the way that another hit of your favourite drug is, as my colleague Oliver Roeder suggests in his absolute must-read long read on polling in last weekend’s FT. And, of course, pollsters have been thinking hard about how they may get closer to the actual result this time. But none of this makes me think it’s wise to think polls impart more information beyond the simple fact that we don’t know.

So-called prediction models are worse, because they claim to impart greater knowledge than polls, but they actually do the opposite. These models (such as 538’s and The Economist’s) will tell you there is a certain probability that, say, Trump will win (52 per cent and 50 per cent at this time of writing, respectively). But a probability distribution is not a prediction — not in the case of a one-time event. Even a more lopsided probability does not “predict” either outcome; it says both are possible and at most that the modeller is more confident that one rather than the other will happen. A nearly 50-50 “prediction” says nothing at all — or nothing more than “we don’t know anything” about who will win in language pretending to say the opposite. (Don’t even get me started on betting markets . . . )

For something to count as a prediction, it has to be falsifiable, and probability distributions can’t be falsified by a single event. So in the case of the 2024 presidential election, look for those willing to give reasons why they make the falsifiable but definitive prediction that Trump wins, or Harris wins (or, conceivably but implausibly, neither).

Which accounts the best of the best and most accurate to follow on X (Twitter) for election coverage? Thanks in advance!

Anything not data or poll related (news articles, etc) will go here. Every juicy twist and turn you want to discuss but don't have polling, data, or analytics to go along with it yet? You can talk about it here.

Yesterday's Election Discussion Megathread

Keep things civil

Keep submissions to quality journalism - random blogs, Facebook groups, or obvious propaganda from specious sources will not be allowed

America needs to know.

Damn “guy”. Not “guys”

66,361,248 mail-in and early in-person votes cast nationally 🔴40% | 🔵41% | ⚪19%

*Modeled data

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/early-vote

2020 Data

Source : https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html

I also added NH, Virginia, and New Mexico to the list but don't have the change as I didn't have data previously.

Change from 2020 vs 2024

Sadly because Wisconsin, Michigan & Georgia don't report and I can only get model data in 2024 I can't get good info there.

There has been lots of talk about Atlas Intel's polls showing around 25% of Black votes going to Trump. So I decided to look into their historical performance in the state.

Atlas Intel has polled Georgia in 3 separate elections: 2024 Presidential Election, 2022 Senate Election, and the 2020 Presidential Election. In both their 2020 and 2022 polls they had a margin of error in the democratic vote percentage of 3.4% and 4.04% percent respectively. It's interesting to note that in the 2020 election cycle Atlas was the most accurate pollster, however, the 3.4% error was their largest of the cycle. 

The potential cause of this seems to lie within their predictions of the Black vote in which they consistently over estimate the % of Black voters voting for republican by 7-11%:

2020 Presidential Georgia

|| || ||Black Voters|Overall| |Actual|88D 11R|49.47D 49.24R| |Atlas|77D 18R|46D 48R|

*Black voters accounted for 29% of the overall vote 

2022 Senate Georgia

|| || ||Black Voters|Overall | |Actual|90D 8R|49.44D 48.39R (Runoff)| |Atlas|74.4D 19.2R|45.4D 46.4R|

  *Black voters accounted for 28% of the overall vote

2024 Presidential Georgia

|| || ||Black Voters|Overall| |Atlas (10/25-10/29)|71.8D 26.6R|47.1D 50.2R| |Atlas (10/30-10/31)|72.7D 25.2R|47.2D 48.8R|

For the 2024 election cycle most pollsters have the % share of the black vote going to Republicans between 10% and 16%. Does this trend suggest that Atlas has a sampling bias for Black voters in Georgia. Obviously this has significant effect on 538's and NS's models which weight Atlas's polls the heaviest.

Thoughts?

Hello,

I have noticed that the Washington Post excludes Emerson from its polling aggregate (additionally Simon Rosenberg lists them as right-leaning). I was always under the impression that they were non-partisan. However their main sponsors have been RCP and The Hill/Nextstar (which have a right editorial perspective). Is this enough to no longer consider them non-partisan?

Odds are starting to thin as Kalshi now has odds at 53/47, and Polymarkets now has odds at 58/42.

Is it possible that next weeks odds will be........a coin toss??!!??

Trump has

53 times out of 100 to win PA

61 times out of 100 to win NC

64 times out of 100 to win GA

66 out of 100 to win AZ

52 out of 100 to win NV

Harris has a 59 out of 100 percent chance to win MI and a 56 out of 44 to win WI

If this is accurate and stays true (Though I doubt it) the final result will be

Harris 251

Trump 287

Biden won the Electoral College in 2020 by ~40,000 votes. Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 by ~70,000 votes. The polls cannot meaningfully sample a large enough number of people in the swing states to get a sense of the margin. 10,000 votes out of 5 million total in Georgia is nothing. That could swing literally based on the weather.

The polls can tell us it will be close. They can tell us the electorate has ossified. They'll never be powerful enough to accurately estimate such a small margin.

I'm sure many of you are here refreshing this sub like me because you want certainty. You want to know who will win and you want to move on with your life. I say this to you as much as I say it to myself: there's no way to know.

I'll see you Wednesday.

I'm looking at some of the house race forecasts and seeing some interesting disagreements among models. (So far looking at Split Ticket, 538, 24cast, Cook, and Sabato, more suggestions of good models very welcome.) I'm curious how the models performed 2 or 4 years ago but can't find any good resources (probably because it's not easy to Google). Any thoughts on models or resources on how they performed?

As of today, here are the rounded polling aggregates for the Rust Belt, according to 538:

MI: Harris + 1

WI: Harris + 1

PA: EVEN

However, there is solid data that indicates these averages are underestimating Harris in all 3 states. Let me explain below:

1. Weighting by recalled vote. For the first time ever, the polling industry decided to weight their samples by 2020 recalled vote. As many of you know, there are many issues with this, and several articles have been posted already that describe these issues. Essentially the pollsters decided to do this to try and eliminate the shy + hostile Trump voter effect. The fact that most pollsters now weight by this almost completely eliminates the possibility of this happening again. However, it also almost guarantees that these samples will be muddied by people who lie or don't remember who they voted for. The fact that more people who lie say they voted for the winner, the fact that Trump wins more low information voters, and the fact that Trump voters are more inclined to lie to the "biased Democrat media", suggests this factor is very likely to underestimate Harris. Estimated Harris poll underestimate due to this factor: Harris - 1%.
2. 2020 Pandemic. Could part of the reason why pollsters oversampled Biden voters in 2020 could be due to, I don't know the fact that there was a massive pandemic that causes extreme polarization? All three Rust Belt states had Democratic governors, thus stricter COVID restrictions than the Sunbelt (where polls were pretty accurate) and the rest of the country in 2020. We don't know for sure if that caused more of an imbalance between Democrats and Republicans staying home than other states, but we do know polls missed in these states by a lot. A hypothesis that has been floated is that 2020 was unique in polling in that Democrats were staying at home whereas Republicans were not, causing Democrats to be more readily available to answer polls. Estimated Harris poll underestimate due to this factor: Harris - 0.5%. It also likely accelerated... wait for it....
3. Migration patterns. Put yourself in the shoes of a MAGA voter in the rust belt between 2020-2022. In November 2020, you think Democrats in your state are corrupt and cheated to give Biden the win. You just dealt with strict COVID restrictions from Democratic governors. You're fed up with your politicians and the cold and figure now is the perfect time to retire to MAGA paradise, aka Florida. And for those who didn't move between 2020-2022, the 2022 gubernatorial election sealed the deal for their decision. The US census estimates that between 2020 and 2024, about 1% of each of these states' populations moved to Florida. Now try to guess the political leanings of that cohort. The recent NYT article also showed solid evidence that the voters moving in to the state leaned heavily Democratic. Estimated Harris poll underestimate due to this factor: Harris - 0.5%.

If these assumption are correct, I would expect results to look something like:

MI: Harris +3-5

WI: Harris: +2-5

PA: Harris +2-3 (more inelastic than the others)

tldr; My prediction is that Harris will win the rust belt pretty easily, NC and GA will be super close, AZ tilts Trump and I have no clue about NV. I'm also pretty confident that polls are severely underestimating Trump in FL. I have already bet a lot of money on these assumptions.

What do you think?

MRP stands for Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification. It is a statistical modelling technique where you combine a very large poll with other sources of information such as census data in order to estimate, for example, the local levels of support for parties in every constituency.

This is now commonplace in the UK with pollsters like YouGov and it has been pretty successful. However, it looks like the US pollsters are still using relatively old school methods. Is there a reason for this?

YouGov’s final MRP (Multilevel Regression and Poststratification) model currently projects Kamala Harris with 240 electoral votes and Donald Trump with 218, leaving 80 electoral votes as tossups. Here's a breakdown:

Lean Harris States:

Michigan: Harris 50%, Trump 46%

Tossup States (Tilt Harris):

Nevada: Harris 50%, Trump 48%

Wisconsin: Harris 49%, Trump 47%

Pennsylvania: Harris 49%, Trump 48%

North Carolina: Harris 49%, Trump 48%

Tossup States (Tilt Trump):

Georgia: Harris 48%, Trump 49%

Arizona: Harris 48%, Trump 50%

Methodology:

This model is built on one of the largest sample sizes in polling for the election, including nearly 100,000 initial interviews and additional follow-ups with over 20,000 voters in late September and early October. Final adjustments incorporate fresh data from 57,784 voters between October 25-31, ensuring a timely view of voter sentiment.

Link

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Times_SAY24_20241101.pdf

Arizona

Trump (+1) 50% - 49%
Gallego (+5) 49% - 44%
880 LV

Georgia

Trump (+2) 50% - 48%
984 LV

North Carolina

Trump (+1) 50% - 49%
987 LV

Nevada

Harris (+1) 50% - 49%
Rosen (+7) 51% - 44%
790 LV

Pennsylvania

Harris (+3) 51% - 48%
Casey (+7) 50% - 43%
982 LV

Michigan

Harris (+3) 50% - 47%
Slotkin (+10) 51% - 41%
985 LV

Wisconsin

Harris (+4) 51% - 47%
Baldwin (+5) 50% - 45%
889 LV

276 - 262 EC Win for Harris. Clean sweep in the senate.

Hi all!

Realistically, have we had any data to suggest that Liz Cheney or Kinzinger have had any actual effect on the voter base shift?

The CDC says 460,513 people died from the virus in 2021, when the vaccine started to be introduced. If those numbers are more concentrated in red areas because of vaccine skepticism, then thats basically the margins of victory no? Just a difference of 10k less Republican seniors in a state would be devastating to the Trump campaign.

Why three? Because it's an easy number. I'm guessing, it reports early, and has the right demographics? I don't know, you're the Number Nerds, you tell me.