What to Expect [Dave_in_Fla]

Disclaimer: The following analysis accounts for cheating that occurred in 2020. But, I can't predict Maduro style cheating, where the results are simply ignored.

Trump wins the popular vote by 1%
Trump wins 312 Electoral Votes

There are several factors that go into this, but at the end of the day the 312 EV win is still the most likely result, even if there are shifts in demographics or Harris were to win the popular vote by 1 or 2%.

When looking at the electoral map, and considering the swings states, there are three "groupings" to keep in mind.

1) Arizona and Nevada have similar Hispanic demographics, but Nevada is considerably more working class. Nevada is unlikely to vote for Trump at a lower rate in this key demographic that is trending hard toward Trump.
2) Georgia and North Carolina vote similarly, with North Carolina polling to the left of Georgia but voting to the right. If Trump wins Georgia, he will also win North Carolina.
3) Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have voted together in every election since 1960, except in 1988 when Wisconsin voted for Dukakis. There are strong demographic similarities between the three states that make it unlikely they will vote in different directions in a given election.

With Trump's strong polling in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, it is highly likely that he will win all of the swing states.

I could spend a lot of time explaining why, but the overall reason is that Trump is over performing 2016 and 2020 in every demographic group. The only group that Harris holds from Biden 2020 is the highly educated white voter.

This means that the only scenario where Harris can win is if Trump voters don't show up at the polls, and it is a very low turnout election. In this scenario, Harris would have a very narrow path of winning with 270 EVs by holding NE-2, and the three blue wall states.

There is another scenario shown by the map below that is about equally likely to a Harris win, where Trump exceeds current indicated performance and wins unexpected states. If that happens, then the first state to fall is Maine-state, followed by Virginia. Depending on how specific demographics perform (e.g. Hispanics in NM or Norwegians in MN) there is roughly an equal chance New Mexico, Minnesota, and New Hampshire could vote for Trump. This puts his ceiling at 347 EVs.

This analysis is based on the 2020 voting results and assumes that Biden legitimately received 81M votes. Trends in registrations, absentee ballot requests, ballot returns, and early voting are not favoring Harris. There are ~3 million first time Democrat voters from 2020 that are missing. They did not request and return an absentee ballot. Harris's only hope is that they really do exist, and they are going to vote on election day. And even if they did, she is still likely to lose.

posted by Open Blogger at 11:00 AM

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