Indecision 2024

[IvanV]

The bouncing around has really been in Nevada and Georgia.

Georgia is one of the few states, perhaps the only state, where anti-Trump Republicans remain in control and in power. This week's Economist has an article on the Trump's loud disagreements with Brian Kemp, the popular, Republican but anti-Trumpite, Governor of Georgia. Trump continues regularly to mouth Kemp off for his lack of loyalty, meaning unwillingness to bend/break the law on Trump's behalf. Trump put up a candidate against him in the last election, but Kemp won by a large margin. Although Trump is loud on the matter, Kemp isn't. Kemp quietly encourages people to vote Republican, but in doing so he does not mention or imply Trump. It is known that Kemp himself did not vote in the last presidential election, and his wife made a write-in vote for her husband. It is suggested that these factors are depressing the Trump vote in Georgia.

[lpm]

Trump grovelled to Kemp last night. Praised him, basically apologised to him.

Nevada had little polling in 2020. Not surprised there's a lot of noise in its polling as they don't have a history to start from.

[dyqik]

For the swing states, Wisconsin is now outside the margin or error, but all others are within. Perhaps the more important point is that there has been a 3 to 4% swing to Harris in Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona in the past 3 weeks. The swing has been between 1 and 2% in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and less than 1% in Georgia and Nevada. The movements in the polls have been reasonably consistent. The bouncing around has really been in Nevada and Georgia.

As a reminder, over the past few weeks, Trump has been getting the RNC convention bounce, while Harris has been getting a "not Biden" bounce. Over the next week or so we should see the DNC convention bounce show up, Trump's convention bounce fade, and then campaigns start up properly.

[dyqik]

There's also going to be whatever effect there is of Kennedy dropping out and probably endorsing Trump. This may not amount to much.

[Woodchopper]

An eloquent and concise expression of how a lot of people are feeling: https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1826761951466455117

More please. It's a street fight. We need to be metaphorically gouging eyes.

[bolo]

The 538 forecast is back, fwiw:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... -forecast/

[monkey]

The brain worm that controls Robert F Kennedy has decided to suspend its campaign and endorse Trump.

clicky

It's taking him off the ballot in swing states, but keeping him on in boring ones.

[dyqik]

The brain worm that controls Robert F Kennedy has decided to suspend its campaign and endorse Trump.

clicky

It's taking him off the ballot in swing states, but keeping him on in boring ones.

It's because he really cares about vaccines and the forever chemicals being released that he's backing the guy who claims credit for operation warp speed, and who wants to abolish the EPA.

[jimbob]

An eloquent and concise expression of how a lot of people are feeling: https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1826761951466455117

More please. It's a street fight. We need to be metaphorically gouging eyes.

Yup

[IvanV]

The brain worm that controls Robert F Kennedy has decided to suspend its campaign and endorse Trump.

clicky

It's taking him off the ballot in swing states, but keeping him on in boring ones.

It's because he really cares about vaccines and the forever chemicals being released that he's backing the guy who claims credit for operation warp speed, and who wants to abolish the EPA.

How much of Kennedy's support derived from people who just vote for Kennedys, overlooking that he is right wing, batshit, etc?

[Woodchopper]

The brain worm that controls Robert F Kennedy has decided to suspend its campaign and endorse Trump.

clicky

It's taking him off the ballot in swing states, but keeping him on in boring ones.

It's because he really cares about vaccines and the forever chemicals being released that he's backing the guy who claims credit for operation warp speed, and who wants to abolish the EPA.

How much of Kennedy's support derived from people who just vote for Kennedys, overlooking that he is right wing, batshit, etc?

I think he got support from people who felt that they should vote, but didn't like Trump or Biden. Harris seems to have picked up a lot of them after she took over.

[Woodchopper]

A mathematician tells us to stop caring about minor changes in Nate Silver's election model. I guess the same goes for the others as well.
https://substack.com/@bristoliver/p-148436901 (free access)

tl;dr the race is too close to call, and likely will remain so. Small percentage changes either way won't stop it being too close to call. We will never have the opportunity to properly test the prediction models because he election is a one off (subsequent elections will require updates to the model). Its likely that the election will be decided by some thousands of voters in Pennsylvania so there's no point obsessing about vote shares elsewhere.

He may well be correct, but what else are we going to do for the next couple of months?

[Stranger Mouse]

A mathematician tells us to stop caring about minor changes in Nate Silver's election model. I guess the same goes for the others as well.
https://substack.com/@bristoliver/p-148436901 (free access)

tl;dr the race is too close to call, and likely will remain so. Small percentage changes either way won't stop it being too close to call. We will never have the opportunity to properly test the prediction models because he election is a one off (subsequent elections will require updates to the model). Its likely that the election will be decided by some thousands of voters in Pennsylvania so there's no point obsessing about vote shares elsewhere.

He may well be correct, but what else are we going to do for the next couple of months?

Panic.

[IvanV]

A mathematician tells us to stop caring about minor changes in Nate Silver's election model. I guess the same goes for the others as well.
https://substack.com/@bristoliver/p-148436901 (free access)

A lot of people - of statistical unsophisication - thought that Nate Silver called the Trump/Clinton election wrong, because his model said Trump had a 29% chance of winning (or some number near that).

When something happens only once, and we give a prior probability for it, changing it a few percent doesn't really matter unless that change is turning a 90% into a 99%. Most intermediate percentages really say no more than it might or might not happen. Useful if you have a portfolio of such events affecting you and can use the probability estimates to hedge. But when its just one, it doesn't help very much. Even at 10% and 90%. And we will have no idea if we were right, unless there are some details in the how-it-happened that tell on that.

[dyqik]

Today is the Massachusetts primary.

On my ballot options, there's one choice on the Democratic ballot, for Governor's Council (roughly state cabinet), with everyone else unopposed. There's one choice on the Republican Ballot, among three candidates for Senate to challenge Elizabeth Warren, and no other candidates running in any races. The Libertarian ballot is entirely empty of candidates.

Anyone want to be write in on the Libertarian ticket? Running may involve public nudity.

[dyqik]

RFK Jr has now failed to quit the presidential race in Michigan, and is told that he can't withdraw his name from the ballot.

[Martin_B]

RFK Jr has now failed to quit the presidential race in Michigan, and is told that he can't withdraw his name from the ballot.

There was a story (not sure how realistic) that Trump was considering dropping Vance as his VP pick and instead choosing RFK Jr. I thought that you couldn't change the names on the ballot once they were confirmed (although when do rules ever stop Trump doing what he wants or if he can't then claiming that he's being unfairly stopped when no-one else is).

But if RFK Jr is still on the ballot as the libertarian (or independent) candidate, then can he become a VP for someone else? I know that some of the early elections had multiple choices, but I assumed the rules had been amended to stop this.

Mind you, despite Vance's unpopularity as VP, RFK Jr might be one of the few people who would be considered worse as a VP candidate; at least Vance is a true Tea Partyist (even if a deeply unlikeable person) whilst RFK Jr is just a mixed bag of left, centrist and right-wing ideas held together by an almost total lack of belief in science or logic.

[Woodchopper]

More on Trump’s apparent cognitive decline: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opi ... rcna168979

And in other news, apparently the Trump campaign has given up on New Hampshire.
https://newrepublic.com/post/185533/don ... -hampshire

[dyqik]

RFK Jr has now failed to quit the presidential race in Michigan, and is told that he can't withdraw his name from the ballot.

There was a story (not sure how realistic) that Trump was considering dropping Vance as his VP pick and instead choosing RFK Jr. I thought that you couldn't change the names on the ballot once they were confirmed (although when do rules ever stop Trump doing what he wants or if he can't then claiming that he's being unfairly stopped when no-one else is).

But if RFK Jr is still on the ballot as the libertarian (or independent) candidate, then can he become a VP for someone else? I know that some of the early elections had multiple choices, but I assumed the rules had been amended to stop this.

Mind you, despite Vance's unpopularity as VP, RFK Jr might be one of the few people who would be considered worse as a VP candidate; at least Vance is a true Tea Partyist (even if a deeply unlikeable person) whilst RFK Jr is just a mixed bag of left, centrist and right-wing ideas held together by an almost total lack of belief in science or logic.

I believe that RFK Jr is the Natural Law Party candidate in Michigan.

The electoral college delegates are chosen by the Presidential campaign, and so would presumably do what the campaign said. However, they are bound by law to vote for the winning ticket in about 1/3 of states.

But the wording of those laws may vary between states, as respect to the vice president. I doubt the laws considered a dispute within the winning ticket about who should be vice president...

[Chris Preston]

Trump replacing Vance with Kennedy is almost certain to result in more Republicans not voting in November. Kennedy espouses virtually none of the ideals dear to the heart of most Republicans. Perhaps the only one is wanting to get rid of the CDC.

The jokes made by the Junior Ps are all about how the brain worm has turned Kennedy into a zombie. While, I would not be so fast to blame the brain worm, the rest is not a bad characterization. Kennedy has gone from a conspiracy theorist with few convictions to a sycophant with none. His withdrawal from the race does not seem to have aided Trump much, which suggests most of the support he had was because of his name and not what he stood for.

[dyqik]

Dick Cheney has just endorsed Harris over Trump.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to help or hurt her.

[Grumble]

Dick Cheney has just endorsed Harris over Trump.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to help or hurt her.

Calling Cheney a RINO is a bit of a stretch I feel.

[jimbob]

Dick Cheney has just endorsed Harris over Trump.

I'm not sure if that's supposed to help or hurt her.

It shows that Trump's GOP isn't conservative. I think Harris's team can point out that it's because Trump is so extreme that even Dick Cheney's closer to the Democratic candidate than to the Republican one.

It might push some on the left to not vote or chose Putin's useful idiot, Stein, but might convince some undecided or registered Republicans

[bjn]

It might push some on the left to not vote or chose Putin's useful idiot, Stein, but might convince some undecided or registered Republicans

If Stein is Putin's useful idiot, what does that make Trump?

[jimbob]

It might push some on the left to not vote or chose Putin's useful idiot, Stein, but might convince some undecided or registered Republicans

If Stein is Putin's useful idiot, what does that make Trump?

Another useful idiot. Potentially more useful. And idiotic.