PREDICTIONS: US Elections 2020
RSS
Search Text�Case Sensitive �Exact Words �Include Comments
List of Bookmarks
Make your predictions here.
I want to do this in a standard way, so for your contribution to be counted:
- Navigate over to https://www.270towin.com/
- Color in the map (only red/blue, no toss ups or gradients)
- Click “share map”
- Click on the image URL and paste the link to the .png file
- Paste the png file into the comments
Like so, here is my “troll map” as an example (note: this is not my final prediction – I will post it in the comments near the deadline):
I will accept predictions until midnight of Nov 2 (EST), 2020. You’re allowed to change your prediction up until that point.
I will compile a list of the most accurate predictions once the results are confirmed. You’re also free to discuss general elections-related topics (polls, predictions markets, shy voters, electoral demographics, etc).
***
Follow @powerfultakes
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.
I actually think this is Trump’s worse case scenario. NC I’m loose on, could go either way, but Biden has more chance of gaining that than he does winning PA. NV showing will interesting, hoping Hispanic support does come through for him.
Will be ironic if they come out in big numbers for the first time only to vote for Trump.Replies: @Tusk
Anatoly Voronin
The future of presidential elections in the US is definitely the popular vote. Technically speaking, the Constitution does not need to be amended, see the National Popular Vote Interstate Vote Compact. Essentially, states are entering into agreements to pool their votes together and award them to the winner of the popular vote, they only need a few more to sign on, before it comes into effect. I don’t think the establishment will challenge it on legal grounds.
Can’t get excited about electoral map-making because the ephemeral nature of demographics, the college itself, and Trump’s shortcomings, but I’ll offer this tip: Nebraska and Maine split their votes, on a district level. I think Biden will win one in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine.
It is here. Normie media finally talk about Hunter’s laptop.
(BTW, what happened to Hunter00 and Hunter01 laptops? The world needs to know!)
https://twitter.com/ali/status/1322696477861388289
With the caveat that NV and PA can go either way IMO (which would swing the election in the case of PA):
(BTW, what happened to Hunter00 and Hunter01 laptops? The world needs to know!)
https://twitter.com/ali/status/1322696477861388289Replies: @Dan Hayes, @Almost Missouri
Once again the London-based Daily Mail comes through where the rest of the media fears to thread!
Prop 22 (App based drivers) margin of victory should be interesting to watch.
Whatever the election night electoral map, to the extent that it favors Trump, the entire Democrat-Media Industrial Complex will immediately go into overdrive screaming “It is not over until every vote is counted!” while “finding” just enough votes to tip the map to Biden.
Texas, Ohio, and Georgia won’t be decided until after 11/3
Can't get excited about electoral map-making because the ephemeral nature of demographics, the college itself, and Trump's shortcomings, but I'll offer this tip: Nebraska and Maine split their votes, on a district level. I think Biden will win one in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Servant of Gla'aki, @TomSchmidt, @davidgmillsatty
So far, the Interstate Vote Compact end-run on the Electoral College only involves states that are already Democratic anyway.
In the not too distant future though, it may very well become decisive in a state where the legislature is Dem but the Presidential vote is Repub, most likely Pennsylvania or Virginia (plus there is some aberrant situation in Colorado I don’t understand). In that case, the Presidential election may yet again hinge on a Supreme Court decision.
This seems like the most likely outcome:
�
�
The sex scandal surrounding NC Senate candidate Cal Cunningham has solidified the state for Trump.
There are a significant number of Minnesota voters who are upset with the “Team Surrender Blue” policies encouraging violence, crime, and property destruction. Calls to Defund the Police have made the situation worse for Minnesotans. It could go Populist Red.
Even if Biden’s handlers commit vote fraud to flip a couple of small states, that will not change the outcome. Any path to DNC victory requires a large state or two. Biden’s publicly announced goal is the eradication of oil & gas jobs associated with fracking. That threat has has ended his chances in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
PEACE 😇
My Wisconsin absentee ballot is marked “Biden”, and my relatives in the Quad Cities area are extremely confident in the local ground game there. There’s been a white liberal influx since 2017 or so.
The rest are mostly un-educated guesses.
(BTW, what happened to Hunter00 and Hunter01 laptops? The world needs to know!)
https://twitter.com/ali/status/1322696477861388289Replies: @Dan Hayes, @Almost Missouri
Sadly, The Daily Mail are spinning it as just a bunch of salacious content while almost totally ignoring the giant corruption and influence peddling scandal sitting in plain sight. They’re even ignoring the illegal salacious content. The most political thing they will commit to is that there was a “risk of blackmail”.
While they mostly give the Bidens a pass, they do focus much more than I’ve seen elsewhere on the computer repair guy who legally owns the laptop, effectively painting a target on his back. So he might want to change his name and move into an armed compound somewhere.
During the original Watergate scandal, the media spent months laboring to build an obscure relative molehill into a mountain. Today the media are laboring to reduce a glaring mountain down to a molehill.
Will Hunter Dong Truthers become in the 2020's what were 9/11 Truthers in 2000's? :-)
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jmd2l2/hunters_cock_size_is_being_inflated_for_unknown/
There's the elite gender inversion conspiracy theory, which postulates alot of the high-profile people we know and love (in politics, media and hollywood) are part of a cult (luciferian) which takes great pride in transgendering their children. (As tribute to the "sexless/Genderless" fallen angels they worship)
Michelle Obama is an often named example, but there's a few others. The men are just as suspect though, and what better way to sell a transgender man for a real man than to have sex scandals and shit like this in the media?
Actually its Epstein whose victims testified in court had an egg shaped penis, whatever that means.
Even more bizarrely Weinstein victims testified he is some kind of hermaphrodite and has a vagina, penis and no testes!
Trumps old, but you're right he has an odd shape for a fat dude.
Soft agree, but most of my associates here in the Communist Party think that Joe’s Beijing ties will allow them to jockey for power at a slight advantage to the current crop of Zionists.
assume the colors are solid
Does anyone seriously think it matters which of the jerks gets elected?
The only absolute is that the government, AKA deep state, will get elected either way.
The US is a boulder rolling down hill. If it hits a rock, the trajectory might shift left or right by a mm, but it’s still going to crash. The election is the rock.
https://twitter.com/mikercarpenter/status/1318330067026673666
https://twitter.com/mikercarpenter/status/1318327672448102402
I do have a strong “spiritual” feeling that the result will be 269-269.
But, realistically, I think it will be something like this:
That is my current prediction.
Delete please got va wrong
PA is almost certainly stolen … Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts.
What a LARP
This has been my prediction for the past half-year or so:
The only state I’m unsure about is Texas; I will not be too surprised if it goes blue, especially in this environment, but I expect it to stay red by a hair.
optional: Senate (though less confident of this -I expect Maine, Montana, and Georgia to be the closest and most decisive races -only a Collins victory in Maine plus a GOP victory in both the Georgia races plus a GOP win in Montana can keep the Senate red for Rs -remember, a Biden victory means a 50-50 Senate is a Dem Senate due to Harris being VP):
The widespread perception that Trump will win despite the evidence (Georgians think he’ll win by ten points, even though Biden’s winning by two on the question on who they want to win) actually hurts the GOP position in the Senate and makes the sort of yuge R overperformances we saw in 2008 impossible.
Unless fraud, but FL hispanics are conservatives and Biden lost PA with his anti fracking and anti oil stance. Still even that places Trump behind so in general I agree with the outcome.
I have invited some of my good friends to post in this thread, as well. Also, according to a very large scale election survey, this may be the first election where we see College Whites vote almost as Democratic as Hispanics -which necessarily means many suburban counties which went for Trump (e.g., Dallas County, IA, numerous Texas suburbs) will go blue, and that we will see 2016 trends partially repeat themselves, especially in the South (meaning what we saw in Georgia and Texas in 2018 was a warning, and what we saw in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Washington State in 2018 had no forecasting validity). Like it or not, trends are real, and the Rs are hemorrhaging human capital badly due to their COVID posture. Nevertheless, Trump has one ace up his sleeve: he’s still winning men. Also seems that many Johnson bros (and sisters) have become Biden men (and women).
For the record, I would not have the Democratic presidential candidate winning Florida if Sanders were the nominee, but Sanders is most assuredly not the nominee, and Biden is a decent fit for the state. Biden in the primary did very well in heavily elderly, working class, and rich precincts. Not that he’ll win them in the general, but he won’t hemorrhage them the way Sanders would inevitably have. Biden is not a good candidate in a Platonic sense, but he has done an excellent job of avoiding media scrutiny -and isn’t that what matters in the end?
Do you think a narrow 51 senate majority will enable the Democrats to pack the Supreme Court?
American “conservatives” seem very weak on the black issue. Most seem terrified of acknowledging there’s a racial strife problem and brewing race war, and laughably try to convince themselves that most blacks are pro-Trump.
Most will also not acknowledge that blacks are more criminal and violent, and come up with bizarre excuses for it, like black areas are violent because they’re run by Democrats, as if it’s purely by chance that black areas are run by Dems and nothing to do with the fact that that’s the sort of politician that low IQ blacks tend to vote for.
So the answer is to use the phrase law & order. Voters understand the language quite well.
Democrat politics for the last 60 years has been to bribe blacks not to kill y-t. There was a brief lull in the 90s not to do this anymore, with Clinton. But they're back to their historic gibs and humiliating prostration.
Most will also not acknowledge that blacks are more criminal and violent, and come up with bizarre excuses for it, like black areas are violent because they're run by Democrats, as if it's purely by chance that black areas are run by Dems and nothing to do with the fact that that's the sort of politician that low IQ blacks tend to vote for.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Bragadocious, @EldnahYm
You are English, and you write that as if it was an exclusively American issue.
All Democrats (Manchin included) opposed confirming Barrett, Biden has not come out against it the way he has on healthcare and the Green New Deal, less moderate Dems like Markey are gloating about it, and even so-called “moderates” like Coons say they support packing, so there’s nothing implausible about that map resulting in expanding the Supreme Court to ten justices (though note this will lead to a midterm backlash among the electorate).
If they expand I suspect it would be to 11 not 10 justices in order to prevent ties and in order to return to a situation where the Democrats are one death/resignation from a majority.Replies: @The Alarmist
I think globally many share the same view 😅.
The US Presidential election has a immense impact on global affairs.
Two elderly liberal men are noisily fighting over who can better welcome the ambitious Third World migrants and who can lower the black unemployment. And the womyn, let’s not forget that womyn always need help to break some ceiling or whatever.
Well, keep on breaking, this contest between two aged liberal oligarchs is amusing but insignificant. Trump is emotionally more satisfying, but what he did in 2017-20 is all he will ever do. And Biden: a thieving moron with almost 50 years in government, holy shit, what the f..k is this, Vatican?
This is how liberal oligarchy feels. This is it: all freedom and invisible hand ideas fully applied and all consequences visible. Let’s at least enjoy the show. I kind of hope Trump pulls it of, he is more fun.
Good points, though packing seems more extreme than not confirming.
If they expand I suspect it would be to 11 not 10 justices in order to prevent ties and in order to return to a situation where the Democrats are one death/resignation from a majority.
Trump just woke up to the fact of leftist school and government indoctrination, collusion between Left and Big Tech etc. so there is the realistic chance of some pushback on these fronts if he wins.
I actually think this is Trump's worse case scenario. NC I'm loose on, could go either way, but Biden has more chance of gaining that than he does winning PA. NV showing will interesting, hoping Hispanic support does come through for him.Replies: @AP, @Escher
Heh, we have the same map except for Minnesota. Polls show Biden only up by 4 in that state, within the margin of “polite” people not admitting they will vote for Trump. Minnesota has a lot of polite people.
IOW, everyone who can let vote fraud sail on by relatively unchallenged is a Dem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote for Trump; what matters is how many votes are counted for Biden.
Every time I watched my ballot disappear into the trusty Diebold machine when I voted in the states, I wondered who I really voted for.Replies: @AP, @Adam Smith
Related Twitter thread that some might find to be of interest:
The dark sorceror Bogwald Zrumpf will find victory again, but at a lesser margin than in 2016.
My prediction is that Trump wins on the night, but due to fraud and also perhaps legitimate mail-ins, one or two key states get called for Biden in the following days. Chaos ensues.
No kidding. What is he, 75?, and he just figured it out? He cannot be that stupid. So no pushback in the second term. But almost certainly a ‘humanitarian amnesty for migrants‘ – just listen to what he says: the businesses (=oligarchs) need them.
By the way, I agree with your prediction map. That is my guess too, unless a mail-in tsunami has been organised by the people who know better. If Texas flips, you will know that they will give no quarter, and the pretend democracy is over.
https://apnews.com/article/discrimination-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-archive-b51043edeee8b7899c26bfaec88e8eec
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University, saying that the school’s recent acknowledgment of racism on campus amounts to a “shocking” and “serious” admission of discrimination.
Would be too bad if all of these efforts were stillborn.He's been offering a deal involving no net increase in number. Recognize the "dreamers" (people brought in as children, who grew up here) in exchange for an equal number of less newcomers.Thank you.Agreed.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Beckow
Btw, Trump vs. Biden 328 – 209.
Trump 309
I like your Troll Map. It all comes down to Omaha. Here is mine:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/Lw8mE
I don’t know about the election as a whole. I suspect there will be plenty of disputes in states where the results are close enough to be flipped through mail-in ballots, cheating, and court cases. I doubt we will have an official winner on election night.
What I can say is that I’ll be surprised if Pennsylvania doesn’t go for Trump. He has a massive amount of enthusiastic and visible support here. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette even endorsed Trump. They haven’t endorsed a Republican since 1972.
https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/10/31/editorial-donald-trump-joe-biden-mike-pence-kamala-harris-presidential-candidate-endorsement/stories/202010310021
Trump 331 (all 2016 states plus Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico), Biden 207
Reasoning:
Florida and Ohio are red states now. Both swung right in 2018 (a Democratic wave year) and the Biden campaign has given up on both.
Republicans are either leading, drawing even, or only slightly behind in early voting in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan (as well as other states). Keep in mind that it’s an established fact that the majority of Democrats have stated they will vote early, by mail, due to fears of COVID-19, while the majority of Republicans have stated they will vote in-person on Election Day. If Biden was going to win, the Democrats would be posting blowout leads in all states. They aren’t. (As for cope about “Republicans for Biden,” 92% of registered Republicans support Trump, and far more Democrats will be voting for Trump—particularly in the Rust Belt—than Republicans voting for Biden.)
North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine: early voting shows the Democrats with a smaller lead in these states than they had in 2016 (when Trump won them both).
Nevada: Republicans have also closed the gap here in early voting, and Nevada has been trending red for over a decade. Greater Latino support will push Trump over the finish line.
New Mexico: Probably my shakiest prediction, but a nationwide shift to the GOP among Latinos will have outsized effects in New Mexico, whose electorate is 40%+ Latino. Additionally, Gary Johnson, who won 10% in New Mexico in 2016, isn’t on the ballot.
Nebraska: I don’t understand people who think Biden has a prayer of winning NE-02. Obama won it in 2008 by one point. Biden is no Obama.
Overall: Trump is going to win by a large enough margin to prevent any kind of real voter fraud. Democrats have been pivoting to in-person voting in the past two weeks because they realized pushing mail-in voting was a huge mistake due to the sheer number of ballots that will be invalidated because they weren’t filled out or sent in properly (see: the “naked ballot” issue in Pennsylvania).
Moreover, hatred of Trump isn’t enough to put Biden over the line. Hatred of Obama didn’t help Romney, hatred of Bush didn’t help Kerry, hatred of Clinton didn’t help Dole. Voters need to be inspired. Biden is not inspiring; he’s a tired old corrupt dotard backed by Kamala Harris, one of the most hated politicians in America. The hardcore anti-Trump contingent has already voted, but they’re a minority. The flakier Democrats—the moderates, the low-info voters, the Berniebros—are sitting on their ballots right now (note how many fewer Democrats have returned their ballots in key swing states compared to Republicans). They are not going to go to the effort of voting for someone who is so transparently repulsive, or at best, boring.
Trump supporters, in contrast, will crawl through broken glass to pull the lever for him. Trump attracts packed rallies and Biden and his surrogates speak to empty parking lots. Trump supporters go to Biden’s rallies to troll him. Just yesterday, a convoy of Trump supporters swarmed on a Biden bus Mad Max-style. Trump also has a sophisticated GOTV operation, signing up tons of new voters in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and other states, whereas Biden didn’t even bother with GOTV efforts. The campaign is trying to reverse this right now, but it’s too late.
Factor in other key indicators, such as the fact that the majority of Americans believe they are better off now than they were four years ago (no incumbent has ever lost reelection in this scenario), the fact that Trump attracted record amounts of votes in the primary even though he was essentially unopposed (meaning that votes for him were meaningless, yet people were inspired to vote anyway), and the fact that Republicans have been winning competitive special elections left and right in places like California and New York, and there’s no way Trump can lose at this stage.
Anyone who thinks Trump will lose because of COVID-19 is delusional, because the majority of Americans have recognized that it’s just the flu, they want life to go back to normal, and they absolutely do not want the Democrats to lock them in their houses and make them wear masks. Even mainstream pollsters acknowledge that COVID-19 is an extremely low priority among voters, outranked by the economy (which Trump scores more highly on then Biden), and the bulk of voters blame Democratic governors and mayors, not Trump, for the economic chaos this year. People have also had it with antifa and Black Lives Matter (the favorability of the latter collapsed by the end of August in swing states, and “how do I change my vote” was a trending search term in Pennsylvania after the Philly riots a few days ago). Trump will also win 40%+ of the Latino vote, which will make the difference in Sun Belt states (Texas is going to stay a red state for the foreseeable future, sorry blackpillers).
Indeed, the Biden campaign seems to have conceded the election. If Biden was truly as far ahead as the polls claim he is, he would be campaigning in South Carolina and Kansas. Instead, he’s desperately trying to eke out a win in Pennsylvania and trying to salvage down-ballot races in Michigan. He’s acting like John McCain in 2008, trying to squeeze out a narrow win through a couple of must-win states. Meanwhile, Trump has the initiative: he’s campaigning in places like Minnesota (hasn’t gone Republican since 1972) and Nevada.
Senate prediction: Republicans 55 (+2), Democrats 45 (-2).
Republicans will defeat Democratic incumbents in Alabama (obvious), Michigan (Peters is a weak incumbent and James is a strong candidate; in 2018, he cut Stabenow’s margin of victory from 21 points to 7 points in what was a Democratic wave year), and Minnesota (again, Smith is a weak incumbent and Lewis is a strong challenger with a big public profile). Trump can also drag James and Lewis over the line by winning both states.
Republican Cory Gardner will likely lose in Colorado; there’s a remote possibility that if Trump does better than expected, he can drag Gardner over the finish line (if Gardner runs ahead of Trump; no way Trump will win Colorado), but I’m not betting on it. Susan Collins will win reelection (she’s a Maine institution who has historically outperformed her polling, and increased support for Trump in ME-02 will drag her over the line). No other GOP incumbents are in danger of losing.
House predictions: Republicans 220 (+21), Democrats 215 (-21)
I’m shakier on this. Republicans will gain 10-15 seats minimum by running the table in the Midwest (they’ll likely win all of Iowa’s seats, the majority of Minnesota’s seats, and make gains in Michigan and Pennsylvania). Some suburban districts that went blue in 2018 will snap back. Retaking the House, however, depends on motivating red voters in blue states; e.g. upstate New York and New Jersey. Trump has apparently been running ads in some of these places to drive up turnout, so a narrow House flip is possible. If the Democrats retain the house, it’ll be with only 220 seats or less.
Biden was campaigning in Minnesota this week.
That's way more significant than Trump campaigning there.Replies: @TomSchmidt
I’m calling a repeat of the 2016 map, give or take NV, MN, and NE-02.
Eharding did a Senate map, so I’ll do one too:
Senate results track presidential results in every state except for Maine, where RCV opens the door to a Trump loss/Collins win.
One interesting thing is how many roads (if all with individually unlikely turns) there are that lead to a 269-269 result.
Was reasonable a month ago, before Trump’s ratings in Wisconsin collapsed (could also substitute for.
Winning PA and losing AZ
The troll map featured in this post: Losing NC, but winning PA and AZ: https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1322140123870515202
Finally, perhaps the most intriguing of them all: Losing *Georgia*, but winning PA and Nevada, should the Latino surge for Trump be *really* strong –
Most Americans over, say, 60 are clueless about the extent of what is going on in the education system and with Twitter etc. Trump has actually named the enemy (Critical Race Theory, “White privilege” ideas) and a bunch of lawsuits against are beginning. He recently placed universities in the crosshairs. This is hilarious. The Princeton president stated that the school has a problem with “systemic racism.” So..:
https://apnews.com/article/discrimination-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-archive-b51043edeee8b7899c26bfaec88e8eec
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University, saying that the school’s recent acknowledgment of racism on campus amounts to a “shocking” and “serious” admission of discrimination.
Would be too bad if all of these efforts were stillborn.
He’s been offering a deal involving no net increase in number. Recognize the “dreamers” (people brought in as children, who grew up here) in exchange for an equal number of less newcomers.
Thank you.
Agreed.
DoE: "Really?" *launches civil rights investigation*
Princeton: *surprised pikachu face*Replies: @Rooster10
https://apnews.com/article/discrimination-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-archive-b51043edeee8b7899c26bfaec88e8eec
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University, saying that the school’s recent acknowledgment of racism on campus amounts to a “shocking” and “serious” admission of discrimination.
Would be too bad if all of these efforts were stillborn.He's been offering a deal involving no net increase in number. Recognize the "dreamers" (people brought in as children, who grew up here) in exchange for an equal number of less newcomers.Thank you.Agreed.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Beckow
Princeton: “We are so sorry for our systematic racism that continues to hold down POC.”
DoE: “Really?” *launches civil rights investigation*
Princeton: *surprised pikachu face*
For the record, this was my election prediction on November 8, 2016:
https://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/final-election-day-predictions/
Thoughts on my accuracy? For the record, this was the final 2016 FiveThirtyEight election forecast:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
You called Florida, I called Michigan, neither of us foresaw Pennsylvania or the Wisconsin upset.
PS. What is truly cringe to me is re-reading my post-elections take: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/trump-train-converges-to-c/Replies: @E. Harding
I agree: Biden and the Democrat Party’s bi-coastal upper class and its phony Left Establishment have run the most anemic national campaign of the last 60 years. Their decision to be be openly hostile to traditional families; underwrite black underclass and anarchist violence in large cities; increase all forms of taxation, and to make stupid dust masks mandatory nationwide are hardly things that are attractive to normal people.
https://i0.wp.com/www.270towin.com/presidential_map_new/maps/deGwv.png
https://againstjebelallawz.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/final-election-day-predictions/
Thoughts on my accuracy? For the record, this was the final 2016 FiveThirtyEight election forecast:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
Congrats, better than me at any rate: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/lets-maga-not-war/
You called Florida, I called Michigan, neither of us foresaw Pennsylvania or the Wisconsin upset.
PS. What is truly cringe to me is re-reading my post-elections take: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/trump-train-converges-to-c/
If they expand I suspect it would be to 11 not 10 justices in order to prevent ties and in order to return to a situation where the Democrats are one death/resignation from a majority.Replies: @The Alarmist
They’d more likely go to 13 or 15 to lock SCOTUS down for generations.
You called Florida, I called Michigan, neither of us foresaw Pennsylvania or the Wisconsin upset.
PS. What is truly cringe to me is re-reading my post-elections take: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/trump-train-converges-to-c/Replies: @E. Harding
Well, state by state, I was less accurate than you were (I incorrectly called four states, you incorrectly called merely three -the MI misfire was especially embarrassing since I actually live there). My views since then have been heavily shaped by the talkelections.org (only make an account there to view, not post, the moderation is terrible) poster IndyRep, who basically correctly called the 2016 election regardless of GOP candidate since at least December 2015 (though misfired on Florida in November 2016, but was surprisingly correct on how New Hampshire would go straight D for House, Senate, and Presidency).
Minnesota has Democrats as Governor, Lt. Gov., Secy of State, and AG.
IOW, everyone who can let vote fraud sail on by relatively unchallenged is a Dem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote for Trump; what matters is how many votes are counted for Biden.
Every time I watched my ballot disappear into the trusty Diebold machine when I voted in the states, I wondered who I really voted for.
☮
I’m guessing the polls are true, and Biden will win 55-44. Trump’s COVID19 response has hurt him greatly with normally GOP-leaning seniors, and America’s demographic shift has progressed another 4 years since Trump’s narrow 2016 win.
Early votes are sign of the GOP’s total defeat in this election. They will be found to be heavily from older voters, and the election day voters will be relatively younger and Democrat-leaning. This will only be slightly offset by COVID19 skeptics preferring to vote in person.
GOP’s hopes for black vote will fail and Trump will win less than 10%. There is no overlap in the interests of Republican voters and blacks, so all attempts at wooing them were futile.
Hispanic vote will return to normal for GOP, since Trump is less toxic to them now than he was in 2016. GOP will keep Texas as a result of this despite hemorrhaging American suburbanites
Areas like Philadelphia & Minneapolis which experienced serious unrest due to BLM will vote more for the Democrats than they did in 2016 and 2018 due to the Frontlash Effect.
I have no doubt as to the election’s winner, and have $1900 staked on Biden winning (made the maximum $850 bet on PredictIt for both Democrats winning Presidency & Biden winning Presidency, and a $200 bet with a friend on Biden winning), and $75 staked on him winning by +10.5 percentage points in the popular vote.
Texas is surely going blue before Iowa or Ohio. Trump 2020 is hemorrhaging his support most among college Whites even relative to 2016, and this means one can expect 2016 trends to largely continue in 2020. The fact the non-college White vote in Texas is already maxxed out for the GOP largely negates Hispanic improvements. I generally trust NYT/Siena polling this time around, but they severely underestimated how Dem Hispanics in Texas were in 2018.
By looking at the wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election
looking at the last few days + average trend I would say:
https://www.270towin.com/maps/d7w8p
Maybe claiming that Texas will go blue is a long shot, but it’s not so impossible.
https://www.270towin.com/maps/1kRJk.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_2020_United_States_presidential_electionlooking at the last few days + average trend I would say:https://www.270towin.com/maps/d7w8pMaybe claiming that Texas will go blue is a long shot, but it's not so impossible.Replies: @In Catilinam
Sorry, wrong link:
DoE: "Really?" *launches civil rights investigation*
Princeton: *surprised pikachu face*Replies: @Rooster10
About time someone makes the virtue-signaling left put their money where their mouth is. We now need to extend this strategy in our personal lives: have a liberal friend or family member advocating for open borders? Ok, list their house on AirBNB for free to any BIPOC persons. They don’t mind paying higher taxes, no need to wait, ask them on public forums to donate significant amounts of money to charities and show proof. Blacks should have better quality jobs? No problem, list their company and position on Monster only for BIPOC persons. Just ram it down their hypocritical throats.
Trump will win. But it won’t matter.
It won’t change much of significance.
Actually a Biden victory could energize people to resist more the bad stuff that’s coming, anyway.
I know nothing about polls, but Trump will win.
Here’s mine.
Most will also not acknowledge that blacks are more criminal and violent, and come up with bizarre excuses for it, like black areas are violent because they're run by Democrats, as if it's purely by chance that black areas are run by Dems and nothing to do with the fact that that's the sort of politician that low IQ blacks tend to vote for.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Bragadocious, @EldnahYm
Well there are certain things you can say in U.S. politics and certain things you can’t. Just as in Britain it’s verboten to bring up Pakistani grooming gangs, or in Sweden Somali rapists. You just can’t go there.
So the answer is to use the phrase law & order. Voters understand the language quite well.
Democrat politics for the last 60 years has been to bribe blacks not to kill y-t. There was a brief lull in the 90s not to do this anymore, with Clinton. But they’re back to their historic gibs and humiliating prostration.
Can't get excited about electoral map-making because the ephemeral nature of demographics, the college itself, and Trump's shortcomings, but I'll offer this tip: Nebraska and Maine split their votes, on a district level. I think Biden will win one in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Servant of Gla'aki, @TomSchmidt, @davidgmillsatty
It’s not a question of the Establishment being unwilling to challenge the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. As much as I despise that proposal, there’s nothing about it which violates the Constitution of the United States in any remote way. It’s a legally permissible measure, albeit one that undermines the foundations of our society.
But then what would prevent Republicans from going up to 29 to recreate the conservative majority next time they control the Senate and the presidency? Court packing would be a truly third world way of settling the issue.
Great post. I like your map too. Almost everyone has MN blue but you give it to Trump. Couldn’t agree more. I’ll just remind people of this:
Biden was campaigning in Minnesota this week.
That’s way more significant than Trump campaigning there.
They'll be back on the D train in 2022, but for now the authorities need to know: they're mad, doncha know.Replies: @Matt Forney
Yep, my take exactly (although I cucked the opposite side of the south from you).
Replies: @TomSchmidt
I’d give you 1000-1 against that. But that’s definitely the funniest map I’ve seen.
Can't get excited about electoral map-making because the ephemeral nature of demographics, the college itself, and Trump's shortcomings, but I'll offer this tip: Nebraska and Maine split their votes, on a district level. I think Biden will win one in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Servant of Gla'aki, @TomSchmidt, @davidgmillsatty
What if every state did what NE and ME do? Then you approach the popular vote result.
It's interesting to think about in the abstract though because it would change the incentive structure on a lot of levels.
I live in Iowa and the Des Moines Register which uses really solid polling has Trump up by six and we have had lots of early voting. So it seems like Trump wins Iowa.
Most will also not acknowledge that blacks are more criminal and violent, and come up with bizarre excuses for it, like black areas are violent because they're run by Democrats, as if it's purely by chance that black areas are run by Dems and nothing to do with the fact that that's the sort of politician that low IQ blacks tend to vote for.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Bragadocious, @EldnahYm
Decades of propaganda and suppression works. Also, conservatives are weak on most issues. Conservatives are conformist weaklings whose only use is to follow orders from non-conservatives.
An important reminder to all:
He’s not making it up:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/national-polls/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/
IA polling is weird this year; Des Moines Register has Trump easily winning the state, but some really good polls (Monmouth and NYT/Siena) have Biden up. I’m keeping IA in the R column just because Trump won the state by a sound 9.4 points, and that’s a hefty margin to get to zero.
538 can't be trusted for this reason. Garbage in, garbage out.
For what it's worth, the Democracy Institute (the only major polling firm to try to account for the "shy Trump supporter" effect, and one of the few firms to correctly call the 2016 election), believes Trump will win with 326 electoral votes: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1354506/us-election-2020-donald-trump-win-poll-democracy-institute-joe-biden-swing-statesReplies: @E. Harding
Biden was campaigning in Minnesota this week.
That's way more significant than Trump campaigning there.Replies: @TomSchmidt
I think Trump does better in MN than WI. I don’t know if he wins both, loses both, or wins MN and loses WI. But evenMinnesotans, the nicest people on the planet, have their limit. Utter chaos released on their largest city with no restraint either by the mayor or governor is going to have them upset enough to send a message.
They’ll be back on the D train in 2022, but for now the authorities need to know: they’re mad, doncha know.
There's no scenario in which Trump wins Minnesota without also winning Wisconsin.Replies: @TomSchmidt
IOW, everyone who can let vote fraud sail on by relatively unchallenged is a Dem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote for Trump; what matters is how many votes are counted for Biden.
Every time I watched my ballot disappear into the trusty Diebold machine when I voted in the states, I wondered who I really voted for.Replies: @AP, @Adam Smith
MN was also recently the state of Michelle Bachman. I know someone who moved there; according to them, the riots in MN gave really (quietly) angered a lot of Minnesotans, even in the suburbs. So when the open poll results are within 4 percent, I suspect Trump will have a very slight real edge. But this one will be close.
Aren’t you adorable. This election would be the one-and-done, and the Dems will reprise the role of Mexico’s PRI rule of one party for a century, or at least for the few years it takes for them to implode what is left of the USA.
People keep forgetting that back in reality, the riots (on net) helped BLM and hurt Trump’s approval rating (it went back up as the summer COVID spike dissipated). I’m not making it up:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
https://civiqs.com/results/black_lives_matter?annotations=true&uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true&trendline=true
The gullibility of the American voter should not be underestimated. In the 1960s, people blamed riots on Black agitators. Now, American voters blame riots on White nationalists. Yes, it doesn’t make sense. But the American voter isn’t sensible. The median voter believes in Russiagate, for God’s sake, and thinks China had a bad COVID response.
Matt Forney’s comment here must be a troll; Florida voting for a popular incumbent governor for Senate and rejecting a Black leftist Democrat for governor does not make it a state Biden can’t win. Likewise, COVID really is at the top of people’s minds in this election, especially White college educated voters’ minds; Trump failed the test; Ardern and Moon Jae-In passed.
Ardern's new foreign minister:
https://cdni.rt.com/files/2020.11/l/5f9fb20c85f5403721221322.jpgReplies: @Blinky Bill
They'll be back on the D train in 2022, but for now the authorities need to know: they're mad, doncha know.Replies: @Matt Forney
Minnesota is considerably more left-wing than Wisconsin (or every other Midwestern/Rust Belt state, for that matter, save Illinois). Minnesota has had Dem governors for a decade, Dems control one of the state legislative houses, and the state’s had a majority Dem congressional delegation since 2006. Wisconsin has had a majority Republican congressional delegation since 2010 (including one of the Senate seats), a fully Republican legislature, and had a Republican governor up until last year. Trump also has strong support from both the WOW counties (the bedrock of the GOP vote in Wisconsin) as well as working-class purple rural counties (which is how he carried the state in 2016).
There’s no scenario in which Trump wins Minnesota without also winning Wisconsin.
You are doubtless more familiar with WI than I.
Care to place a bet on it? If MN has a higher percentage of R votes than WI, you'll donate to my charity ($10?) and if WI has a higher percentage I donate to yours? You can expect me to act not in mala fide on that, Matt.
My charity: the Metropolitan Opera, the foremost conservative organization in NYC.
Polling is garbage. Only 8-9 percent of people called by polling firms actually respond, meaning that polls are absolutely not reflective of the national mood. Additionally, Trump supporters are both less likely to answer pollsters (either because they distrust them or because of the “shy Trump supporter” effect) and they’re less likely to be called by pollsters in the first place (see how the maps of Pennsylvania polling have focused on Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, ignoring the vast “T” region where Trump’s support is concentrated).
538 can’t be trusted for this reason. Garbage in, garbage out.
For what it’s worth, the Democracy Institute (the only major polling firm to try to account for the “shy Trump supporter” effect, and one of the few firms to correctly call the 2016 election), believes Trump will win with 326 electoral votes: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1354506/us-election-2020-donald-trump-win-poll-democracy-institute-joe-biden-swing-states
538 can't be trusted for this reason. Garbage in, garbage out.
For what it's worth, the Democracy Institute (the only major polling firm to try to account for the "shy Trump supporter" effect, and one of the few firms to correctly call the 2016 election), believes Trump will win with 326 electoral votes: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1354506/us-election-2020-donald-trump-win-poll-democracy-institute-joe-biden-swing-statesReplies: @E. Harding
Then why was it off by less than a point in 2016?
If it’s off by the same amount it was in 2016, Biden will win the popular vote by 7.9 points. I predict closer to 7, but who really knows? I trust the polling because it was accurate in 2016, much as it was accurate in 2012, 2008, and 2004. The state effects one can adjust for.
Biden can run up the popular vote in California and New York all he wants, it won't get him any closer to winning Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
I also explained upthread that every other substantive predictor of electoral success is swinging in Trump's favor:
Majority of Americans say they're better off now than four years ago
Economy is recovering rapidly with record GDP growth and lower unemployment
Trump earned record votes in the primary despite running unopposed
GOP has consistently won special elections all year, including in blue states like New York and California (where they won back the seat Katie Hill took in 2018)
Republicans exceeding/drawing even with Democrats in early voting (remember, Democrats are supposed to be dominating early voting)
If the polls are showing one thing and every other metric shows something else, the polls are wrong.Replies: @Shortsword
You’re eliding what actually happened. Florida didn’t just swing right in the gubernatorial race in 2018, it also unseated a popular three-term moderate Democrat Senator. And the guy who unseated him was Rick Scott, who is not terribly charismatic or well-liked. This was during a blue wave year.
And polling shows that COVID-19 is an extremely low priority except insofar as it applies to the economy (which, again, Trump scores higher on than Biden).
Nobody who criticizes Trump’s response to COVID-19 can ever explain what he should have done differently. The U.S. did the exact same things that every other country did; lockdowns, social distancing, mask laws. In fact, Trump was one of the first leaders to ban travel from China at the same time the Democrats were calling concern over COVID-19 “racist.” Was Trump supposed to put the military on every block and weld COVID sufferers into their apartments?
People who still hyperventilate about COVID-19 are really telling on themselves. It’s a fixation of upper middle class people who have the privilege to work from home and order all their meals from Doordash. Working-class people absolutely hate mask laws and lockdowns because they’re directly destroying their ability to make a living. Small business owners also hate these laws. It’s not just Americans, either; Europeans are rioting right now over new lockdowns.
Trump has positioned himself as the candidate of normality and Biden is pledging to essentially wipe out what’s left of the economy.
* https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-back-national-lockdown-coronavirus-poll-1532914
* https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/09/23/brits-support-new-lockdown-rules-many-think-they-d
I don't support lockdowns these days, because they seem to have limited efficacy and white people countries have demonstrated they are not seriously committed to suppressing the coronavirus anyway (as evidenced by, say, the consistent refusal to do centralized quarantine).
However, the mass of the population disagrees (some loud protesters regardless).
***
Trump's coronavirus response was not particularly bad by the standards of non-East Asians, but that's not the impression Americans got thanks to his continuous disastrous optics. He has acquired a reputation as a COVID dissident, most Americans seem to be under the incorrect impression that Europe did better with containing coronavirus than the US. Getting infected the day after mocking Biden for wearing a big mask epitomized the cringe. Also, unlike Bolsonaro, whose aggressive COVID skepticism was at least balanced out by a generous UBI program, hardly anybody is going to be moved by the measly 2x $1,200 that have been handed out as helicopter money.
Also, it needs be mentioned that no political leader has paid a political price for a hardcore response to coronavirus. E.g., Jacinda Ardern was reelected with record numbers.Replies: @Matt Forney, @utu
I saw that. Since the polling was all landline, I have my doubts. Only boomers and suburban middle class types have those any more. The hipsters who bounced there from Chicago & Madison sure don’t. I do think it’s interesting how polls are only correct to Unz readers when they favor Orange Man.
Scott was well liked due to the hurricane, and Nelson by this point wasn’t moderate. Yes, Trump approval in Florida was decent, but this was prior to COVID and gubernatorial dynamics meant just as much as Trump-related ones.
Every other country except Uruguay, Thailand, Taiwan, New Zealand, Korea, Vietnam, China, Cuba, Estonia, Finland, Mongolia, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Rwanda, Ghana, etc.
Where’s your evidence? Even the lockdowns, pointless as they were, were supported by a majority of all social classes.
Americans rioted because police were lynching negroes; what’s your point?
Not claimed it was going to disappear despite substantial evidence it was exploding. Wore a mask from the start. Banned travel from the entirety of the rest of the world in January. Supported a massive rampup of testing, contact tracing, and isolation. Basically, behaved like Luis Lacalle Pou or Prayut Chan O-Cha. Or how people in 2016 imagined Trump would have behaved when faced with a Chinese/Italian pandemic spread by cough.
Hey; I’m not calling the governors’ responses any good. It wasn’t. I’m calling the Thai, Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese response good.
No, he is not. Or at the very least, [citation needed].
Yes, next question. Or, at the very least, pack them into hotels where they wouldn’t infect others. Like sensible countries do.
A lot of whom voted for Trump and won’t vote for him again.
In the real world, even today, most people back lockdowns according to opinion polls:
* https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-back-national-lockdown-coronavirus-poll-1532914
* https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/09/23/brits-support-new-lockdown-rules-many-think-they-d
I don’t support lockdowns these days, because they seem to have limited efficacy and white people countries have demonstrated they are not seriously committed to suppressing the coronavirus anyway (as evidenced by, say, the consistent refusal to do centralized quarantine).
However, the mass of the population disagrees (some loud protesters regardless).
***
Trump’s coronavirus response was not particularly bad by the standards of non-East Asians, but that’s not the impression Americans got thanks to his continuous disastrous optics. He has acquired a reputation as a COVID dissident, most Americans seem to be under the incorrect impression that Europe did better with containing coronavirus than the US. Getting infected the day after mocking Biden for wearing a big mask epitomized the cringe. Also, unlike Bolsonaro, whose aggressive COVID skepticism was at least balanced out by a generous UBI program, hardly anybody is going to be moved by the measly 2x $1,200 that have been handed out as helicopter money.
Also, it needs be mentioned that no political leader has paid a political price for a hardcore response to coronavirus. E.g., Jacinda Ardern was reelected with record numbers.
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I've seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I'd rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn't compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them "South Sea poms" for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn't really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.Replies: @utu, @dfordoom, @Europe Europa, @Matra
I actually think this is Trump's worse case scenario. NC I'm loose on, could go either way, but Biden has more chance of gaining that than he does winning PA. NV showing will interesting, hoping Hispanic support does come through for him.Replies: @AP, @Escher
You might be right about the Hispanic vote. I can’t imagine they are too happy about BLM and Antifa destroying small businesses.
Will be ironic if they come out in big numbers for the first time only to vote for Trump.
Don’t ever cite national polls. They mean nothing. The presidential election is actually 51 separate elections. 538 stated that Clinton would win the electoral college, which she didn’t.
Biden can run up the popular vote in California and New York all he wants, it won’t get him any closer to winning Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
I also explained upthread that every other substantive predictor of electoral success is swinging in Trump’s favor:
Majority of Americans say they’re better off now than four years ago
Economy is recovering rapidly with record GDP growth and lower unemployment
Trump earned record votes in the primary despite running unopposed
GOP has consistently won special elections all year, including in blue states like New York and California (where they won back the seat Katie Hill took in 2018)
Republicans exceeding/drawing even with Democrats in early voting (remember, Democrats are supposed to be dominating early voting)
If the polls are showing one thing and every other metric shows something else, the polls are wrong.
If Trump scrapes through again despite losing the popular vote (possibly by a bigger margin) we can expect open season on the streets.
Biden can run up the popular vote in California and New York all he wants, it won't get him any closer to winning Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
I also explained upthread that every other substantive predictor of electoral success is swinging in Trump's favor:
Majority of Americans say they're better off now than four years ago
Economy is recovering rapidly with record GDP growth and lower unemployment
Trump earned record votes in the primary despite running unopposed
GOP has consistently won special elections all year, including in blue states like New York and California (where they won back the seat Katie Hill took in 2018)
Republicans exceeding/drawing even with Democrats in early voting (remember, Democrats are supposed to be dominating early voting)
If the polls are showing one thing and every other metric shows something else, the polls are wrong.Replies: @Shortsword
FiveThirtyEight gave Trump just under 30% chance to win. That’s not bad.
If Trump is trailing in Florida, explain why Democrats are underperforming their 2016 early voting numbers.
The U.S. did nothing substantially different than the Western countries on that list. Travel from the hotspots of the virus (Brazil, China, Schengen) was banned. Almost every state had shelter-in-place orders. Almost every state has mask laws, and even if they didn’t, most businesses require customers to wear a mask.
Also, half of those countries are irrelevant backwaters. No shock that an isolated island country like New Zealand would have an easier time containing a virus then the world’s dominant superpower.
Were. Once it became clear that COVID-19 had a comically low mortality rate, people wanted to get out of the house. Less than an hour after a court struck down Wisconsin’s COVID laws, the bars were already open. On Friday, people were stampeding to get out of Paris after Macron instituted a new lockdown. Revealed preference: people say they want the government to do something about COVID and then flout the law.
BLM riots were backed and funded by TPTB. Anti-lockdown riots weren’t and aren’t (see: Democrat governors/mayors allowing the former but proscribing the latter).
I really don’t understand people who argue that the government hates white people to the point of claiming they’re engaging in “white genocide” yet also want to hand that same government dictatorial levels of control over everyone’s lives. Once the government assumes a new power for itself, it never gives it back. Look at the new lockdowns across Europe now, even after the sainted WHO declared that lockdowns don’t work.
I was pro-lockdown when this all began because, like everyone else, I thought the virus was a serious threat. By April, it was clear that most everyone who contracts it survives it easily, aside from the elderly and the obese. (By the way, COVID deaths in the U.S. are disproportionately blacks due to their higher obesity rate; odd for you to demand totalitarianism to save a bunch of “negroes.”)
China stopped COVID testing months ago. We don’t know if they “controlled” the virus because they’re not collecting the information. (They’re right, BTW. It’s just the flu.)
Biden has already stated he will do a national lockdown. I really need a citation to prove how much damage the lockdown did to the economy? I’m in the Balkans right now and the governments here are terrified to do another lockdown because it will completely destroy them (and since they’re not in the E.U., they don’t have the ECB throwing buckets of cash at them). In Serbia, the government’s attempt to do a lockdown in July ended after protesters stormed the parliament.
Also, what about the human cost? Opioid deaths are up this year. Suicides are up (I was in Albania during lockdown and the local papers were running suicide stories almost every day). Divorces are up. Mental illness has skyrocketed. A study showed that lockdown had the same psychological effect on people as being thrown in prison does. Plenty of people do not want to go through that again, especially when it’s clear that COVID-19 is not the threat it was hyped to be.
The economy is recovering. The U.S. has posted record GDP gains and has a lower unemployment rate than most other developed countries. Biden’s policies would wreck that and cause a depression. Enough people understand this that he’s not going to win. I was concerned that he was leading back in August, when it seemed like Trump was flim-flamming on the riots and everything else, but I’m confident now that Trump will win.
Using martial law to combat a disease with a 99.5% survival rate, with a government that is (in the estimation of the kind of people who read Unz) working against the interests of white people, seems…unwise.
This shift began in 2018 and was inevitable. The Democrats are the party of upper class whites (and blacks) now. The Republicans are the party of working- and middle-class whites (and soon, Latinos). Same thing happened in Britain last year, when upper class Remainers switched to Labour or the Lib Dems and working-class Leave voters switched to the Conservatives. Trump will win by taking advantage of the same dynamics, though the GOP will likely have a bad 2022 (since working-class voters are harder to get to the polls).
You have literally no regard for facts.
You could have gleaned the survival rates from the Wuhan numbers! China wasn’t lying!
If Macron and BoJo want to lose, they’ll lose. Fine with me.
Biden 341, Trump 197.
Trump will lose in a blowout because he is a fraud, who ran as a populist, but then mostly governed like a typical Chamber of Commerce establishment Republican. His only major legislative achievement was passing Paul Ryan’s extremely unpopular corporate tax cuts (without even demanding funding for the Wall in exchange). On foreign policy, he gave the neocons pretty much everything they wanted short of all-out war with Iran. And his (politically insane) economic libertarian response to covid so lowered the bar, that basically all Biden had to do to win was wear a mask and not downplay the virus.
Tucker Carlson 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/discrimination-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-archive-b51043edeee8b7899c26bfaec88e8eec
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into racial bias at Princeton University, saying that the school’s recent acknowledgment of racism on campus amounts to a “shocking” and “serious” admission of discrimination.
Would be too bad if all of these efforts were stillborn.He's been offering a deal involving no net increase in number. Recognize the "dreamers" (people brought in as children, who grew up here) in exchange for an equal number of less newcomers.Thank you.Agreed.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Beckow
Trump has been attacked continuously for 4 years. If he is clueless about who is doing it and the role of Big Tech, he should just retire to Florida. But I think he is pretty savvy about the world. His laudable investigations into the endless university racial obsessions are about 3 years too late. I am not buying that he ‘didn’t know‘.
If I recall he was elected to lower the number, not to keep it the same. The amnesty (“recognition of the dreamers“) will allow millions of additional legal family reunification – it would allow as many as 30 million relatives to apply to move to US legally. It would take a decade or so, but it would happen, chain migration works that way and there are about 2-5 billion potential takers in the Third World. That’s why even the deal you mention is a scam. I would be surprised if Trump doesn’t know that.
He is better, but he just won’t do much. It is mostly smart marketing.
* https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-back-national-lockdown-coronavirus-poll-1532914
* https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/09/23/brits-support-new-lockdown-rules-many-think-they-d
I don't support lockdowns these days, because they seem to have limited efficacy and white people countries have demonstrated they are not seriously committed to suppressing the coronavirus anyway (as evidenced by, say, the consistent refusal to do centralized quarantine).
However, the mass of the population disagrees (some loud protesters regardless).
***
Trump's coronavirus response was not particularly bad by the standards of non-East Asians, but that's not the impression Americans got thanks to his continuous disastrous optics. He has acquired a reputation as a COVID dissident, most Americans seem to be under the incorrect impression that Europe did better with containing coronavirus than the US. Getting infected the day after mocking Biden for wearing a big mask epitomized the cringe. Also, unlike Bolsonaro, whose aggressive COVID skepticism was at least balanced out by a generous UBI program, hardly anybody is going to be moved by the measly 2x $1,200 that have been handed out as helicopter money.
Also, it needs be mentioned that no political leader has paid a political price for a hardcore response to coronavirus. E.g., Jacinda Ardern was reelected with record numbers.Replies: @Matt Forney, @utu
I’m skeptical of polls claiming people want a lockdown because of revealed preference. Very few people obey COVID dictates if given a choice. I’ve been in four countries since March (Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia), and only once was I yelled at by a policeman for not wearing a mask when I was supposed to (in North Macedonia, and that’s all he did, yell). Everyone back in the U.S. says the same thing; majority of Americans ignore mask laws, police generally don’t enforce them. Friends in Hungary, Poland, Greece etc. say the same thing. Last week, Parisians were stampeding to get out after Macron announced a new lockdown.
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I’ve seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I’d rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn’t compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them “South Sea poms” for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn’t really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.
extrapolation about anything.
"Friends in Hungary, Poland, Greece etc. say the same thing." - You should consider that people who do not care for the the reputation loss due to associating with you are not really representative of any country. You need to divide your poll results by the deplorability coefficient which in your and your 'friends' case is huge.
Really? Matt Forney makes some good points about the unreliability of polling but I don't think this comment is correct, and there's no way he could know it from the Balkans. His relatives may tell him people aren't wearing masks but my relative in a Southern Republican state says virtually everybody is adhering to mask rules/laws, so where does that leave us? The general impression I get from TV & online footage in US is that there is a high level of compliance.
* https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-back-national-lockdown-coronavirus-poll-1532914
* https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/09/23/brits-support-new-lockdown-rules-many-think-they-d
I don't support lockdowns these days, because they seem to have limited efficacy and white people countries have demonstrated they are not seriously committed to suppressing the coronavirus anyway (as evidenced by, say, the consistent refusal to do centralized quarantine).
However, the mass of the population disagrees (some loud protesters regardless).
***
Trump's coronavirus response was not particularly bad by the standards of non-East Asians, but that's not the impression Americans got thanks to his continuous disastrous optics. He has acquired a reputation as a COVID dissident, most Americans seem to be under the incorrect impression that Europe did better with containing coronavirus than the US. Getting infected the day after mocking Biden for wearing a big mask epitomized the cringe. Also, unlike Bolsonaro, whose aggressive COVID skepticism was at least balanced out by a generous UBI program, hardly anybody is going to be moved by the measly 2x $1,200 that have been handed out as helicopter money.
Also, it needs be mentioned that no political leader has paid a political price for a hardcore response to coronavirus. E.g., Jacinda Ardern was reelected with record numbers.Replies: @Matt Forney, @utu
“I don’t support lockdowns these days, because they seem to have limited efficacy and white people countries have demonstrated they are not seriously committed…” – Two separate things. Nothing is more efficacious in bringing R0 below one than a lockdown. That people are not seriously committed is another thing.
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I've seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I'd rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn't compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them "South Sea poms" for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn't really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.Replies: @utu, @dfordoom, @Europe Europa, @Matra
Albania, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia are not countries that I would use as a base for
extrapolation about anything.
“Friends in Hungary, Poland, Greece etc. say the same thing.” – You should consider that people who do not care for the the reputation loss due to associating with you are not really representative of any country. You need to divide your poll results by the deplorability coefficient which in your and your ‘friends’ case is huge.
I just don’t trust the the polls in the upper midwest. I think PA and WI will be close and a well organized Dem rigging plan will give them to Biden/Harris.
https://www.270towin.com/maps/6k4JZ
A bit difficult and I made a leap of faith of assigning MN to the Team Red but here you are. Hope your aggregation can beat the lame Superforecasters vote that mainly seem to copy whatever they read on 538.
I see this as politically unlikely. I think it requires certain demographics to start with – ME and NE are two of the whitest states. If you take more diverse states, people will see it as ceding power to their rivals. And imagine, if the election map was district level for the nation, on a race that people get excited about, it would be putting an uncomfortable focus on race.
It’s interesting to think about in the abstract though because it would change the incentive structure on a lot of levels.
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I've seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I'd rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn't compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them "South Sea poms" for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn't really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.Replies: @utu, @dfordoom, @Europe Europa, @Matra
Do we? Strangely enough I’ve lived in Australia my whole life and I have never ever heard New Zealanders called South Sea poms.
While I can't specifically claim to recall the term "South Sea Pom " being used , I'm sure if someone did use the phrase many Australians wouldn't blink .
NZers have always struck me as being more pro government minded than Australians which I ( among many ) have always put down to NZ historically being a more Protestant British society ( ie without the sizeable Catholic Irish contrarian element of Australia which has historically raised two fingers to British style rule )
Will be ironic if they come out in big numbers for the first time only to vote for Trump.Replies: @Tusk
Considering the changes within racial groups, I think this is likely. It’s also why I think MI, MN, and WI will probably go with Joe as Trump has lost out with Whites. Maybe he’ll squeak by in WI and MI but I’m doubtful on MN. His hispanic support and the data out of Florida show he’s got strong support there so those saying FL is going blue, in my eyes, are straight up wrong.
Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina all solid for Trump. Arizona by a nose. PA by a nose, and lawsuits.
Heartbreaker in Minnesota as Somalia makes its vote count. More rioting anyway. Twin Cities blame Trump.
North Carolina went Trump in 2016, and I don’t see any reason for that to change, except that fraud could be an issue — the Dems there are still hungry. But Trump has a lot of fans in NC.
California will be closer than the Party will ever admit, but still no cigar for Trump. Numerous packed drop-boxes inexplicably found floating and on fire in the SF bay. GOP blamed, video evidence posted.
A potential shocker could be Texas, but I don’t think the data, or recent voting patterns, suggest that. Also, Hispanics don’t all hate Trump. Quite a few of them like him very much. (This could even put New Mexico and Nevada in play.)
If Georgia flips — which I very much doubt — it will be because of Asian, Hispanic, and West Coast immigration, but I don’t think those numbers are significant enough yet (maybe next time), and I think the blacks may vote Republican more than they have since Reconstruction ended.
I’m guessing the demographics do it’s magic on the west coast, and on top of that Trump loses the senior vote due to covid and drops NC, VA and MI.
Plus you have the mail in fraud going, it wouldn’t surprise me if even more swing states go the dems way. I still think that PA is in the bag for Trump, Ohio too, but it won’t be enough.
I don’t see Biden taking FL and PA.
Unless fraud, but FL hispanics are conservatives and Biden lost PA with his anti fracking and anti oil stance. Still even that places Trump behind so in general I agree with the outcome.
Do not worry, the greatest minds of the internets are already concentrated on things that matter.
Will Hunter Dong Truthers become in the 2020’s what were 9/11 Truthers in 2000’s? 🙂
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/jmd2l2/hunters_cock_size_is_being_inflated_for_unknown/
There’s the elite gender inversion conspiracy theory, which postulates alot of the high-profile people we know and love (in politics, media and hollywood) are part of a cult (luciferian) which takes great pride in transgendering their children. (As tribute to the “sexless/Genderless” fallen angels they worship)
Michelle Obama is an often named example, but there’s a few others. The men are just as suspect though, and what better way to sell a transgender man for a real man than to have sex scandals and shit like this in the media?
Actually its Epstein whose victims testified in court had an egg shaped penis, whatever that means.
Even more bizarrely Weinstein victims testified he is some kind of hermaphrodite and has a vagina, penis and no testes!
Trumps old, but you’re right he has an odd shape for a fat dude.
Yes, some people in this world have a very big stake in Biden losing …
https://twitter.com/mikercarpenter/status/1318330067026673666
https://twitter.com/mikercarpenter/status/1318327672448102402
So its Biden huh… This better not be another 2016.
https://twitter.com/qorachius/status/1322742735032516609Replies: @SIMP simp
Texas for Biden? No wonder this guy can’t figure out how to attach a file.
Ardern and Moon Jae-In passed
Ardern’s new foreign minister:
Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I've seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I'd rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn't compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them "South Sea poms" for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn't really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.Replies: @utu, @dfordoom, @Europe Europa, @Matra
I wouldn’t call the UK a very conformist society, which I think is what you were implying. British politics is very tribal and also very regional as well, more so than even American politics I’d say. Many if not most voters in the UK are life long Tory or Labour voters, and would never vote for the other. Often generations of families support the same party.
There’s a significant amount of Labour and Tory voters in the UK who absolutely despise each other and see the other parties’ voters as practically sub-human.
I can’t imagine the majority of British people rallying around one PM in the conformist way that most New Zealanders have around Jacinda Ardern.
To be honest the highly conformist nature of New Zealanders seems quite alien to me as a British person, Australian politics and society seems more familiar to me.
Ardern's new foreign minister:
https://cdni.rt.com/files/2020.11/l/5f9fb20c85f5403721221322.jpgReplies: @Blinky Bill
Manchin opposes ending the filibuster. Even with 52 or more seats I’m skeptical that Dems would pack the court (they very well might not even kill the filibuster, as they need to preserve an excuse for why they can’t do things that their base wants but their corporate donors don’t). Biden is an institutionalist who clearly opposes court packing: He has said he will appoint a commission to study the issue, which is typically the kiss of death. A lot of the packing talk may be a tactic intended to pressure ACB not to overturn the ACA.
Servant, I do not endorse the Compact as described, but adoption of it does not “undermine the foundations of our society”. Rather it will fundamentally change the way that the executive branch of the government is selected. Government and society are not yet one and the same. Maybe if that compact is widely enough adopted, perhaps. I wish our society would not tolerate the authoritarian, foolish, and knavish government we currently enjoy, but… we get the government we vote for, good and hard!
There's no scenario in which Trump wins Minnesota without also winning Wisconsin.Replies: @TomSchmidt
In 1984, when MN was the only state that voted for Mondale, it had two Republican senators. They’re an odd, prickly lot. The Democratic Party is the DFL Party, for Democratic/Farmer/Labor. With the tectonic shift in parties underway, I expect many of the FL constituents to move to Trump. The white suburbanite D’s also have a quarrel with their in-state leaders. The Independent Republicans strike me as mostly Mitt Romney types, but they’ve had a few with spines.
You are doubtless more familiar with WI than I.
Care to place a bet on it? If MN has a higher percentage of R votes than WI, you’ll donate to my charity ($10?) and if WI has a higher percentage I donate to yours? You can expect me to act not in mala fide on that, Matt.
My charity: the Metropolitan Opera, the foremost conservative organization in NYC.
[img]https://www.270towin.com/map-images/DQvN9[/img]
Our picks look identical except for Michigan. When I flip Michigan I get a Biden win 272 – 266.
I’ve noticed that a lot of Trump supporters explain away his very poor performance in the opinion polls by saying that a significant proportion of Trump voters are scared to admit they are going to vote for him so they’re not reflected in the polls, but I don’t find that very credible. It’s not 2016 any more, Trump has been president for 4 years. Are many Trump supporters really scared to say they support him now? Especially to a pollster?
If anything I think the opposite is more likely, there’s a significant percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who have been spooked by the BLM riots and Trump’s terrible handling of the pandemic and actually will vote for Biden, because they now want a more establishment figure in the White House, but are scared to openly admit that.
But.
(1) This effect would now need to be about twice as big for Trump to have a reasonable chance of scraping a win. It might be bigger, but I doubt it's twice as big.
(2) Pollsters are not idiots and dozens of them are not going to coordinate to dump Trump's numbers and wreck their own reputations just because they hate Trump and conservatives (rightoid conspiracies regardless), they studied their mistakes in 2016 and are taking greater efforts to adjust for the shy Trump voters.Replies: @anonymous coward, @reiner Tor, @Excal
In the English-speaking world the most conformist nations are NZ (Antipodes), Canada (N America), and probably Scotland & Ireland (British Isles) – though both Scotland & Ireland have a minority rebel streak NZ & Canada do not have. I’d say England is somewhere in between the two extremes, varying by region and class. The least conformist would be the USA and Northern Ireland (and maybe one or two regions of Australia?). The most conformist are the ‘little brothers’ living next to the bigger ones. Scots also have played a disproportionately greater role in the development of NZ & Canada than their bigger neighbours. Make of that what you will.
If anything I think the opposite is more likely, there's a significant percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who have been spooked by the BLM riots and Trump's terrible handling of the pandemic and actually will vote for Biden, because they now want a more establishment figure in the White House, but are scared to openly admit that.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Tusk
I think that’s credible, especially amongst the “Hajnalcels” of the Rustbelt.
But.
(1) This effect would now need to be about twice as big for Trump to have a reasonable chance of scraping a win. It might be bigger, but I doubt it’s twice as big.
(2) Pollsters are not idiots and dozens of them are not going to coordinate to dump Trump’s numbers and wreck their own reputations just because they hate Trump and conservatives (rightoid conspiracies regardless), they studied their mistakes in 2016 and are taking greater efforts to adjust for the shy Trump voters.
I don’t know if I believe it, but certainly I have seen a situation where the discrepancy was already noticed by everyone to the point of hurting reputations, and yet it still persisted.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
They're probably also somewhat constricted by methods and sampling that happened to work in the past, but not so much now. For big, historically successful organisations, change can be tough.
We'll probably know soon enough though ..
BTW, and this might be of interest to some given how much I’ve shilled him on this site – Egor Kholmogorov is a BIGLY champion of Trump and is convinced he’ll win unless the Dems truly go overboard on fraud.
https://www.facebook.com/holmogorov.egor/posts/10225128597107569
Yes, anecdotes, not data, but everything I've seen suggests that people in the U.S. and Europe will signal their concern about COVID and then go back to doing what they want short of being ordered around at gunpoint (which I'd rather they not do for reasons that I think are perfectly rational).
I also wouldn't compare New Zealand to the U.S.; New Zealanders are far more conformist than Americans (Australians call them "South Sea poms" for their comparatively greater love for the U.K.) and Ardern was already moving the country in an aggressively totalitarian direction pre-COVID (see: her response to the Christchurch killings). COVID also doesn't really feature in the U.S. election, at least not in the states Biden needs to win.Replies: @utu, @dfordoom, @Europe Europa, @Matra
Everyone back in the U.S. says the same thing; majority of Americans ignore mask laws,
Really? Matt Forney makes some good points about the unreliability of polling but I don’t think this comment is correct, and there’s no way he could know it from the Balkans. His relatives may tell him people aren’t wearing masks but my relative in a Southern Republican state says virtually everybody is adhering to mask rules/laws, so where does that leave us? The general impression I get from TV & online footage in US is that there is a high level of compliance.
Well, he has already moved there officially.
Correct, he was also elected to build a wall and he did do that, and to keep out Muslim refugees which he also did to a very large extent. While perfect, overall he has been better at doing what he said he would do than have been most politicians.
Trump’s deal would also replace the current family-driven immigration system with a points-based one as they have in Canada. So there would be fewer new immigrants coming in (the amnestied “dreamers” would take those spaces) and the new ones who would come in, would be selected for their skills.
I doubt that. To me it is nothing but an attempt to avoid having to go through the amendment process and I think the courts would view it that way. I think it is unconstitutional.
Can't get excited about electoral map-making because the ephemeral nature of demographics, the college itself, and Trump's shortcomings, but I'll offer this tip: Nebraska and Maine split their votes, on a district level. I think Biden will win one in Nebraska and Trump one in Maine.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Servant of Gla'aki, @TomSchmidt, @davidgmillsatty
I think it would not survive a Constitutional challenge. It is obviously an attempt to get around amending the Constitution and I think the courts would see it that way.
California reclaiming its independent spirit and the south cucked beyond all hope.
Yep, my take exactly (although I cucked the opposite side of the south from you).
But.
(1) This effect would now need to be about twice as big for Trump to have a reasonable chance of scraping a win. It might be bigger, but I doubt it's twice as big.
(2) Pollsters are not idiots and dozens of them are not going to coordinate to dump Trump's numbers and wreck their own reputations just because they hate Trump and conservatives (rightoid conspiracies regardless), they studied their mistakes in 2016 and are taking greater efforts to adjust for the shy Trump voters.Replies: @anonymous coward, @reiner Tor, @Excal
The pollsters aren’t here for objective science. They’re on a payroll to deliver the customer’s desired results, and the customer here isn’t Trump.
Allegedly the state-level polling errors of 2016 (undersampling of WWC voters) have been fixed, but I’m influenced by Akinokure’s argument that the shy Trump effect is stronger in 2020. That’s why I have Minnesota as Trump-country this time, which also assumes there will be a backlash vote instead of the frontlash predicted by Nemets.
NV could go Trump but I don’t believe it will as demographics there don’t favor a shy Trump phenomenon. Trump will likely hold onto AZ and FL owing to improved hispanic support.
If anything I think the opposite is more likely, there's a significant percentage of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who have been spooked by the BLM riots and Trump's terrible handling of the pandemic and actually will vote for Biden, because they now want a more establishment figure in the White House, but are scared to openly admit that.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Tusk
It’s clearly more taboo to be a Trump voter now than in 2016, so the effect is amplified.
But.
(1) This effect would now need to be about twice as big for Trump to have a reasonable chance of scraping a win. It might be bigger, but I doubt it's twice as big.
(2) Pollsters are not idiots and dozens of them are not going to coordinate to dump Trump's numbers and wreck their own reputations just because they hate Trump and conservatives (rightoid conspiracies regardless), they studied their mistakes in 2016 and are taking greater efforts to adjust for the shy Trump voters.Replies: @anonymous coward, @reiner Tor, @Excal
For what it’s worth, in Hungary in the 2000s there was a consistent gap between the leftist and rightist pollsters, and no one knew the reason. Each side overestimated their own chances, and one of the leftist pollsters clearly lost business as a result. Incidentally I knew a guy who worked there, and said it’s pretty difficult to measure such things. Most people don’t like answering such questions, and even the poll takers are usually just college students who cannot be trusted and sometimes just fill out the data themselves with fictitious things. He said (could’ve been exaggerating as it was while half drunk over a few beers) that half the questionnaires are thrown out because they suspect the poll taker didn’t even properly ask the subjects. Basically his explanation was that the “leftist” pollsters had leftist people working for them who couldn’t leave their skins and kept filtering the data through their biases.
I don’t know if I believe it, but certainly I have seen a situation where the discrepancy was already noticed by everyone to the point of hurting reputations, and yet it still persisted.
I don’t know if I believe it, but certainly I have seen a situation where the discrepancy was already noticed by everyone to the point of hurting reputations, and yet it still persisted.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
In fairness, polling science is a more developed in the US c.2020 than in Hungary c.2000s. But, thanks for an interesting/contrary perspective!
As I said, I don’t know if I could believe that explanation. The other and easier explanation is that they were simply hacks. Could happen in the USA, too. The mechanism might be similar to how the media or think tanks could be persistently wrong and get away with it. Certainly they can keep their handshakeworthy reputations. In fact, they’d lose it if they were accurate. Paul Krugman complained about it: those who were wrong about Iraq kept their nice reputations, while those who were correct lost at least some of it and kinda never got it back. They were still the crazy extremists who opposed the consensus long after it was proven beyond doubt that they were right to oppose the consensus, which was wrong all along.
If I follow my reasoning from October 2016 the Hunter's files and Greenwald appearance may serve the same role as James Comey on October 28, 2016. The message was to media to deflate the polls and prepare public for Trump's win.
What this means in practice is mass immigration of scamming Indian diploma mill graduates. Short of everyone in Israel moving to the U.S., or mass sub-Saharan African immigration, this is about the worst possible scenario for the U.S. I would take Mexican drug dealers over “high skilled” Indians any day of the week. Don’t bet on there being less overall immigrants either.
From the perspective of upper middle class who vote for the Democrats this is worse than the current system that favors Latino chain migration, it will mean that cheap labor will be replaced by competition.
Here are the source countries for Canada. 25% are from India:
https://www.cicnews.com/2020/02/a-quarter-of-canadas-immigrants-arrived-from-india-in-2019-0213700.html#gs.kcpedt
Total New Immigrants in 2019 341,180
1. India 85,585
2. China 30,260
3. Philippines 27,815
4. Nigeria 12,595
5. United States of America 10,800
6. Pakistan 10,790
7. Syria 10,120
8. Eritrea 7,025
9. Korea, Republic of 6,110
10. Iran 6,055
Texas for Biden. Trump loses overall. Bigly to coin a phrase.
Biden conceded Texas to Trump when he said he was going to make everyone in the fracking industry jobless.
Trump wins Bigly overall.
PEACE 😇
Texas is an oil & gas state.
Biden conceded Texas to Trump when he said he was going to make everyone in the fracking industry jobless.
Trump wins Bigly overall.
PEACE 😇
Unfortunately. Also, Chinese, as in Canada. And Eastern Europeans.
From the perspective of upper middle class who vote for the Democrats this is worse than the current system that favors Latino chain migration, it will mean that cheap labor will be replaced by competition.
Here are the source countries for Canada. 25% are from India:
https://www.cicnews.com/2020/02/a-quarter-of-canadas-immigrants-arrived-from-india-in-2019-0213700.html#gs.kcpedt
Total New Immigrants in 2019 341,180
1. India 85,585
2. China 30,260
3. Philippines 27,815
4. Nigeria 12,595
5. United States of America 10,800
6. Pakistan 10,790
7. Syria 10,120
8. Eritrea 7,025
9. Korea, Republic of 6,110
10. Iran 6,055
2016 polls got the result right in states Trump lost but Trump outperformed polls by 5% where he was expected to win and by 2% in swing states. This tells me it was not the ‘shy Trump voter’ effect because one would expect it to manifest itself in states Trump lost as well. I would rather side with the hypothesis that some bias and hard effort to produce desirable results for Hillary was at play. What was the mechanism I do not know? Is it possible that in swing states Trump won a cheating took place, I do not know but I thought of it. But I would agree with AK that this year when polls show much higher Biden advantage than Hillary had a chance for Trump winning is much smaller. But if Trump wins this would be the most devastating blow to the remnants of trust people still have in American election system.
If I follow my reasoning from October 2016 the Hunter’s files and Greenwald appearance may serve the same role as James Comey on October 28, 2016. The message was to media to deflate the polls and prepare public for Trump’s win.
Ok, so Trump is better than any available alternative. That would be good enough if the situation was not as dire as it is, but the minor adjustments and reforms will not make much of a difference. Maybe a 5-10 year delay, but America is going to turn into a Third World country with nukes and a very smart, increasingly isolated elite. With dysfunctional labor markets, persistent crime, inability to form middle class families, with different ethnic groups at each others’ throats.
A delay is better than an immediate third-worldization as Democrats clearly desire. Regarding ‘skills based‘ immigration, that is one of the main drivers of recent US labor market collapse so Trump advocating it a sign of him not being serious.
To my best knowledge US is the only large country where foreigners are treated better in every way possible way than the young Americans who are supposed to compete against them. That is insane and no society can function like that. No society where a large percentage of its young males are made redundant and cannot form families can survive for long. Trump was elected to address it, maybe even fix it – he didn’t and he gives all signs of simply letting the labor market destruction for young people to continue. The ‘skills based‘ is a scam and he knows it. Biden is much worse, but maybe a sharp shock is what US needs to wake up.
Also, an interesting phenomenon about America’s hollowing of the middle and working classes is the rise of the upper middle class (not only in wealth but also in number). America is not coming to resemble a Mexico with a 10% elite but rather a place with a 25% to 35% elite. This is worse than a stable prosperous middle but I can’t think of a historical analogue suggesting the likelihood of mass unrest or insurrection.
Below the 25%-35% will be an increasingly Castizo lower middle to working class, another 45% or so. Their fate will probably not be desperate, only stagnant. Like that of lower middle class people in France. Or maybe above average Serbs. There won’t be much social mobility but enough to relieve the pressure.
The overall picture is not great but far from Third World. Such an America will be bound to be eclipsed by China but will retain the population, military, technology, and functional elites to hold onto a secure second place - it will not go the way of Russia, or Britain before it.Crime in America is well within post-Soviet norms. It is mostly a black problem. Latinos tend to behave themselves in this side of the border, even in areas where they have super-majorities such as El Paso (which due to lack of Blacks is ironically one of the safest large American cities). Their influx actually diluted the crime caused by Blacks. With increased immigration we can expect more noise and more litter on the streets but not extreme crime.This is not the Balkans. The only serious ethnic problems are between Blacks and everyone else. As our host Unz has demonstrated, Latinos and Whites tend to settle in with each other okay. Latinos aren’t engaged in the BLM nonsense, etc. Blacks are about 13% of the population and this is not increasing.Prior to Covid, under Trump USA experienced record low unemployment. Things were worse for unskilled people, not skilled ones (upper middle class has been growing and getting richer).It had worked in the USA because there were enough jobs to go around for most people, enough to prevent instability. By limiting immigration of unskilled labor and tariffing China, Trump began the process of improving the lot of unskilled native labor. These had the highest income gains during his presidency. Of course this has been unnoticed and ignored by the mass media who come from and write for mostly the upper middle class.Under Trump income gains were greatest among the working classes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html
What has set this rise apart is that it’s the first time during an economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half — in fact, about twice as much, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs. The trend began in 2018 and has continued into this year, and could be signaling a stronger economy than many experts think.Replies: @Beckow
My forecast: Trump 290 with same map as 2016 less Michigan
Here’s the winning map:
AK Final Prediction
Electoral map remains unchanged:
Raw percentages:
Biden 51.10%
Trump 47.07%
IOW, everyone who can let vote fraud sail on by relatively unchallenged is a Dem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote for Trump; what matters is how many votes are counted for Biden.
Every time I watched my ballot disappear into the trusty Diebold machine when I voted in the states, I wondered who I really voted for.Replies: @AP, @Adam Smith
If you can’t trust a trusty Diebold machine, who can you trust?
☮
I made the same prediction a week ago. I’d bet on this being within 20 points of the final outcome for Trump (range 259-299).
Biden flips Texas. And it may not even be close. Hurricanes, Covid-19, new voters. And China Grove. Oo-hoo.
But.
(1) This effect would now need to be about twice as big for Trump to have a reasonable chance of scraping a win. It might be bigger, but I doubt it's twice as big.
(2) Pollsters are not idiots and dozens of them are not going to coordinate to dump Trump's numbers and wreck their own reputations just because they hate Trump and conservatives (rightoid conspiracies regardless), they studied their mistakes in 2016 and are taking greater efforts to adjust for the shy Trump voters.Replies: @anonymous coward, @reiner Tor, @Excal
If there are significantly more Trump voters this time, and a lot of them are shy, it could be twice as big. Being a known Trump voter can seriously harm your career in many US companies, or so a lot of people think. It seems incredible, but it’s quite real.
If they were going to lose a lot of sales by being wrong, I think that would already have happened. I think they’re selling what their customers want, and in this case, I strongly suspect both sides want the polls biased toward Biden.
They’re probably also somewhat constricted by methods and sampling that happened to work in the past, but not so much now. For big, historically successful organisations, change can be tough.
We’ll probably know soon enough though ..
Biden 290 – 248 Trump.
Biden takes back MI, WI, PA and flips AZ, Trump holds everything else, collapse in northern white vote for Trump causes him to lose the 3 northern states and bleeding in Phoenix suburbs not being offset by small town votes, as there are no voters in small town Arizona relatively speaking. In other states, Biden’s gains with whites offset with Trump gains among Hispanics, this will be especially true in Florida.
In Senate, GOP holds 51-49, loses Colorado, Arizona and Maine, flips Alabama for a net loss of 2 seats.
Like you I’m Australian ( of many generations )
While I can’t specifically claim to recall the term “South Sea Pom ” being used , I’m sure if someone did use the phrase many Australians wouldn’t blink .
NZers have always struck me as being more pro government minded than Australians which I ( among many ) have always put down to NZ historically being a more Protestant British society ( ie without the sizeable Catholic Irish contrarian element of Australia which has historically raised two fingers to British style rule )
I think it would be appropriate to close predictions at this time.
Your idea of “Third World” seems to be too broad. USA currently has a per capita GDP that is about 30% higher than that of France or UK, and nearly double that of Portugal and Poland. Mexico itself has a GDP per capita that is about the same as that of Serbia. However it has greater income inequality than Serbia. If the USA sinks towards Mexico (due to demographics, inherited institutions, infrastructure and human capital it will of course never go nearly all the way) it will become as poor as France, with income inequality perhaps as in Chile (that is, higher than Europe and the present USA but not as in Mexico).
Also, an interesting phenomenon about America’s hollowing of the middle and working classes is the rise of the upper middle class (not only in wealth but also in number). America is not coming to resemble a Mexico with a 10% elite but rather a place with a 25% to 35% elite. This is worse than a stable prosperous middle but I can’t think of a historical analogue suggesting the likelihood of mass unrest or insurrection.
Below the 25%-35% will be an increasingly Castizo lower middle to working class, another 45% or so. Their fate will probably not be desperate, only stagnant. Like that of lower middle class people in France. Or maybe above average Serbs. There won’t be much social mobility but enough to relieve the pressure.
The overall picture is not great but far from Third World. Such an America will be bound to be eclipsed by China but will retain the population, military, technology, and functional elites to hold onto a secure second place – it will not go the way of Russia, or Britain before it.
Crime in America is well within post-Soviet norms. It is mostly a black problem. Latinos tend to behave themselves in this side of the border, even in areas where they have super-majorities such as El Paso (which due to lack of Blacks is ironically one of the safest large American cities). Their influx actually diluted the crime caused by Blacks. With increased immigration we can expect more noise and more litter on the streets but not extreme crime.
This is not the Balkans. The only serious ethnic problems are between Blacks and everyone else. As our host Unz has demonstrated, Latinos and Whites tend to settle in with each other okay. Latinos aren’t engaged in the BLM nonsense, etc. Blacks are about 13% of the population and this is not increasing.
Prior to Covid, under Trump USA experienced record low unemployment. Things were worse for unskilled people, not skilled ones (upper middle class has been growing and getting richer).
It had worked in the USA because there were enough jobs to go around for most people, enough to prevent instability. By limiting immigration of unskilled labor and tariffing China, Trump began the process of improving the lot of unskilled native labor. These had the highest income gains during his presidency. Of course this has been unnoticed and ignored by the mass media who come from and write for mostly the upper middle class.
Under Trump income gains were greatest among the working classes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html
What has set this rise apart is that it’s the first time during an economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half — in fact, about twice as much, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs. The trend began in 2018 and has continued into this year, and could be signaling a stronger economy than many experts think.
Low conviction.
Looks like the only maps here with a red Virginia were jokes. Absolutely everyone else has Virginia blue, including me.
But Virginia voted GOP from 1968, for Nixon, through 2004, for Bush, which he won by 262k votes over John Kerry.
In the next three elections, Virginia went blue: 2008, Obama over McCain by 234k; 2012, Obama over Romney by 149k; 2016, Clinton over Trump by 212k.
Everyone (including me) has been assuming that this shift to blue is permanent. But what if it isn’t? None of the Dem margins were greater than the 2004 Bush margin, including Clinton’s. McCain and Romney were both pretty weak candidates, but it was still close.
It’s true that Hilary got to 234k — but that’s not as well as Bush did in ’04. And Trump was an unknown quantity in that election. It could be that people have made up their minds about him since then.
And of course, demographics have shifted since 2004, but .. what if everybody forgot about Virginia? And what if people are really that sick of Northam?
A Virginia flip wouldn’t guarantee a win for Trump, but unless anything on the West Coast goes red, or Texas goes blue, that would be the upset of the night for me.
Also, an interesting phenomenon about America’s hollowing of the middle and working classes is the rise of the upper middle class (not only in wealth but also in number). America is not coming to resemble a Mexico with a 10% elite but rather a place with a 25% to 35% elite. This is worse than a stable prosperous middle but I can’t think of a historical analogue suggesting the likelihood of mass unrest or insurrection.
Below the 25%-35% will be an increasingly Castizo lower middle to working class, another 45% or so. Their fate will probably not be desperate, only stagnant. Like that of lower middle class people in France. Or maybe above average Serbs. There won’t be much social mobility but enough to relieve the pressure.
The overall picture is not great but far from Third World. Such an America will be bound to be eclipsed by China but will retain the population, military, technology, and functional elites to hold onto a secure second place - it will not go the way of Russia, or Britain before it.Crime in America is well within post-Soviet norms. It is mostly a black problem. Latinos tend to behave themselves in this side of the border, even in areas where they have super-majorities such as El Paso (which due to lack of Blacks is ironically one of the safest large American cities). Their influx actually diluted the crime caused by Blacks. With increased immigration we can expect more noise and more litter on the streets but not extreme crime.This is not the Balkans. The only serious ethnic problems are between Blacks and everyone else. As our host Unz has demonstrated, Latinos and Whites tend to settle in with each other okay. Latinos aren’t engaged in the BLM nonsense, etc. Blacks are about 13% of the population and this is not increasing.Prior to Covid, under Trump USA experienced record low unemployment. Things were worse for unskilled people, not skilled ones (upper middle class has been growing and getting richer).It had worked in the USA because there were enough jobs to go around for most people, enough to prevent instability. By limiting immigration of unskilled labor and tariffing China, Trump began the process of improving the lot of unskilled native labor. These had the highest income gains during his presidency. Of course this has been unnoticed and ignored by the mass media who come from and write for mostly the upper middle class.Under Trump income gains were greatest among the working classes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/13/workers-at-lower-end-of-pay-scale-getting-most-benefit-from-rising-wages.html
What has set this rise apart is that it’s the first time during an economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half — in fact, about twice as much, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs. The trend began in 2018 and has continued into this year, and could be signaling a stronger economy than many experts think.Replies: @Beckow
Possibly. But at this point Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta and even probably Phoenix would qualify. It is about the demographics and mentality (‘=rules exist to serve the privileged, not to be observed by all‘). The material well-being comes and goes, there are plenty of prosperous enclaves in the Third World.
Your GNP comparisons are way off. US counts as GNP ‘activities’ what others don’t count, a large part of the differential comes down to that. E.g. US GNP famously consists of “8% GNP” derived by assigning an ‘imputed value to home ownership‘ – basically an assumed rent payment when there is none. And 15% of US GNP is ‘financial transactions‘ of dubious value, in EU it averages 3-5%. There is real heft in US GNP, but not as much as your numbers would suggest. The real living standards are much closer as you can see when you actually travel around, Detroit supposedly 3-times richer than Budapest? I don’t think so.
Good for Trump. But a real leader would assure that opportunities in white collar skilled jobs are available to young American people. Trump continued to restrict opportunities for Americans by importing about 1 million people per year, most slated into these jobs (H1b’s, etc…). Younger Americans burdened with large student debt and not being of the right ‘colour’ were displaced by greedy employers with Trump’s help. That’s probably why Trump is done. Think about it and not just about your own narrow existence.
If you don’t like GNP look at concrete measures such as consumption, wages, etc. Average annual wage in the USA in 2019 was $63,000 - in France $41,400, UK $39,400. Adjusting for cost of living doesn’t make much of a difference for Western Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wageDetroit is America’s equivalent of a gypsy encampment. It probably has much more shooting than a Hungarian gypsy encampment but it is probably more than 3-times richer than one. It may even be not much poorer (materially, not culturally) than Hungary overall. Average annual per capita income of residents in the city of Detroit is about $17,400. In Hungary it is $11,500 - but adjusted for cost of living, $24,400. So in purely material terms, the difference between an average Hungarian and an American poorest of the poor sub population is like the difference between the average American and the average Frenchman.
:::::::::::::
So again, even if America’s economy were to decline by 30% it would simply just achieve the material level of France or the UK, with more income inequality than in those countries. Not Third World.Replies: @AltanBakshi, @Beckow
And there are poor enclaves in non Third World countries. Hungary is something like 8-10% gypsy, not much less than the USA’s 13% African-American population, and gypsy shanties are worse than how most American Blacks live. Parts of Philadelphia, Milwaukee etc. are no more representative of Pennsylvania or Wisconsin than are gypsy encampments, of Hungary.
Interesting point, but does not change the big picture of US being about 30% richer than most of Western Europe (at least places like France and UK, less so for Germany).
If you don’t like GNP look at concrete measures such as consumption, wages, etc. Average annual wage in the USA in 2019 was $63,000 – in France $41,400, UK $39,400. Adjusting for cost of living doesn’t make much of a difference for Western Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage
Detroit is America’s equivalent of a gypsy encampment. It probably has much more shooting than a Hungarian gypsy encampment but it is probably more than 3-times richer than one. It may even be not much poorer (materially, not culturally) than Hungary overall. Average annual per capita income of residents in the city of Detroit is about $17,400. In Hungary it is $11,500 – but adjusted for cost of living, $24,400. So in purely material terms, the difference between an average Hungarian and an American poorest of the poor sub population is like the difference between the average American and the average Frenchman.
:::::::::::::
So again, even if America’s economy were to decline by 30% it would simply just achieve the material level of France or the UK, with more income inequality than in those countries. Not Third World.
Your map is identical to mine.
If you don’t like GNP look at concrete measures such as consumption, wages, etc. Average annual wage in the USA in 2019 was $63,000 - in France $41,400, UK $39,400. Adjusting for cost of living doesn’t make much of a difference for Western Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wageDetroit is America’s equivalent of a gypsy encampment. It probably has much more shooting than a Hungarian gypsy encampment but it is probably more than 3-times richer than one. It may even be not much poorer (materially, not culturally) than Hungary overall. Average annual per capita income of residents in the city of Detroit is about $17,400. In Hungary it is $11,500 - but adjusted for cost of living, $24,400. So in purely material terms, the difference between an average Hungarian and an American poorest of the poor sub population is like the difference between the average American and the average Frenchman.
:::::::::::::
So again, even if America’s economy were to decline by 30% it would simply just achieve the material level of France or the UK, with more income inequality than in those countries. Not Third World.Replies: @AltanBakshi, @Beckow
Still people in UK and France have much cheaper health care and more paid vacations than Americans.
And they pay much higher taxes on their already-lower incomes for that cheaper healthcare. But longer vacations is a very good point.
Healthcare spending per capita in the USA is highest among the OECD countries. USA spends over 3000 dollars more per capita in healthcare than Switzerland and about 5000 dollars more than the Sweden, Finland Netherlands do. I have no experience about the American health care, but I really dont believe that they have a better health care system than Scandinavia has, at least for average American it cant be better.
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
Then you forget that the university education is free in France and Scotland and that the students get various welfare benefits, even in England its cheaper than in the USA.
About the taxes? Middle class Americans pay by percentage almost as much taxes as average Europeans pay, its not the 80s anymore, rich people in the USA pay much less taxes than they do in most European countries. But yes average wages are higher in the US than in Western Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage
Germany: 34.71
Finland: 28.81
France: 15.43(Sweden wasn’t listed)In spite of Americans having such unhealthy lifestyles, thanks to the healthcare system they have the highest overall cancer recovery rate in the world:https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-survival-rates-by-country#:~:text=Cancer%20Survival%20Rates%20by%20Country%202020%20%20,%20%2096.10%25%20%2050%20more%20rows%20Of course, it is true that America’s system is less cost-efficient.This is true, but unless someone has perhaps five or more children it isn’t enough to compensate for a lifetime of lower wages and higher taxes on those lower wages. And USA does have scholarships for very bright kids.Not only rich people, in the USA also upper middle class people such as physicians, engineers, chemists, pharmacists, skilled workers such as plumbers, RNs, pay lower income taxes. For store cashiers or hotel cleaners - America offers no advantage, indeed such people are certainly worse off in the USA. People like secretaries probably break even.For example, USA income tax between $39k and 84k is 22% (some states may add a couple %, others do not). The next rate, up to $160k, is 24%.In France - 30% up to $77k, then 41%!Also add to that higher taxes on goods and services in Europe vs. USA.
Americans are less healthy than Europeans due to lifestyle problems (they are more sedentary, more obese, use more drugs, etc.) but the system is probably better. It is much more expensive because it has more expensive equipment and because it is used to greater capacity with more people. For example, obese, elderly, HIV positive people are eligible for expensive kidney transplants in the USA (even dirt poor people on state insurance-Medicaid) and are typically excluded in many European countries due to success rate of such procedures on such compromised people being too low.
For example here is expensive MRI equipment per capita:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/
USA: 40.44
Germany: 34.71
Finland: 28.81
France: 15.43
(Sweden wasn’t listed)
In spite of Americans having such unhealthy lifestyles, thanks to the healthcare system they have the highest overall cancer recovery rate in the world:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-survival-rates-by-country#:~:text=Cancer%20Survival%20Rates%20by%20Country%202020%20%20,%20%2096.10%25%20%2050%20more%20rows%20
Of course, it is true that America’s system is less cost-efficient.
This is true, but unless someone has perhaps five or more children it isn’t enough to compensate for a lifetime of lower wages and higher taxes on those lower wages. And USA does have scholarships for very bright kids.
Not only rich people, in the USA also upper middle class people such as physicians, engineers, chemists, pharmacists, skilled workers such as plumbers, RNs, pay lower income taxes. For store cashiers or hotel cleaners – America offers no advantage, indeed such people are certainly worse off in the USA. People like secretaries probably break even.
For example, USA income tax between $39k and 84k is 22% (some states may add a couple %, others do not). The next rate, up to $160k, is 24%.
In France – 30% up to $77k, then 41%!
Also add to that higher taxes on goods and services in Europe vs. USA.
If you don’t like GNP look at concrete measures such as consumption, wages, etc. Average annual wage in the USA in 2019 was $63,000 - in France $41,400, UK $39,400. Adjusting for cost of living doesn’t make much of a difference for Western Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wageDetroit is America’s equivalent of a gypsy encampment. It probably has much more shooting than a Hungarian gypsy encampment but it is probably more than 3-times richer than one. It may even be not much poorer (materially, not culturally) than Hungary overall. Average annual per capita income of residents in the city of Detroit is about $17,400. In Hungary it is $11,500 - but adjusted for cost of living, $24,400. So in purely material terms, the difference between an average Hungarian and an American poorest of the poor sub population is like the difference between the average American and the average Frenchman.
:::::::::::::
So again, even if America’s economy were to decline by 30% it would simply just achieve the material level of France or the UK, with more income inequality than in those countries. Not Third World.Replies: @AltanBakshi, @Beckow
I have never seen to one of those ‘gypsy encampments‘, although I am sure they exist. Just not in the center of our societies, the way Phillie, Detroit, or parts of DC are literally at the center of US, easy to see and hard to ignore. Gypsies are an issue, but much smaller than the minorities in US.
Your comparisons of US with Europe ignore the social benefits that all people have in Europe, from education, medical care, to better security, etc… They have real value, but are not fully captured in GNP and income statistics. Different people put different value on these social benefits, so we will never agree on how they change living standards. Suffice to say, most US taxes go to military spending and overpriced medical care for elderly, in Europe the benefits are more tangible and more evenly distributed. US could use better social policies, but given the demographic it will probably never get them. And that is a road straight into a Third World status. Maybe not yet, but you know where you are going. It won’t be pretty.