I need to apologize to my readers. Virtually everything significant that I believed and wrote about this election was wrong ! I am truly sorry ! Obviously the errors were unintentional and I based them upon data which looked sound, but I was very, very wrong about everything significant I wrote about this election. I apologize ! I am so very sorry !
While it looks like Biden will squeak by with a very narrow win, I was completely and totally wrong on virtually everything. I believed the polls would be right this time because even though HRC had leads in the average of the polls, her leads were less than the sum of the undecided and third party vote.
Her topline share of the vote in the average of the polls was very close to what she actually won in the election — (1) PA her share of the vote in the average of the polls was 46.8% and she won 47.5% of the vote in the election, a difference of .7%, seven tenths of one percent (2) WI her share of the vote in the average of the polls was 46.8% and she won 46.5% of the vote in the election , a difference of .3%, three tenths of one percent and (3) MI her share of the vote in the average of the polls was 47.0% and she won 47.0% of the vote in the election, a difference of 0.0%. The sum of the undecided and third party vote was 9.6% in Michigan while her lead was only 3.6% in the average of the polls (so the sum of the third party and undecided vote was more than twice as large as her lead). The sum of the undecided and third party vote in Wisconsin was 12.9% and her lead was only 6.5% in the average of the polls ; thus, the sum of the undecided and third party vote was nearly twice as large as her lead in the average of the polls. The sum of the undecided and third party vote in Pennsylvania was 8.5% and her lead in the average of the polls was only 2.1% ; thus, the sum of the undecided and third party vote was over four times as great as her lead.
Some of the third party vote was going to go to one of the major party candidates and so was the undecided vote. That’s all that happened . She was viewed as untrustworthy and dishonest by 57% of registered voters and 57% of registered voters viewed her unfavorably. Her party had held the White House for eight years and it is relatively uncommon for the same party to hold the White House for more than eight straight years (only once after WW2 and that was Reagan, Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush). She had served in the White House and thus was the faux incumbent and had 100% name recognition. She was facing an opponent with no record as an elected official. She was between 46% and 48% of the vote in the average of the polls both nationally and in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania . That is really low .She was also under investigation by the FBI and Comey gave a moralizing sermon against her and politicized the investigation near the election. In light of all of this, when we looked at the polls, it should not surprise us that all of the undecided vote and a little of the third party vote went to her opponent. National polling was only off 1.1% . So, I have a hard time viewing the polling for 2016 as inaccurate .
I was expecting, therefore, the polls to be relatively close to accurate. I saw a lot of data that I WRONGLY WRONGLY WRONGLY interpreted to mean that it was unlikely that Trump could win a lot more votes than 2016. I was 100% WRONG when I wrote that 65 million votes was likely to be the hard cap for Trump. I was just completely wrong. There was data that led me to believe that: the number of registered republicans had shrunk because of Trump, there were now for the first time more independents than registered republicans, Trump’s approval rating had stayed between 42% and 45% and mostly hovered around 43% his entire presidency, making him the first president in the 80 year history of modern polling to never earn majority approval. Trump’s approval for his handling of the pandemic was atrocious and this was the driving issue of the election it seemed. Seniors, according to polling, now mostly supported Biden which is horrendous for a republican candidate. The pandemic is at its worst right now because of Trump’s surrender to it. For all of these reasons, I believed WRONGLY that Trump could at most add only 2 million more votes to his 2016 vote total. He is already near 67 million votes and he is likely to get near 70 million votes, EIGHT MILLION more than he won in 2016. I was just completely wrong.
538 projected that there would be at least 154 million votes. Others did as well. We had over 100 million early votes cast. I didn’t think that we were simply cannibalizing our entire vote then, but apparently that is exactly what we did. This early vote were people who already were going to vote no matter what and so all that happened is that the time of when they voted changed. We apparently absolutely did not show up at all on election day. So, we may be in the low 140s when we are finished at most which is pathetic. . Texas has more cases of the novel coronavirus than any other state. Based upon the past vote totals, I thought that 11 million votes cast in Texas would mean that Biden would win. I thought nobody who didn’t already support him in 2016 would be enticed to support him in 2020 ; why would the status quo in this situation be attractive to any voters ?? I thought, therefore, that the additional voters were likely to vote for Biden. I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG about that. Since I believed 538’s projection of 154 million votes and based upon the data above believed Trump could not increase his 2016 vote total more than by 2 million and this meant I thought Biden would win by a double digit margin. Instead, it appears that Biden may win the popular vote by only 3 or 4 %. I was completely wrong.
In summary, I was wrong about everything important. I am thankful that Biden is likely to win the White House. I am absolutely stunned by how many people came out to support Trump and by how far off the polls were and by our absolute failure to show up on election day.
I am flabbergasted. I am flummoxed. I am angry. I am confused. Why in the hell would anybody want to vote for the guy who has surrendered to the novel coronavirus ? Why ? Why vote for this liar, conman, narcissistic bigot, this extreme present hedonist ? Why ? What the hell is the matter with these people ? He announced he would fire Dr. Fauci and people still stayed home or voted for him in huge numbers on election day. That is absolutely inexcusable. They know that he promoted domestic terrorism with his son telling people to attack the Biden Harris van and then after they did (hitting it) Trump praised them. Who the hell votes for somebody like that ? People with no working moral compass. Who votes for a person who says that the KKK are very fine people ? Who votes for that ? Who votes for a person who intentionally sets out as a policy putting children in cages (it was not an intentional policy set by President Obama — it was created to be temporary and President Obama did not have Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy) and Trump’s wife, Melanoma, wears a jacket that says, “I don’t really care, do you ?” when going there and when she talked about it with friends justified her husband’s intentional policy of separating children and doing it permanently as part of a “zero tolerance” policy by referring to President Obama’s use of the facilities which was TEMPORARY and not part of a Zero Tolerance policy. So who votes for that ? Or the nativism of the go back to where you came from language from Trump and calling African countries, “shithole countries” ?
Who votes for that ? Who doesn’t care enough to vote against it ? No working moral compass. This country has some serious problems when there are around 70 million people who voted for Trump.
I believed and wrote that the polls would be accurate. I was completely wrong. I believed and wrote that we would win Texas and Florida and Ohio and we were not even close in those states. I believed and wrote that we would win North Carolina and we didn’t. I believed and wrote that Trump could not top 65 million votes. I was completely wrong. I was wrong about everything significant even though I am thankful that Biden looks poised to win the White House. I believed and wrote that we would control 52 or 53 seats and I was completely wrong. I was wrong about everything significant that I believed and wrote.
I apologize to my readers. I am deeply sorry. I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG ! I apologize !
I am profoundly sorry and very, very depressed. I apologize to the entire community here. I am truly sorry !
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2020 · 4:38:21 PM +00:00 · Dem
Sometimes it is very tempting when a person mocks me, for me to respond back in kind. This is a completely different context than this diary as I noted in a previous update. Even so, I would do better by not responding back in kind.
Many of us find the pessimism we read here depressing and we dislike it (my naivete and the naivete of others likely bothers them) but that does not justify being harsh in response. It would have been far better if I had simply ignored the pessimism instead of being harsh . I strongly believed the polling which has been so stable and consistent and it would not have been different on election day itself either. So, I thought that the pessimists were being pessimistic against all of the polling evidence and other evidence . I responded wrongly . It would have been wrong even if the election had been a landslide. However, certainly the fact is that those who were pessimistic were much closer to the truth than I was.
Being harsh in response to what I viewed as pessimism was wrong even if I believed that the evidence strongly contradicted the person’s view. And that’s the key. Each of us is a real live human being with feelings. And I failed to act accordingly. So, even if I had been correct about a landslide, I would have been morally wrong .
Besides I don’t know the life that they have lived which may lead them to be skeptical .
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2020 · 7:59:09 PM +00:00
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Dem
I left a very abusive relationship that I was in for seven years. I have been going through substance abuse rehabilitation since the end of July of 2018. I have stayed clean the entire time. My medication makes me vomit or at least be extremely nauseous every day. It also gives me insomnia. I normally sleep an hour at a time. I have slept more than 3 straight hours continuously only six times since I started on the medication. I began at 32 mg on my medication and I have reduced to 12 mg. I first started acting on my depression when I was in middle school. I survived numerous suicide attempts while I continued to cut and hit myself hard in the face. Suffice it to say that I do not have a positive view of myself. I can see that I am not alone in that.
I am not planning on interacting any more with the comments.
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2020 · 9:08:37 PM +00:00
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Dem
Nate wrote that about 12 million votes remain and that there will likely be about 155 million votes in total cast and that Biden is likely to win the remaining 12 million votes by 25% .
I can’t believe so many people are voting for the bigoted narcissistic maniac. It’s insane. Especially now.
2x+25=100 2x=75 x=37.5, So, Biden is expected to win 62.5 % of that 12 million and Trump is expected to win 37.5% of that 12 million vote . 37.5% = 3/8 * 12 = 4.5. Add 4.5 million to Trump’s current total of about 68 million and we get 72.5 million. Biden gets the rest and so that’s 7.5 million more and Biden is at 71 million now and that gets him to about 79 million votes. 79 million / 155 to 72/155 is probably a little less than 5% doing some more mental math. I will check with the calculator though . 50.9% for Biden and 46.45% for Trump and so it is a little less than a 5% popular vote margin, 4.45% and in absolute terms a 7 million vote margin for Biden. Against a raving bigoted narcissistic dishonest extreme present hedonistic maniac. And he will get almost 73 million votes ?
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2020 · 9:14:12 PM +00:00
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Dem
So about 2.7 million votes have been cast in AZ and there is about 16% of precincts which have not yet reported. Precincts=/= votes but it will serve roughly for our purpose. .16*2.7=432 , 432,000 votes. Okay, so we have a lead of about 100,000. So, 2x+100,000 = 432,000, 2x = 332,000 and so x = 166,000 . Trump would have to win approximately 266,000 and Biden only 166,000 of the remaining vote. That’s fairly high at almost 62% and that territory includes area that Biden did very well in. That’s why the Associated Press has already called it for Biden. The Associated Press, thus, has Biden at 248 electoral college votes. Add Nevada and Biden is at 254. Any of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia puts him at 270 . Biden is leading in Michigan with 99% of the vote in and it will likely be called shortly. Biden will likely be leading in PA (that margin has shrunk from 700,000 to 351,000 already ) after absentee ballots , ballots from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are counted, and NY Times Upshot has Biden with a 64% probability of winning Georgia after the remaining ballots are counted because they are in areas that favor Biden and that lead is only 77,000 votes.
This is not by any means completely safe and secure, but it is likely. AP having called AZ and 99% of precincts reporting in MI with a lead of 61,000 for Biden , then we are simply waiting on NV. Ralston has long been the expert on NV and there’s no reason not to believe him here. That’s 270 and Biden is likely to win both PA and GA as I wrote above.
So, it’s natural to be nervous but we should win. I am NOT saying it is certain, but it looks promising.