Given my big miss in 2016, I’m not sure why anyone would be interested in my election predictions, but I’ve received several emails asking me to offer up my guesses for 2020 (perhaps some of them are long-time readers who remember 2010, when I actually did a good job?).
Before I offer up my prediction, I’ll first share some of the guesses from the experts.
Everyone is predicting Biden, though my Trump friends regularly remind me that the experts were wrong in 2016.
We’ll start with the outlook from Real Clear Politics.
Next, we have Nate Silver’s 538 numbers.
Here are the betting odds for the election, as compiled by John Stossel and Maxim Lott.
And here’s Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball forecast.
I’ll add one caveat to the above estimates.
This tweet from Frank Luntz explains why my Democratic friends are still nervous.
Finally, for those of you who want my guess, here’s my prediction of a comfortable Biden victory.
It’s basically the same (wrong) prediction I made in 2016, except I’m now giving Arizona and Michigan to the Democrats and Pennsylvania to the Republicans.
For what it’s worth, I was very tempted to give Pennsylvania – and maybe a few other states – to Biden.
Why? Because I think late-deciding voters may decide that they’re tired of all the drama and fighting that we get with Trump in the White House.
But I ultimately decided on the above map because I also think some of those voters may worry about Biden’s age. And they may worry even more about the Democratic Party’s leftward drift.
I guess we’ll know in a week (or so!).
In any event, if you really want to have fun, you can take my predictions, give Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina to Trump, along with one of Maine’s congressional districts, at which point you’d have a 269-269 tie. That would be a perfect ending for 2020, huh?
I’ll close with a few words about policy.
Biden clearly would move the country to the left on certain issues, most notably taxes and regulation. The only silver lining to that dark forecast is that I suspect that his tax increase will be much smaller than what’s contained in his awful plan.
I’m also somewhat hopeful that he won’t push for the so-called Green New Deal and that we’ll instead get the more-modest kind of Solyndra-style cronyism that we got under Obama. That’s bad, but not the end of the world.
The good news is that trade policy will move in the right direction.
But the biggest silver lining to a Biden victory is that Republicans will revert to pretending to once again be opposed to big government.
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Hope you’re wrong again Dan!
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We often find that when people here in Australia bet their own money on outcomes, these are more accurate. So the betters are more likely to be right. That indicates Biden, at this exact moment.
Republican will oppose big government until they become the government…
I do think that Trump will end up winning Pennsylvania, but I’m surprised you have FL is going to Biden. I think Trump will win there as well.
“I’m not sure why anyone would be interested in my election predictions,” … I’m not. Now if you want to predict where voter fraud, rioting and economic depression will occur, we’d probably have common ground. Anywhere Democrats have power.
Stick to numbers, unlike Trump you don’t know people.
You missed in 2016. I believe you are going to miss again in 2020. You base your analysis too much on obvious push polls. The idea of a Pres. Biden with Kamala Harris a heartbeat away is absolutely terrifying. Go Trump/Pence 2020.
I saw a Rasmussen poll today that had Trump ahead, so things could be swinging in his favor within the polls. My prediction isn’t about polls, but about other factors, that I outline in the following article: https://sdu754.wordpress.com/2020/08/24/predicting-the-presidential-election/
My criteria lead to a Trump victory, and they examine the last 30 elections
I gave up predicting the future a long time ago – but astrologers and tarot readers are probably as reliable as “scientific” polling these days. I live in PA, right over the Marcellus Shale. Not a lot of democrats up here among my neighbors. And all the PA professionals I know – people with advanced degrees – are pretty pro Trump, or at least anti-Biden. We’ll see in a week or so but a landslide Trump win wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t believe any of the demographic generalizations about monolithic identity blocks like “suburban women.” My wife runs clinics with dozens of LCSWs and a surprising number of those people are pro Trump and have been buying guns! I know – social workers buying guns? That’s where we are at right now.