I have no idea who is going to win the presidential election in the fall, but it seems there is a consensus that Trump's chances have taken a hit over the past month or two. If that's true, I can understand why: the Biden campaign keeps releasing new ads made mostly of Trump saying stupid stuff, and the main criticism is that they are "too long."
Well, Trump talks a lot, all of it stupid! He alone can fix it, but he's bravely deferred to the governors, whom he then criticizes harshly, and yesterday he told a reporter that she'd have to ask China ("Chiiiinuh") if she wanted to know why 80,000 Americans have died.
Nevertheless, I'm not as sanguine about Biden's prospects as, say, James Carville, whom I recently saw on tv chortling about how the tide has turned. Not a poll showing Trump ahead, he says. Yes, but who cares? Everyone says the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day, which is true, sort of. More to the point is that everything hinges on the Election Day poll in around six states. Thanks Electoral College! I just checked and right now the average of the national polls, according to Real Clear Politics, is Biden +4.4%. Unfortunately, it would mean more, for purposes of predicting the winner, if Biden were ahead by 4.4% in Kenosha County, Wisconsin.
Supposing on Election Day Biden wins the national vote by 4.4%. There's a pretty good chance that Trump would then be "reelected." If you're skeptical, here's how the arithmetic on that looks.
In 2016, Clinton won the national vote by just under 3 million ballots, which was 2.1% of all votes cast. So Biden, winning by 4.4%, would basically be doubling Clinton's margin and adding on for good measure about another quarter million. To keep the numbers round, let's say he'd win by 6 million, adding just over 3 million to Clinton's margin. Sounds like a lot, but where would the additional 3 million come from? An even distribution of the additional votes would put Biden comfortably over the top in the Electoral College. But the distribution wouldn't be even. In 2012, Obama won California by 2.3 million votes. Then in 2016 Hillary Clinton, running a little behind Obama in the country, carried California by 4.3 million votes. She picked up 2 million in one state. Obama had lost Texas by 1.2 million in 2012. Clinton then lost it by 800,000 for a net gain of 400,000. So in the two biggest states she ran ahead of Obama by 2.4 million votes. Net gain in the Electoral College: zero.
If Biden were to duplicate Clinton's gains in our two biggest states, he also would not net a single additional electoral vote. But he would have used up 80% of his additional 3 million votes. It's not at all clear that there'd be enough in the remaining 20% to switch the outcome in enough states so that his 6 million vote advantage translated into victory after being run through the Rube Goldberg machine that determines the winner. After all, when Clinton gained 2.4 million votes in the two biggest states, she went backwards in the only ones that mattered—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida.
I'm not saying it makes no sense to be bullish on Biden's chances. If my life depended on choosing the winner today, I'd bet on him myself—but not on account of current national polling data, and I'd be a lot less nervous if between now and November around a million Californians were to start telecommuting from the suburbs of Milwaukee, Madison, Detroit, and Philadelphia. It would be illegal to pay people to vote for the Democrat but how about paying people who already are Democrats to move to "swing states"?
It's surely crazy that our method of choosing the president makes a voter migration plan a viable electoral strategy. Colonize the red states! Start with those of the lightest hue!
UPDATE: I should have included links to the sources for the election results I describe. For 2012, here. And for 2016, here. You can check my math and, if you want, contemplate the result in any particular county, which for me has dissipated several hours of life's tedium. Check out the 2016 result in the suburban counties of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro compared to the result in the counties surrounding Milwaukee.
Comments