November 3, 2020: Consolidated General Election.

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I still think Trump will win Florida. People vote for Trump because they want Trump. Lots of people vote for Biden because they don't want Trump. Biden is the "Not Trump" candidate.
 
If you add those all up you get a sample of 33,000. That has a margin of error of c. 0.6% and Biden's lead is 2.6%. Biden looks a really good bet here at 2.4 but as I mentioned before I face PTD syndrome. I don't want to be losing money when suffering from Post Trump Depression.
 

Lol.

I don't think you can aggregate polls quite that simply. I'm not expert enough on polling technicals but as far as I know each poll is distinct event from a statistical point of view. I don't think you can aggregate them to get a tighter margin of error. Also each polling company have their own proprietary modelling which will adjust for various factors such as education, liklihood to vote, history, demographics etc etc. I don't think aggregating tightens the margin of error - it might do the opposite. But - there may be others on here (or you?) who are better equipped to say.

I kow what 538 do is to capture all polling data and feed that into a more complex model which looks at other factors such as correlation between states, swings and even time to election and then run multiple scenarios - which gives them % liklihood of outcomes.
 
I am sure I have over simplified the situation. But certainly if say two sources conduct the same sort of poll at the same sort of time with say samples of 1,000 you can add them together to get the result of a sample of 2,000, provided that the samples do not overlap. 1,000 is a typical sample size (moe 3%) out of say an electorate of over 10 million so the possibility of overlap can be ignored. If the sources use different methodologies that might invalidate the simple statistical aggregation, but I think we still would get a good approximation.

I'm not sure about the Surveymonkey. They have 2 polls in the list each with a sample size of 7,796. That would have an moe of 1.1% and yet they show a big 4% swing from 2% for to 2% against Biden, that would be an almost statistically impossible swing. So I have taken the Surveymonkey out of the data. That gives a sample size of 17,000 with 4.9% Biden lead and moe of 0.8%. On that basis a Biden win looks nailed on.
 
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I would have thought that 'silent' voters would be more likely to vote Trump by a considerable margin? That would be my perception anyway.

I'm getting somewhat enthused today however that we may be at the end of the Trump era. If anything, Biden will at least restore some level of decorum back to the office of US President (even if he forgets his lines while doing so! )

In fairness, credit where credit is due, Biden has handled himself quite well over this campaign. The onset of dementia kept at bay for the most part. Between debates and performances he deserves to win, and I hope he does. I will wait until inauguration to start kicking him down!
 
WolfeTone said:
I would have thought that 'silent' voters would be more likely to vote Trump by a considerable margin? That would be my perception anyway.
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I would have thought the same fundamentally. But there have been a few of the pollsters addressing this recently. I listened to Nate Silver from 538 argue why this wasn't the case on a recent modelling podcast. YouGov have discussed it as well.... https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/11/02/trump-biden-voters-shy.

The thing is that the polls were pretty accurate last time with the problem being in a number of states being off. The Washington Post talked about the "myth" of the shy Trump vote -

But... even with all of that... I do wonder how "off" the polls will end up being

WolfeTone said:
In fairness, credit where credit is due, Biden has handled himself quite well over this campaign.
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He and his team made what looks to have been the correct strategic call a number of months back - let the President shoot himself in the foot and don't get in the way. They were gettign some flak for it internally initially but in the end it worked out - or at least it's difficult to see how Biden would be a better position if he had tried to shout down Trump. It was probably the lesson from 2016 - that getting in war of words with Trump is a suckers game.
 
Strange how Pennsylvania seems to be consistently such a key swing state... bit like the first civil war
 
The total vote in 2016 was 128 million. Already more than 100 million have voted early in 2020
The Donald out to 2.2/1 on Betfair.
€362M has been bet on Betfair.
 
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Major shift in betting markets, in Trumps favour. Trump 2.14, Biden 1.91.

Echoes of 2016 emerging.
 
Prices moving back in Bidens favour 1.55 to Trump 2.74. I think I can call it a night.
Congratulations to Betfair, looking likely this one single market will match €400m in bets.
 
This is incredible, what is going on? Have they stopped counting??
Trump is on stage quite confident that (is ever not) he will win.
I'm not sure, but the voting suggests he could be right. He is winning key States bar Michigan.

Why has the counting stopped?
 
I just listened to him on stage. It’s frankly quite frightening that an autocratic narcissist who is openly trying to stop voting in a democratic election will most likely be re-elected.
 
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