State of the Race - Halloween edition

In the latest RCP average of polls in the swing states, Kamala Harris has pulled back ahead of Donald Trump in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump has opened his lead further in a few of the other states. For any new readers, I don't go by a straight lift of the RCP data, as not all polls are created equal. I filter out polls that do not share their poll population, or where the polled population is too low to consider statistically significant. I also filter out polls that are more than 10 days old (this week I am lowering that to 7 days). Any poll with a margin of error greater than 3.5% is not reliable in my opinion either. Likely voters are a must but pretty much every poll now is only looking at likely voters rather than registered voters or all adults.

All of that has to be taken into consideration, without even getting into the crosstabs of who was polled. Many pollsters still, oversample Democrats and it skews their results.

Here is what I am seeing as of today, but I have a caveat to apply to my findings:

Trump has from the above as well as safe states, enough electoral college votes to secure a victory, winning all of the swing states, and the electoral college by 312 to 226. But Pennsylvania is a must in this scenario and frankly, I don't implicitly trust their vote counts. The three rust belt states (PA, WI and MI) appear to be within the grasp of Harris at the moment. Trump's leads are thin (1.96%, 0.36% and  0.69% respectively). That makes a 'steal' more possible for the Democrats. I don't like it. And in fact if they were trying to create a plausible scenario for a surprise Kamala 'victory', from a RCP viewpoint they have succeeds.

But here are my caveats on my own results; (1) I have not looked at the crosstabs of any of the individual polls, and more importantly (2) these polls that do meet my statistical standards, are mostly all conservative leaning or neutral pollsters.  The latter point means that while Trump leads, the may truly be razor thin leads, making a stolen election possible.

Where the Democrats seem to be conceding are states that do not matter.  They appear to have written off Georgia and Arizona.  Trump needs those, Kamala does not. The Harris campaign also has apparently pulled a bunch of ad buys from North Carolina.  Trump needs the state, Kamala does not. Nevada, does not matter to either candidate in the current calculus. The Rust Belt is what matters. Kamala needs all 3, Trump only needs one to win.

Despite the polymarket betting that Trump has a 2 out of 3 chance of winning, despite Trump apparently leading in the national vote total, and despite him leading in enough (or conceivably all) the swing states, if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, she wins 270-268. That still makes this race a nail biter.

What's this garbage?

Let's Go Brandon tries to trash Trump and as an added bonus, Trump supporters. It overshadowed Kamala Harris' closing argument (which lacked substance anyway). Way to go Brandon, thank you for sucking the remaining oxygen out of her campaign with this.  

Always Be Closing

The sales saying Always Be Closing, is no less true in politics. But you have to do it right and in politics the optics matter.  Kamala Harris is doing it horribly badly.  Not that I'm complaining; it's not gonna help her get elected.

This settles it

The mainstream media gloms on to anything, ANYTHING, they think will harm Trump's chances. JD Vance emphatically puts an end to it as far as the offensive joke by comparing it to the vile Democrats' "Trump is Hitler" argument.

We're done here.  Moving on.

Polymarket has Trump 2 out of 3

I don't ascribe a lot of relevance to the betting markets on who is going to win the presidential election because it's not scientific.  But there's clearly a trend to be seen here.

The 'smaller' rally down the street

For posterity purposes, this was the 'smaller' rally down the street: