Election Day Prognostications

As some you may have noticed, I occasionally make comments about politics, politicians and policies. This has been especially true during this election. As election day is nearly upon us, I would like to make some predictions. See if you agree. Comment with your own predictions so we can compare them on November 9th.

1. Hillary will win. She will end up with 345 electoral college votes, plus or minus 5%. Why so high compared to the current polls? There are a couple of things at play that are hard to measure. First is the ground game. Clinton has a high number of people going door to door, driving people to voting locations, and working the phones. Some experts feel this is worth 2-3% more than the polls show. Trump has virtually no ground game. 

Second are the results from early voting. In many cases it shows an almost equal number of Democrats and Republicans have voted early. So most people assume that all people are voting for the Presidential candidate of their party. Not true, in my opinion. In this election there are more Republicans voting for Hillary than there are Democrats voting for Trump. Even if only 2% more of the Republicans vote for Hillary than there are Democrats voting for Trump, that converts to a 4% shift in the early voting results (2% taken from Trump and given to Hillary deflates his vote by 2 and adds 2 to her to give a total shift of 4%). Note that this unmeasured effect is only true for early voters where we don't know how they voted. On election day we will know how they voted. Since about 30% of eligible voters in early voting states have voted, the net effect in those states is about 1.2% (30% of voters times the 4% shift).

If you combined these two factors, you end up with a net gain to Clinton of 3-4%. This puts all of the battleground states out of reach for Trump and may even move a couple of Trump-leaning states to her too.

2. After the election, the Senate will be 51/49 in favor of the Democrats. Some of the math from above will work for the Democrats. 

3. Trump will not concede the election Tuesday or Wednesday. He will claim voting irregularities. On election day we will see some voter intimidation at the polls but not as much as some predict. It will come mostly from the Trump side as he has encouraged people to monitor the polls but has not put any guidelines in place to control those who may be too enthusiastic about their duties. 

4. Trump's failure to get elected will launch Trump's career in the anti-establishment alt-right movement which will crash and burn. Trump's brand, which he values at $5 billion dollars will take a big hit. The brand has been attached to Trump the winner. Now he will be Trump the loser no matter who he blames the loss on.

Disagree with my predictions? Offer your thoughts about what will happen on and after election day. Any logic you can use will be appreciated. 

Charlie Sharp