Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
The US presidential election is on November 5. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Kamala Harris has a 49.3-46.1 lead over Donald Trump (49.3-46.2 in my previous US election article for The Conversation on Monday). In presidential elections, the Electoral College is decisive, not the national popular vote. Harris has at least a one-point lead in enough states to win the Electoral College by a 276-262 margin.
The New York Times released polls from the highly regarded Siena on Tuesday, which had good and bad news for Harris. Siena’s national poll gave Harris a 49-46 lead, her best position in this poll. But Trump led by a thumping 55-41 in Florida, which used to be a swing state. This caused Silver’s Florida aggregate to move two points in Trump’s favour, and he now leads by 5.5 points there.
On Wednesday, Quinnipiac polls of Wisconsin and Michigan gave Trump 2-3 point leads, though Harris had a three-point lead in Pennsylvania. Silver’s model now gives Harris a 53.5% chance to win the Electoral College, down from 56% on Monday. There’s a 23% chance that Harris wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College. The FiveThirtyEight model is now very close to Silver, with Harris a 53% chance to win.
Two right-wing candidates to contest UK Conservative leadership
As in previous UK Conservative leadership elections, the final two candidates are selected by Conservative MPs, with Conservative party members to choose between these final candidates. At Wednesday’s final round of MPs’ votes, the right-wing Kemi Badenoch won 42 of the 120 votes, the right-wing Robert Jenrick 41 and the more centrist James Cleverly 37.
Cleverly had easily won the previous round of MPs’ votes on Tuesday with 39 votes, followed by Jenrick on 31 and Badenoch on 30. It’s likely that a tactical voting blunder caused him to finish third and be eliminated, with some of his supporters voting for Jenrick as they thought Cleverly had a better chance to beat Jenrick than Badenoch in the members’ vote.
Members will now decide between Badenoch and Jenrick by an online vote, with the final result to be announced November 2. A late September YouGov poll of Conservative members gave Badenoch a 41-38 lead over Jenrick.
Labour and PM Keir Starmer’s dreadful start to the term continues, with a recent More in Common poll giving Labour just a 29-28 lead over the Conservatives with 19% for Reform and 11% for the Liberal Democrats, although three other early October polls gave Labour 5-8 point leads. The latest two polls that have asked about Starmer’s ratings have him at net -30 (Opinium) and net -36 (YouGov).
Far-right wins most seats in Austria
Austria uses proportional representation with a 4% threshold to elect its 183 seats. At the September 29 election, the far-right FPÖ won 57 seats (up 26 since the 2019 election), the conservative ÖVP 51 seats (down 20), the centre-left SPÖ 41 (up one), the liberal NEOS 18 (up three) and the Greens 16 (down ten).
The FPÖ had its best result in an Austrian election and it was the first time since World War Two that a far-right party has won the most seats. However, the FPÖ is well short of the 92 seats needed for a majority. The ÖVP and the Greens had formed a coalition government after the 2019 election. A coalition between the ÖVP and SPÖ is the only way to keep the FPÖ out of government.
Japanese election: October 27
The conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has formed government after every Japanese election since 1955 except after the 2009 election. Of the 465 lower house seats, 289 are elected by first-past-the-post, while the remaining 176 are elected using proportional representation in 11 multi-member electorates.
This election is being held a year early after Shigeru Ishiba replaced Fumio Kishida as LDP leader and PM on September 27 and called an early election. Polls indicate the LDP is far ahead of their nearest party rival, the centre-left Constitutional Democrats, but there’s a large “no party” vote. The LDP should easily win yet another election.
If I was Tester/Allred I would be building an advert using that Trump video about killing cows and then saying that unlike the former president and Republicans I support cattle ranchers in Montana/Texas. You never know, it might make a few Republican voters stay home. It also reminds voters that Trump is weird.
Trump is doing a tonne of rallies and interviews, which is stressing out whatever cognition he has remaining.
The clips from the current Atlanta rally are mind boggling, following on his train wreck Bloomberg earlier in Chicago. He might have been able to pull off this back-to-back 4 or 8 years ago, but not now. Bordering on elder abuse by his team.
An example from the Atlanta rally just now..
Trump: Hydrogen is the new car. They say it’s great. If it explodes, you’re dead. If it explodes, they actually say if it explodes, you’re unrecognizable. You call your wife over, they call up the wife. Would you please come here and take a look and see whether or not this is your husband because we cannot see. And she goes to the nearest tree, which is about 100 yards away and she says, no, it’s only blood, there’s nothing there. She says I can’t tell
People are walking out
”
C@tmommasays:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 12:27 pm
FUBAR @ #693 Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 – 11:55 am
Ven says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 10:32 am
Whereas 50% married women vote for Republicans. One of the reasons is they may influenced by their husbands.
If Trump becomes President maybe Divorce laws will be tightened or laws will be passed to force “unmarried” women to get married.
Not only are you sexist, you’re also nuts. WTF?
I see you’ve brought your abusive bullying style to this thread. And yet, no matter how many times you get your arse handed to you on a plate yet you still persist with it.
I also note that you are ignoring Project 2025 and the Christian Nationalists. Hmm, looks like Ven is better informed than you. That’s where this stuff is. You need to get out of the Lolstralian/Sky News swamps, FUBAR.
Possibly you could start here to better inform yourself:
https://youtu.be/63VGTf0CMAg?si=9fEtYiAqDK3zaW-8
”
Wow! Theobros have links to JD Vance and he is married a Hindu, highly educated, successful career woman.
sprocket_ @ #704 Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 – 1:20 pm
Those are decisions Trump made. Deliberate, intentional, well-thought-out, completely hinged decisions. No chance he’s lost control of the situation, or his reactions to it. Move along, nothing to see here. 🙂
Trump now revisiting Churchill’s ‘We will fight them on the beaches..’ speech.
He’s desperate and going all in with his rhetoric —
Trump: “We will not by invaded. We will not be occupied. We will not be conquered. We will defeat the enemy at all levels of combat.”
https://www.threads.net/@vincedmonroy/post/DBKwtJlPr30?xmt=AQGz_J55PUpWwos6TykIPOBnFCNx0RWZTtaLOkVLsasEfQ
And the dark orange bronzer is getting darker by the day
Ted Cruz and Colin Allred clash over abortion, trans athletes and Jan. 6 in feisty Texas Senate debate
Sahil Kapur
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Colin Allred traded quippy one-liners and clashed over policy tonight at their first and only debate in a Texas Senate race debate that both candidates agree is up for grabs.
Cruz presented himself as a conservative who “will fight to keep Texas Texas,” while Allred cast Cruz as a do-nothing extremist who has not delivered for the state in his 12 years in the Senate.
“When the lights went out in the energy capital of the world, he went to Cancún. On Jan. 6, when a mob was storming the Capitol, he was hiding a supply closet. And when the toughest border security bill in a generation came up in the United States Senate, he took it down,” Allred said, repeatedly mentioning Cruz’s trip to Mexico during a 2021 winter storm in Texas. “We don’t have to have a senator like this.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/live-blog/trump-harris-presidential-election-live-updates-rcna175178#rcrd60319
6x bankrupt stronger on the economy lol.
On another interesting Senate race in Nebraska:
‘ OMAHA — As a Trump-endorsed Republican in a deep-red state, Sen. Deb Fischer might expect an easy reelection. Instead, she’s in perhaps the tightest Senate race in America — so says the election data site 538 — against a rookie politician named Dan Osborn, a mechanic turned union leader with tattooed forearms and a level gaze. Fischer’s trouble boils down to what might be called a George Norris problem.
Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work
Around here, few discussions of Nebraska politics go very long before someone drops Norris’s name. Arguably the most important U.S. senator left out of the history books, the pragmatic Republican crossed the aisle in the 1930s to help Franklin D. Roosevelt bring electricity to rural America, among other big doings.
What he represents to Nebraskans, though, is the streak of independence that they consider to be a state brand. Valuing practicality over party, Norris in 1934 wore out two sets of tires and two windshields while campaigning by car across the state to shrink the two-house state legislature down to a single (“unicameral”) nonpartisan body. Nebraska is the only unicameral state in the country, and folks are mighty proud of that fact because it saves money and does the people’s work efficiently. Also, it makes them unique.
Osborn, 49 and running as an independent, has that history in mind as he crisscrosses the state in his campaign manager’s pickup truck, 30,000 miles and counting. They make rubber and glass a lot sturdier nowadays, but the spirit of the campaign is familiar. Osborn offers himself as a nonpartisan servant of the state’s working people and family farmers and sensible folks tired of the circus.
…
A new internal poll by SurveyUSA shows Osborn with 50 percent of the likely votes and a six-point lead over Fischer, up from a one-point lead in the same poll last month. And data suggest that Osborn is winning 1 in 5 Trump voters. He’ll need that many or more to win as an independent in these highly partisan times. But if it can happen anywhere, Nebraska’s the place.’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/15/dan-osborn-nebraska-senate-campaign-independent/
Georgia Democratic voters, for instance, are voting early, and as they say, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Trump supporters prefer to vote on election day, but that has potential disadvantages – eg, bad weather, sickness, family emergency or just plain disinterest. Indeed, Prof. Lichtman, of the 13 keys fame, claims that the ‘fall off’ is in the realm of ten per cent. I’d much prefer to be in Harris’ shoes than Trump’s at this stage of the election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJlC3rcWN_k
This commenter at The Bulwark distils the Trump campaign to its essence:
Terry Hilldale
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for a “crime wave.”
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for voter fraud.
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for driving up housing costs.
• The Trump campaign claims undocumented immigrants will bankrupt Medicare and Social Security.
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for taking jobs from American citizens.
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for smuggling fentanyl.
• The Trump campaign blames undocumented immigrants for inflation.
• The Trump campaign tells dangerous lies about Springfield and FEMA.
• Trump promises violent retribution to all who oppose him.
• Trump spends all his time stoking fear.
• Trump engages in all sorts of fascist speech.
Then MAGA laughs because Americans rightly fear what Trump promises and naively believe they will be safe. The fact is if a Dem said even a scintilla of what Trump says they would suddenly remember what being a patriotic American means.
Ted Cruz will still have his podcast to fall back on when he loses his seat. lol!
a r @ #704 Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 – 1:56 pm
Yes, so I agree that this isnt a sign of rapid decline. But it is nonetheless interesting to me because… well… this risks turning off every medium to high (at least independent) information voter for the benefit of turning out a few more low morals cultists. Policies of (or even sly nods to) mass deportation do not have a huge market outside the already rabid MAGA. He could have stopped at saying ‘strong border, zero tolerance’ stuff. Everyone already beleives he is going to be stronger on such matters. So why ramp it up?
Trumps instincts are to go low and stay low and go lower. Never back down, triple down. If it is controversial – say it and say the quiet bit out loud. He is a risk taker and it has served him well in the business world he polluted. And this has managed to (astoundingly) get him to evens with Harris. But the strategy has its limits. He didnt deploy it to this level against Clinton. It didnt win him 2020 and the GOP barely won in 2022 (and didnt win the senate). And the more I think about it, the more I wonder just how well it will serve him in turnout come Nov if he keeps it up. Not all Trump voters are in the cult. And a lot of traditional Republicans may decide that staying home isnt the best way to protest against him.
So I ask myself, is part of this rhetoric just revving up his mob for a possible counter of a loss?
Trump is simply continuing to dominate the news cycle in any way he can think of. Swaying to music for 40 minutes, telling wildly unbelievable stories… Whatever it takes. And it works. We’re talking about it a half a world away.
I was just doing a sarcastic backreference to yesterday, when someone suggested that Trump’s bizarre unplanned 30-minute musical interlude wasn’t weird or unhinged but rather a ho-hum normal example of a sane Trump just deciding he’d like to listen to some music. Like any normal Presidential candidate in the middle of a scheduled town-hall/Q&A might do.
Anyways though:
Debateable. He’s had how many bankruptcies? Fraud findings against himself and associated business entities?
Problem is that the consequences are too slow; he probably won’t even be around by the time they finally catch up. Not sure if that makes the risk-taking a success though.
Absolutely. It’ll be Jan 6 all over again. Almost worked last time, and why wouldn’t he try it again. It’s that, or go straight* to jail.
* Along the slowest, most meandering path the US justice system can cook up, so…not exactly straight.
What almost worked to do what?
I haven’t seen one poll that has Allred in front of Cruz.
Mavis says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 3:49 pm
How do you know how they voted without their votes having been counted?
FUBAR @ #717 Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 – 4:31 pm
Don’t try and take us for fools, FUEY. We can see the game you’re playing here. It’s a dangerous game but you’ve obviously drunk the Kool Aid and now you’re trying to become a soldier for the forces aligned with Trump and the Republican Party here on this thread. Shame on you. However, as you are one of the new Shameless Ones there seems to be no hope of redemption for you. Sad.
bc says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 1:25 pm
You think Trump was saying he wanted to kill cows?
Remind me not to get any type of political advice from you.
Pennsylvania early voting: mail in ballots returned so far:
Democrats 358,703 (35.4% returned)
Republican 130,076 (26.8%)
Other 47,433 (23.2%)
On the most recent Hacks on Tap podcast
https://www.hacksontap.com/episodes/margin-of-effort-with-ron-brownstein
David Axelrod (Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 and his Chief of Staff for a while after) and Mike Murphy (a Never Trumper who worked on the campaigns of both GW Bush and McCain) seem to be pretty down about Harris’s prospects, suggesting that she needs to do something drastic in the last three weeks or she’s going to be toast.
Their guest Ron Brownstein was slightly more optimistic, but not confident about a Harris victory.
I take what these guys have to say very seriously. And my own instincts tell me that they’re right: after cruising along for a couple of months, the Kamalamobile started to run out of gas about two weeks ago. The negligible contribution to the campaign from Walz hasn’t helped, but I suspect the main problem is the global situation, which pushes some uninsightful voters into thinking that they need Trump as President because he is a “strong man.”
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 12:27 pm
If you don’t think that saying females can’t decide for themselves who they are going to vote for isn’t sexist then I don’t know what is sexism anymore.
I don’t click on any of your links – you are the one wallowing in swamps of conspiracy theories. I deal in facts.
The fact is that both you and Ven are blatantly sexist, if not misogynistic.
Victoria says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 4:46 pm
How did they vote?
When do you start allocating Electoral College Votes?
meher baba says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 4:52 pm
You don’t need to listen to podcasts. You just need to look at the polling and actually read the numbers. There’s some very deluded fools on this site.
Fubar
I dont get what you are implying.
But I do sense you are stressed. Lol
How?
Have their votes been counted?
Fubar
You are too funny. Trump supporters are generally deluded so there is that.
Victoria says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 5:04 pm
I’m not stressed.
I am surprised that on psephologically based site you keep making unsubstantiated claims that are unsupported by the current polling.
I have no problem with you supporting Harris. I just expect some connection to reality about the potential outcome.
FUBAR @ #724 Wednesday, October 16th, 2024 – 4:53 pm
😆 😆 😆
I’m not the one who observed that you spend all day marinating in The Australian and Sky News. Probably Fox News, other RWNJ websites and more likely than not Newsmax and Right Side Broadcasting from America, and the fact that you don’t click on any of our links just proves your confirmation bias.
Fubar
I am following the data from analysts. They were spot during the mid terms, and I am confident they are spot on this time.
The dems for a win
In any event, the roe vs wade decision is getting the vote out for the dems bigly.
FUBAR
fwiw (and I think it is worth some attention), in 2018 Cruz beat O’Rourke by 2.6pts. RCP had him up by 7pts.
That was a midterm, and a bad midterm for the GOP. But polls definitely overestimated the incumbent Cruz.
And rather than look at polls now. We look at the actually voting data.
Turnout so far is big in Pennsylvania and Georgia
Polls have not been accurate for at least three election cycles, so there is that
Correct. Perhaps you could indicate which way they have missed? No?
Fubar
You can look it up yourself.
Look at the polling data and see what the actual outcome was.
I have not written one post that supports Trump. I am critical of the Democrats and Harris for being crap and unable to put up a candidate who should be able to easily beat the joke that Trump is. I also call out the clearly deluded posts of Democrat supporters.
The polls are not composed of randomly collected samples. They are contrived to measure and weight the expression of the samples taken. They are starting to resemble polls taken in the lead up to the 2019 election in Australia, where there was distinct herding/copying by the pollsters. They were nearly all totally wrong. 1/3 citizens in the US usually refrain from voting. The election will be decided by these occasional voters….by turnout among the frustrated, alienated, discouraged, busy and sceptical.
Trump has been campaigning against himself for months. His pool of support cannot have improved. If anything, his appeal will be eroding. He is plainly unsuitable for the office. He is plainly unsuitable for anything at all.
Harris will win because she’s not Trump and because she’s offering the most basic must-have: safe hands.
The Reactionaries, the MAGA-intoxicated, the loonies….they are preparing to try to steal the election. They will be arming themselves and thinking of violence, once again. But they will fail.
They have essentially destroyed the Republican Party. This is a very welcome thing. The US will power on without them.
My take on Trumps cray cray behaviour during last couple of days.
He knows he is losing and it is freaking him out. So he is going with the insanity defence.
You know it makes sense. Lol
Fubar
If you think Harris is crap. Then by definition Trump must be the crapiest crap of all. Lol
Early voting trends…….Alan Lichtman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS_tglm9-Os
Team Katich says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 5:13 pm
Well worth a read:
https://fortune.com/2022/11/16/pollsters-got-it-wrong-2018-2020-elections-statistical-sophistry-accuracy-sonnenfeld-tian/
There’s nothing Harris could or should do that would attract the Reactionary voter. It’s a very good thing that FUBAR dislikes Harris. This means she remains a Democrat. Good. Very good.
Politics in the US is an exceedingly dirty game. So far Harris has stayed out of muck. This is to her credit. It’s comforting to know that for this she will earn nothing but rebuke from FUBAR who basically yearns for the destruction of anti-Reactionary voices.
meher:
So despondent! I haven’t listened to Hacks yet, but will make time to do so.
FWIW my view as has been discussed by others, is Trump appears to be placing an awful lot of faith in first time and irregular voters to get him over the line, eg young men of colour. His violent and OTT rhetoric is not aimed at middle of the way voters.
It might pay off for him, but if he were in a position of strength he’d be pitching for the GOP leaners and trying to win over independents rather than an unreliable voting cohort.
The other thing his campaign is doing is flooding the polls with shit polls leaning Republic in an attempt to make it look like he is leading. Coupled with his violent and revolting campaign rallies which are designed to capture the media attention, robbing Harris of her own attention.
I like that Harris is targeting his health record and encouraging people to look at his rallies. The more Trump people see the less they like him.
Victoria says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 5:26 pm
Trump is an UnPresidential Buffoon. A convicted felon, sexist (but not misogynist), self-centred very old man. It is a disgrace that the Republicans nominated him once and won. It’s terrible that he is the nominee again.
But! It is even worse that the Democrats are unable to nominate a candidate who can’t beat him in their sleep!!!
WTF are the Democrats doing? Biden was a disaster and should never have been in the running and then they hand balled it to one the most lack lustre Veeps in history. Are the Democrats really that short of talent?
WTF?
I thought I’d seen every excuse. Now, you’re claiming that the Republicans are producing and publishing shit polls?
Who? Where? How?
paywall.
Team Katich says:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 5:49 pm
Sorry. I didn’t hit one.
Marist Poll, brand new one(they get an A+ grading):
Harris 52
Trump 47
At least one good thing happened today, 100-year-old former President Jimmy Carter was able to cast his early vote for Harris in Georgia.
Just one vote, but a significant one. His remaining days alive might be few in number, but maybe he’ll last a few more weeks to see Harris win.