2020 Updated Swing State Map

Since looking at 2020 Biden vs Trump Swing States last month, things have moved in Joe Biden’s favor.

Tilt Democrat

Florida is now leaning blue.  Three high quality polls out today show Biden leading, Monmouth, Marist, and Quinnipiac.   Also Democrats have an impressive lead from mail in ballots, that so far Republicans have not quite overcome with Early voting.  As the last weekend of Early voting tends to favor Democrats, it seems unlikely that they will.  In addition, Biden’s strong showing with Independents along with and advantage with crossover voters  should close the deal for him in The Sunshine State.

North Carolina also leans blue now.  The final NY Times/Sienna College poll there gives Biden a 3% advantage.   It’s a close one, but other polls concur. Like in Florida, North Carolina’s Democrats have a significant lead in mail in ballots.

Tossups

Texas and Iowa both have moved significantly in Biden’s favor.  If that momentum continues into next week, we’ll be looking at a landslide Biden victory.  For now, they’re tossups along with Georgia and Ohio. It was tempting to shade Ohio pink this morning, but this Quinnipiac poll today showing Biden up by 5% leaves it a tossup for now.

Swing States

That’s the final Swing State Map.

Coming soon, we’ll try to verify these guesses with the scheduled final polling.

Then lastly, we’ll try to predict the winner of Texas, Iowa, Georgia and Ohio.

Odds of Trump Successfully Cheating

After being impeached for cheating in this election, some lawmakers voted not to convict Trump, hoping “he’d learn his lesson” . Already , in light of many antics from the likes of Rudy Giuliani, we know that didn’t happen.

However , all that matters when trying to predict outcomes, is will any cheating attempts be successful?

Predictit Odds of winning the Electoral College

A quick glance at 538 odds shows an 89% chance of a Biden victory. Real Clear Politics average of gambling odds shows around 66% chance of victory for Biden. 538 doesn’t take into account any chance of cheating, or other external factors. Outside of polls, and prior voting records, why the difference? Gambler’s money isn’t an exact predictor of outcomes, but neither are polls, or the experts at 538. But the chance off a successful cheat are likely a small portion of that difference. So it’s probably something significantly less than 20%.

Also, cheating can only get you so far. With Biden’s lead fairly big right now, many nefarious actors wouldn’t want to take on the risk of cheating, given it probably wouldn’t help. If a win was likely, perhaps the Giuliani and William Barr types could count on a pardon if they were caught.

In a football game, when the score is close, you’ll see more calls for pass interference and holding, as the stakes are high. But when a team is down, cheating is just not worth the effort. So the odds of a successful cheat are dwindling.

Now, if, on election night, we see Trump magically winning in states he polled poorly, like Michigan and Wisconsin, it would bring back memories of the same in 2016; that feeling from 9/11 of watching the second plane hit the building, and knowing for sure at that moment the first plane was not some unfortunate accident, but we were under attack.

Thankfully, a nefarious outcome looks less and less likely as we approach election day.

So to keep things simple, we assume no successful cheating with any predictions here.