A Little Hopium Cocktail

Created
Fri, 20/09/2024 - 09:30
Updated
Fri, 20/09/2024 - 09:30
Obviously, it would be very bad to get your hopes up. We’ve all learned our lesson over the past 8 years. But still, there is a bit of a case to be made that things could go very well on election day for Harris and the Democrats. I think it’s ok to fantasize a little bit about that, just for kicks. Here’s an article in Fortune about the possibility of a big win: In late 2020 and early 2021, this reporter wrote several stories focusing on the election predictions advanced by Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University. I was intrigued by the highly original methodology Miller deployed in calling the trends, and outcomes, first in the presidential race, then for the two Georgia senatorial contests, where the surprise twin victories gave Democrats control of the upper chamber. […] In all three 2020 contests, Miller beat virtually every pollster, and modeler parsing multiple voter surveys. He missed the size of Biden’s win in the electoral college by just 12 votes, tagging every state for the correct column save Georgia. For the two senate runoffs, Miller refined his approach to sorting data on the Peach State, and scored again. A week before Election Day on December 6, 2020, the polls gave Republican David Perdue a wide lead over Democrat Jon Ossoff, and showed the GOP’s Kelly Loeffler in a dead heat versus opponent Raphael Warnock. By contrast, Miller’s numbers had Loeffler heading for a big loss, and Ossoff en route…