So in the wake of my interview with @IChotiner and pieces the past couple of weeks, people have asked why I am bullish on Trump. The answer is . . . I'm not, really. I would not even think to take an even-money bet on Trump winning right now. 1/
I'm probably more bullish on him relative to @NateSilver538 's 14%, but we can debate the relative differences of an 14% chance of someone winning versus, say, a 20-25% chance of someone winning. But let's take Nate's 14% chance. 2/
That translates to about a 1-in-7 chance. Let's call it 1-in-8 to make the math easy. We did this ad nauseum in 2016, seemingly to little effect, but that 1-in-8 chance is roughly the same chance of having three kids, all boys. That's not unusual. Trust me! 3/
If you rounded the other way, to 1-in-6, you'd have the chances of losing at Russian Roulette. Again, if you were playing Russian Roulette, you'd be really nervous, and probably focused on the ways you could lose, rather than win. 4/
So the question is, "what does that one" look like? My story for that is basically "the polls tighten modestly, and then we have a poll error of roughly the magnitude of 2016." I know the arguments why that wouldn't happen . . . 5/
Obviously if we *expected* that to happen we wouldn't have Trump as the underdog. But there are things consistent with that story, and they are worth pointing out. It's further complicated by the fact that, by the numbers, this has been a very boring race. 6/
The story for "why Biden will win" just isn't that interesting, but I nevertheless forced myself to write it up for this week. We should probably spend more time telling that story, since it's the more likely story, but telling contrarian stories is more interesting. 7/
It's also better to write/analyze the "why Trump could win" pieces as a check on my own biases, to keep me from rounding that 14% (or 20-25% chance) down to zero, as I basically did for much of 2015-mid-2016. 8/
FWIW, I *would* take the under on Biden winning by 9-10%, for the reasons in my pieces. That still translates to a comfortable Biden win, though. 9/9
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