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As it's Saturday I thought I'd do a thread on US politics, which will dominate the next two months. Much media coverage is pretty woeful, so here are some tips and places to look: 1/
For starters: the election is decided by not who gets the most votes, but by who wins the electoral college. Each state has a number of votes in the college proportional to its population. 270 electoral votes wins. 2/
You can play around with who will win what states at http://270towin.com 3/
Right now, Biden is ahead by 7.5% on average nationally, but only ahead by 5-6% in the states he needs to win 270 electoral votes. 4/
So, Trump can win fewer votes than Biden but still win the election, as he did in 2016. Basically because the Democrats pile up votes in California and New York. 5/
So it's the swing states that matter - this time round, they will be Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina (possibly a few others too). 6/
A word on polling: it's hard, and pollsters generally do a good job. Ignore any news story based on one poll. Follow the polling average instead. http://Fivethirtyeight.com probably has the best average. 7/
The polling average itself is usually out by 2-3% compared with the final result however. This is what happened in 2016 - the polls weren't 'wrong', they just did as well as they usually do. 8/
Does this mean we can't know what's happening for sure? No. Right now, Biden is definitely ahead. A Trump comeback is unlikely but not impossible. 9/
Lots of people try to predict the outcome. http://Fivethirtyeight.com is by far the best. Right now, they give Biden a 75% chance, which feels about right. Anyone predicting anything significantly different right now is probably a charlatan. 10/
This isn't a sure thing. Man Utd will beat Man City 25% of the time and that wouldn't be massively unusual. 11/
Final thought: Trump will probably try to dispute the result if he loses. He'll allege mail voting leads to fraud. If Florida is called for Biden on election night, this probably won't matter, as Trump needs Florida to win. 12/
But if Florida doesn't declare its result until later, or votes for Trump, it could get very messy. 13/13
