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Might as well do a US election thread
First off, some basic stuff for those that don't pay attention to these things
US Presidents aren't elected via popular vote and that's because it was founded as a union of states. Think of it like the EU; you want all the countries to have a say and not have politicians only campaign in Germany & France
To that end, US states have electoral college votes. The number for each state is determined by the sum of its Senate and House seats. House seats are population based and Senate seats are fixed at 2 for every state. In total, that comes to 538 votes
Half of that is 269, so you need 270 to win the presidency. Most states are winner take all except for Nebraska and Maine, so if you narrowly win a state, you get all the votes basically
Ok so this is the map of the US that shows how each state voted for the past 5 election cycles. Brown indicates that they haven't consistently voted for one party in that time but flip between both
So let's look at 2012 and 2016 in more detail. Immediately you can tell how Trump won the election, he flipped the so called rust belt states of Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
That was unprecedented because prior to this they were considered Democratic strongholds and flip only in landslide elections. The traditional way for Republicans to win was by doing well in the Sun belt and states like Virginia
Let's talk about Tuesday now. This is the current state of the race according to the polls. As you can see Biden is on track to flip the rust belt and take a lot of the sun belt states as well. In historical terms, this is landslide territory. Brown is too close to call
Are the polls right? Most likely but nobody knows for sure. 2016 and Brexit made people very skeptical of polls but they were largely accurate in 2018 with a few big misses in some governorship and Senate races
If they are wrong though, it'll most likely be because of a sampling error. Most of these polls are done with 900 people, so the sample sizes are great. Plus they have to construct a likely voter model that might not reflect reality of the people that actually vote
Another factor is the response rate of polls. People aren't picking up calls for polls which might skew the polls in some undetermined way
Let's look at early voting. This is a map of early voting across the US. In total numbers, California, Florida and Texas are leading the way but when you factor in 2016 turnout, Texas is the undisputed leader. What this means is difficult to say
The youth turnout hasn't reached the levels predicted by the polls and if the polls are accurate about Republicans being more likely to vote on election day, any early vote lead can evaporate fast. These are the old numbers but we're looking at youth vote being closer to 2018
Either way to know if the polls are accurate, Florida and Pennsylvania are key because we'll know the results relatively early. If Biden wins either one, you can start celebrating. If not, we're in for a long few weeks
