F**king Mondays: My Big Prediction is.....

And my projected map too!

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the roundup today, it’s a pre-election prediction special!

Trump laughs when fan calls Harris a prostitute

Before we get going, this story really drives home what is at stake in this election. Donald Trump has debased politics in America to such an extent that repulsive interactions like this are no longer shocking (from the Washington Post):

“It’s terrible when Kamala says that she worked at McDonald’s,” Trump said. He added: “It’s so simple, she’s a liar, a real liar, not a good liar, but she’s a significant liar, and when you lie about something so simple. So she never worked there —”

“She worked on a corner!” a member of the crowd shouted out.

Trump let out a short laugh, briefly paused and pointed his finger to the crowd.

“This place is amazing,” he said to laughs and cheers. “Just remember it’s other people saying it, it’s not me.”

Anyone with a modicum of dignity or decency would have reprimanded the fan and unequivocally denounced the comment. All Trump had to say was “no, that’s not appropriate, my opponent is a good person whom I happen to disagree with”. But then Donald Trump has no dignity or decency. He is a repellent misogynist, a notorious abuser of women, and a truly abhorrent human being.

There are flaws I am willing to accept in politicians. I expect them to distort truths, not answer questions directly, and behave inconsistently in their personal lives. I do not accept flaws that include misogyny, racism, sexual assaulting people, sociopathic lying, and outright criminality. These are not traits I would accept in anyone in my social circle, or even my family.

To think that half the voting population in America either doesn’t care or doesn’t believe the reality of Trump’s character is deeply disturbing. Character matters when picking a president, and tomorrow America gets to send a message to the world about what kind of character they want representing them.

Predictions, predictions

Okay, down to my prediction! If you’ve followed my writing over the past few months, you’ll know I’m bullish on a Kamala Harris victory tomorrow. This is not because I want her to win (although I obviously do), it is because the evidence supports it.

I know this flies in the face of the polling world and the professional prognosticators who all believe it is a coin flip contest, but I have covered many elections over the years and have learned how to tune out the noise. This means only listening to people with real track records in a) running campaigns, b) doing high quality polling, c) analyzing data, and d) getting good on the ground intel.

I have been paying attention to people like Tom Bonier, Simon Rosenberg, Adam Carlson, Rachel Bitecoffer, David Plouffe, James Carville, David Axelrod, Rick Wilson, and Christopher Bouzy, all of whom see a completely different race.

Without the hundreds of Republican funded polls, the constant noise from MAGA fanatics, Twitter madness, Elon Musk conspiracies, and the professional poll analysts slicing and dicing data, it seems quite clear Harris should be the solid favorite.

The high quality polls have actually been quite consistent, and the averages show a pretty much even race in the swing states. When you take into account controversial weighting models, herding (when pollsters adjust their stats to appear similar to existing polls), and general fear in the polling community of underestimating Trump, it is clear that Harris is most likely being underestimated. This would track with almost every election in post-Roe America, where Democrats have over-performed polls all across the country.

Furthermore, when you take into account the fact that Democrats are heavily favored to win Senate seats in most of the swing states, it makes no sense that these states would vote for a split-ticket (a Democrat for the Senate but a Republican for president). History shows split-tickets are exceedingly rare, particularly in our hyper partisan environment. As polling firm Vantage Data House (VDH) argues:

The split ticket theory doesn’t hold much water, especially considering the high correlation between partisanship and voter behavior. One particularly confusing case is in North Carolina where Lt. Governor Mark Robinson’s disastrous gubernatorial campaign is sinking every race on the ticket. Robinson is trailing by 22 points overall and a staggering 41 points among women. Yet, Trump is leading by 0.4-1.2 in the averages. It’s hard to imagine a Republican losing by 41 points among women while Trump is supposedly running a close race. Even without the gender gap, the idea that Robinson is down 22 points while Trump is ahead defies logic. This would be a 23% split ticket margin, which would be astonishing.  

The Vantage Data House team believes Harris is on the verge of a crushing victory because unlike other polling firms, they aren’t herding, and are publishing their polling results without fear of being the outlier — much like the astonishing Selzer poll from Iowa over the weekend that showed Harris up by three points in Iowa. VDH argues that what is being missed is “a significant widening of the gender gap and Harris’ growing support among independents, which is propelling her toward a potential 300+ electoral college victory.”

This race was always going to come down to turnout, and more specifically, the demographics each sides needs to win.

Theories of the election

What this really boils down to is the GOP vs Dem theory of the election. The Republican theory of the election is that men are going to come out in droves for Trump. The Democrats’ theory is the opposite — that women will come out in droves for Harris. Unfortunately for Trump, early vote data now shows conclusively that men are not coming out in the numbers they need to to give Trump the win. As the highly regarded political analyst Rachel Bitecoffer wrote yesterday:

The gender gap we see in early voting and registration data is not dissimilar from what we saw in both 2020 and 2022. But Democrats didn’t need an even bigger gap, it was already huge and Joe Biden won with that gender gap.

What Democrats needed was to maintain that advantage in the face of 2 years and millions in investment from Trump and Republican superPACs to drive more men to the polls to maximize their own gender gap to offset ours.

And there is not one iota of evidence that suggests they have been successful in this effort.

Unless these men pick up the pace dramatically, Trump is toast. Women are going to win this election for Kamala Harris, and I don’t think it will be close.

Here is my projected map for the presidential race tomorrow. I’ll be wrong of course, but I’m giving you my honest assessment of what I think it will look like:

While Trump will almost certainly try to claim victory early, pretend there is wide spread voter fraud etc, my guess is the election will be decisive enough to prevent too much drama. I could be wrong about this, but nothing I’ve seen thus far gives me much cause for concern.

Most of you reading this are no doubt extremely nervous about tomorrow. My advice? Don’t be.

NOTE TO BANTER MEMBERS: I’m going to figure out how to host a Substack Chat tomorrow so you can follow the election with us. Substack tells me this is very straightforward, so stay tuned on how to join!

Read the latest on The Banter (Members Only):

Well Look at Those Prediction Markets!