US Presidential Poll Meta-Tracker update - Sept 27 - Some shifts Republican but higher Dem EV cutoff

This is an update on September 27th, 2020 to my US Presidential Election meta-tracker. Compare this to my earlier post on Sptember 8th, where you can also find more details about the method. It includes polls that straddle before and after the Supreme Court nomination became an issue, but before debates.

The news is mixed: Small shifts to the Republicans, but the threshold has shifted towards the Democrats.

The table below shows the states ranked from top to bottom from most likely Democrat wins for President (top) to Republican wins (bottom). Data is amalgamated from 6 current poll trackers, such as the Economist and Princeton University.The cells with the green and yellow backgrounds are the current swing states.

The green-background cells are the swing states that Democrats seem most likely to win. Ohio has been added to this list, compared to September 8th. Wisconsin and Michigan have dropped into clear Democrat category, and no longer appear to be swing states.

Joe Biden needs to win any one of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina or Ohio to get over the 270 threshold, whereas the Donald Trump would have to win them all. But Joe Biden still also has a fighting chance at four more states marked in yellow.

Despite this apparent slight shift in electoral vote chances towards the Democrats, there have been a considerable number of shifts in individual state predictions by the trackers towards the Republicans.

• The text colour is white if there has been a shift towards the party given by the background colour (e.g. white on blue means becoming even more Democrat) and white on red or pink means becoming more Republican.
• Blue on red (or blue on pink) means Republicans are favored, but less so than before.
• Red on blue means the Democrats are favored, but less so than before.
• Red on white means newly toss-up states in favor of the Republicans, whereas the Democrats had been favoured before. Two poll trackers have these, for Arizona and Florida.
• Blue on white means newly toss--up states in favor of the Democrats. Four states have these, for Indiana, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. 

Four states have shifted in different directions in different poll trackers: Georgia, Pennsylviania, New Hampshire and Missouri

Of the swing states, Arizona, Texas and Florida have shifted consistently to the Republicans (78 EVs), while Ohio and Iowa have shifted consistently to the Democrats (24 EV).

Overall the prediction currently would be Joe Biden 352 EV, vs, Donald Trump 186 EV. 

I am also showing information on the right about the mode of voting, obtained from CNN. Of the 5 swing states from which the Democrats must win one to win, three should have results on election day, or very soon thereafter, because ballots must be received by then (shown in green text). Three states (all favouring Democrats) will, however, have almost-entirely mail-in voting, where the ballots only have to be posted by election day. These have 32 EVs in total; the networks will probably be able to 'call' these states, but they could be a cause of controversy if the election is close.

Covid-19 most-affected and surging countries - Sept 7 2020

 I have made a variety of posts on the progression of Covid-19 over the last 6 months.

Here's today's update as of September 7th. All date is extracted from the Worldometer site.

Bottom line: Canada is doing quite well. Israel is having the biggest current problem.

In the tables, countries are coloured by continent. Only countries with 2 million or more inhabitants are included in the tables to avoid listing outliers (islands or very small countries that have outbreaks). I am particularly interested in how Canada is doing, along with the USA (our neighbour) and the UK (my birthplace), so I have listed these separately if they are not in the table.

The first table shows countries with the most recent surges, measured as new cases yesterday / total cases. Prominent in the list are a group of African countries, and a group of middle-eastern countries/territories (Jordan, Israel, Palestine) that border each other. Not shown in this table is the USA (rank 105, with 0.39), Canada (rank 135, 0.19) and the UK (Rank 61, 0.84)

Myanmar	6.52
Hungary	6.43
Zimbabwe	6.32
Botswana	5.83
Libya	5.76
Congo	5.38
Paraguay	3.71
Uganda	2.89
Jordan	2.7
Jamaica	2.55
Israel	2.49
Mozambique	2.48
Palestine	2.43
Nepal	2.07
Georgia	2.02

The second table shows the number of new cases yesterday per million people, showing the intensity of the ongoing pandemic there. Some countries/territories, such as Israel and Palestine show up on the above table too. Not shown is Canada, which ranks 102 (6.5 new cases/million) and UK which ranks 49 (43.4).

Countries with three stars are also listed above (surging most recently) and in the third table (overall worst affected). Countries with two stars are also in the third table, and countries/territories with one star are also in the first table.

Israel	362.2	***
Argentina	203.5	**
Kuwait	188.0	**
Costa Rica	163.2	**
Libya	157.5	*
Palestine	127.3	*
Panama	123.6	**
Paraguay	121.3	*
Iraq	106.8
Colombia	104.5	**
Chile	92.1	**
Qatar	90.1
USA	76.4	**
France	64.4
Moldova	64.0	**
Hungary	59.7
Lebanon	58.7
India	54.3
Botswana	52.5
Albania	52.5
Czechia	52.3
Spain	52.2	**
Dominican Republic	52.0
Oman	49.9
Ukraine	49.8

The third table shows the overall number of cases per million people (many of which could have been earlier in the pandemic). This shows overall how hard the countries have been hit. Canada is 66th at 3495, and the UK is 49th at 5152).

Panama	22550
Chile	22159
Kuwait	21108
Peru	20921
USA	19572
Brazil	19488
Oman	17024
Armenia	15128
Israel	14566
Colombia	13178
Spain	11240
Argentina	10779
South Africa	10755
Bolivia	10320
Moldova	9934
Singapore	9736
Costa Rica	9559
Saudi Arabia	9207
Dominican Republic	9192
Sweden	8477

US 2020 Presidential Election Poll Meta-Tracker - Sept 17

(For my latest meta-poll-tracker update, see here)

The US presidential election is of great concern to the entire world. The outcome of the election will have an effect on citizens of numerous countries on matters such as climate change, pandemic response and trade.

Also, with democracy and evidence-based non-authoritarian governance under attack worldwide, the world looks to see evidence that the democratic process can in fact wrestle a country back from a populist authoritarian-leaning leader.

There are numerous polls, and these are tracked by a variety of poll-trackers. It is interesting to see the differences among these trackers. The table below shows those differences and mades its own meta-prediction.

The meta-prediction based on September 7 data is that Joe Biden will win with 333 electoral votes, but could get between 235 and 405.

Biden has to defend his probable lead primarily in 6 states (shown by the green bar below) and also try to increase his margin, with the most likely targets marked with yellow.

Donald Trump has to defend his probable lead in the 5 states highlighted with the yellow bar below, and overcome Biden's probable lead in the 4 states (Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina) shown with the bold numbers in the green area (or some other combination of states in which Biden is leading, that together have 63 EVs.

The US system isn't based on popular national vote, so Biden could win that with an even higher margin than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and still lose. Candidates have to focus on obtaining electoral votes that are allocated to each state (one for each senator and representative combined). Other than the two states marked with purple below, the EVs allocated to the state all go to the party that gets the most votes in that state.

The table below is organized as follows.

• The EVs column shows the number of electoral votes each state has.
• The '% prob' column near the right is used for sorting and indicates the precent chance that each party will receive all the electoral votes in that state, except that Democrat wins are shown with negative numbers.
• The 'Cum' column shows the number of electoral votes won, adding the states one by one (Democrats from the top, Republicans from the bottom).
• The 'Certain D' and 'Certain R' states are states (including DC) where all the poll trackers give 99% probability of winning to either party. I have not listed them. That leaves 36 states where at least one poll tracker is not completely certain about either the Democrats or the republicans winning.

The probability calculation is based on the combined weightings of the different poll trackers.

• Two calculations are done. One to compute a minimum number of EVs for each party (second-to-right column, and one for a likely number of EVs (rightmost column). These columns are fractional numbers of EVs because they are probabilistic. Democrat EV counts are shown as negative numbers.
• Each tracker rates some states as near certain wins for a party those are given 95% chance for the minimum EV computation and 100% chance for the likely calculation.
• Each tracker rates another set of states as very likely (VL). Those are given 60% for the minimum and 90% for the likely.
• Each tracker rates a further set of states as Likely (L). These are given 30% and 60% chances, respectively.

• Finally some trackers, but not all, rate some states as toss-ups. These are weighted zero in the calculations.

The poll trackers considered are the following:

• The Economist 'Forecasting the US elections' page: https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president This is calculated every day based on state and national polls, and also uses economic indicators. It predicts Biten will get 334 EVs and has an 84% chance of winning currently (although a 96% chance of getting the most votes).
• ElectoralVote.com. https://electoral-vote.com This predicts Biden will win with 350 EVs and also provides news about the election. It seems reasonably neutral, but shows Biden leading in more places than the other trackers.
• The Princeton University Election Consortium https://election.princeton.edu/electoral-college-map/ This uses some slightly different mathematical methods than other trackers, focusing on proabilities rather than simply margins in polls. In other words, greater confidence is given where polls show consistent results, even if the margins might be smaller. It currently predicts Biden will get 366 EVs. 
• Éric Grenier tracker at the CBC in Canada https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/presidential/ He currently suggests Biden will get at least 319 EVs, but with 75 as 'toss ups'. 
• Real Clear Politics. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/2020_elections_electoral_college_map.html This tracker differ from the others in that it is far less confident in outcomes. It has 211 EVs and 14 states as toss-ups. It shows Biden as getting at least 212 EVs, but won't go any further than that. I have weighted this tracker at 80% of the weight of the others, due to its lower willingness to make predictions, but it still contributes almost a seventh of the overall weighting.
• FiveThirtyEight. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ This gives Biden a 72% chance of winning (lower than others), and predicts he will get 333 EVs.
• The 2016 results. Although these are old, they are included at 20% of the weighting of the actual trackers to help account for temporal uncertainty (the possibility of people going back to thinking the way they did then, since Trump is well-known for being able to get people to think his way). This only accounts for about 3% of the total.

I will update this data at least a couple of times prior to US Election Day in two months.