I’m a guy on the internet. So naturally I have uninformed opinions. And because this is the internet, I’d like to share them with everyone because….well, what’s the point of the internet if I can’t post uninformed opinions? So here I go.

Here’s what I’ve been looking at recently. I took the polls that fivethirtyeight has listed and I took only the polls that have a grade of 2.5 or higher. I aggregated each of those polls to get a single prediction based on pooling all the polls in a sliding 15 day period. I then bootstrapped some error clouds around these predicted lines and you get the following results for swing states (plus a few bonus states) if you use polls for registered voters:

Based on these results, it looks like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin aren’t all that close and Harris has had them locked up for weeks with very little movement at all. Whereas the other swing states, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and North Carolina all seem incredibly close. Which gives up basically this map:

With this map all Kamala needs to win is one of Michigan and Nevada OR North Carolina OR Georgia. But if we look at likely voters, the story is different. (How do they determine likely voters? Do they ask respondents? Or do they model that?).

Here, Georgia is safely in Trumps column but the other five swing states are all statistically tied.

This would give us this map:

And this would mean all Trump needs to do to win would be to win any two of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. But you didn’t come here for insight or rational discussion. This is the presidential race in 2024 where facts don’t matter and numbers are just completely made up. So what do I think will happen? I present to you my official completely uninformed prediction for the 2024 presidential race. I think Kamala wins the popular vote by 3 points and we end up with this map. And she wins by two electoral votes (and then there are 3 faithless electors and Trump wins anyway because….everything is stupid).

In all seriousness, no one knows what is going to happen. And polling is incredibly complicated in 2024. Response rates for polls used to be in the SIXTIES. Today? It’s less than 1 percent. I think about this all the time, think about this question: “Is it even possible for a pollster to reach you?”. For me the answer is 100% no. I don’t have a land line and I’m not answering my cell phone for a number I don’t know. I’m not gonna respond to an email from a pollster. So I genuinely will never be a poll responded. Now think about how true this is for everyone you know. Polling in 2024 is really difficult. That’s why even with all this polling we still have no idea who’s going to win. It is important to note than in both 2016 and 2020 Trump was underestimated in polls. Pollsters have attempted to correct for this by using something called “recall-vote weighting” which “in practice inflates Trump’s support”. So it’s very likely that Trump’s support is being over-estimated in many of these polls. And if it’s even slightly over estimated by even a point or two, Trump is going to lose very badly. But it might work! No one knows!

But I’m not a coward like Nate Silver, so I’m making a prediction: I’m taking Kamala 271 to 267. But also I am a coward and Trump might win. I have no idea what’s going to happen. But, rest assured, it will all end with chaos no matter who wins.

Cheers.