So, there are less than two weeks until election day and Trump is “leading”. FiveThirtyEight gives Trump a 54% chance to win the election. And betting markets also have Trump as a favorite to win (Polymarket gives Trump a 66.1% chance to win). And Trump might win. But…..I don’t see it. I think I’d rather be Harris right now than Trump. (But also I’m always wrong.)

Let’s take a look at Michigan as an example. Polymarket has Trump with a 53% chance to win and FiveThirtyEight has Michigan tied (with Harris leading by 0.4% in their poll aggregator.

But when you dig into the most recent polls, there is a wildly different story. Take a look at the polls that FiveThirtyEight lists from Oct 16 through today. There are six different polling companies listed here. Two of these six have Harris leading just at about the margin of error (Quinnipiac and Bloomberg). According to FiveThirtyEight’s ranking of pollsters, based on their track record of accuracy, Quinnipiac is 2.8/3 and Morning Consult (for Bloomberg) is 1.9/3. The other four polls listed here are Trafalgar Group, The Telegraph, Patriot Polling, and InsiderAdvantange, which all have Trump tied or leading. One of these, Trafalgar Group, is designated by FiveThirtyEight as “Republican-funded” and known to skew red.

The other three are:

• The Daily Telegraph: A British Conservative newspaper that endorsed Boris Johnson in 2019. (This polls was conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies which is rated 1.8/3 by FiveThirtyEight).
• Patriot Polling: A “non-partisan organization” that was literally founded by high school students and has a FiveThirtyEight rating of 1.1/3.
• Insider Advantage: The founder of this company was the on air pollster for Sean Hannity. FiveThirtyEight gives this polling company a 2/3.

So, all I’m trying to say is that the polls that have been flooding the news recently are openly partisan and right leaning. If you look at only the top rated pollster in the rankings from FiveThirtyEight (Siena College), the story from them is different than the Polymarket map in two big ways: Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Siena College has Harris leading in both those states and kind of comfortably leading in Pennsylvania. In this scenario, it all comes down to Michigan which has flip flopped between blue and red in the last two elections. But factor in that in the Senate race that Slotkin, the Democrat, is leading by 4-5 points, which is advantage Harris. I just have a. hard time imagining a huge number of people voting for Slotkin and Trump. But who knows. I’m always wrong.

The point is this: Boy howdy, this is going to be close. Buckle up and strap in because we aren’t gonna now who won for days (weeks?) after election night. But I’d rather be Harris right now than Trump.

Cheers.