Trump's odds rose last week and he now leads the Electoral College by 2 votes, prominent data scientist says

Miller emphasized that his view is based on the results of presidential elections over sixty years.

I'm sure Miller's got a good system in place when following his framework and predictions during the 2020 election cycle. He called the presidential race for Biden within 12 electoral votes and later said in the Georgia senatorial runoff that Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff would both win when the polls still trailed their GOP opponents by substantial margins.

On the Harris-Trump race, I posted three stories between September 18 and October 3, and in all of them, Miller's approach showed Harris with a large lead, while polls showed a dead heat, and the media often characterized the race as too close to call. In fact, the first part states that according to Miller's metrics, the vice-president could be headed for a landslide near President Johnson's blowout victory in 1964. Even in the Oct. 3 update, Harris—as in previous days—led the former president. 302 to 236 in 66 electoral votes.

Last week, the contest took another sudden turn — this time in Trump's favor

In a battle that already charted like one of the most undulating rides on a rollercoaster, Donald Trump made a sharp comeback in the week beginning at noon on October 9. To Miller, this proved something of a surprise, since after twenty days or so of the presidential debate, the race had seemingly entered a stalemate with Harris consistently leading. But as of midnight on Oct. 8, Miller's system gives Trump a tiny edge, 270 to 268 for Harris. “This is the first time in history that a race has gone from a tossup to a landslide for one team, then a tossup, then a near landslide for the other side, then a tossup again,” Miller said. fate “The dynamic of this election is that after one candidate jumps out in front, the race always comes back to even. It stands where it is now. I follow this minute by minute, and the results keep toggling around the 270 electoral votes needed to win.”

It is important to briefly review the Miller model that has worked so well in 2020. It is guided by two governing principles. The first depends on the probabilities expressed by bettors who will earn large profits if the candidate they are betting on wins, not the one they plan to vote for, will prevail on November 5. To get those odds, Miller uses prices posted by the most established political betting site, PredictIT, which trades a whopping 35,000 shares a day on average, buying or selling the two candidates. Miller excludes votes from third-party contestants and makes Trump and Harris equal 100% of the total.

He then applied his method to translate probabilities into popular vote shares for each candidate. That task requires quite a bit of coordination. For example, a 50% share on PredictIT for Trump equates to less than 50% of the potential popular vote for the GOP ticket, because bettors are predominantly male, and often regular sports gamblers, who tend to be Republicans. On the other hand, a Republican ticket can win with less than half the popular vote, another factor Miller calibrates in his number-crunching.

The second governing guideline: Expected Popular Vote Percentage closely tracks the share of the electoral vote received by each candidate. Acceptance of data scientists from studying every election since the 1960s. Over the past few days, the PredictIT odds have virtually even narrowed by several points in favor of Harris, accounting for the electoral lead that now shifts from candidate to candidate, within a narrow band of a few electoral votes (EVs).

Following a careering course is an exercise in electoral whiplash

On his homepage The Virtual Tout, Miller posted a graph showing Democrat EV shares at the end of each day, overshadowed by major events that seemed to have moved voters. The graph looks like a giant “S” placed on its side. In early June, the Biden-Trump face-off looked like an even match. That was the first “tossup” moment. After their debate on June 27, Trump took a huge lead, and by the time of the Republican convention in mid-July, Trump had a total of more than 300 EVs. This was the “first landslide” phase and the only one for Trump. The Republican standard-bearer maintained a double-digit EV lead until his disastrous July 31 appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, where he falsely claimed Harris had misled voters about his race.

That day, the Democrats took the lead for the first time. But Trump quickly bounced back, nearly leveling the count by August 5. This is the “second tossup” point. The next day, Harris received the nomination and named Tim Walz as his running mate. Biden's withdrawal gave Dems a big boost and sent Harris climbing; He reached the peak of just over 350 electoral votes on August 11 That milestone marked the top of the “second landslide” span, this time tagging Harris as the big winner and making Trump look like an easy winner just a month later.

Once again, Trump closed the gap by getting within seven EVs of Harris on September 9, the day before the debate. That's the “third tossup” point. Famously, Trump's disappointing performance on stage in Philadelphia sent a lot of EVs into the Harris column. This time, the uptrend peaked on September 20 with 337 Harris votes to 201 for Trump. The chart focused on the “third landslide” zone, the second time in six weeks that Harris has been seen to walk.

Towards the end of September, the bay gradually narrows. Miller believes JD Vance did slightly better than Walz in their Oct. 1 debate. But Vance's good performance, he said, did virtually nothing to improve Trump's chances. Two days later, Harris still held a significant lead of 58 EVs, 298 to 240. Trump's big rise began on October 4. Over the next four days, he vaulted to 270 and reached the smallest of leads, while Harris dropped by 30. 268 to EVs.

Miller sees a stalemate until Nov. 5, not continued movement toward Trump

I ask Miller if he sees a wave building for Trump, given the momentum he's shown in the past few days. “I don't think so,” he replied. “Trump is still playing to his base. I have not seen him change his pitch to reach out to more voters like a typical politician.” So what accounts for the sudden jump in GOP numbers? “This may be due to the fear of a massive war in the Middle East and American troops joining the conflict,” he noted. “The Biden administration is pursuing a traditional foreign policy of supporting allies militarily, leading to a vision that could happen. Trump is an isolationist, and that appeals to a lot of people who think about Afghanistan and Iraq and say, 'Why are we trying to do this? Why engage in foreign wars?' A lot of people across the spectrum are not interested in us going to war.”

The pattern of giant waves that continually deflate, bringing the nation back to equilibrium over and over again, symbolizes America's current predicament. “We are an incredibly divided nation,” Miller said. “The most likely trend over the next 26 days to November 5 is that the forecast is back to a tossup. The next month will be a crazy time.”