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Nate Silver also had an article saying that the most likely scenario would be a blowout. There was a 25% chance that Trump would win all 7 battleground state,

Nate Silver also had an article saying that the most likely scenario would be a blowout. There was a 25% chance that Trump would win all 7 battleground state, a 15% chance Harris would win all 7. No other permutation of the 7 states was anywhere close.

bombcar 2y ago
If they're not completely independent variables, that should be the expected outcome (e.g., they all trend the same direction). And if they're not that close, they're not battleground.
- fullshark 2y ago
  They are where the campaign money and attention is going, what about battleground implies independence? Whoever wins them will win the election.
chicagobob 2y ago
True, but the word "blowout" in this case is just a crazy side-effect of our weird electoral college system. Everyone knows that in all the swing states (except Arizona), the final vote margin was just a few percent, and that was well within the MOE for all the "50-50" polling in each of those states. No one seriously believes that any President has had a blowout election since maybe Obama in 2008 or Bush in 2004, but the media sure loves the word "blowout".
- nightski 2y ago
  So basically, if you ignore how the entire system works then it wasn't a blowout lol. I'm guessing the media was taking into account that we indeed use an electoral college system so that is all that matters.
  - DangitBobby 2y ago
    I think "blowout" to some (most? vast majority?) without more context implies that the voting citizens strongly preferred a candidate. So people pushback against the clickbait word being used to drive engagement.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      The only score that matters is the one used to call the game, because that’s the only score anyone is trying to win. We simply don’t know what would have happened under a different set of rules. The “ground game” is extremely expensive: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934604-kamala-harris-ground-game-gotv https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934604-kamala-harris-g.... Especially for republicans, whose voters are spread out over rural areas. In post-election interviews, Trump campaign strategists revealed that to save money they largely eschewed a traditional ground game in favor of target outreach to low propensity voters. Even then, Trump received a lot of criticism on the right for doing a handful of rallies in California and New York. As it is, both campaigns focused most of their resources on the seven swing states, and Trump swept all of them. Had the election been close you would’ve expected by sheer chance each candidate to get some of the swing states, but that didn’t happen.
      - toast0 2y ago
        Certainaly there are no rules for what is a blowout or a mandate... But we can look back and see Reagan won all but one state, and say yeah, that was a blow out, and Reagan had a mandate. IMHO, if you don't win in any of your opponent's stronghold states, it's not much of a blowout. Yes, it was a win and any win gets you the whole four years, so it doesn't really matter what you want to call it, but it's yet another gaslighting IMHO.
        rayiner 2y ago
        To be clear, I don’t think it was a blowout or a landslide or anything like that. I’m just saying it’s not as close as the PV would make it seem. Harris’s campaign said their internal polling never showed her ahead, and the result was consistent with that. In particular, he wiped out two decades of immigration-driven leftward shift in the electorate, which was how Biden was able to win traditionally red states like Arizona and Georgia. Trump won Nevada, which is now under 45% white, by more than Bush did in 2000, when it was 65% white. He lost New Jersey by less than six points, doing better now that the state is only 55% white than Bush did in 2004 when it was 70% white. He won Texas by a similar margin to Bush in 88 and Florida by more than Reagan did in 1980.
  - notTooFarGone 2y ago
    no, he means a blowout is entirely dependent on the few people that are in the states that count. Therefore your MoE is higher because your population size is significantly lower. You can pretty much ignore every non-swing state and the result of polls would be the same.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    When 0.1% of the total voters can swing the vote from being 60 for red to being 60 for blue, polling is obviously going to be pretty tricky to predict.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    How the specific electoral system works is irrelevant. In our case, our electoral system is designed to make most voters' votes not actually matter, so I really don't care about it one bit when talking about who had more or less support in the country as a whole. Trump only got 1.5% more votes than Harris did. That's not a blowout. Even if you insist on going by electoral votes, 58% to 42% isn't a blowout either.
culi 2y ago
Trump won the popular vote by 1.5%. That's the 8th closest election in all of US history. Maybe he meant an EC blowout. But that's easier to predict. Most polling had almost all the swing states as extremely close. The outcome was likely to swing in the same direction across all swing states so an EC blowout is likely
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  As I recall none of the big polls the mainstream media was pushing projected Trump to win. They even refused to call the election until the wee hours of the morning, when the results were pretty clear. Just like in 2016, the polls were intended to deceive people into thinking there was no hope for an alternative candidate.
  - culi 2y ago
    Major decisions desks (AP, Edison, and Fox News; plus a recent newcomer called DDHQ) have made about 3 incorrect calls in their entire history (they were house races, not senate or presidential calls). An incorrect call is a HUGE deal and they have an extremely high bar for certainty. Even for Obama, who's wins were basically a landslide compared to the past 3 elections, calls weren't made until around midnight. Historically it's even common for presidential candidates to concede even before decision desks have made an official call (another norm Trump has challenged). Anyways Decision Desks are a very different topic than pollsters and have no overlap. I don't know what "mainstream media" you were consuming but as a bettor, I definitely didn't get the sense that the race was locked in. All major polls had Biden trailing Trump. Harris got a big boost but that only pushed her to being neck and neck with Trump. We can check the Wayback Machine to verify your claim * NYTimes frontpage the day before the election says "turnout is a focus in a closely divided race" https://web.archive.org/web/20241105011526/https://www.nytimes.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241105011526/https://www.nytim... * Vox frontpage says "5 reasons Harris could win and 4 reasons Trump could" and "Should it really be this hard to beat Trump?" https://web.archive.org/web/20241106000611/https://www.vox.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241106000611/https://www.vox.c... * CNN frontpage does not include any particular characterization of chances https://web.archive.org/web/20241105000156/https://edition.cnn.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241105000156/https://edition.c... A cursory look at other "mainstream" media sources will easily verify that the race was clearly represented as a very close tossup.

bombcar 2y ago

If they're not completely independent variables, that should be the expected outcome (e.g., they all trend the same direction). And if they're not that close, they're not battleground.

fullshark 2y ago
They are where the campaign money and attention is going, what about battleground implies independence? Whoever wins them will win the election.

chicagobob 2y ago

True, but the word "blowout" in this case is just a crazy side-effect of our weird electoral college system. Everyone knows that in all the swing states (except Arizona), the final vote margin was just a few percent, and that was well within the MOE for all the "50-50" polling in each of those states. No one seriously believes that any President has had a blowout election since maybe Obama in 2008 or Bush in 2004, but the media sure loves the word "blowout".

nightski 2y ago
So basically, if you ignore how the entire system works then it wasn't a blowout lol. I'm guessing the media was taking into account that we indeed use an electoral college system so that is all that matters.
- DangitBobby 2y ago
  I think "blowout" to some (most? vast majority?) without more context implies that the voting citizens strongly preferred a candidate. So people pushback against the clickbait word being used to drive engagement.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    The only score that matters is the one used to call the game, because that’s the only score anyone is trying to win. We simply don’t know what would have happened under a different set of rules. The “ground game” is extremely expensive: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934604-kamala-harris-ground-game-gotv https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934604-kamala-harris-g.... Especially for republicans, whose voters are spread out over rural areas. In post-election interviews, Trump campaign strategists revealed that to save money they largely eschewed a traditional ground game in favor of target outreach to low propensity voters. Even then, Trump received a lot of criticism on the right for doing a handful of rallies in California and New York. As it is, both campaigns focused most of their resources on the seven swing states, and Trump swept all of them. Had the election been close you would’ve expected by sheer chance each candidate to get some of the swing states, but that didn’t happen.
    - toast0 2y ago
      Certainaly there are no rules for what is a blowout or a mandate... But we can look back and see Reagan won all but one state, and say yeah, that was a blow out, and Reagan had a mandate. IMHO, if you don't win in any of your opponent's stronghold states, it's not much of a blowout. Yes, it was a win and any win gets you the whole four years, so it doesn't really matter what you want to call it, but it's yet another gaslighting IMHO.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        To be clear, I don’t think it was a blowout or a landslide or anything like that. I’m just saying it’s not as close as the PV would make it seem. Harris’s campaign said their internal polling never showed her ahead, and the result was consistent with that. In particular, he wiped out two decades of immigration-driven leftward shift in the electorate, which was how Biden was able to win traditionally red states like Arizona and Georgia. Trump won Nevada, which is now under 45% white, by more than Bush did in 2000, when it was 65% white. He lost New Jersey by less than six points, doing better now that the state is only 55% white than Bush did in 2004 when it was 70% white. He won Texas by a similar margin to Bush in 88 and Florida by more than Reagan did in 1980.
- notTooFarGone 2y ago
  no, he means a blowout is entirely dependent on the few people that are in the states that count. Therefore your MoE is higher because your population size is significantly lower. You can pretty much ignore every non-swing state and the result of polls would be the same.
- ta1243 2y ago
  When 0.1% of the total voters can swing the vote from being 60 for red to being 60 for blue, polling is obviously going to be pretty tricky to predict.
- kelnos 2y ago
  How the specific electoral system works is irrelevant. In our case, our electoral system is designed to make most voters' votes not actually matter, so I really don't care about it one bit when talking about who had more or less support in the country as a whole. Trump only got 1.5% more votes than Harris did. That's not a blowout. Even if you insist on going by electoral votes, 58% to 42% isn't a blowout either.

culi 2y ago

Trump won the popular vote by 1.5%. That's the 8th closest election in all of US history. Maybe he meant an EC blowout. But that's easier to predict. Most polling had almost all the swing states as extremely close. The outcome was likely to swing in the same direction across all swing states so an EC blowout is likely

wakawaka28 2y ago
As I recall none of the big polls the mainstream media was pushing projected Trump to win. They even refused to call the election until the wee hours of the morning, when the results were pretty clear. Just like in 2016, the polls were intended to deceive people into thinking there was no hope for an alternative candidate.
- culi 2y ago
  Major decisions desks (AP, Edison, and Fox News; plus a recent newcomer called DDHQ) have made about 3 incorrect calls in their entire history (they were house races, not senate or presidential calls). An incorrect call is a HUGE deal and they have an extremely high bar for certainty. Even for Obama, who's wins were basically a landslide compared to the past 3 elections, calls weren't made until around midnight. Historically it's even common for presidential candidates to concede even before decision desks have made an official call (another norm Trump has challenged). Anyways Decision Desks are a very different topic than pollsters and have no overlap. I don't know what "mainstream media" you were consuming but as a bettor, I definitely didn't get the sense that the race was locked in. All major polls had Biden trailing Trump. Harris got a big boost but that only pushed her to being neck and neck with Trump. We can check the Wayback Machine to verify your claim * NYTimes frontpage the day before the election says "turnout is a focus in a closely divided race" https://web.archive.org/web/20241105011526/https://www.nytimes.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241105011526/https://www.nytim... * Vox frontpage says "5 reasons Harris could win and 4 reasons Trump could" and "Should it really be this hard to beat Trump?" https://web.archive.org/web/20241106000611/https://www.vox.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241106000611/https://www.vox.c... * CNN frontpage does not include any particular characterization of chances https://web.archive.org/web/20241105000156/https://edition.cnn.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241105000156/https://edition.c... A cursory look at other "mainstream" media sources will easily verify that the race was clearly represented as a very close tossup.