My US election prediction
Harris is 75% likely to win. Yes, those are higher odds than on other websites. Yes, I'm confident in my prediction. No, my confidence does not mean that I'm correct.
Good morning.
I attempted to start a chat on the Substack website for paying subscribers this morning about the US elections and their impact on Latin American policy. Substack emailed many unpaid subscribers with a link to a paywalled chat that most of you can't view and failed to email others who should have received it. I apologize for that. I try hard not to spam people and I'm working with Substack to fix that in the future.
To make up for it, here is the brief message about the elections I posted at the top of the chat. If you want to engage in Q&A and discussion about the election, you'll have to become a paying subscriber. But I think it's only fair to send you all the basic text because you were hit with an email you couldn't access this morning. Plus it makes me even more publicly accountable for my prediction. Yay!
The usual newsletter will be in your inbox tomorrow.
Saludos,
Boz
I usually try to avoid writing about US politics unless it directly pertains to Latin America, but hard to do so this week. For today, instead of a newsletter, I'm opening up a subscriber chat on Substack to test out the technology and let some of you ask me questions about the US election and the impact on the hemisphere.
The chat should remain open all week. If it works well, it could be a useful new feature. If it fails, I'll stick to newsletters.
My World Politics Review column published this morning highlights how this election is impacting Latin America. The map last week gave some insights into how I see the country-by-country view. I imagine that will remain a theme for the weeks to come as I analyze how the next administration plans to implement its regional policies and strategies.
In my first newsletter of this year, I said the Democrats were 70% likely to win the presidency. Despite a wild election year in the United States, my prediction has remained steady.
My final prediction: It's 75% likely that Harris will beat Trump in tomorrow's election.
That number hasn't moved in about a month. I mentioned that prediction in a few Friday links newsletters earlier this year. If you've spoken to me about the US election this year, you've heard me make a prediction somewhere around those numbers. The predictions from this year have been tracked on Good Judgment's Superforecasters service and my accuracy will be measured after the election.
As everyone hedging their predictions will tell you, 25% is not zero. It's two coin flips hitting tails. But my prediction is also far higher than the 50-50 single coin flip that so many other election predictors are claiming and the >60% Trump odds that were on election betting sites last week. My model developed in late 2023 is focused on economics and swing state demographics/math and does not include much polling information. It remains quite confident the economy is doing well and therefore the Democrats are likely to win the presidential election.
If I'm correct, I'll take a victory lap. If I'm wrong, I'll have to explain how I got it wrong. It's the joy of doing public predictions.
Meanwhile, feel free to join the chat and ask questions or make comments, preferably about the impact on Latin America.