DEWcision 2020: An Electoral Prediction Map

Late in the afternoon on Election Day 2016 I sat down at my computer to fill out my predictions for the Presidential Election. I had just gotten home from work and the polls would be closing soon so I wanted to make sure that there was some evidence showing how right I was about what I thought. At the time, based on the polls, I thought that Hillary had the whole thing in the bag and the question was by how much.

I printed the map filled out with the corresponding blue and red colors. I was so confident that normal Republicans, Evangelicals and the super religious would abandon Trump so I made the map based on that. I gave Utah to Clinton, yes I know. Even a few southern states too. After what took place in the hours following my terrible prediction I tossed out the map. I just remember it for how bad it was.

But I have decided to make another map for tonight’s election. The map I have constructed is based on my own opinion of various polls along with many news articles I’ve read over the past months. The map does not account for voter suppression, voter intimidation, mail-in ballots being thrown away or just general fascism. When all is said and done I may look like Charlie Brown again getting the football pulled away at the last moment, but I think it’s different this time.

For starters all the hullabaloo about how wrong the polls were last time was overblown.  The polls really weren’t that far off. The national polls had Clinton winning by 3 points and she did win the popular vote by 2 points. The other errors that came in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were due to over-polling people with college degrees. Trump has very high numbers with individuals who don’t have a college degree, but in 2018 there was some correction to make sure they represented a larger number in each poll. That being said I believe the current polls even if I am still nervous from last time.

For a while I also thought long time conservative and Republican states like Texas and Georgia would turn blue for good within a decade. It feels even closer after seeing how well Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams did in 2018. One of my favorite Bill Maher quotes that I’ll paraphrase here is that there are no blue states just red states that have large cities and I think that is really true. When you look at the growth in Houston and the always progressive Austin it’s just too much to contain forever by watering it down with white rural voters. Eventually you reach a point where these large urban centers are too big to continue to produce red state results. Likewise Atlanta is at a breaking point where it will push Georgia blue for the next generation; it’s just a matter of when that starts. With all the work that Stacey Abrams has done for the 2018 and 2020 elections in terms of getting new groups of voters excited and registered it feels like the future is now.

My 2020 Presidential Election prediction is below. Regardless of the individual state count I would like to add the prediction that Joe Biden will win the popular vote even if he loses the Electoral College. I think he will win by between 5 and 7 million possibly more. I’ll also point out that the Electoral College needs to be abolished but I’ll save that for another article.