Key takeaways
- Biden still on the road to victory
- Key marginals remain hotly contested
- Walmart stocks negatively correlated to news about the economy
- When news mentions of “Anger” rise Trump’s winning chances fall
BIDEN FORECAST TO WIN, RINSE AND REPEAT
The sun rises each day and there continues to be no change as Joe Biden is overwhelmingly (95%) likely to win the 2020 presidential election, according to RavenPack’s forecasting model.
Biden is expected to win with by 313 electoral college votes to Trump’s 225. The projected electoral vote range for Biden is 277 to 353 and Trump is 185 to 261, giving Biden the necessary majority to be President of the United States.
Yet even on a range basis, Biden is still inching further ahead with a +1 higher range high compared to 2 weeks ago whilst Trump’s range low has fallen by -1.
ANALYSIS: KEY BATTLEGROUND STATES
When it comes to winning the presidency there is no greater misnomer than that of calling a state marginal. It is often via a surprise swing in a few of these very important marginals that the winner is decided.
Below is a table of the 13 closest battleground states ranked first according to their results in 2016 (in the case of the first 10) and then, for the next 3 based on those states which have polled consistently close since the start of the campaign.
Starting from the top of the table, the first key takeaway seems to be that Trump has consolidated his chances of winning in New Hampshire by +15.2% over the last week.
Trump surprisingly stole the state in the 2016 election - can he replicate the effort in 2020? With a lead of 78.5% and only 20 days remaining, the chances are increasing that he could.
The next insight is that from being a Democrat stronghold for most of the summer, Minnesota has become a closer run state again, with Biden’s chances of winning sliding to 60.1%.
Although still quite far behind, Biden is not trailing as far behind in the 3 closest polled states compared to September. In Texas, it is also worth mentioning that Trump’s chances recently slid below 90% for the first time since the start of the campaign.
The 2 closest run states are Nevada, which recently flipped Democrat and is 53.1% likely to be won by Biden, and North Carolina which is 55.9% likely to be won by Biden.
The state of Arizona has become much more strongly Trumpian. The chart below shows how winning chances have sharply diverged over recent weeks reflecting Trump’s increased probability of success in the state.
MENTIONS OF “ECONOMY” & WALMART
The election monitor often throws up some interesting relationships between election news analytics and stock prices.
One is shown in the chart below which compares Walmart with the percentage share of news about Donald Trump that talks about the economy.
In this case, there seems to be a negative correlation, suggesting that the more news there is about Trump and the economy the more Walmart stocks fall in value.
The negatively correlated volatility at the start of September is the clearest example of this divergence, as is the move in the first half of July, and the sharp expansion in late March.
“ANGER” AND TRUMP’S CHANCES OF WINNING
In September we observed that when references to Donald Trump and “Anger” increase in the news, Trump’s chances of winning decline, and vice versa.
More recently (circled) we have noticed how mentions of “Anger” have risen sharply over the last few days and this has coincided with a further reduction in Trump’s chances of winning, reinforcing the negative correlation we witnessed last month.
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