Highlights From Our Live Forecaster Chat

The rules were that we weren't going to fact check

Here are a few brief highlights from Telling the Future’s live US election chat with forecasters Jean-Pierre Beugoms, Scott Eastman, and Atief Heermance. The full discussion is available here for anyone who wasn’t able to attend the conversation live.

Jean-Pierre Beugoms, Scott Eastman, and Atief Heermance all agreed that Kamala Harris is the favorite to win the presidency, but they don’t really agree about how heavy a favorite she is. Several of us expressed concerns that low response rates make polling harder to rely on. Jean-Pierre was the highest on Harris’ chances, giving her an 88% chance of winning—a much higher chance than most forecasting models—although he still thinks Democrats have just a 25% chance of holding onto the Senate. Scott agreed that Harris is likely to win by more than the polls currently suggest—and thinks the presence of self-described “black Nazi” Mark Robinson on the ballot in North Carolina could deliver the state to her—but Scott also remembers being too confident Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.

Atief cited Steve Bannon’s remark in an interview with David Brooks that the MAGA movement is engaged in “a battle of narrative.” Atief said his own model of the election is that it was likely to be driven not by meat-and-potatoes issues like the state of the economy—which actually hasn’t been closely correlated with incumbent performance in recent years—but by “the stories people are telling themselves.” He notes that the stories his conservative friends tell about a given set of facts often differ radically from the stories he tells. But while fundamental political divisions in American society may persist for a while, none of our forecasters think we’re likely to see sustained political violence after this year’s election.

Thanks to everyone who participated—and especially to Jean-Pierre Beugoms, Scott Eastman, and Atief Heermance—in our live US election chat. It was a great conversation. If readers are interested, I’ll do chats like this about other subjects in the future. If there’s a particular subject you’d like to discuss with expert forecasters, please let me know in the comments.

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