Latest / Project 2028 / New Polling, Betting Markets, Crosstabs, and More

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New Polling, Betting Markets, Crosstabs, and More · Project 2028

• 0:00
  Alright, welcome to Project 2028.
• 0:12
  Today we're going to be talking a lot about the polling, some cross tabs, some really
• 0:16
  cool stuff that's kind of indicating the way the election is going right now, how the race
• 0:23
  has kind of shifted in the past few weeks, and some other really cool demographic stuff.
• 0:29
  This is going to be part one of a two part series, kind of leading up to the election.
• 0:33
  We're going to have some more information specific episodes outside of this series,
• 0:37
  most likely.
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  But this will inform you polling wise, and it will give you some information about being
• 0:43
  a voter and just participating civilly in our society.
• 0:47
  So with all that going, let's get started on the podcast.
• 0:52
  In the past week, lots of models have changed, and Ryan is now going to talk to you about
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  those.
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  Alright guys, so there's been a big shift in two of the major models and one of the
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  major betting sites over the past few weeks, something quite monumental for the state of
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  the race.
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  And then there's a kind of something else I want to talk about a bit after this.
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  It's just going to be kind of a public momentum, but that's a bit harder to measure.
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  So we're going to start with the measurables first.
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  So The Economist, which is one of the two major election models, runs models consistently
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  regarding the chances of an electoral college victory for each candidate.
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  They run simulations hundreds of thousands of times every day.
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  And right now it projects a Donald Trump with a 54 out of 100 time win rate.
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  Kamala Harris is underwater by eight points, roughly, in that.
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  That has changed nine points.
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  Sorry, my voice is a bit raspy.
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  In the last seven days, this presents quite the change.
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  You usually don't see models like this change in, especially with this amount of deference
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  to one candidate so quickly in just almost a week.
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  It's predicting that the median electoral outcome will be Trump with 276 votes and Harris
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  with 262.
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  You obviously have to put this in context.
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  This is only a slight advantage for a coin flip for Donald Trump.
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  But we're going to kind of talk about some momentum later, see if he can carry it on.
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  But if you then look at the other major model, 538, it is projected that he wins 54 times
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  out of 100, just like The Economist model, and the Harris wins 46 times.
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  They provide actually a graph of all of their election simulations.
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  And if I'm looking at the graph right now, it looks quite much like a standard deviation
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  chart, which all it really means is that it's a healthy simulation.
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  Nothing appears to be off too much.
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  And there is a wide range of outcomes that are pretty, pretty reliable.
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  And then there's also a graph on the bottom of the page.
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  The Democrats have a higher chance of, or a lower chance of winning the election but
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  not winning popular.
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  The Republicans have a slight chance, I would estimate based on looking at this, around
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  5% to 10% of winning the popular vote, or losing the popular vote but winning the election.
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  That's something that's kind of been contested since 2016.
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  Now if you look at the polymarket, and we will get back to 538 later for a bit of something
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  else, but if you do look at polymarket, which is a betting market where real money is exchanged
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  for US elections, again, it's illegal in the United States, but there are people who bet
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  from the United States.
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  This is obviously an opinion based model, but the people who are changing the percent
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  chances of winning and the percent chance of betting are mainly hedge fund managers
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  and people with extensive research and extensive polling on the topic.
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  So this might not be the best model for it, but it certainly reflects sentiment.
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  And what you can see sentiment wise is that Trump has taken a significant lead.
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  He has a 65% win rate against Kamala Harris's 35% chance.
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  This shows, and if you just look at the past week, it's gone from almost a 50-50 to her
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  being underwater by, what is it now, 20 points.
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  That's quite monumental.
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  And obviously the volume here is pretty massive.
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  It's $2.2 billion of volume, which is the amount of money that's been wagered on this
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  specific bet.
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  This is a market that's been up for a long time now and it's quite reliable just looking
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  at the market and opinions publicly.
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  And now to circle back to something that I did mention earlier that will go back to 538,
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  they do have a house model too.
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  They're one of the few house models that exists.
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  And I just wanted to kind of take a look at that because it does kind of reflect the presidential
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  model.
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  It is basically a coin flip.
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  Republicans win control of the house 51 times and Democrats win control 49 times.
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  It looks almost exactly like a standard distribution graph with the 218 seat for each party being
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  the most likely outcome of both.
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  However, the Democrats do have a slight chance on the 218, but Republicans have a bit of
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  a higher chance on the sweeps.
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  It's kind of just some stuff, but it doesn't matter too much to the physical election of
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  federal house representatives.
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  And 538 also hosts something that I also find quite interesting and it's a public sentiment
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  model.
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  Well, it's kind of a public sentiment model.
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  It just shows how much one candidate is underwater by the other candidate.
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  And right now it is roughly 1.7 points Harris is winning the election by popular wise.
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  However, there's something to always factor in it.
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  It's that national elections, presidential elections are usually off by around four points.
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  So this could go either way.
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  However, this is her lowest lead since her coming into the race as the presumptive DNC
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  nominee.
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  Elias?
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  Okay, so I'm going to kind of backpedal here and also veer slightly off of polls, but I'm
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  going to re-bring up something you said a little bit earlier.
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  You talked about how for a while people have kind of dismissed that popular vote doesn't
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  get taken into account.
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  Why do you think this is and do you think this will change at any point or why?
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  What do you mean by popular vote?
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  Like, like, what do you mean taken into account?
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  You can win the popular like the general population vote, but not win the federal like electoral
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  college like election like you can win over the people but not win the election type.
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  What about it?
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  Will it like ever because obviously it's a big thing that if you're more popular within
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  the population, why should you not represent the population?
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  But do you think that that should ever like be taken into account and why do you think
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  people have that much of a opinion about the difference?
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  Well, I think there's certainly a lot of incentives for some people to have a popular vote rather
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  than the electoral college system.
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  Obviously the electoral college system is what our, you know, country was founded upon.
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  However, there are there is a loophole in our constitution because the elections are
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  ran by the states and there's something called Project 270 that would allow and states have
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  already signed on to it.
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  Once states that total 270 electoral college votes sign on to it, it will be pledged into
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  basically, it'll be enshrined in their state constitution or state law depending on what
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  state it is.
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  They're signing on to a bill basically once you've 270 electoral votes worth of states,
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  the states will override their voters, which they are technically allowed to because they
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  run the elections and their eight electoral college members will then be given to the
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  candidate that has won the popular vote.
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  So that those 270 electoral vote collection of states will then override basically their
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  own state election process and give it to the thing.
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  Over 270 states have not signed on, but a lot have, more democratic states, but there
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  are a few Republicans.
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  However, if this were to go into effect, most certainly going to go to Supreme Court because
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  this is kind of flaunting a pretty small loop in the constitution that would probably be
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  closed or amended relatively quickly.
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  If not amended, then it would be amended by the Supreme Court with law.
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  Yes, Luchonor?
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  I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the new laws or restrictions in Georgia
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  with the votes where like all the votes have to be verified and stuff.
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  I'm wondering how you think that applies.
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  And also, do you think this will change the amount of time it takes for us to get our
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  results because last year we got them Saturday after the election, but this year with this
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  critical state taking so much longer, I'm wondering what you think that'll change.
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  To address your first point, Georgia, obviously a contested state with heavy Republican lawmakers,
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  a heavy Republican governor, has passed this bill basically from a Republican stance.
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  I don't see anything wrong with the bill other than the fact that it may take a bit longer
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  to verify the votes.
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  I think that it's a ploy to buy some time, obviously, if something were to go wrong on
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  the Republican side.
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  But obviously it doesn't actually hurt the electoral system other than maybe taking a
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  bit longer.
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  But, you know, projections, of course, can be made on the night or the nights following
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  the election, so it is not too hard to envision a place where Georgia isn't a decisive state
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  or where they can kind of suss out Georgia, hoping it's not like last year where it was
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  only a few 50 or something thousand votes.
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  Worst case scenario, the votes are counted.
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  Republicans can't dispute the results there, or at least some of them can't.
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  And that would kind of be that it might take a bit longer, but I see that more as an inconvenience
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  rather than an actual big problem.
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  So we're going to transition now into demographics, specifically talking about gender, age, race,
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  and ethnicity.
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  So we're going to present a couple of topics and then give the percentage of the people
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  within that demographic and how they fit within the categories of the question.
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  Okay, so the first thing is we're going to talk about what percentage of each gender
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  fits into how they choose to identify within the given categories.
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  So for this topic or this question, it's very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat
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  conservative, very conservative, or they don't know slash they didn't want to answer this
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  question.
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  So basically, within these options, they had to either select one of them or choose not
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  to respond.
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  So they aren't allowing for much variation within the political affiliations.
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  So Luchana is going to talk about the percentage from gender, age, and then I'll talk about
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  race and ethnicity.
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  Okay, so starting off with very liberal, 11% of women describe themselves as very liberal
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  and 9% of men.
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  16% of women and 11% of men describe themselves as somewhat liberal and 37% of both women
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  and men describe themselves as moderate.
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  So starting off here, we can see pretty clearly that 27% of women consider themselves on the
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  liberal side while 20% of men do.
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  So this is an interesting thing to note and the same amount consider themselves moderate.
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  20% of women and 19% of men consider themselves somewhat conservative and 14% of women and
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  21% of men consider themselves very conservative.
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  So 40% of men would place themselves on the conservative side and 34% of women would.
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  And then 3% of men don't know or refuse and 2% of women did.
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  Now moving on to age.
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  For our category of 18 to 29 year olds, 15% consider themselves very liberal, 21% consider
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  themselves somewhat liberal, 42% think of themselves as moderate, 11% as somewhat conservative,
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  and 9% as very conservative.
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  So this is our younger age range who also tend to be some of the most liberal.
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  For 30 to 44 year olds, we have 15% as very liberal, 16% as somewhat liberal, 42% as moderate,
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  17% as somewhat conservative, 9% as very conservative, and less than 1% that refused or didn't know.
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  For 45 to 64 year olds, 7% are very liberal, 10% are somewhat liberal, 40% are moderate,
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  24% are somewhat conservative, and 15% are very conservative.
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  And 4% don't know or refuse to answer.
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  For our over 65, 9% consider themselves very liberal, 12% consider themselves somewhat
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  liberal, 29% consider themselves moderate, 19% consider themselves somewhat conservative,
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  29% consider themselves very conservative, and 1% refuse.
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  So this is our most conservative age demographic.
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  So now onto race and ethnicity.
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  So the people that answered this that identify as white, 9% of them say they were very liberal,
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  12% somewhat liberal, 36% moderate, 22% somewhat conservative, 19% very conservative, and 2%
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  did not answer.
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  Those who identify as black, 15% are very liberal, 13% somewhat liberal, 43% moderate,
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  15% somewhat conservative, 12% very conservative, and 3% did not answer.
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  Those who identify as Hispanic, there were 15% who identify as very liberal, 22% who
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  identify as somewhat liberal, 30% who identify as moderate, 14% who are somewhat conservative,
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  another 14% who are very conservative, and 4% who did not want to answer.
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  And then those are the only specific race slash ethnicities that they have in this,
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  but they also have an other category with 7% classifying themselves as very liberal,
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  17% somewhat liberal, 52% moderate, 7% somewhat conservative, 15% very conservative, and less
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  than 1% did not choose to answer.
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  So as we can see with this, the highest group through gender, age, and race and ethnicity
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  is those who identify as moderate.
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  Now within the moderate category, there's definitely more people leaning more to the
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  left or more to the right.
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  It is very hard to be exactly moderate.
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  Very, very small percentage of people are fully in the middle and don't really care
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  about the party.
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  But with that not being an option, moderate was the best option for a lot of these people.
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  And then especially when it comes to race and ethnicity, that's a very broad spectrum.
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  So obviously we see a lot of higher numbers within these classifications, but that is
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  mainly because there are less options here to identify with.
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  And just to caveat all this and kind of just provide some transparency, this was from a
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  New York Times poll conducted in the past two weeks by Siena College.
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  It has hundreds of pages of cross tabs.
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  It took us a long time to find it.
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  It was conducted on exactly September 19th, 2024 and polled roughly 2,437 voters.
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  It kind of got whittled down for some questions for complicated reasons.
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  But if you want it, it's easily found on New York Times or if you just Google cross tabs
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  and we'll also put it in the show notes for the episode.
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  So thank you guys for listening.
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  Do we have anything else that we want to add before we go out?
• 16:52
  Sorry, I got a little confused there, but Ryan is 100% correct on that.
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  All right, that'll be it.
• 16:59
  Luchana is now going to talk to you about our socials and stuff like that.
• 17:05
  Thank you for listening to this episode.
• 17:08
  As always, if you have any feedback, feel free to email us at project2028.pod at gmail.com.
• 17:15
  You can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Podcasts
• 17:20
  or RSS.
• 17:21
  If you've liked this episode, please make sure to leave us a review and you can also
• 17:25
  go follow us on Instagram at at project2028.podcast.
• 17:31
  We post lots of updates about the show and what's happening in the world along with election
• 17:36
  updates and reminders.
• 17:37
  Thank you so much for listening.
• 17:38
  Have a great night.