Gotta say a shout out to the Maricopa County Dem Party

Total pros. I was a teensy part of their operation and they absolutely knew their stuff. They were organized, knew who needed to vote, found them, and turned them out. Old fashioned ground game, door to door, signs in yards, blood sweat and tears.

Biden signs were everywhere in Maricopa Co by the way.

They created a great roadmap for the future. People say that, "Oh Maricopa Co is changing demographically." Bullshit. So was Miami Dade. It isn't just that easy as hoping the demographic ages in to the voter pools.

Thank God. Nite nite.

CNN Exit 53 Female 47 Male / POC up 10%

And more college graduates. 45%
2016 was 40%

Party 38D 35R 28 Indy

You tell me. Fricking great?

Betting Markets Responded Immediately in Biden's favor

Betting Markets Moving Biden

Biden up 5c in the past hour or so. This gives you the real-time sense of where we are.

Market reacting to CNN announcing low turnout in PA.

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3698

Trumptanic. Totally worth watching. Will make you smile.

Federal Judge Rejects Efforts to Invalidate Houston Votes

A federal judge rejected a bid by Republican activists to invalidate 127,000 votes in the most populous county in Texas.

“For lack of a nicer way of saying it, I ain’t buying it,” U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said at a hearing Monday in Houston, rejecting the request by Republican activists because of lack of standing.

NC Dems lead In Person voting. Crushing Mail.

Something is going on in NC for reals. Unlike other battleground states, Dems have the lead for IN PERSON early voters. Granted the lead is .8% but Dems have a huge 25% lead in mail ballots.

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NC.html

Overall D lead of 255,000 votes +-
Bodes very well for Biden.

Curiously, NC is one of the few states where Rs have an advantage in the rate of return for their mail in ballots. (That's the percentage if those who turn in the ballot, not the actual numbers if ballots) Rs have a 2.7% advantage. IA is the other R Mail advantage state for rate of return.

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NC.html

In the other battlegrounds Dems requested far more ballots but they also are turning them in at a higher rate.

Fl 1.5 Dem advantage
AZ 5 D advantage
PA 11.4 advantage

Will be watching that PA number closely. Nate Silver said that the Rs could be hurt more by stopping the Mail ballots as they are sitting on their ballots longer. This is presumably because they don't even know that slow mail delivery is an issue. Fox ain't talking about it.

Final Morning Consult: General B+8 PA B+9

General B +8

AZ B +2
FL B +6
GA B +2
MI B +7
MN B+9
NC B+1
OH T +3
PA B +9. MOE 2%
Texas TIE
WI B +13

https://morningconsult.com/form/2020-u-s-election-tracker/#section-5

The only political subject trending on Twitter now is...

#Trumpdeliverednothing.

The tweet that started it..

https://twitter.com/lindyli/status/1322988642084790275?s=21
---------
Wake up, America!

#TrumpDeliveredNothing and screwed us over

We have two more days to end this clusterfuck. Share widely
---------

Everything else that is trending is football.

Race is now between Trump 43% and Fauci 66%

Fauci did us a solid last night. The narrative today will be about his rift with the White House. The Washington Post story rings a little like a Comey surprise. Comey was generally well regarded and perceived to be above it all. Fauci is cut from the same cloth. The doctor's approval numbers are 20%+ better than Trump's. It's a battle Trump can't win.

Even better it takes Biden out of the story entirely. This puts Trump purely on the defense. Attacking Fauci is not a winning strategy for the last two days of the campaign, but there's no way for Trump to contain himself. One would expect the sound bites from his rallies to be his comments on Fauci.

Nobody will care about Iowa today.

The WaPo story is also not hidden behind a paywall.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fauci-covid-winter-forecast/2020/10/31/e3970eb0-1b8b-11eb-bb35-2dcfdab0a345_story.html

USC Daybreak Poll Deep Dive Looks Promising

Lots can be said about the USC Daybreak Poll. Nate Silver doesn't seem to be a huge fan. But that being said, the poll offers some useful info if you want to go deep. So let's go deep.

Keep in mind that USC interviews the same 5000 group of people every 14 days in a 1/14 sample per day rotation. Let's assume their initial methodology was wrong and Biden really isn't leading by +11. Who cares? It's still a great tool to show how people are changing their minds and general volatility.

First takeaway shows an insanely different story for election volatility. The 2016 USC poll was nuts--all over the place. 2020, solid as a rock. Biden leading by 11 pretty much the whole way. See for yourself.

2016 Crazy Volatility
https://dornsife-center-for-political-future.usc.edu/past-polls-collection/2016-poll/

2020 Snoozefest
https://election.usc.edu/

Obviously Access Hollywood and Comey were major players in this volatility for 2016.

For 2020, Biden picked up support after Trump's Walter Reed visit but then lost it during the brief laptop nonsense. Other than that, zip movement. We are where we started a few months ago.

Second takeaway is that because USC shows how these people actually voted, you can see hard number trends.

The internals from two weeks ago show an interesting trend for Trump abstainers. Dems were voting Biden for president, but a lot of women Republicans were voting for nobody. Independents were also sitting on the sidelines and abstaining in huge numbers. But Indies still gave Biden an advantage of around 5%.

But..... 20% + of R women who already voted in the USC did not vote for president at all. (You have to do a little extrapolation and the sample is small but it's there)

This opens the door to a very plausible scenario that I haven't read much about. Yes, Biden picks up maybe 5% better crossover voters and he does better with independents. But the real story might be this year that an unusually large number of R women voters may skip filling in a presidential bubble and not vote for president at all. This would make it all but impossible for Trump to win. It also explains his stupid-ass begging for suburban women voters on the stump.

Men (and I'm an man and I should know) continue to suck, choosing Trump by a huge margin. Ridiculous.

So the USC poll tells us that the race is not volatile. The other polling we see--especially the partisan or low quality outfits--varies because of methodology.

Trafalgar, by the way, literally changes responses from Biden to Trump. They figure that if someone answers all other questions as if they were a Trump voter but say they will vote Biden, they will change their preference back to Trump. I simplify, but literally they do this.

The Upshot? Stable race. No tightening. Biden is doing slightly better with crossover voters and Indies. Women hate Trump. R women are abstaining. And white men, (that's me) F*CKING SUCK.