| | | | |  | | By Calder McHugh | Presented by Citi | | 
Vice President Kamala Harris steps off Air Force Two as she arrives at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Sunday. | Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images | SO YOU’RE SAYING THERE’S A CHANCE — With six weeks to go until Election Day, both in national and battleground state public opinion polls, the presidential election looks incredibly close. The most popular political forecasts that employ probability models indicate the same thing, only through different methods. These are the forecasts that aggregate polling data, sometimes factoring in other environmental factors (how much time until the election, whether a candidate is an incumbent, what the unemployment rate is) in order to come to a probabilistic conclusion on who is likely to win. In its most recent update, one of the best known forecasts, Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin, gives Vice President Kamala Harris a 53.2 percent chance of winning, compared to former President Donald Trump’s 46.6 percent shot. The Economist has Harris at 57/100 and Trump at 43/100. The Hill/Decision Desk HQ projects Harris has a 55 percent chance of victory and Trump has a 45 percent shot. And 538 says that Harris wins 58 times out of 100 while Trump claims victory 42 times out of 100. The trouble is, it’s not entirely clear if most people understand the purpose of the models or what they tell us. Studies have shown that these kinds of forecasts can be confusing to voters — causing them to conflate a candidate’s probability of winning with their expected vote share. For example, they might look at the 538 forecast (which shows Harris with a 58 percent chance of winning compared to Trump at 42 percent) and believe she’s ahead of Trump by a significant margin — 16 points. Now, if Harris were beating Trump by 16 points in the national polls, that would indeed be big news — it might be the harbinger of a landslide. But that’s not at all what the probability models are saying. In an election as close as this one, in a nation as divided as ours, distorted perceptions about the outcome can be a dangerous thing. What’s important to understand is that the concept of probability of victory and the results of actual public opinion polling are different. Each of the above websites uses their own model to determine the probability that they spit out — some heavily weigh polls from some polling firms above others, some price in the idea of a “convention polling bounce” or an “incumbency advantage” into their models. It means that some models are much more reactive to different moments on the calendar and different polling inputs than others. Consider these examples. Over the last two weeks, the same polling has been available to everyone. Yet on Sept. 9, The Hill/DDHQ gave Harris a 54 percent chance to win and The Silver Bulletin had Harris at a more modest 35.3 percent chance. Since that day, The Hill/DDHQ’s forecast barely moved, but The Silver Bulletin’s experienced a considerable shift. If you only looked at the former forecast, you’d believe the race has barely changed. But if you only looked at the latter, you’d think there’s been some real movement in the race. Around this time in the election calendar, people get desperate for any news. So Silver’s model, which is much more reactive than The Hill/DDHQ’s, drives a lot more conversation. But even his relatively large change isn’t as significant as a lot of pundits would have you believe. You’d rather have a 53 percent chance of success than a 35 percent chance, but both are well within the realm of possibility. And this brings us to the question of the value of political forecasts in the first place. Silver’s critics often cite 2016 as an example of how he was wrong — he gave Hillary Clinton a 71.4 percent chance of winning and she lost. He cites it as an example of how he was right — other prediction sites and betting markets gave her an even higher chance of winning, whereas he was more bullish on Trump’s chances (in his most recent book concerning people who break norms, Silver explains how people who gamble on elections told him that in 2016, his model helped them make money, because it was more bullish on Trump than the gambling markets). And Silver wasn’t really wrong. Outcomes with a low chance of occurring happen fairly frequently across our daily lives. Just a week ago in an NFL game, the Atlanta Falcons had just an 0.7 percent chance of defeating the Philadelphia Eagles with under two minutes to go in the fourth quarter. They staged an improbable comeback and won. Given that we have many more results in pro football than in presidential elections (the NFL has 272 games over the course of a season, whereas there’s only one presidential election every four years), it’s much more likely that something with a 0.7 percent chance will eventually happen on the football field. And yet, it’s possible in politics as well. Without more results, it’s impossible to have a conclusive answer, even after an election, for how “accurate” any model truly is. So, for the election forecasting-interested among us, by all means continue to compulsively check how the candidates appear to be doing. Just don’t conflate them with the polls, and remember that probability is just that — it’s not a hard and fast prediction. Strange things happen all the time. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
| | A message from Citi: The global healthcare system is in need of a checkup. Life expectancy in many western countries has stalled over the past 15 years, while healthcare costs are rising to potentially unsustainable levels. The new Citi GPS Report, Future of Healthcare, sheds light on key strategies that could revolutionize our healthcare system – such as restructuring healthcare delivery and harnessing data-integrated digital technology. Learn more here. | | | | | — U.S. sending ‘small number’ of troops to Middle East as attacks ramp up: The U.S. is sending “a small number” of troops to the Middle East, the Pentagon said today, as Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters intensify their cross-border attacks. The troops would add to the 40,000 American forces already in the region, including over a dozen warships in the surrounding waters and thousands of Marines aboard ships in the Mediterranean Sea. — FBI reports violent crime declined in 2023: Violent crime in the U.S. dropped in 2023, according to FBI statistics that show a continued trend downward after a coronavirus pandemic-era crime spike. Overall violent crime declined an estimated 3% in 2023 from the year before, according to the FBI report today. Murders and non-negligent manslaughter dropped nearly 12%. — Commerce Dept. moves to ban imports of Chinese ‘connected’ cars and parts: The Commerce Department is publishing a proposed rule today to ban imports of Chinese and Russian vehicles, as well as key hardware and software components, that could be used to spy on Americans or potentially even take control of their cars. “Cars today have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies connected to the internet,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement. “It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens.’ The proposed regulation is the latest barrier that the United States has imposed on Chinese vehicles in recent years, but the first to address cyber hacking threats.
| | NO IN NEBRASKA — The Nebraska state senator who Republicans hoped would help ease former President Donald J. Trump’s path to the White House by agreeing to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes said today that he would not do so, ending a brief but intense lobbying effort from allies of Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. The state legislator, Mike McDonnell, a Democrat turned Republican from Omaha, said that he would not agree to change Nebraska’s 32-year tradition of awarding three of the state’s five electoral votes by congressional district to a winner-take-all system based on the statewide popular vote, bucking calls from Nebraska’s governor and its congressional delegation to help Mr. Trump, writes the New York Times. WALZ’S DEBATE STAND-IN — Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) will be playing his home state governor Tim Walz during Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s debate preparation, a Vance spokesperson told POLITICO. Emmer is the House majority whip, the third highest ranking Republican in the House. He was previously the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. RETURN TRIP — Former President Donald Trump plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where he faced an assassination attempt in July, for a rally next month, reports NBC News. The event is scheduled for Oct. 5 — one month before Election Day — said the sources, who requested anonymity to share information about a rally that hasn’t been publicly announced. Trump has long teased a return to the town where he was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt on July 13. Weeks after the attempt on his life, Trump wrote in all caps on Truth Social that he would be back "for a big beautiful rally," honoring Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief who died during the shooting and two others who were injured when a gunman opened fire from an elevated post not far from the rally site. WSJ ED BOARD WHACKS TRUMP — The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board compared Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to Sen. Bernie Sanders following Trump’s announcement that if he were reelected, he would instate a temporary 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates. The former president made the surprise pledge, which would require congressional approval, during a rally last week.
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Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike in Marjayoun, near the Lebanon-Israel border, today. | Rabih Daher/AFP via Getty Images | DEADLY AIRSTRIKES — Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed at least 274 people, including 21 children, today according to Lebanese health authorities. The Israeli military carried out strikes on hundreds of targets across the country in a major new assault on Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group and political party based in Lebanon. Around 5,000 people have been injured in Israeli attacks since Tuesday, the Lebanese health minister said. The strikes raise fears of a wider regional war in the Middle East, where Israel has also been battling Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip since October last year. FRENCH FRUSTRATION — The appointment of France’s new, right-leaning government has provoked frustration and angst among some of President Emmanuel Macron’s earliest supporters. After Prime Minister Michel Barnier unveiled his Cabinet on Saturday, Macron’s allies took to the airwaves to voice their frustrations. Many of the centrists who backed Macron are worried about the conservative hard-liners occupying key Cabinet positions, including those whose stances on social issues and immigration differ from the French president’s. “I understand that voters may feel frustrated by this government, which does not represent the results of the legislative elections,” Roland Lescure, a lawmaker with Macron’s Renaissance party who was elected to the National Assembly after the president’s first election in 2017 and served as industry minister in the previous administration, said. Lescure, a former member of the Socialists who threw his support behind Macron in the early days of his first presidential campaign, echoed the concerns of many left and centrist-leaning pro-Macron politicians worried about the rightward tilt of Barnier’s government. On Sunday, Gabriel Attal, Barnier’s predecessor who now presides over a group of pro-Macron lawmakers in the National Assembly, told his troops that he would ask Barnier to “clearly state in his general policy statement that there will be no going back on ART [assisted reproductive technology], abortion rights or LGBT rights.”
| | | | A message from Citi:   | | | | | | | 80 percent The percentage of Democratic-aligned groups’ outside spending that has been supportive of Kamala Harris’ candidacy, rather than attacking Donald Trump, according to the POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission records. The strategy marks a striking shift from 2016 and 2020, when a majority of similar groups’ spending was focused on driving up Trump’s negative ratings. | | | | GOING BANANAS — The bananas you enjoy in the morning, with your cereal, smoothies, in your banana bread, or just on their own, are facing extinction due to a fungal disease. Specifically, the disease is affecting the Cavendish bananas, the world’s most popular type of banana, attacking its roots and causing the plant to rot and die. The fungus has affected banana crops around the globe for decades, but in recent years it’s accelerated and moved to new regions. Fortunately, scientists appear to have found a potential solution, writes Stacey Leasca for Food & Wine magazine.
| | |  On this date in 1975: President Gerald Ford is flanked by first lady Betty Ford (right) and Happy Rockefeller, wife of the vice president, at the White House a day after an assassination attempt. Ford told reporters he was glad to be safely home at the Executive Mansion following the second attempt on his life in 17 days. | AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
| | A message from Citi: Globally, the average person born today will live almost 30 years longer than someone born in 1950, perhaps one of humanity’s most astonishing achievements. But the global healthcare system’s vital signs have deteriorated recently – and in many western countries, life expectancy has stalled over the past 15 years.
A rapidly aging population is already driving healthcare system costs to potentially unsustainable levels, and in many advanced economies the cost of healthcare as a proportion of GDP has more than doubled in the past 30 years.
The new Citi GPS Report, Future of Healthcare, sheds light on key strategies that could revolutionize our healthcare system – such as reorganizing how healthcare is delivered, leveraging data-integrated digital technology, and addressing medical issues more proactively.
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