Updated 2020 USA Election Prediction: the fall of America’s Brezhnev

In August this year I predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2020 USA election. The final debate has closed, and the laptop from hell has dropped. Early voting has begun. What is my prediction now?

Everyone agrees this election is hard to predict; and yet pundits persist in making predictions, and not clarifying the thinking driving their forecasts. Clarifying the thinking makes elections predictions not just a betting game, but a way of revealing political and historical thought.

I do not believe you can make a prediction that extrapolates from the RealClear Politics polling average. This scepticism is not just because the polls were wrong in 2016 (and quite a few other elections). It is rather what those errors reveal. Relying on polls is treacherous – as Tim Poole and Robert Cahahly, the pollster for Trafalgar, have made clear. One key factor is the injection by Trump of previously unregistered voters – they expose the fallacy of predicting one election through the data of the last.

The difficulties arise, I think, from some real shifts in culture, political behaviour and institutions.

Culture is fragmenting, and ways of life are reassembling or reacting against some of the extremes. This brew is throwing up extreme identity politics and calls for the Benedict Option. It is throwing up the cancellation of J.K. Rowling and the exultation of Jordan Peterson. There is a storm of new sense-making. Some is inspiring. Some is terrifying. For every crowd pulling down a statue of Cervantes, there is at least another gasping in horror at the madness of crowds. Which way will it go? And since culture is upstream of politics, how will they decide the events of 2020?

Political behaviour is professionalised into an obscene caricature. Politicians represent a narrow, unrepresentative cohort of mercenary hacks. They recycle personnel and resources through consulting firms, think tanks and NGOs. They manipulate stories through collusive networks in the media. Political discourse is twisted into an absurd drama, with the mainstream media chorus. But people are seeing through the absurd game. That was why Donald Trump was elected in 2016; will the backlash against the modern political glass bead game strengthen in 2020?

Institutions are degraded, and have been exposed as incompetent. This decadent political elite have directed a network of institutions that are no longer capable of delivering their mission, that have betrayed their ethos, and have lost their sense of purpose. Perhaps, the best example is the FBI. This institution, which Americans boast is the greatest law enforcement agency in the world, has become the tool of political cowards, the perpetrators of the RussiaGate hoax, and the persecutors of patriotic citizens. It has become a travesty, and no better sign of how democracies really die.

These shifts are responding to the three great historical events of the 2020 campaign:

• Pandemic/lockdown

• Racial Justice/Colour Revolution

• Impeachment/Corruption

I have named each of these events with a dual name, to reflect their dynamic nature and how they can be interpreted from different viewpoints. Each of these events are not single shocks, but rolling dramas, that swing the public mood and political behaviour, including voting behaviour.

So this is how I see the situation – a country questioning its cultural fundamentals, no longer bound together by its constitution, that is unable to control events in ways to secure the stability of its citizens. And it is also a country that feels betrayed by its leadership. But the emotional tug between conflicting values is intense. Will people choose safety (against the pandemic) or freedom (against the lockdown)? Will they march for justice for the now rarely named George Floyd or resist ex-security state operatives enacting a colour revolution to sabotage democracy in the home of the brave? Will they decide that Donald Trump or Joe Biden is the most corrupt politician ever to run for President of the United States? I think the drama of events does have an impact on voting behaviour.

My hunch is that the final question will be decisive. The revelations from the laptop from hell – despite all the attempts by Big Tech and many so-called journalists and media organisations – will answer the final question, with a resounding “Joe is corrupt”. This response will reshape the political and cultural kaleidoscope towards a victory, perhaps a large victory for Trump.

The revelations expose Joe Biden as a corrupt politician, who has orchestrated the security state, Democratic Party and mainstream media to cover his corruption. Joe Biden will go down in history as Swamp Monster Joe. And all the surging sentiments – for country, for democracy, for the rule of law, for faith, for freedom, for enterprise, for decency, for family values, for rule of law, for America – will swell into a Red Wave.

As Conrad Black has written the final Presidential debate and the laptop from hell scandal have exposed the real Joe Biden, that is:

“someone in no position to be lecturing America about “morality and integrity. Biden has been caught red-handed monetizing the vice presidency and has been exposed as having no serious argument to make against the reelection of this president. Unless the rabidly dishonest partisan media manage an unheard-of paroxysm of Goebbelsesque misinformation, this debate should have been a turning point.”

Conrad Black, “Biden’s Campaign Blew Up in a Bad Way, American Greatness (23 October 2020)

There are statistical indicators that I can point to in support of this prediction that defies the current polls. Norpoth’s primary model – that has predicted many past elections on the basis of the proportion of the candidate primary votes – predicts a 90 per cent chance of victory for Trump. Voter registration trends favour Trump. The enthusiasm gap favours Trump, and is a source of many amusing videos of Joe Biden shouting to empty car parks. Gallup party affiliation favours Trump. Gallup’s measure of whether people feel better off points to a strong advantage for Trump. Early voting results seem to be trending for Trump. There are clear signs that the Democrats are losing some of the black vote, especially young black men, and the Latino vote.

Yet the media and their pollsters are convincing themselves that a Biden victory is certain. I predict they are wrong. Some republican strategists are predicting a Trump victory in the range of 280 to 320 electoral college votes. I think Biden’s campaign is collapsing in response to this story. But as he hides under his “lid”, his vote will sink. My prediction is a Trump win with 300 to 320 electoral college votes.

I think there is going to be a late surge to Trump and the Republicans. I think people will rally around their constitution, their faith and their nation. And equally significant there will be a late sag in the vote for Biden and the Democrats. In the end they have been exposed as corrupt and incompetent. The Sanders voters will fall away and take their revenge within the party.

I think we are witnessing a crisis in power regime of the Democratic Party – or perhaps more accurately the American Imperial War Faction. Joe Biden will fail to get his Presidential power of pardon, and will be remembered in history as the Leonid Brezhnev of America – ailing, incompetent, corrupt, deluded, and presiding over a collapsing regime and a disintegrating empire.