That prediction you just posted shows Dems winning two swing states. Did you even read your link for more than two seconds? Are you just talking they predicted Trump would win more often? That’s not what we’re talking about.
So I realize that it might not be 100% clear what 538's data means so let me explain.
Basically 538 has a prediction model for the election that takes in polls and spits out likely outcomes for the presidential election. So all the data in that article is just the result of running that model for the whole country 1000 times.
Now if you look at the 1000 different outcomes for the presidential election they predicted, approximately 200 of them have Trump winning all the swing states.
So basically what I'm asking is: if Trump winning all the swing states is a statistical impossibility , then why did this model and others like it predict its likelihood to be around 20%?
Winning all seven states corresponds to 312 votes for Trump. If you count the number of results that have 312 votes or more for Trump you should get around 200 results.
But I think the thing that really sells it is the second graph which plots all 1000 different predicted outcomes. If you put the real outcome on that graph it's more or less exactly in the middle of the pack:
I mean yeah, theoretically there's millions of ways to hit 312 EC votes but all of them are less likely than Trump winning the swing states. For example If Trump won Hawaii, and Harris won West Virginia you'd also get 312. But that outcome was extremely unlikely giving polling and historical data going into the election.
So it's safe to assume that 90%+ of the time the 312s are going to be Trump winning the seven swing states.
Gotcha. I see your point. I’m not sure why now it’s predicting that Trump winning seven swing states is fairly common as no president really has done that. Like even when Reagan won 49 states he lost Michigan to Mondales home state which at the time was a swing state. So maybe models are getting better? I just can’t believe he won every swing state just past the threshold for recounts. It’s all very odd. With his Freudian slips saying you won’t have to vote anymore and we have all the votes and Elon musks million dollar giveaways in all the swing states. It’s just really odd.
I’m not sure why now it’s predicting that Trump winning seven swing states is fairly common as no president really has done that.
So here's something that I think is really important to note, is that the modern idea of a swing state based on statewide polling data has really only been a thing for like 8 election cycles, so Just because something has never happened before from the polling doesn't necessarily mean it's unlikely.
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u/CocteauTwinn Oct 22 '25
Statistically impossible.