Who will win the presidency? I love data. I look at it and try to predict the future. You probably don’t know much about me, so let me introduce myself. I am Insider Monkey’s research director. I have a PhD in financial economics and I try to predict the direction of individual stocks and the entire market to make trade recommendations for our subscribers. I usually share 1-2 free trade ideas every year.
I shared this year’s first free trade idea on February 27th in an article titled “Recession Is Imminent: We Need A Travel Ban NOW!“. At the time of the publication of that article the U.S. COVID-19 death toll stood at zero and we had only 1 confirmed COVID-19 case of community transmission. It is an amazing article. I predicted that the S&P 500 Index will decline by 20-30% by the end of the year and told you to short the market (I told our subscribers to short the market a few days before that article was published).
The second time I shared a stock pick this year was in the middle of March when the total U.S. COVID-19 deaths was fewer than 200. In this article I predicted that the U.S. death toll will surpass 20,000 in less than 4 weeks and told our readers to buy hospital stocks, specifically Tenet Healthcare (THC). Those predictions were very accurate.
On March 25th, I told our subscribers to cover their short positions and go long the market. So, our market bottom call was also very accurate. Because of accurate market timing and stock recommendations our subscribers were able to return 112% since March 2017 vs. 54% gain for the S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY). I am really good at analyzing data and not a very humble person.
So, one of the most important questions we have to answer right now is the outcome of the presidential election. Who will win the presidency?
The best tool we have to determine the outcome of elections is polls. Each poll has its own bias and we have get rid of some of the bias in individual polls by combining the results of each individual poll in one giant poll. Fivethirtyeight is a website that does this for us. Its method isn’t fool proof though. We can get rid of some of the bias, but not all of it. Right before the 2016 presidential election, on November 7th, Fivethirtyeight estimated that Hillary Clinton had a 67% chance of winning the election. Yet, Donald Trump crushed Hillary. There are several reasons why this happened. I am not going to waste your time to discuss these. The most important factor was that voters didn’t reveal their true intentions when asked by pollsters. As a result, polls failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 elections. Take a look at this screenshot of Fivethirtyeight’s website from November 7, 2016 (the day before the 2016 election):
Today, Fivethirtyeight thinks Biden has an 85% chance of winning the election. An almost slam dunk case. I disagree.
In this article I am going to assume that the current polls in each state have the same bias as they had in 2016 and I will adjust the current poll results to estimate the true intentions of the voters. At the end of this article, we will have a better idea about who will win the presidency.
1. Alabama
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump wins by 21.6 points
Actual result: Trump won by 27.7 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump wins by 19.4 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump wins by 25.5 points
Trump: 9 – Biden:0
2. Alaska
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump wins by 7.3 points
Actual result: Trump won by 14.7 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump wins by 7 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump wins by 14.4 points
Trump: 12 – Biden:0
3. Arizona**
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump wins by 3.3 points
Actual result: Trump won by 3.5 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 2.7 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump wins by 0.0 points
Trump: 23 – Biden:0
4. Arkansas
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump wins by 19.8 points
Actual result: Trump won by 26.9 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump wins by 19.5 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump wins by 26.6 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:0
5. California
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump loses by 22.5 points
Actual result: Trump lost by 30.1 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 30.7 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump loses by 38.3 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:55
6. Colorado
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump loses by 3.4 points
Actual result: Trump lost by 4.9 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 10.6 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump loses by 12.1 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:64
7. Connecticut
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump loses by 11.1 points
Actual result: Trump lost by 13.6 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 21.8 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump loses by 24.3 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:71
8. Delaware
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump loses by 12.2 points
Actual result: Trump lost by 11.4 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 25 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump loses by 24.2 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:74
9. District of Columbia
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump loses by 70.8 points
Actual result: Trump lost by 86.8 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 83.2 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump loses by 88 points
Trump: 29 – Biden:77
10. Florida**
Fivethirtyeight 2016 prediction: Trump wins by 0.1 points
Actual result: Trump won by 1.2 points
Fivethirtyeight 2020 prediction: Trump loses by 3.6 points
Insider Monkey Prediction: Trump wins by 1 vote (Even though Biden has the edge right now, I think this is temporary and Trump will close the gap in the next 3 weeks. I think Trump has a 50.1% probability of winning Florida)
Trump: 58 – Biden:77
