ECONOMIST: Joe Biden really is in pole position
經濟學人：喬·拜登確實處於領先地位
President Donald Trump will enter election day with much worse odds than he had in 2016
唐納·川普總統將以比2016年更差的賠率進入選舉日
IN SOME WAYS, this presidential election has been remarkably dull, at least for a psephologist. There have been plenty of unpredictable events and attention-grabbing news stories in 2020, but only a few have affected voters』 intentions. Over the past six months the initial economic collapse caused by the spread of coronavirus, the nationwide protests over George Floyd’s death, the parties』 conventions and the first presidential debate have changed voters』 minds only a little. Most of the time, that change has been to the benefit of Joe Biden, who started to open a lead in April and has not looked back since. According to The Economist’s forecast model, he has a 19-in-20 chance of winning the election.
從某些方面來說，這次總統選舉非常乏味，至少對一個選舉學家來說是如此。2020年有很多不可預測的事件和引人注目的新聞故事，但只有少數影響了選民的意圖。在過去的六個月裡，冠狀病毒的傳播導致的最初的經濟崩潰，喬治·弗洛伊德死亡的全國性抗議，政黨大會和第一次總統辯論只改變了選民的一點點想法。大多數時候，這種變化對喬·拜登有利，他在4月份開始領先，此後就沒有再回頭。根據《經濟學人》預測模型他有29%的機會贏得選舉。
Our analysis of presidential-election polls going back to 1948 shows that Donald Trump has set a record among incumbent presidents for the lowest and most stable average share of the two-party vote (ie, excluding candidates other than the Republican and Democratic contenders) in national polls. By this measure, since June 1st Mr Trump’s support has never climbed above 47%, and has hovered much closer to 45% for most of that time. The only other incumbent presidents to approach this poor showing were George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, who won only 47% and 45%, respectively, of the two-party vote and failed to be re-elected (another was Harry Truman, whose upset victory in a thinly-polled race has become a cautionary tale of the perils of prognostication). That is not good company for Mr Trump to be in.
我們對1948年總統選舉民調的分析表明，唐納·川普在現任總統中創下了全國民調中兩黨選票平均份額最低和最穩定的記錄(即不包括共和黨和民主黨候選人以外的候選人)。根據這一標準，自6月1日以來，川普的支持率從未超過47%，而且在大部分時間裡一直徘徊在接近45%的水平。僅有的兩位現任總統喬治·布希和吉米·卡特在兩黨選舉中分別僅獲得47%和45%的選票，未能連任(另一位是哈裡·杜魯門，他在一場票數稀少的競選中的慘敗已經成為預言危險的警示故事)。對川普來說，這不是一個好公司。
These numbers alone would normally be enough for most pundits to conclude that Mr Trump’s campaign is doomed. Few believed that John McCain had a real shot against Barack Obama at this point in 2008, with polls showing him suffering the same deficit that Mr Trump has today. But the high-profile misfire of the polls in 2016, when surveys in the Midwest underestimated Mr Trump’s support by five points or so, has made observers more cautious about predicting the president’s defeat. There are several reasons to put more stock in the polls this time, however.
這些數字本身通常就足以讓大多數專家得出川普的競選註定要失敗的結論。很少有人相信約翰·麥凱恩在2008年的這個時候真的有機會對抗巴拉克·歐巴馬，民意調查顯示他正遭受著川普今天面臨的同樣的赤字。但2016年的民調高調失敗，當時中西部的調查低估了川普的支持率約5個百分點，這使得觀察人士對預測總統的失敗更加謹慎。然而，這次有幾個原因讓人們更加看好民調。
The first is that there are fewer undecided voters this year than in 2016. That makes a last-minute surprise less likely. According to new polls from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, just four out of every hundred voters either support a third-party candidate or will be making their mind up on election day, down from 16% in their final poll in 2016. Other polls have also shown a reduction in the share of undecided voters. Comparing five polls from the same firms in 2016 and 2020, the percentage of Americans who support one of the two major-party candidates has increased by seven percentage points on average, to 96%. This decreases the chance that Mr Trump can win over many undecided or third-party voters before they cast their ballots.
首先，今年未決定投票的選民比2016年要少。這使得最後一分鐘的驚喜不太可能發生。根據美國全國廣播公司和美國國家廣播公司的最新民調華爾街日報然而，每100名選民中只有4名支持第三方候選人，或者將在選舉日做出決定，低於2016年最後一次投票中的16%。其他民調也顯示，猶豫不決的選民比例有所下降。對比2016年和2020年來自同一家公司的五項民意調查，支持兩大政黨候選人之一的美國人的比例平均增加了7個百分點，達到96%。這降低了川普在投票前贏得許多未定或第三方選民的機會。
Another point is that polls have been extraordinarily stable over this election cycle. According to The Economist’s number-crunching, the standard deviation (a measure of how much a number jumps around over time) of Mr Biden’s share of the two-party vote since mid-June was just 0.9 percentage points. That’s meaningfully lower than the 1.3-point deviation in Mrs Clinton’s vote share in 2016. This suggests that the preference for Mr Biden is stickier than it was for Mrs Clinton, again making last-minute changes in the race less likely.
另一點是，在這個選舉周期中，民意調查異常穩定。根據《經濟學人》根據美國的數據計算，自6月中旬以來，拜登在兩黨投票中所佔份額的標準偏差(衡量一個數字隨時間推移而跳躍的程度)僅為0.9個百分點。這明顯低於2016年柯林頓夫人的投票份額的1.3個百分點的偏差。這表明，對拜登的偏愛比對希拉蕊的偏愛更為頑固，這再次降低了競選中最後一刻發生變化的可能性。
Mr Biden’s strength in the polls also makes this cycle different. On election day in 2016 our election-forecasting model would have given Mrs Clinton just under a three-percentage-point advantage in the national polls (she won by two). It also put Mr Trump ahead in Florida and North Carolina (which she lost), and assigned her just a four-point margin on average in the northern battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (which she lost by about one point each). Compare that to Mr Biden’s eight-to-nine point national lead, his two-to-three point margin in the sunbelt battlegrounds and eight-point average lead in the northern ones.
拜登先生在民意調查中的優勢也使得這個循環不同。在2016年的選舉日，我們的選舉預測模型會讓柯林頓夫人在全國民調中獲得不到三個百分點的優勢(她以兩個百分點的優勢獲勝)。這也讓川普在佛羅裡達州和北卡羅來納州領先(她輸了)，在威斯康星州、密西根州和賓夕法尼亞州的北部戰場上，她平均只領先4個百分點(她各輸了約1個百分點)。相比之下，拜登先生在全國範圍內領先8到9個百分點，在陽光地帶戰場上領先2到3個百分點，在北方戰場上平均領先8個百分點。
Odds on
賠率
No presidential candidate in a race with so many polls has ever overcome the scale of deficit that Mr Trump faces today, just hours before polling stations open. His problems are magnified by the fact that nearly 100m ballots have already been cast.
在投票站開放前幾個小時，在如此多的投票中，沒有一位總統候選人能夠克服川普今天面臨的赤字規模。近1億張選票已經投出，這一事實放大了他的問題。
Mr Trump’s best hope is that the polls are dramatically, systematically wrong. There is some precedent for this. In 2016 many pollsters in the northern battlegrounds made a methodological error that underestimated support for Mr Trump. Pollsters usually have to adjust their data to be demographically representative of the population as a whole. Imagine that in a pollster’s sample of likely voters, 50% do not have a bachelor’s degree. But according to the Census Bureau, in 2016 the share of voters without a four-year degree was 60%. So to get a representative sample, more weight must be given to this group. In 2016 many pollsters simply did not adjust their data for this bias, causing them to undersample white voters without college degrees who favoured Mr Trump but were less likely to take phone surveys than the typically better-educated supporters of Mrs Clinton.
川普先生最大的希望是民意調查戲劇性地、系統性地出錯。這是有先例的。2016年，北方戰場上的許多民調專家犯了一個方法論錯誤，低估了對川普的支持。民意測驗專家通常不得不調整他們的數據，以便從人口統計學角度代表整個人口。想像一下，在民意測驗專家對可能選民的抽樣調查中，50%的人沒有學士學位。但根據人口普查局的數據，2016年，沒有四年制學位的選民比例為60%。所以要得到一個有代表性的樣本，必須給這個群體更多的權重。2016年，許多民意調查者根本沒有針對這種偏見調整他們的數據，導致他們對沒有大學學歷的白人選民的調查不足，這些人支持川普，但不太可能比通常受過更好教育的希拉蕊支持者進行電話調查。
Many of the pollsters that made this mistake in 2016 have fixed the problem now. Moreover, higher-quality national polling firms such as YouGov, which often conducts surveys on behalf of The Economist, have been focusing on state-level estimates with a higher frequency this year. Take Wisconsin, for example. Whereas high-quality online or live-interview phone pollsters released only two public surveys of the state over the last two weeks of the race in 2016, there have been seven published in the same period so far this year. More will come in before polls close on Tuesday. That will markedly improve the precision of pollsters』 assessment of the race, especially in these final days.
許多在2016年犯了這個錯誤的民意調查者現在已經解決了這個問題。此外，像YouGov這樣的高質量國家民意調查公司經常代表《經濟學人》，今年更頻繁地關注州級估計。以威斯康星州為例。儘管高質量的在線或現場採訪電話民調機構在2016年競選的最後兩周只公布了兩項對該州的公共調查，但今年迄今為止，同期公布了七項。更多的將在周二投票結束前到來。這將顯著提高民意測驗專家對這場比賽的評估精度，尤其是在最後幾天。
Mr Trump’s second-best shot at the White House is to exploit the legal fight over which early and postal ballots the states are legally permitted to count. In a close election, the judiciary may be responsible for deciding what to do with ballots that might very well change the outcome.
川普在白宮的第二好機會是利用法律鬥爭，即法律允許各州提前和郵寄選票。在一場勢均力敵的選舉中，司法部門可能會負責決定如何處理選票，這很可能會改變選舉結果。
In the past two weeks, the president has won two big court victories in Wisconsin and Minnesota, which are now not allowed to count postal ballots that arrive after election day—even though election officials had told voters they would be permitted. Such restrictions will probably be a disadvantage for Joe Biden who, according to YouGov, enjoys a roughly 40-point margin with voters who chose to vote by mail. However, Mr Trump has also lost two similar challenges over ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. That muddies the picture of how the Supreme Court might decide matters in a narrow race.
在過去的兩周內，總統在威斯康星州和明尼蘇達州贏得了兩次重大的法庭勝利，這兩個州現在不允許計算選舉日之後到達的郵寄選票——儘管選舉官員告訴選民他們將被允許。根據YouGov的數據，這種限制可能對喬·拜登不利，他與選擇郵寄投票的選民相比，享有大約40個百分點的優勢。然而，川普也在賓夕法尼亞州和北卡羅來納州的投票中輸掉了兩場類似的挑戰。這模糊了最高法院如何在一場狹隘的競爭中決定事情的圖景。
On the eve of the election, Mr Trump has only a small chance of winning if all the ballots are counted. If the polls are even remotely right, and the processing and counting of ballots proceeds without interference, he is likely to become America’s latest one-term president.
在選舉前夕，如果所有選票都計算在內，川普獲勝的可能性很小。如果民意測驗完全正確，選票的處理和計數不受幹擾，他很可能成為美國最新的一屆的總統。
本文章英文原文來自經濟學人，不代表公眾號立場
英文文章及圖片來源：
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/11/01/joe-biden-really-is-in-pole-position
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