 Hello everyone. Welcome. My name is Carol Hinkle. I am the president of Triple E. I know it's a gloomy day, but we have one of our very favorite returning speakers. So without further ado, I'd like to ask Beth Wood, our program chair, to please introduce him. Beth? Good afternoon, everyone. We're very fortunate. Good afternoon, everyone. We're very fortunate to welcome back Eric Davis today. And if you have been lucky enough to have heard any of his previous presentations here at Triple E, you'll know how much breadth and depth and context he's able to provide for our current political scene. Eric earned his bachelor's at Brown University, his master's in PhD at Stanford, and all of the degrees were in political science. He was on the faculty at Middlebury College for 30 years and is now Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Middlebury. Eric also provides political analysis for a number of Vermont news outlets, and one of his special areas of interest and expertise is presidential elections. So there's no better time to welcome Eric Davis back to Triple E. Welcome back, Eric. Thank you very much, Carol, and thank you very much, Beth. I'm pleased to be speaking to the Triple E group again this afternoon. Sorry that we have to do it via Zoom rather than at the Methodist Church in South Burlington. But obviously, this is the safe and prudent way to do things, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon. I should note that I will be talking for the next, oh, 45 minutes or so. If you have a question for me, what I'd like you to do is to type it into the Q&A box that is at the bottom of your screen. And at about quarter of three, I'll stop the formal part of the presentation and begin going through questions. And we'll do as many questions as we can before the program has to end at three o'clock. To give an overview of my remarks this afternoon, I'm going to start by talking about projections of the presidential election, both in terms of the popular vote with demographics and key states in the electoral college, then talk about projections for the U.S. Senate election, talk about some of the major issues in this year's election, and then end by talking about issues relating to turnout, the level of turnout voting by mail and what some of the implications of that might be. If I can get through all of those things, before we get to quarter of three, I'll then talk about some other topics, the vice presidential candidates, they need Coney Barrett's nomination and so forth. But let's begin talking about projections of the presidential election. Now I should note that what I'm going to be giving here is my best professional judgment as to where things stand as of today, about two and a half weeks before election day. Much of this over the next few minutes is going to be based on polls. Reputable pollsters are almost always trying to perfect and improve their methods, and pollsters are trying to figure out why they didn't catch some of the late-breaking trends toad Trump in the 2016 election, and have made some adjustments in the methodology, question wording, how they draw the samples and so forth to account for that. But we should note, as published polls indicate, there's always going to be a margin of error with any poll. So it is possible that the scenarios I'm going to be talking about for the next few minutes will not come to pass on November 3rd or whenever the votes are counted, but something different. However, as of today, as of the afternoon of October 16th, this is my best professional judgment and how things stand. As you may know, if you've looked at the national polls that have come out over the last week or so, Vice President Biden leads President Trump by in the 538.com average, somewhere around 10%. Now I should note that 538.com is the source that I tend to use for most of my polling information. What's good about them is they rank pollsters, they give them a grade from A through F, based on characteristics of their methodology, size of the sample, whether they use live operators or robo calls, the mix of landline cell phones, online respondents, those sorts of things. And in its averages, 538.com gives more weighting to those pollsters whose methods are more reliable and whose results have been more valid in the sense of being consistent with actual results in recent elections. So nationally, the most reputable polls show that Vice President Biden is leading President Trump by about 10 points. That gap has increased slightly over the course of the last few months. But beginning, and I would say June or so, Biden began to open up a lead over Trump. And it's been, since Biden, since it became apparent at the end of March that Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee. He's been pretty much ahead of Trump in just about every poll that's been taken. And, you know, that's a, that's a more than six-month period now. However, the president is elected in the Electoral College, not by the National Popular Vote. And before we get to the key states, I should note, and this is a point I've made before, I may have made it an election to your group before, a national sample is going to weight those included in the poll in rough proportion to each state's share of the national population. So, California is going to have the largest share of those. If you have a poll of more than, say, 1,000 to 1,200 people, probably somewhere around 130, 140 of them are going to be from California because California has 12, 13 percent of the nation's population. Similarly, New York, Florida, Texas, and so forth, the other large states are going to have roughly the same representation in the poll. The Electoral College, the way it works with the winter take-all system in all but two states, produces a lot of so-called wasted votes. Whether Trump, whether, excuse me, whether Biden wins California by one vote or 10 million votes, he's going to get the same number of electoral votes from California. So, there will be millions of quote-unquote wasted votes for Biden from California, from New York, and also from some sort of middle-sized states where Biden will get 60 percent of the vote, maybe even a little bit more. Massachusetts, Maryland, maybe even Illinois. The only large state that Trump is expected to win by a substantial majority, and I'm not sure even that's an accurate way of putting it. I think a more accurate way of putting it is there is no, no one of the large states in the Electoral College that Trump is likely to win will give him millions of wasted votes in Electoral College terms. The way California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland will provide. So, we really should focus on the electoral votes rather than the popular vote. And looking at the electoral vote, we'll start with 2016, the election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. That election ended up with 306 electoral votes for Trump, 232 for Clinton. When looking at changes in 2020 from the base, that base, excuse me, 306 to 232, in 2016, I'm looking particularly at three groups of states, each group having three states in it. States most likely to flip, states possibly flipping, and states which in a Biden landslide might also flip. So, let's talk about these group of states. The first three are the upper Midwestern states, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as Pennsylvania, all of which Trump won narrowly in 2016, which gave him the margin of votes in the Electoral College to put him over the top. As we know, 270 is the number of electoral votes needed to win. If we start with Hillary Clinton's base of 232, so I don't believe Trump is going to win any excuse me, I don't believe any state that was won by Clinton in 2016 will not go for Biden this year. Trump had hoped to put New Hampshire and Minnesota into contention. That's, excuse me, that's most unlikely now. There was a poll in the Boston Globe of New Hampshire that came out a day or two ago that showed Biden up by, I think it was 12 points. Polls from Minnesota show Biden leading by a large, large single-digit or low double-digit margin. So, Trump's hope to expand the Electoral College battlefield to include some states that Clinton won in 2016 does not appear to be bearing fruit. Rather, Trump is playing defense much more than Biden is in terms of electoral votes this year. So, if we look at first the two upper Midwestern states, Michigan and Wisconsin, in both of them, the 538.com average indicates that Biden is leading by somewhere in the range of seven to eight percent. That's outside the margin of error of these polls, which is typically somewhere in the four to five percent range. Reports from the ground from reporters and political operatives on the ground in those two states indicate that many of the voters who voted for Trump four years ago have, particularly from labor union families, non-college degree, white families, are gravitating back to the Democratic Party, their traditional allegiance to the Democratic Party, and to Biden. The Biden campaign is working hard to get a good African American turnout, especially in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee. Kamala Harris is helping with that. So I feel quite confident in putting Michigan and Wisconsin into the Biden column this year. Those two states together have 26 electoral votes, which would put Biden at 258. So he needs a little bit more to get to 270. Let's look next at the state I think is most, is next most likely to flip, which is Pennsylvania. If Wisconsin and Michigan polling averages show Biden ahead by seven to eight points, gap in Pennsylvania is almost as large between six and seven points. Biden has several advantages in Pennsylvania. First of all, it's his native state. He grew up in Scranton. Secondly, some of the same patents that are evident in Michigan and Wisconsin are evident in Pennsylvania too. White working class voters often from labor union households voting for Biden in greater numbers than they voted for Clinton in 2016. Strong efforts going on in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to generate a large turnout of African American voters. One complication in Pennsylvania is related to something which I'll talk about a little bit later, which is voting by mail, and still uncertainty over what the deadline for returning ballots will be. And I'll get to that topic a little bit later on. But again, at this point, I would feel rather confident putting Pennsylvania in the Biden column. Coupled with Michigan and Wisconsin, that would give him 278 electoral votes, which is more than enough to win. There are two states which allocate electoral college votes not on a win or take all basis, but on the basis of the statewide winner getting the two electoral votes or the electoral votes representing the two senators from that state. And the individual electors representing the house districts from the state, so to speak, being allocated to the winners of those districts. So these two states, Maine and Nebraska, do not award their electoral vote on a win or take all basis, but on a district basis. And at this point, it looks like Biden will do a little bit better than Clinton did in both of those states. In 2016, the electoral vote breakdown in Maine was three for Clinton, one for Trump. Trump won the electoral vote in the second district, which is the northern part of Maine, basically from Augusta Northwood. Polls and reports from the ground indicate that Biden is likely to win all four of Maine's electoral votes this year. The women were in congressional district as well as the southern one. That's the area around Portland and the coast. The other state that allocates electoral votes according to districts is Nebraska. And there's one district, the second district in Nebraska, which is Omaha and its suburbs, where, again, polls and reports on the ground indicate Biden is likely to win. So in New Hampshire, excuse me, Nebraska, which cast all five of its electoral votes for Trump in 2016, is likely to split this year, four for Trump, one for Biden from the second district. So if we add the district and votes from Maine and Nebraska to Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and everything that Clinton won, Biden is at 280 votes. And that's sort of where I would draw my first line. These are the states and districts that I feel most confident about flipping from 2016 to 2020. Now we have our next group of three states. In all of them polls indicate that Biden is ahead, but not by as much as in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. These are Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. In these states, the margin by which Biden is ahead of Trump is somewhere in the three to four percent range, which is at the upper end of the margin of error for these polls, which typically runs four to five percent. So I don't feel as confident in putting these states in the Biden column as I do Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. There are some characteristics about all three of them that should be noted. Arizona is probably undergoing the most demographic change of any of these states. The population is becoming increasingly Latino. And also, just read an article the other day that in the last decade, 600,000 people have moved from California to Arizona. California is actually losing population in this census cycle be the first time since it became a state that California will likely have fewer members of Congress, once the 435 seats are reallocated among the states beginning in 2022 than it did earlier. California would always gain states after each succeeding census. For the high cost of living in California, the overcrowding in some of the urban areas there, environmental concerns associated with fires, and so forth, are leading people to begin to move to other states often elsewhere in the West. Nevada and Arizona are frequent destinations for people moving from California. So you have people from California who were Democrats bringing their Democratic voting patents with them to Arizona and an increasingly younger and Latino state. So that's why Democrats look at it as a promising opportunity. Florida again, it's a state undergoing demographic change. Latinos make up an important part of the population of Florida, but it's a more mixed group than in Arizona. In Arizona, most of Latinos' ancestry is from Mexico or Central America. In Florida, there are a large number of Cubans, Venezuelans, and other people who have left their native lands because of the political regimes in those countries and may be more conservative in their voting intentions. And unknown in Florida is the number of people who moved there from Puerto Rico in the last four years, especially after Hurricane Maria two or three years ago. Puerto Ricans, of course, are American citizens, so do not have to go through any sort of naturalization process to be eligible to vote. But they do need to be mobilized and turned out and brought on to the registration rolls in the first place. Trump is obviously spending a lot of time in Florida. He's there today. He's focusing mainly on older voters and on the northern part of the state. But one of the big developments we've seen this year is that seniors are breaking for Biden. In 2016, Trump v. Clinton among voters 65 and over. This year, Biden is leading Trump among voters 65 and over. Trump is trying to work hard to get seniors back with things like $200 Medicare discount prescription cards, which may or may not materialize, but he does a real struggle for the for the older Americans vote this year, which there wasn't in 2016. North Carolina is the third state in this group. Again, we're Biden as a three or four percent lead. That state is undergoing demographic change of a different type. 20 years ago, Virginia was very much part of the South. It was intended to be a red state. Democrats would really win there. Virginia is now, if not completely blue, it's very purple. Democrats now control the governorship there. Both US Senate seats made some gains in the House in the 2018 midterm elections. Democrats made gains in the Virginia state legislature in the most recent state legislative elections there. Virginia is now a pretty certain state for Democrats in terms of presidential and congressional politics. The same sort of trend is happening in North Carolina, but 15 to 20 years later. North Carolina, the more democratic areas tend to be the larger metropolitan areas, the Charlotte metropolitan area, the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill area. These areas aren't all that different from metropolitan areas in the East and Seaboard in generally. The more rural parts of North Carolina, the upland and western parts of the state and the more rural areas in the Far East of where Republicans tend to do better. So, you know, it's possible Biden could win all three of those states, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. It's possibly might win two of them. It's possibly wins one of them. It's possibly wins none of them. If Biden were to win all three of them, Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina, he would have 335 electoral votes, 65 more than the number needed to win. If there is a clear leader in Florida, which is a state that tends to count its ballots pretty quickly on election night, if Trump on the night of November 3rd is losing in Florida, that would be an indication that he's likely to lose. Sorry about this. My Siri has heard something and thinks I was talking to her, even though my phone is off. Sorry about that. I'll repeat the point. If on election night Trump is leading in Florida, that's a good indication that he's likely to lose because it's very difficult to come up with a scenario where Trump can be reelected without Florida. It's really a key state for him, which is why he's spending so much time there. So that's our second group of states. Biden leading in the polls, not outside the margin of error, could go either way on election night, I would say at this point. Then we have three more states, Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia. These three states are basically dead heats according to polls right now. What I would say about these three states is if there is a Biden landslide, a real landslide, a popular vote margin of 10% maybe even a little bit more, getting up to 350 electoral votes or more, in other words, Trump maybe not even getting 200 electoral votes. It's likely Biden would be winning all three of these states, Iowa, Georgia, and Ohio. Again, no Republican has ever been elected president for a very, very long time. Without winning Ohio. It's a state that many analysts had taken off the board earlier this year, but recent polling indicates that it's very close there. The Biden campaign is putting resources into Ohio. Biden was campaigning in Cincinnati and Toledo earlier this week. It has 18 electoral votes. Georgia has a good number of electoral votes too, 16. Again, if you look at the map, if Virginia was the first state to tip from red to blue in North Carolina maybe on the verge of doing so, my sense is that Georgia may eventually make that tip, but it's less likely this cycle than in the case of North Carolina, than in the case of North Carolina. For Biden to win Georgia, there would have to be an extremely large turnout in Atlanta and the suburbs, and turnout would need to be depressed in other areas of the state. So at this point, I think that it's possible that Biden could win any one of Ohio, Georgia, or Iowa, but it would be if the election were in landslide territory. As of today, my best projection at this point is that Biden would have a popular vote lead in the high single digits, you know, somewhere in the six to nine percent range, and would end up with somewhere between 280 and 330 electoral votes. That's the best judgment I can make as of today, two and a half weeks before the election. Looking at some of the demographics in these polls, just about every demographic group has become less favorable for Trump in 2020 than it was in 2016. It's interesting to note the huge gender gap we now see in polling. Trump and Biden run about even among men and Biden has about a 20 point lead among women. Among whites, Biden and Trump, Biden has a slight lead among whites, among African Americans. Biden is leading by a ratio of seven or eight to one. In other words, Trump only getting somewhere between 10 to 20 percent of the African American vote. One group that has trended a little bit more pro-Trump over the last four years, and this is interesting, is Latinos. Recent polling has indicated that Trump may get as much as 35, possibly even 40 percent of the Latino vote. It's due mainly to strong performance among Latino men. And there was an article I read yesterday, I don't remember which newspaper it was in, it was New York Times, where the writer made the argument that a certain kind of machismo that Trump projects may be appealing to a certain type of Latino male. So that might explain why Trump is doing a little bit better among Latinos this year than he did in 2016. And if there's two states where that could be an advantage for Trump in terms of letting him hold on to two states that he won last time, it would be Florida and Arizona. So we'll just have to see. The only demographic category that Trump is clearly ahead in is white men who did not go to college. Among college graduates of both genders, among women regardless of race, Biden has a substantial lead. These are all patents that were evident in the Trump-Clinton race in 2016, but they've become exacerbated in this cycle. Biden's leads among those groups are larger this year than they were. All of these groups have moved in a pro-democratic direction this year, compared with four years ago. Okay, let's now talk about the U.S. Senate. Senate right now has 47 Democrats and 53 Republicans. The Democrats to organize the Senate, they would need to make a net gain of three seats. If Biden and Kamala Harris win president and vice president, and Harris becomes the presiding officer of the Senate, if Trump and Pence are reelected, Democrats would need to make a gain of four seats in the Senate in order to organize the majority. Again, I'll talk about different sorts of scenarios and states that are most likely to flip. Right now we start with a base of 47 to 53. There's one Democratic held seat that just about everybody believes will go the other way, and that's Senator Doug Jones in Alabama. A deep red state shall we say. Jones won that seat in a special election two years ago. Remember Jeff Sessions, the former senator from Alabama. It was Clinton, it was Trump's attorney general for a while. Special election to replace Sessions. Jones defeated Roy Moore, a controversial candidate, Republican candidate in the general election there. Moore had been accused of having inappropriate relationships with underage girls. But that was a special election. Now we're in a regular general election. Alabama is one of the most strongly Republican states in the country. Tommy Tuberville, the former coach of football at Auburn University, looks like he's likely to defeat Jones. So that puts the Democrats at 46 seats, Republicans at 54. So we need a net gain of four with a Democratic vice president, a net gain of five otherwise. Which seats are most likely to flip? There are two seats which almost every observer agrees are going to be lost by Republican incumbents. That's Colorado and Arizona. In Colorado, Senator Cory Gardner, first term Republican senator who was elected in 2014 will almost certainly lose his reelection bid to John Ickenlooper, former governor, former mayor of Denver, polls indicate to Ickenlooper as a 10 to 15 point lead. Colorado will certainly go for Biden into the presidential. So this is the most likely flip Colorado from a Republican to a Democratic senator. Right behind is Arizona. In Arizona, you have Martha McSally, an appointed senator. She was appointed to fill out the remainder of the term that John McCain was elected for. After Senator McCain died. Sally's a very conservative Republican. Her Democratic opponent, Mark Kelly, is a former astronaut, commander of one of the space shuttle missions. He's the spouse of former representative Gabby Giffords, whom you might remember was shot at a campaign event in Arizona in her district a few years ago. Arizona is a state that, as I said before, in presidential politics has been undergoing political change. Kelly is a well liked candidate. He's extremely well funded. And he is most, he is almost certain to win that seat as well. In fact, Kelly may even have some reverse coattails and might help Biden win the presidential in Arizona. So if Colorado and Arizona flip, we're now up to 48 Democratic senators. Where do the Democrats get some additional seats from? The next most likely to flip in my opinion is Maine. Susan Collins is running for her fifth term. Up until now, she's been reelected with 60% or more of the vote. She's had a strong cross-party appeal. But as in many states, congressional politics in Maine have become more nationalized. Maine is now pretty reliably Democratic except for that northern district in presidential elections. And Susan Collins' brand of moderate Republicanism has fewer and fewer adherents in Maine. Like in Vermont, the state Republican party in Maine has become more conservative in recent years and doesn't always agree with Susan Collins on everything. Collins' support for Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court a couple of years ago hasn't helped her. It's mobilized a lot of fundraising on behalf of her opponent. The speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Sarah Gideon, polls for the most part indicate Gideon has a good but not substantial lead in Maine. Trump didn't help Collins any this morning when he tweeted out some criticism of her for not supporting Amy Comey Barrett from the Supreme Court. And I think it's likely, not as certain as Colorado and Arizona, but likely that Sarah Gideon will flip the Maine Senate seat and Susan Collins will lose her bid for her fifth term. That gives the Democrats 49 seats. Now we get into a little bit more complicated territory in terms of flips. It is a group of states, North Carolina and Iowa, perhaps at the top of it, that are seeing the first term Republican incumbent senators who are having difficult reelection races, but who might be able to pull out another term at the same time. This is Senator Joni Ernst in Iowa and Senator Tom Tillis in North Carolina. Ernst's opponent is Theresa Greenfield, the Democrat. Democratic candidate in North Carolina is Cal Cunningham. These races are basically deadlocked, and I think a lot of it is going to depend on round game and, you know, to what extent candidates can mobilize voters in the two and a half weeks that are left before election. You know, I'm not sure how many voters have already cast their ballots early in these states, but you know, these I think of the two next most likely to flip, but I wouldn't want to say with any confidence that they will. Then there's another set of states that are somewhat more of a reach for Democratic candidates, South Carolina, Kansas, Alaska, Montana, and there's one Democratic senator who is facing some a vigorous challenge on his own. That's Gary Peters in Michigan, who's being challenged by John James, an African American candidate. Peters is running behind Biden in Michigan. Biden is leading Michigan in the polls by seven to nine percent. Peters is only leading by three to four. Now, Michigan does allow a straight ticket option on the ballot. In other words, a voter in Michigan can go into the polling place and pull the lever or mark up. Actually, it's no levers anymore. We don't use that kind of machines anymore. Make a mark on the ballot or on the electronic screen to vote for all the Democrats. So Peters is likely to retain his seat, but very much by clinging to Biden's coattails. Bottom line for the Senate. I could see any number of scenarios materializing in the Senate. And I realize some of you may want a more definitive answer than I could give right now. Well, I'm fairly confident that Biden will win the presidency. I think control of the Senate is a much more is a much more uncertain proposition. I could see an outcome. The best possible Republican outcome would be staying the same party distribution as it is now, 53 to 47. In that outcome, Jones would lose in Alabama. Peters would lose in Michigan. Kelly would win in Arizona. Hickenlooper would win in Colorado. Every other state would say the same. So you have Democrats losing two and gaining two for a net change of zero. At the other end of the range, you could see a Democratic total of a gain of up to eight seats. You know, even if Jones loses and Democrats win seats in Colorado, one, Arizona, two, Maine, three, North Carolina, four, Iowa, five, South Carolina, six, Kansas, seven, Alaska, eight, Montana, nine. That would that would produce a 55, 45 pro-Democratic Senate. While I think the most likely outcome is somewhere between 50 and 52 Democrats, I think I would rather speak in terms of a range at this point in the Senate, where the peak, if you look, if you, if you graft a distribution, the most probable outcome, 50, 51 or 52, would not be significantly higher than the tails of either side, either Republicans maintaining a narrow majority or the Democrats a larger majority. So I think we're going to just have to wait and see how some of these close Senate campaigns develop in the next, in the next two to two and a half weeks. One thing that should be noted about these Democratic candidates in the Senate is that in nearly every race except Michigan, all of the Democrats who are running as challenges to incumbent Republican senators or in an open seat race such as Kansas have raised far more money than the Republican candidates have. This is a reversal from a trend that we used to see in, that we used to see in many, in many campaigns, which is that Republicans have raised Democrats. Some of these Senate candidates have just raised choose amounts of money. I mean, Sarah Gideon, the Democratic candidate in Maine announced today she's raised, she raised $38 million in just July, August and September alone. Most of that came from small contributions from people from out of state who gave to Gideon online. The average contribution that's so-called act blue, which is the fundraising platform that nearly every Democratic candidate uses, the average contribution on act blue this year has been $47. And most donors to act blue give at least two times. So there's a lot of people out there who are making $25, $50 contributions and doing so to many candidates. So you have a very highly motivated Democratic small donor base, much more than the Republican small donor base. During the third quarter, Biden and affiliated Democratic committees raised over $1 billion, $1 billion. That's by far the most that's been raised by any candidate in any quarter in the past. And almost all of it came from small donations. And two people from Vermont should be given credit for sort of starting the surge in small donor contributions going all the way back to 2004 when he ran for president and then in 2006 when he was chair of the DNC, Howard Dean, and then Vernon Sanchez and his two presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. Both of those people showed that it is possible to fund vigorously fund a competitive campaign relying almost entirely on small donors rather than big givers. Now, Biden has some big givers as well. There was a piece on CNBC this morning indicating that in the third quarter, Biden raised $50 million from Wall Street. And most of those were four figure contributions, the maximum allowed, not $25 and $50. It was interesting, the article noted that Wall Street in the interest provided 50 million to Biden in the third quarter and only 10 million to Trump. We have about 10 minutes left before I take questions. So I encourage you, if you have any questions, I see we have seven already in the queue. So if you do have some more questions, you might want to put them in the queue in the next five to 10 minutes, so we can try and get to as many as possible before time runs out. Just a word on the house and then I want to talk about turnout and voting by mail. The house right now is 233 Democrats, 201 Republicans, one Libertarian, just to name Mesh of Michigan. Almost all analysts of house races indicate that the likely outcome of the house will be that it stays democratic and Democrats may even gain five to 10 seats. So we're looking with the Democrats ending up with somewhere in the range of 240 seats, once all the votes are counted, which would be about 240 to 195, about a 55 seat majority. Again, as has been the case in the last several cycles, 90% plus of house members will be reelected, most without any difficulty. There's about 50 districts that will really, there's about 50 competitive districts for the house. Many of them are open seats, but members have retired, or seats where first term members are running for re-election for the first time. So Democrats maintaining their current majority and possibly expanding it a little bit is the most likely scenario. Finally, let's talk a bit about turnout and voting by mail. Most experts on turnout believe that the 2020 election will see the largest turnout we've seen in several cycles. Voters are highly mobilized and energized. A lot of people have voted already. As of this morning, more than 22 million people have already cast their ballots by mail or an early voting station. In the modern era, the presidential election cycle with the highest turnout was in 1960, when turnout was 60% of the eligible voters. Then turnout began to decline, down into the low 50s. Picked up again in recent years, the 2018 midterms had the highest midterm turnout we've seen in some time. Most experts think and I would agree that we'll see at least the 60% turnout this year and maybe closer to 65%. Somewhere in the 62, 63, 64% range would not be a surprise. I think that in part this is due to the polarization of politics around Donald Trump. People either like him very much or dislike him very much. And when you have a candidate who arouses strong views like Trump, you tend to get high turnout. Also, states that have voted by mail and have used it for a while also have shown increases in turnout. These are the western states like Colorado and Washington that have been doing mail voting elections for years. This year, there are seven states in the District of Columbia that are mailing ballots to all voters in advance of the election. Vermont, of course, is one of them. I should note with some pride that as of today, Vermont is leading the nation in terms of returned ballots as a percentage of 2016 turnout. Numbers reported by the Secretary of State this morning indicate that 40%, excuse me, that well over 100,000 Vermonters have already voted, and that that represents 40% of the state's turnout in the 2016 presidential election. Turn out that year was 325,000, so 40% of that is about 125,000. Just a note, if you've not returned your ballot yet, think about doing so soon. It will ease the workload of the town clerks and city clerks if they don't get all the ballots back in the last few days before the election. Also, if your town or city does not have a dropbox and you're returning the ballot by mail, you want to allow enough time for it to get back and be counted. Secretary of State's office advises that if you're returning your ballot by mail, you should have it in the mail by a week from tomorrow by Saturday the 24th. You don't get it in the mail by Saturday the 24th, you should hand deliver it to your town or city clerk the week before the election. There are many states that already have turnouts that exceed 20% of the 2016 turnout. Virginia was the one that was next behind Vermont, they were at 30% as of this morning. So I think we're going to see a very high turnout this year. Now one of the things that we should note is that states vary according to when a mail ballot has to be returned by in order to be counted. In Vermont, the law is very clear, a mail ballot must be returned, must be received by the town clerk no later than the close of the polls at 7pm on November 3rd. The postmark date doesn't matter. It's that the ballot has to be in the hands of the town clerk by 7pm on November 3rd. There are some states which allow, which go on a postmark basis. In California, for example, where a large number of voters have been voting by mail for years, the rule is that a ballot will be counted as long as it is postmarked on or before election day and received by the local election officials within the next three days by the Friday after the election. So the close of business on Friday after election day is the deadline for a California mail ballot to be received in order to be counted. In Pennsylvania, as I mentioned earlier, there's a controversy now about what the deadline is. The legislature adopted a deadline there, the same as in California. Election day postmark, three days after for returning. Republicans challenged that in court. So far, the extended deadline has held, but there's an appeal before the Supreme Court, which has not yet been decided. So we need to wait and see what's going to happen. The impact of all this is in terms of reporting results on election night. States fall into three categories here. You have states with an election day deadline that allow processing of ballots before the day. You have states with an election day deadline that do not allow advanced processing, and you have states where they post election deadline. Let's talk about each of the three categories of states in turn. Vermont is in the first group, a state with an election day deadline, but allows processing, not counting, but processing of mail ballots before election day. Processing in Vermont means open the envelope, make sure that the inner envelope has been, the form on the inside of the, the form on the return ballot envelope has been properly completed and signed, and then put that envelope in a pile to be opened and counted by a scanner on election day. That's the first category. Second category of states includes Michigan and Wisconsin, where the deadline is election day and nothing can be done in terms of returned mail until the polls open on election day. Then you have the third category, Pennsylvania and California, where the counting deadline is, is after election day. Of all the states that I talked about earlier as competitive states, the ones least likely to have full results on election night are Michigan, Wisconsin and California, because in Michigan and Wisconsin, processing of mail ballots cannot begin before election day, and Pennsylvania, it's an election day postmark deadline with the three days later receipt deadline. So we're likely to get only partial results from those states on election night. It might be enough to indicate who has won the state, but they'll only be partial results. As I indicated earlier, there are other states like Florida that have a history of counting ballots quickly and allow processing of mail ballots before election day. So that would give us an indication of how things are going. Ohio is another state that falls in that category. But it's important to keep in mind that with so many votes being cast by mail this year, it's going to be a longer vote counting process than them we have been used to. And rather than think of election night, it might be better to think in terms of election days. Hopefully it won't be a full election week. But in some of these states, I think it may be until Friday before we really know what the outcome is in the state. Well, I see from the clock on my computer, it's now 246, and there are 12 questions in the Q&A. So I think I should stop the presentation and open the questions. And I'm just going to read through them in the order in the order in which they were asked. And we'll do as many as we can. And I believe our EEE tech hosts are going to give me a heads up when it's about two minutes left that I need to wrap things up. First question, can you comment on the quality of the town meetings last night? They were so different. I was watching back and forth between the two of them. As the questionnaire indicates, it was two different types of events. Biden and George Stephanopoulos were having a serious discussion about policy issues. And indeed, Biden stayed at the location after the program and on the air and continued talking with voters for another 45 minutes or so. Trump was engaged in a defensive back and forth with Savannah Guthrie. I will say that the ratings numbers, which I saw this morning indicated that slightly more people viewed the Biden event than the Trump event. But the two of them together had less than a third of the number of people who watched the first debate two weeks ago. Also, I think Savannah Guthrie did better than the moderator at the first debate. Chris Wallace, in terms of keeping Trump on topic and not letting him wander off, there's one more debate between Trump and Biden, which is a week, which is next Thursday. Christine Welker from NBC News will be the moderator. I'm pretty sure that debate will be held. The only question is, will Trump allow the Cleveland Clinic to do an independent COVID test off him? The ground rules for the Cleveland Clinic, which is responsible for the health and safety protocols, will test both candidates in advance. So if there's a possibility, Trump will refuse to be tested by the Cleveland Clinic and use that as an excuse to pull out. Next question. You seem to be more tentative this year than you were four years ago. Is that due to the one slung twice, one stun twice shy? Or is it really, is that close between the two? I would agree with the question of that. I think other political scientists in addition to myself, other pundits in addition to myself, were burned four years ago. So we're being a lot more cautious this year than we were four years ago. How great do you, next question, how great do you expect the effects of multiple Republican efforts of voter suppression will be? This is going to vary from state to state. The biggest controversy right now has to do with how many drop boxes for return of mail ballots there can be in some states. This is a big issue in Texas where the governor resorted, there'd be only one return location for each county. Now, in a county like Harris County, which is Houston, or Dallas County, you're talking about counties with multiple millions of people in just one location for returning ballots. Now, the ballots can be returned by the mail, can be returned in the mail. I think something like that is going to depress turnout in Texas. And I don't think anyone really expected that Biden would win Texas, where it may make a difference isn't some house races in Texas, and in local legislative races. So I think that's the best answer I can give on that one. Next question. Assuming that Biden will win Vermont's electoral votes by a landslide, could his coattails be sufficient to lead David Zuckerman to an upset win over popular Republican Governor Phil Scott? The best answer I can give at this time to that question is no. There's not been much polling in Vermont, but the polls there have been done in my sense of talking with people is that David Zuckerman's campaign has not taken off. I would not be surprised to see Phil Scott get double the votes of Donald Trump. Trump got 29% in Vermont in 2016. I don't think he'll do much better this time around. I think he's going to be in the high 20s or very low 30s. And I could see Scott getting in the high 50s. So, you know, a situation where excuse me, Trump had 28% of the vote and Scott had 57% of the vote. In that scenario, Scott would have doubled Trump. Continuing to scroll down the questions. The silent or hidden vote for Trump has mentioned your thoughts on that. I think there may be a little bit of a hidden vote. I think pollsters are working hard to try and uncover it if it's there. That's why I've been cautious about trying to talk about poll leads that are within or outside the margin of error. In Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, where polls show Biden leading in 7, 8, 9% range, I feel much more confident about the results there than in places like North Carolina and Florida and Arizona, where Biden's lead is in the 3-4% range. Okay. Next question. Does the seemingly inevitable appointment of Amy Comey Barrett to the Supreme Court necessarily mean that if Biden wins, he would most likely pack the Supreme Court? Or is this too much of a logical leap? Well, first of all, Biden cannot pack the Supreme Court himself. Expanding the size of the Supreme Court would require legislative action by Congress. Constitution says the Supreme Judicial Power is in the hands of a Supreme Court and basically leaves it up to Congress to make the decisions about how it's constituted. So that raises another question, which is, will the filibuster continue in the Senate? Because whether the Republicans are the majority of the minority party in the Senate, they will have enough votes to filibuster a bill to expand the size of the Supreme Court. Biden was asked about this last night, and I think he was, you know, he wasn't very specific, but he said he wanted to see how things turned out, both in terms of the Barrett confirmation and in terms of, I think, how she rules on some cases that may come up in the next year or so, particularly the ones involving the Affordable Care Act and any abortion cases that may come. But in order to expand the size of the Supreme Court, Congress would have to pass a bill to do so first. And in order to do that, Senate filibuster would have to be eliminated. And I am not sure there is a majority of votes in the Senate to eliminate the filibuster as of today. What about the farm states? Mid-U.S. Total Trump signs and anecdotal experiences witnessed by family members who drove across the country both ways, returned to Idaho from Vermont last week. Duttling difference, no Biden signs on the plains, farm and ranch countries should we be worried. Well, most of the smaller states in the Midwest and the Mountain States are going to vote for Trump. The one state in the Midwest that I think that could go either way is Iowa. I'm not sure your family drove through Iowa. Poles indicate it's really a dead heat in that state. And same thing for the U.S. Senate race between Theresa Greenfield and Joni Ernst. As I said, Minnesota, which is a state that, as both farm and urban areas, Trump had originally tried to put that one into play, but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore. Okay, next question. Please comment on the McConnell-McGrath race. Regardless of what happens in many of the other states, I've talked about Mitch McConnell is coming back to the Senate. This is the same sort of situation as Phil Scott. A locally popular figure who may even do better than Trump in Kentucky. I know there's a lot of people out in Democrats who would like to see Mitch McConnell gone, but I'd be surprised if Amy McGrath comes within 10% of him. I think the focus for small Democratic donors should be on winning seats in other states so that Mitch McConnell becomes minority leader rather than continues as majority leader. It has seemed that last-minute ads have overlooked this year's trend in early voting. Have you noticed this? Yes, and I wonder why candidates are spending so much money on advertising. I mean, here's a good example in Vermont. If 40% of the Vermont vote has already been counted, is it a good investment of money to be advertising on radio and TV, doing social media advertising? I'm not sure. Again, I don't know, and I don't know if any of you work for candidates and if you're tracking this, but one of the most important things I think candidates want to know at this point in time is who's voted, because you don't want to be sending your message to someone who's already returned their ballot. Okay, another question about Mitch McConnell, so we'll skip that one. Last question. Do you see the role of culture, Trumpian versus polite, pro-LGB? Tech for tomorrow, could you please close your window? You blocked out the question I was trying to read. Thank you. Beth, would you close your window, please? I can't see the question. Thank you. Do I see the role of culture, Trumpian versus polite, pro-LGB, TQ versus anti-pro-help for the poor versus anti-issues like that looming large in this election? Yes, there is a cultural divide between Biden and Trump voters. And again, in some of these states that are really on the edge, Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, it is interesting that Biden is not talking about cultural issues in those states. If you look at the Biden ads that are in those states, he focuses on economic issues and he focuses on his ability to unite the country. He doesn't talk about more hot-button cultural issues, and I think that's a deliberate strategy. And I see one final question here and I'll take it and then stop, because we are running out of time. Could I please comment on the South Carolina Senate race? Yes. Harrison, excuse me, Jamie Harrison is close to Lindsey Graham in the polls. He raised an enormous amount of money. I think it was $83 million in the third quarter. In the end, I think Lindsey Graham is going to pull that one out by a narrow margin, but it's going to be a lot closer than anybody had thought. And I see from my clock we're now at $258 million and Carol's coming back to sign people off. So I will say thank you to everyone. Thank you to everyone who posted the question. Thank you, everyone, to listen to me, pontificate for the last hour or so. We will find out on November 3 or a few days thereafter what has happened. Thank you all very much. Good afternoon. Oh, Eric, thank you so much. We love your pontifications. And we'll look forward to seeing you again very soon. Thank you. Have a wonderful winter. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.