Two days before Election Day seems to be a good time to break out the election forecasts, so here I go with my guess at the outcome of the presidential election.

First things first:  I don’t believe that this will be called by Tuesday or even Wednesday, no matter how much Trump would like you to believe it will be.  I believe the court fights to allow votes to count will go on for at least two weeks.  I do not, however, think it will be decided by the Supreme Court.  This will not be a replay of 2000, when Bush and his legal team, including Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, took the case to SCOTUS.  

That being said, my prognostications are based on what the final results actually will be (in my view).  There are three states–Texas, Georgia and Iowa–which I put in the republican column only because I think that the GOP will fight tooth-and-nail to void ballots.  

So here’s the tally as I see it coming out:  Biden with 335 Electoral College votes and Trump with just 203.  I think Biden will win the popular vote by about 8%, passing 50% of the vote total, and coming out 12 million votes ahead.  That puts the total number of votes at around 157 million, with roughly 3 million people (about 1.9%) throwing away votes on third-, fourth-, and fifth-party candidates.  (Kanye, for those who care, will get about 180,000 votes across the country.)

I see Biden flipping Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona.  

In Florida, I see Biden coming out with a lead of more than 1%, which should allow the state to be called on Election Night.  Florida will be the bellwether:  Once that state is called, to Biden as I believe, Trump’s avenue to reelection narrows to a hair-thin path.  If Florida goes to Biden by more than 1.5%, the legal fight must shift out of the state:  it’s hard to see any lawsuit able to void a net 120,000 votes in the state.

Biden will take Pennsylvania by 3% when all votes are counted, which I expect to be done about 7 days after the election.  Michigan and Wisconsin will go by more than 6% to Biden; North Carolina and Arizona will go to Biden by <2%.  

While I see Texas, Georgia and Iowa being very close races, I don’t see them switching from Trump.  Iowa will be the closest, by percentage of vote.  Georgia will also be a tight race, with a large volume of Election Day voters driven to the polls by the Senate races.  (I’ll do another piece on the Senate tomorrow.)  

All eyes should stay on Florida.  If it’s tighter than 1%, Trump will draw out the race for weeks in court actions.  If it’s more than 1.5%, even his advocates will have a hard time justifying legal fights when he’s lost so many other states.