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Notes -
Electoral college - 80% Trump
Popular vote - Cointoss
Polls show a close race, but pollsters underestimated Trump support in both 2016 and 2020, when he was supposed to lose soundly. (In October 2020, poll aggregators were showing him down by 10 points nationally.) I see a lot of people arguing "surely they've adjusted now", but if anything, my impression is the media has been trying to hyperstition a Kamala victory, and I wouldn't put it past polling organizations to be part of that attempt. Reports of a close race encourage turnout from an otherwise divided and demoralized Democratic base. The timing of the sudden Kamala swing in polls feels artificial.
Riots/violent coup attempts - 10%
For either party. The level of passion from Democrats is lower, and the sort of Republicans who would consider staging a January 6th again will, I think, have been spooked by the DOJ's level of political repression in the last four years.
Neither side will contest the election. Republicans will bark about illegal votes if they lose, but not bite. Meanwhile, Democrats will kvetch about the electoral college if they lose despite a popular vote victory, but otherwise stand down.
MAGA Republicans will be devastated if they lose this one, woke Democrats merely irritated.
Maybe true but a) this functions both ways, so pollsters could, under this theory, equally be great polling results for Harris in order to avoid complacency, and more importantly b) the differences here are tiny (well within any MoE) between a close EV race and a popular vote tossup delivering a Trump victory, only one or two points. Polls can't pick up those tiny margins anyway, and the far more parsimonious explanations for polling predicting tight races in key states is herding - but once again this has no particular valence so could be hiding good results for either Harris or Trump.
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I agree with your assessment that a repeat of Jan 6 is unlikely but I don't think it's because people are cowed, I think it's because the actions taken by the "rioters" didn't spark the admiration of their own side that progressive protests do. Begging someone else to do something about the problem, burning it all down because you don't like the hand you are dealt: conservatives, with their emphasis on personal responsibility and an internal locus of control, just don't resonate with these courses of action the same way progressives do.
For rank and file conservatives, the way Jan 6 was handled by the DoJ is a glaring injustice, but the rioters themselves are not heros. I think they are regarded as, at best, well-intentioned idiots and buffoons, and at worst, feds and their dupes working to supply the establishment with casus belli for extreme action to stamp out their political opponents.
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