Cowboy Who?

To be read before the 2020 Presidential Election.
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Early in President Trump’s term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them. This list will be updated between now and the November 2020 Presidential election.

Various writers have compiled this list during the course of the Trump administration. Their work has been guided by invaluable journalistic resources, including WTFJHT, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other sources, to whom we are grateful.

ATROCITY KEY

– Sexual Misconduct, Harassment, & Bullying
– White Supremacy, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, & Xenophobia
– Public Statements / Tweets
– Collusion with Russia & Obstruction of Justice
– Trump Staff & Administration
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Policy
– Environment

Jump to October 2020

Jump to 2020

Jump to 2019

Jump to 2018

Jump to 2017

BEFORE JANUARY 2017

1. – February 10, 2011 – In 2011, Donald Trump stoked false claims that Barack Obama had lied about his education. During a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said, “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere. In fact, I’ll go a step further: The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” This is false. Numerous accounts from Obama’s college classmates refute Trump’s claim, including Obama’s Columbia roommate, Phil Doerner.
   
   
2. – March 30, 2011 – Donald Trump was a vocal proponent of the “birther” myth, claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, Trump told Bill O’Reilly, “If you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was… He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one, but there’s something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.” In response to the “birther” conspiracy theory, the State of Hawaii released Barack Obama’s short- and long-form birth certificate.
   
   
3. – August 6, 2012 – Over a year after the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate, Donald Trump again promoted the “birther” myth, tweeting, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” President Trump has publicly attacked media outlets for citing anonymous sources, but has himself cited anonymous sources numerous times to support the claim that Barack Obama lied about his biography.
   
   
4. – December 12, 2013 – Years after first stirring controversy about Barack Obama’s birthplace, Donald Trump implied a conspiracy surrounding the death of the Hawaiian State Official who had released Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. Trump tweeted, “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s “birth certificate” died in plane crash today. All others lived.”
   
   
5. – May 27, 2015 – Continuing to build on the debunked “birther” conspiracy, Donald Trump said Barack Obama could have claimed Kenya as his birthplace for special treatment from colleges. Trump said, “There are three things that could happen. And one of them did happen. He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK? He was perhaps born in this country. But said he was born in Kenya because if you say you were born in Kenya, you got aid and you got into colleges. People were doing that. So perhaps he was born in this country, and that has a very big chance. Or, you know, who knows?"
   
   
6. – June 16, 2015 – In his speech announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, Donald Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
   
   
7. – June 16, 2015 – In the same speech announcing his candidacy, Donald Trump said, “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” Trump’s belief that Mexico should finance construction for the wall led Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a meeting with Trump in June 2017, and again in February 2018. Peña Nieto has repeatedly said that Mexico will not fund the border wall.
   
   
8. – July 18, 2015 – Donald Trump insulted the military service of Senator John McCain, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who endured torture and solitary confinement as a POW in Hanoi. Trump said in a speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, "He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump’s comments drew boos from his audience in Iowa, as well as widespread condemnation from Republicans and Democrats alike. Donald Trump himself was exempted from military service after receiving four student deferments between 1964 and 1968, and a medical deferment for a “bone spur in his foot” after graduating from college.
   
   
9. – August 7, 2015 – During the first Republican primary debate in 2015, Donald Trump clashed with moderator Megyn Kelly regarding his many controversial statements against women. In one exchange, Trump claimed his disparaging remarks about women were limited to comments about Rosie O’Donnell, to which Kelly responded, “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” The next day, Trump told a CNN interviewer that Kelly had been “off-base” in the way she treated him. “She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions,” Trump said. “You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
   
   
10. – August 19, 2015 – In August of 2015, just three months after Trump announced his candidacy for president, two of his supporters in Boston beat a homeless Latino man with a metal pipe, and then urinated on him. Asked by the arresting officer why they had done it, one of the attackers said, “Trump was right—all these illegals need to be deported.” During a press conference shortly thereafter, Trump said he hadn’t heard about the assault. “It would be a shame,” he told the crowd of reporters, before continuing, “I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
    
    
11. – July 30, 2016 – Donald Trump belittled Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim American soldier who had been killed while serving in the Army, for their speech at the Democratic National Convention. In his speech at the DNC, Khizr Khan had addressed Trump’s stringent anti-Muslim immigration policies, saying, “Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words liberty and equal protection of law.” In response to the speech, Trump suggested that Khan had “no right” to criticize him.
    
    
12. – April, 2016 – Jill Harth accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. In a 1997 lawsuit, Harth stated in court documents that Trump harassed and groped her in 1993. She later dropped the suit but stood by her story.
    
    
13. – May 5, 2016 – For the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo, Donald Trump posted a photo of himself eating a taco bowl to Facebook and Twitter, captioned, “Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”
    
    
14. – May 31, 2016 – Donald Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who presided over the Trump University fraud case, saying that Curiel’s assignment to the case represented "an absolute conflict because the judge was “of Mexican heritage.” “I’m building a wall,” said Trump, “It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”
    
    
15. – May 2016 – Temple Taggart, former Miss Utah in the 1997 Miss USA pageant, claimed Donald Trump sexually harassed her. Taggart said that Trump, on multiple occasions, had kissed her on the lips without her consent.
    
    
16. – June, 2016 – Cassandra Searles, Miss Washington 2013, accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct at the Miss USA pageant. Searles posted a photo of contestants with Trump on Facebook, saying, “One guy treated us like cattle,” and “proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property.”
    
    
17. – October 7, 2016 – In the 2005 Access Hollywood tape, Donald Trump bragged to Billy Bush about grabbing women by their genitals without consent. In the video published by the Washington Post, Trump said, “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything… grab them by the pussy.” Trump said his statements were “locker room banter” and apologized “if anyone was offended.” He later issued a further response to the tape’s release, saying, “I’ve never said I’m a perfect person.”
    
    
18. – October 7, 2016 – Donald Trump reiterated his false claim that the young men known as the “Central Park Five” were guilty of sexually assaulting a jogger in 1989, despite DNA evidence that exonerated them.
    
    
19. – October 11, 2016 – Tasha Dixon, a former Miss Universe contestant, accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. Dixon asserted that Trump walked into their changing room in 2001 while contestants were changing. On the Howard Stern Show in 2005, Trump said about the pageant, “I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else. And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore, I’m inspecting it. You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”
    
    
20. – October 12, 2016 – Mariah Billado, a former Miss Teen USA contestant, claimed that Donald Trump behaved inappropriately during the pageant. Billado said that in 1997 Trump walked into the changing room when contestants were not fully clothed. She is one of four former Miss Teen U.S.A. contestants to tell the same story of Trump’s sexual misconduct.
    
    
21. – October 12, 2016 – Rachel Crooks claimed Donald Trump sexually harassed her. Crooks said that when she met Trump for the first time in 2005 while working as a receptionist for a company in Trump Tower, Trump would not let go of her hand and inappropriately kissed her.
    
    
22. – October 12, 2016 – Jessica Leeds alleged Donald Trump made inappropriate sexual advances towards her. Over 30 years ago Leeds sat next to Trump on a plane, where he lifted the armrest, grabbed her breasts, and put his hand up her skirt. She described him as an “octopus,” saying, “his hands were everywhere.”
    
    
23. – October 12, 2016 – Mindy McGillivray accused Donald Trump of groping her. McGillivray alleged that Trump touched her without her consent while she was attending a concert at Mar-a-Lago in 2003.
    
    
24. – October 12, 2016 – Jennifer Murphy, a former contestant on the television show “The Apprentice,” said that Donald Trump kissed her without her consent after a job interview in 2005. She claimed that he had made multiple inappropriate comments to her while she was on the show and when she met with him later about job opportunities.
    
    
25. – October 12, 2016 – Natasha Stoynoff, a journalist, accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment. Stoynoff said that Trump insisted on giving her a tour of his Palm Beach estate while she was interviewing him and his wife, Melania. Trump pinned her to a wall and kissed her. Trump called her a “liar” and responded to Stoynoff’s story, saying, “Look at her… I don’t think so.”
    
    
26. – October 13, 2016 – Lisa Boyne accused Donald Trump of sexual misbehavior. Boyne asserted that at a dinner in 1996, Trump and modeling agent John Casablancas paraded women in front of their table, looking under their skirts to determine whether each woman was wearing underwear.
    
    
27. – October 14, 2016 – Kristin Anderson claimed Donald Trump groped her in the early 1990s. Anderson was at a club in Manhattan with friends when, she asserted, Trump reached into her skirt and touched her without consent, leaving her and her friends “very grossed out.”
    
    
28. – October 14, 2016 – Samantha Holvey described Donald Trump’s sexual misconduct at the 2006 Miss USA pageant. While participating in the competition, Holvey noted that Trump inspected each contestant before the event. She noted, “He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people.”
    
    
29. – October 14, 2016 – Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice, accused Donald Trump of sexual assault. Zervos claimed that Trump assaulted her on several occasions, kissing and grabbing her, and during one business meeting, “began thrusting his genitals.”
    
    
30. – October 15, 2016 – Cathy Heller accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. Heller said she was having Mother’s Day brunch in 1997 at Mar-a-Lago when Trump grabbed her, tried kissing her, and became angry when she twisted away.
    
    
31. – October 21, 2016 – Karen Virginia accused Donald Trump of groping her. Virginia described how she’d seen Trump with a group of men at the U.S. Open in 1998, and overheard him say about her “Hey look at this one!” and “Look at those legs.” After his comments, Trump approached Virginia, grabbed her by the right arm, and touched her breast. The incident lingered with Virginia for years, and she came forward with her story alongside Gloria Allred: “I now understand that I was not to blame. Mr. Trump, perhaps you do not remember me or what you did to me so many years ago, but I can assure you that I remember you and what you did to me as though it was yesterday," she said. "Your random moment of sexual pleasure came at my expense and affected me greatly.”
    
    
32. – October 22, 2016 – Jessica Drake, an adult film actor and director, accused Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual contact. Drake said that Trump grabbed and kissed her without her consent at a charity golf tournament in 2006, then made further unwanted advances by inviting her to his suite. After Drake repeatedly declined his invitations, Trump asked her, “What do you want? How much?”
    
    
33. – October 27, 2016 – Ninni Laaksonen, a former Miss Finland, alleged that Donald Trump had sexually harassed her. Laaksonen described an incident in which Trump groped her from behind in 2006.
    
    
34. – November 13, 2016 – Ivanka Trump accompanied her father on his presidential interview with 60 Minutes. Ivanka’s upscale jewelry brand used her father’s political appearance to promote a $10,800 bracelet she had worn during the broadcast.
    
    
35. – November 18, 2016 – One week after Trump’s election, 100 foreign diplomats gathered at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. to drink champagne and tour the building. One diplomat told the Washington Post, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” This indicated a conflict of interest that could have violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which forbids government officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
    
    
36. – November 18, 2016 – Even though he said he would not settle the case, Donald Trump agreed to pay $25 million to settle his Trump University fraud lawsuits. The real estate seminar program was not an accredited university and used misleading marketing tactics to recruit students.
    
    
37. – November 27, 2016 – Without citing evidence to support his claim, Donald Trump tweeted, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. This claim has been repeatedly debunked.
    
    
38. – End of December 2016 – In December of 2016, Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner, incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak met at Trump Tower to establish a “line of connection.” The meeting occurred around the time that the Obama administration was placing sanctions on the Russian government for interfering in the 2016 election.
    
    
    - – -

    JANUARY 2017

39. January 10, 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Donald Trump approached him about leading an investigation into “Vaccine Safety.” The prospect that vaccination can lead to autism has been repeatedly debunked by long-running, peer-reviewed studies. Trump had supported the anti-vaccination theory on stage at the 2015 presidential debates. In September 2015 he publicly stated, “We had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, two years old, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
    
    
40. – January 11, 2017 – Donald Trump’s lawyer Sheri Dillon stated that Trump would “voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotel to the United States Treasury.” Two months into his presidency, no evidence existed that Trump had followed through with this promise. If Trump did accept payments from foreign states through his businesses, as his lawyer claimed, he may have been in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This clause forbids government officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
    
    
41. – January 11, 2017 – Donald Trump refused to divest from his real estate companies or place his assets in a blind trust, as encouraged by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The United States Government designates a “Qualified Blind Trust:” for executive branch employees as one where the trustee has no relation whatsoever to the government official. Contrary to this, President Trump opted to entrust business operations of his companies to his sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. According to the Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Trump’s arrangement “doesn’t meet the standards that the best of his nominees are meeting and that every President in the past four decades has met.” By continuing to maintain a direct...

In a memo, Joe Biden's campaign manager cautioned supporters not to get complacent, despite his polling lead over President Trump.

(Image credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Good morning, and welcome to a new week. Before we get into our daily forecast—and it’s going to be fairly warm and humid until at least the weekend—I wanted to offer a quick look at the forecast for our upcoming winter.

We are now reasonably confident that La Niña conditions will persist in the equatorial Pacific Ocean this winter, and that typically leads to a fairly consistent pattern for the United States. Specifically for Texas, it tends to yield more mild winters with less precipitation. NOAA’s updated, official outlooks for winter conditions—defined here as the months of December, January, and February—were just released. And they reflect this La Niña-like pattern. Here’s the temperature outlook:

And below you will find the corresponding outlook for precipitation. Will this include snow? The likelihood of warmer temperatures lowers the probability of this, but there is always the old wives’ tale that says Houston will see snow during the winter following a tropical system landfall. So we’re not ruling it out.

Now, let’s jump into the forecast for the week ahead.

Monday

A cold front is pushing through Texas this morning, but it should stall out around College Station, and will not bring any cooler or drier air into Houston. However, the front will help engender some scattered showers over the region today—ultimately probably about 30 percent of the area will see rain. Under mostly cloudy skies, we can expect highs to reach into the mid-80s, with lows unlikely to fall below 70 for all but areas far north and west. Winds will be light, out of the south.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

The region will be largely stuck in the same pattern for much of the work week, with partly to mostly sunny skies, highs in the mid-80s or so, and plenty of humidity. Nighttime temperatures will probably again not drop below 70 degrees. Rain chances will not exactly be zero, but they’re on the order of 10 to 20 percent for most days.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Our weather this weekend will be determined by whether a weakening cool front makes it all the way through Houston later on Friday or Saturday. The overall pattern is not fully supportive of the this front diving southward, and off the coast, but it seems possible. If there’s no front, expect more of the same. If the front does make it, expect a pleasant, slightly cooler weekend with drier air. Rain chances seem modest either way.

Next week

The forecast models are hinting at a stronger front coming through by next Monday or Tuesday, and there does seem to be more support for this one’s passage. If the front verifies, we could see lows in the 40s for areas well inland, and 50s in Houston next week. But let’s see a few more days of data before we fully buy into this one.

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I tried to read that book but there are too many numbers at not enough pictures.

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The biggest plot twist in Death Stranding is when you rebuild the 3D-printed future highways and the game suddenly becomes Truck Driving Simulator, and the second-biggest plot twist is that I loved that.

You don't look so good, Count Bloodzo.

We’re in the final stretch of the campaign, with just 15 days to go until the election. Indeed, “the election” is something of a misnomer, since early or mail voting is already underway in most states and about 30 million people have already cast ballots.

This is a period of high anxiety for almost everybody. So here are a few tips on how to process news and polls over the final two weeks. I’m going to keep these fairly short and sweet; we’ll save the more philosophical stuff about election forecasting, etc., for elsewhere.

1. Keep the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in mind.

The most important story in the country is that 210,000 Americans and counting have died from the coronavirus, plus virtually everybody’s lives have been disrupted in some way by the pandemic. And far from the U.S. having turned the corner, cases and hospitalizations are growing again in most parts of the country. President Trump’s approval ratings on COVID-19 are poor, too, considerably worse than his overall approval numbers. The pandemic isn’t a new story, but it’s liable to be more important to voters than, say, whatever is in Hunter Biden’s emails.

2. Don’t assume the race is in the bag for Biden.

Although COVID-19 and other issues make Trump’s road to reelection difficult, he still has a 12 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, according to the FiveThirtyEight model as of Sunday afternoon. And if Joe Biden maintains his current lead in the polls, Trump’s chances will fall further — although the forecast thinks it’s more likely that the race will tighten.

But say Trump’s chances do decline further — to 5 percent by Election Day, for example — I’d keep a few things in mind.

First, even a 5 percent chance is something you ought to take seriously if the consequences are very high, something I think both Trump and Biden supporters would say is true of this election. And second, the outcomes in this election aren’t entirely binary. Say Biden wins: His margin of victory will still be heavily scrutinized. Does he win by double digits nationally? Does he win a state like Texas? This could affect both the degree to which Democrats pursue a more aggressive agenda, and the extent to which Republicans regard Trumpism as having been repudiated. Also, many Senate races are competitive, and having control of 50 versus 52 versus 54 or more Senate seats will greatly affect Biden’s first two years in office. Statewide races matter too, especially in states where control of the redistricting process is still in play.

3. But also don’t buy the narrative that “polling is broken.”

Polling is an imperfect instrument, more so in some years than others. However, 2016 — while far from a banner year from the polls — was not quite so bad as some critics assume. The national polls were pretty good, and Trump’s wins in the swing states were not that surprising based on the close margins in those states beforehand. Meanwhile, 2018, with the midterms, was one of the more accurate years for polling on record.

One other thing to keep in mind about polls in an election like this one: They do provide some way to measure public sentiment, however imperfect, independent of election results, which could be important if the election is disputed. It’s not surprising then that Trump frequently disparages polls — which could give Americans more confidence about the results if they closely resemble the polls — when he’s also repeatedly failed to commit to accepting the results of the election.

[Live Updates: We’re Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems]

4. Don’t get too obsessed with comparisons to 2016.

I know it’s fashionable to make comparisons between 2016 and 2020, and to discuss the various ways in which they might or might not be similar (there are fewer undecided voters this year, for instance). But to some extent, I think those comparisons are misguided. You shouldn’t make too much of a sample size of one election. And you should avoid thinking in binaries, i.e., that the polls will either be “wrong” or “right.” Instead, it’s more of a spectrum: The larger Biden’s lead in the tipping-point states, the more that polls could be wrong and he could win anyway. And there’s also no guarantee that a polling error will work in Trump’s favor as it did in 2016. In 2012, polls underestimated then-President Barack Obama and Democrats instead.

At the same time, while there is no particular reason to think that polls will be wrong in exactly the same ways that they were in 2016, there are also precedents for larger polling errors than the one we experienced in 2016. The final Gallup poll in 1948 had Harry Truman 5 points behind Thomas Dewey, for example, but Truman actually won by 4 points, making for a 9-point polling error. A polling error of that magnitude probably would be enough for Trump to win the Electoral College, although not necessarily the popular vote.

5. Don’t pay much attention to individual polls; wait for polling averages to move.

This is perhaps the single piece of advice we give most often at FiveThirtyEight, but it’s especially important in the final couple weeks of a campaign. After a lull this weekend, there are likely to be a lot of polls the rest of the way out. On any given day, it will be possible to take the two or three best polls for Biden and tell a story of his holding or expanding his lead, or the two or three best polls for Trump and make a claim that the race is tightening.

Resist buying too much into those narratives. Instead, turn to polling averages like FiveThirtyEight’s that are smart at distinguishing (ahem) the signal from the noise. We do program our averages to be more aggressive in the closing days of the campaign — so if there’s a shift in the race, our average should start to detect it within a few days. But while there is such a thing as underreacting to news developments,¹⁹ the more common problem in the last days of a campaign is false positives, with partisans and the media trying to hype big swings in the polls when they actually show a fairly steady race.

6. Beware talk of “October surprises.” They’re usually overhyped.

Indeed, while the Comey letter really did matter in 2016, contributing to a 3-point shift toward Trump in the waning days of the campaign, it’s more the exception than the rule. On average, in elections since 1972,²⁰ national polling averages shifted by an average of 1.8 points and a median of just 1.4 points in the final 15 days of the race.

The final two weeks usually don’t change much

How much the national polling margin changed between 15 days before the presidential election and Election Day, since 1972

	Leader in FiveThirtyEight national polling average
Year	15 days before ELECTION		Election Day		Change
2016	Clinton	+6.9	Clinton	+3.8	3.1
2012	Romney	+1.2	Obama	+0.4	1.6
2008	Obama	+6.8	Obama	+7.1	0.3
2004	Bush	+2.4	Bush	+1.6	0.8
2000	Bush	+2.7	Bush	+3.5	0.8
1996	Clinton	+14.9	Clinton	+12.8	2.1
1992	Clinton	+14.1	Clinton	+7.1	7.0
1988	Bush	+11.8	Bush	+10.4	1.4
1984	Reagan	+16.7	Reagan	+18.0	1.3
1980	Reagan	+2.3	Reagan	+2.1	0.2
1976	Carter	+2.0	Carter	+0.8	1.2
1972	Nixon	+25.5	Nixon	+24.1	1.4

The averages listed are calculated retroactively based on FiveThirtyEight’s current polling average methodology.

Also, keep in mind that relatively few voters are undecided this year, and that many people have already voted, which could dampen the effect of any last-minute news developments.

7. Don’t read too much into the campaigns’ behavior.

These last two points are things I’ve learned by experience. There’s enough conflicting information in the final days of the campaign that it can help to triage, and one category of information I’d generally ignore are reports about how the Biden or Trump campaigns are feeling about the race. Even if reporters have good access into campaigns and are accurately reflecting their thinking, presidential campaigns often do not have a better read on the race than public polls. Campaigns are often just as surprised by unexpected results as anyone else; the Trump campaign’s models gave it a 30 percent chance of winning the Electoral College on the eve of the election in 2016, the same as FiveThirtyEight’s forecast did. And of course, less diligent reporters are subject to being spun by the campaigns, or to publishing information that is designed to deceive or bluff the campaign’s opponents.

8. Don’t get carried away with early voting data.

Democrats have a huge edge in early voting so far … but as I talked about on my weekly segment for ABC’s “This Week,” I’m not sure I’d read too much into it. The early-voting lead for Democrats is largely in line with what polls predicted, and Republicans are likely to draw the race closer with a huge Election Day turnout. Moreover, our experience in past elections is that people tend to read more into early voting data than is warranted and often cherry-pick data in ways that are favorable to their preferred party or candidate.

Also, the huge partisan split in early in-person voting and mail voting is new — historically, it was something that both parties took advantage of — and that makes it hard to put it into context. Maybe it really will turn out to be a bad sign for Republicans that Democrats are banking so many votes. Or maybe Democrats will underperform polls because mail votes have a higher rate of ballot spoilage. On balance I’d rather have a lot of votes locked in than not, but we’re flying pretty blind here. Besides, most polls try to account for early voting — for instance, by asking voters whether they’ve already voted — so to the extent that Democrats are benefiting from it, it should be reflected in the polls already.

It’s going to be a long 15 days — and perhaps beyond, since we may not know the winner on Nov. 3. FiveThirtyEight will be providing all the content that you might want, from daily podcasts to near-constant updates of our forecast. But you’ll usually know all that you need to if you’re pacing yourself and only checking in with news coverage of the campaign once a day or a couple of times a week. Stay safe and stay sane, and we’ll enjoy watching the rest of the election with you.

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Nothing will ruin space for you like reading the political history of how decisions were made.

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The Wallabies are made to pay for a high missed tackle count and several turnovers of the ball, as the All Blacks showed they have not lost their edge in their clinical victory in the second Bledisloe Cup Test.

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Whoever wins the US election one thing is certain: it will be a victory for the meritocracy, writes Stan Grant.

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Someone on patreon pointed out that the small mammal sure looks like the infamous hedgefox of comics past, which makes perfect sense in context.

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Mandatory Windows 10 updates aren’t new, but the latest example is raising a few hackles. Windows Latest, ZDNet, The Verge and users are reporting that Windows 10 is force-restarting PCs to install links to Office web apps that launch in Edge, including in the Start menu. And despite initial reports, this isn’t limited to Insider members — people using standard Windows 10 releases have seen the change as well.

The apps take up no storage or other resources. Until now, though, installing Office web apps was optional. Windows isn’t asking for your permission, let alone informing you of what’s about to happen. Microsoft is potentially disrupting work or other important tasks to promote its online productivity suite.

We’ve asked Microsoft for comment.

While the lack of informed consent is clearly the main issue, The Verge noted that this also trivializes mandatory updates. Microsoft instituted them in no small part to ensure users had the latest security fixes and prevent widespread malware outbreaks. If your Windows PC reboots itself to pitch products, you might become wary of those updates or even veer away from Windows altogether. It also implies that you don’t have as much control over your system as you might have thought.

Early projections indicate New Zealanders have handed Jacinda Ardern's Labour Party a parliamentary majority in the country's election.

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Red flags abound in a story about Hunter Biden that provides fodder for President Trump and his allies. The allegations rest on speculation and assumptions rather than journalistically sound facts.

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

For Democrats trying to explain how they can win in Texas, the line has long been that it’s not a Republican state, it’s a nonvoting state. The second half of that claim has been true historically: Texas has routinely brought up the rear on lists of states ranked by voter participation. But 2020 is setting up to be the year when that changes. As of Thursday evening—that is, after just three days of early voting—a whopping 2.63 million Texans had cast their ballots, either in person or by mail, for the November 3 election. That’s more than 15 percent of all registered voters. To put it plainly, that’s a pretty big honkin’ deal. As of Friday morning, lines around the state were still long, and…View Original Post

The post The Early Voting Numbers in Texas Are Bonkers. Here’s What That Does and Doesn’t Tell Us. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Analogue has slowly been working its way through the '80s and '90s video game vault, recreating classic console after classic console. After starting with various pieces of Neo-Geo hardware, the company then remade the NES (twice), SNES and Genesis. More recently, it's turned to handhelds with the Pocket, an all-in-one system that, with adapters, can play the vast majority of handheld game cartridges. The Pocket has been pushed back to May 2021 due to the pandemic affecting manufacturing, but despite that the company is today announcing its latest console, the Analogue Duo. The Duo focuses entirely on NEC's home console hardware, offering compatibility with every TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine game produced. 

The TurboGrafx-16, known as PC Engine in Japan, was an NES and later SNES competitor that saw success in Japan, but didn't make a huge impact elsewhere, typically trailing well behind Nintendo and Sega's machines of the era. The upshot of this relative obscurity is that it's a console with a library of hundreds of games that most people haven't played. (Konami recently made a mini version of the original TurboGrafx, but, once again, the pandemic has meant stock is hit-and-miss and in some regions basically non-existent.)

Evan Amos/Public domain

TurboGrafx and PC Engine games originally came on cartridges called HuCards (A.K.A. TurboChips), but a Sega CD-like add-on was produced to support games on disc. The Duo can read any media produced for original TurboGrafx systems, including those that require the Arcade RAM add-on, as well as the few titles that took advantage of the more-powerful hardware in the "SuperGrafx" console, which flopped in Japan and didn't see a US release.

Analogue's take on the TurboGraphx resembles the TurboDuo, which was essentially a TurboGrafx-16 and the TurboGrafx-CD in one. Unlike the TurboDuo, which was all flaps and wobbly bits, the Duo's design is minimal and modern, with two slots at the front and mostly clean lines. A nice design flourish can be found at the rear, though, where ripples have been added that resemble the original TurboDuo's undulating sides.

Analogue

The port selection is also markedly different. At the side there's an original TurboGraphx-16 controller port and a headphone jack with its own volume dial, while at the back there's HDMI out (at 480p, 720p or 1080p), an SD card slot for firmware updates and two USB ports for wired controllers. If you'd rather be wireless, the system has built-in Bluetooth and 2.4G. There is, however, no pad packed in; Analogue points towards 8BitDo's PCE 2.4G controller, although the majority of Bluetooth, 2.4G and USB controllers should work just fine.

Like all Analogue consoles, the Duo does not rely on software emulation to play older games. Instead, its FPGA chip is programmed to replicate the circuitry of the original hardware, and the console plays original media, rather than ROM files. Analogue's UI is minimal, but does include granular settings for scaling, stretching and re-positioning the output for modern TVs, as well as the option to add scanlines.

Analogue

The one NEC system the Duo doesn't offer compatibility with is the successor to the TurboGrafx, the PC-FX, which arrived in Japan in 1994 weeks after the original Sony PlayStation and Sega's Saturn. It did not fare well. Analogue has yet to produce a machine that's compatible with a "fifth-generation" console; the nature of FPGA programming means that, the more complex the hardware, the more difficult it is to replicate.

The Analogue Duo will be available in 2021 in "limited quantities" for $200, in either white or black.

Analogue

In tandem with the unveiling of the Duo, Analogue has also announced a new adapter for its delayed Pocket handheld console. Also arriving in 2021, the TurboGrafx-16 adapter will offer support for all cartridge-based TurboGrapfx, PC Engine and SuperGrafx games, at a price of $30.

New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

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