Every morning, just after my second cup of coffee, I boot up my PC and check out the four major election models:
- Sam Wang — http://election.princeton.edu/todays-electoral-vote-histogram/
- Nate Silver — http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
- Drew Linzer — http://elections.dailykos.com/app/elections/2016/office/president
- NYT Upshot — http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html
Lately, these various models have been misbehaving like a pack of unschooled children in a science museum. Hopping from left to right, weaving past each other, and utterly failing to converge on anything resembling consensus. As they probably don’t say in China, “May you live in interesting times.”
All of these vacillating numbers led me to whip up my own model, mostly out of curiosity. My numbers turned out to be closest to those of Sam Wang. While I have nothing much to add to the experts in terms of most likely outcome, I was surprised to see that my model’s probability of an electoral college tie popped up to just over one percent.
I have good reasons to believe the real world probability is somewhat lower, but wow. The idea that the GOP-dominated House of Representatives might ultimately decide this election keeps me up at night. Just in case you might be sleeping too well, here are the maps for my two most likely electoral tie scenarios, as of this week:
Click the map to create your own at 
Each of these maps represent only around a ¼ of one percent of the simulation runs in my model, so they are fairly unlikely on their own. There are another dozen tie scenarios which are likely enough to show up in my model, however, and altogether they add up to over one percent of the total runs. Should the polls continue to tighten, I would expect more of them to pop up over time.
Trump’s classy neckties convey the impression that you are large and in charge while functionally cutting off the oxygen to your brain. An electoral tie would have much the same effect, but with no provision for casual loosening as needs must.
