So here we are, finally at election day. And as the comedian Emo Phillips said, ‘It’s hard to believe that this long, crazy election will finally be over in a few months.’ Because it’s that close.

None of the models give either candidate much of a margin, from 538 having it 270-268 for Harris, to the 287-251 margins given by Nate Silver and RCP (note also that Nate’s Monte Carlo simulations disagree with his state y state model, giving Harris a win in a handful more runs out of 80,000).

It’s also worth pointing out that a close vote margin does not necessarily mean a close result in the Electoral College. 538 has six states within 1%, and a seventh (AZ) within the margin of error at 2.1%. Nate Silver has slightly larger margins in most of those, but the pattern is the same. Those seven states have 93 votes between them, more than one sixth of total in the Electoral College.

A systemic shift or polling error could see all of them go one way (or the other) and give Harris (or Trump) a massive win in the college. And I imagine everyone reading this is aware by now that Nate Silver wrote a long piece late last week calling the polling firms out for herding together. That’s not the same as fiddling the figures, but it does mean that any error in how their weightings are constructed are likely to be replicated among them all, and then the systemic error would seem more likely.

Fnigers crossed. Good night, and may your god go with you.

James Doyle