Regarding the polls a common US political tactic is to declare victory and hope it sticks. I wouldn't trust any of them...

Seeing as you're all going political on me, it seems record numbers are going to vote. Whether they're voting someone IN or voting someone Not To Get In remains to be seen.

But what will the likely effect of a high turnout? And any Scadenfreude for the loser?

Picking the prediction of any single organisation, no matter what polling methodology they use, doesn't mean much unless they have had consecutive accurate predictions.

In other words: I don't care who said what is 2016 unless they were also accurate in 2012, 2008, and 2004. Can any of the polls make that claim?

The betting odds still seem to be overwhelmingly pointing in one direction, but who knows what could happen in the next week...

Not that I know of, as I said in post #250: "Possible, Rasmussen was off the mark in 2012 but was very close in 2016:"
AFAIK, none of the pollsters have a stellar record.

Okay, but what I'm trying to ask is what does it even to say a statement of the form "Candidate A has X% chance of winning" is "spot on" or not? It seems like people tend to interpret that as meaning "Candidate A will win" if X > 50%, but does that really make sense?

I think when all is said & done, it means nothing. Polls are sold t news outlets. Betting odds are placed by bookmakers. Without knowing the details it seems that even a 2.0% swing against Biden would still leave him in with a chance of winning, and I don't expect 2% to swing unless there's some skeleton in his closet.

If you look at post #250: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post6178762
it includes 3 links, two from the BBC.
Link #2 (BBC) [Election Day] takes you to a page where they explain their methodology of taking the last 5 National polls, throwing out the highest and lowest number for each candidate, finding the 'mean' which in their estimation put Hillary at 48% vs Trump at 44% in the polls.

Link #3 (BBC) [Election Day] is more prognostication and gives links to various organizations last minute predictions, not polls. The three mentioned below are underlined to show they are links but when I quoted them they show as plain text. Two of them actually gave Hillary a slightly greater chance if you click on them today. Sorry for any confusion.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...-forecast.html
Clinton has 84% chance of winning
Clinton - 85%_____Trump - 15%

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/...tion-forecast/
Clinton has 65% chance
Clinton - 71%_____Trump - 28.6%

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/...cast/president
Clinton has 98% chance
Clinton - 98%______Trump - 1.7%

I learned a lot about US politics in the past 4 years, during the past couple of months or so, and yesterday when I listened to a long "US election special, and why we (non-Americans) should care".
I shamefully admit that only yesterday I fully understood the meaning of electorate & swing states.
It seems really, really unfair. I know other countries also have similar "irregularities" in their voting systems, but to that extent? It sounded like every US American politician's campaign concentrates 99% on very few states with the largest electorate & chances of a swing.
And the senate? Just as unfair, only in another way. Same amount of senators from California and Wyoming? No wonder some Californians want to get out.
This might have worked OK 200 years ago, but seems in need of a general overhaul.

But I'm getting ahead... let's see how this election ends first.

That said, today's the first time I heard a republican MP admit that the election is lost. Not in so many words, but it was very clear in a sentence about the new supreme court.
Don't remember exact words... something like this:
"It is great that we have the supreme court in our hands now, at least we can continue to shape the future of this country that way"...

"It seems really, really unfair." It only seems unfair to those that don't understand it. The process is able to provide smaller States with a greater voice. It provides a failsafe in case someone is convicted between the election and installment.

It provides a fun factor. Everyone hates the officials calls on Monday don't they.

We've got the same "protect the smaller states" here; it only works if the senators vote on state lines instead of party lines - which is to say it's broken here as well.

You'll find that the design is the same (or very similar) in any country which has a bicameral parliament (i.e. most Constitutional Democracies).

The lower house (aka the House of Representatives -or- House of Commons -or- Legislative Assembly, depending upon which country you're in) will have a different number of seats per state (or region) based upon population size. To extend your example, California has 53 representatives in the H.o.R., while Vermont has 1.

The upper house (aka the Senate -or- House of Lords -or- Legislative Council, again depending upon which country you're in) has the same number of seats per state/region to ensure that smaller states/regions have the same amount of power as larger states/regions.

That depends upon the composition of the Senate... it can be beneficial to have a Senate comprised of minority parties instead of the "big two." But I will admit that we haven't seen that much recently.

RE: BBC Polls.

Allow me to apologise for raising them in the first place, they seem to be causing ceaseless arguments . Now BBC list the Polls they're taking their averages fromhttps://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-53657174

Of course, maybe you all wanted something to argue about and bend your minds to .

.
And what's responsible for the data in this chart?

I say it right wing media's assault on the truth in support of President Chump.

8bit

Edit: pick your source:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump's+covid+response
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump's+covid+failures
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump's+covid+success

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Whether Trump has done a good job with covid won't be clear for at least five years, possibly ten. If there's one thing history teaches us, it's that the outcome of an event doesn't necessarily have much to do with the concerns of the people going through it at the time.

We're in the middle of a pandemic, so of course we are concerned with infection and mortality rates. Our lives may depend on such things. And on that basis, Trump is a failure. But in ten years time, the only question worth asking might be, "Did the country survive?" I'm not at all sure that my own country, or any European country will do so.

In a world of bankrupt governments, crashed economies and widespread resultant disorder, people might well be praising Trump for keeping the American economy going even at the cost of a couple of million extra deaths.