Setting up for a November Surprise…

It is notable that the Big Money has convinced itself that we are looking at a Trump win. Here is one quote put out this past weekend.

A billionaire investor and former money manager for George Soros explained why he thinks markets are “very convinced” that former President Donald Trump will win the 2024 election.

Over the last 12 days, Wall Street has seemed “very convinced Trump is going to win… You can see it in the bank stocks, you can see it in crypto,” Stanley Druckenmiller said Wednesday.

But that is Big Money talking, not the People.

At the moment I am reading Nate’s Silver’s book “On the Edge”. It is an interesting book about risk, so far it seems to be kind of a good recap of material that has evolved over the past 40 years in the development of AI. As to predicting the election outcome, your brain would probably be better served by keeping things simple.

For me it appears clear. This election is about women and their fight for their rights. The group that will be a significant factor in a Harris victory in the 2024 election are the 18 to 44 year old group. According to the last census 62.6 % of this group voted in the 2020 election.

With the motivation that this group now has, we could easily see it have a voter turnout like older women’s groups in the 2020 election of 76 % or even more. That would mean an increase of at least 4 percent of the total voting number, enough to put Harris easily over the top. Contrary to all the polling guru’s commentary this election is not about the economy, race, or state.

 I base my comments on a couple of small amateur polls that I have done that start with no party bias. One in a regional rural group on Facebook, and one on a website catering also to rural roots. I baited the groups with positive comments on Walz. I got a lot of positive responses from women, especially younger women based on their pictures or comments. Younger men also seemed to want to respond, mostly negatively. The ratio of women to men ended up around 9:1. So, I put my intuition to work and looked at some census numbers.

The methodology that I used is based on the Birkman Method, a tool I used in my Masters thesis years ago and still like to use in other situations.

The Birkman Method is a psychological assessment that measures various personality traits to provide insights on how someone is likely to behave and why. It is used by businesses, organizations, and individuals to help identify strengths and weaknesses, understand motivation and behavior, and improve communication and teamwork. The Birkman Method combines motivational, behavioral, and interest evaluation into one single assessment, which provides a multi-dimensional and comprehensive analysis⁵.

So in my little study I did not ask whether people favored or whether they were going to vote for Trump or Harris, I just posed the statement to see what kind of responses it elicited.

Here is what I posed to the groups: “Growing up in a rural area many years ago, I have to say that seeing Tim Walz on the stage in Chicago answers my life long question, will we ever see a salt of the earth small town person in the White House?”

One of the populations that I tested this on was a Rural Republican leaning group and one was on kind of balanced rural group. The flavor of the responses appeared to be much the same. Responses were tilted strongly female, but also to negative young macho men based on their other posts.

Next week, around a week out from the election, we will talk about two widely different portfolios, one that should benefit from a Harris win and one that should benefit from a Trump win. With the current market setup for a Trump win, the big excitement will evolve from a Harris win.