According to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement, non-voters' self-reported most frequent reason for abstaining from the 2016 general election was they didn't like the candidates https://twitter.com/SolomonMg/status/1311650239745536000

Despite all of the hand-wringing about the election forecasts, if you're politically knowledgeable and follow the forecasts, you're someone who is already highly likely to vote - if not already voted

My research on voters' perceptions of electoral competition (in House elections) finds people who do not follow politics closely assume elections are competitive by default, and badly misestimate winning probabilities in favor of their candidate https://www.jstor.org/stable/41684584?seq=1

One of my favorite data points from the survey we ran was that a majority of voters in a House district with only one major party candidate running thought the election would be close. The actual average victory margin was over 95 points

So I find myself defending @CillizzaCNN. Egad! The people who are paying attention and are (actually not) affected by his statement of probabilities are people who are going to vote anyway

And to return to a point starting this thread. The fact that conservative and mainstream media have not been able to paint Biden as a corrupt monster is more important to turnout than election forecast models