Tech billionaire Elon Musk has issued a series of political predictions this week, based on strong Republican showings in early voting turnout data that former president Donald Trump is “trending toward a crushing victory” in Pennsylvania and that Vice President Kamala Harris should even be “worried about losing Virginia”.
Musk’s predictions are based on publicly available analysis of ballots returned so far in pre-election voting, which won’t be tallied until Election Day.
But voting experts say that because of gaps in the data, this isn’t a statistically sound method to game out election winners – and could sow confusion and doubts about the eventual results when ballots are counted.
“Based on all credible data, this race is going to be extremely close,” said David Becker, an expert on voting procedures who runs the non-partisan Centre …