Tuesday, 22 December 2020
Developed by CD Projekt Red
Published by CD Projekt
Genre Action RPG
Platform PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Stadia
Before you say it, yes it's a bit late in the year to be posting a review, but this one concerns a release so prominent that I felt it worth taking a break from writing my end of year Debbie Awards. Had I known this would prove to be a topic of such heated emotion I may have stuck to something less controversial, like Donald Trump or Brexit. This is, of course, the review of Cyberpunk 2077, the latest release from CD Projekt Red.
CD Projekt Red have spent the last several years riding high on a wave of adulation following the almost universal acclaim that has been lavished upon their previous project, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Armed with new global renown and a AAA budget far beyond anything they had seen previously, the developer set its sights on adapting Cyberpunk, a somewhat known tabletop RPG whose original format dates back to the 1980s.
First teased back in 2012, this title has seen what can be charitably described as a protracted production cycle. Even when the game was finally given a release date last year, that date ended up being delayed repeatedly. A lot of people joked that this release would never come, but it has and we've played it.
Let's not mince words, the hype for this game has been stratospheric: a developer who was seen as incapable of doing wrong, a reimagining of an intellectual property with cult following, all packaged into an ambitious, grand open-world RPG package with endless possibilities. This wasn't just a new game, it was billed as a generational moment in the industry, a milestone against which future titles would be compared. Few could possibly have foreseen the shitstorm that came next. It turns out there was a reason for the frequent delays. Cyberpunk 2077 simply isn't finished.
Let's step back a moment. Cyberpunk 2077 is an action RPG set in the dystopian near-future Night City, located on the American west coast. The world's governments have mostly collapsed, meaning that most power lies with corporations. Sophisticated, intelligent AI is a thing, and cybernetic technology has improved to such an extent that people can and do augment their bodies with regularity. These augmentations can include anything from the functional (think extra RAM or physically stronger limbs) to the superficial (like a shiny metallic gold body).
It makes for an interesting setting as there is an awful lot to like about this future. This is a world where you can be whoever you want. The ability to completely customise one's own body has led to an explosion in self-expression, both through augmentations as well as fashion, hairstyling and gender fluidity. Then there are the obvious advances that this level of technology would offer. Ocular implants can project information within one's vision. The brain's operating system can jack directly into computer systems to transfer information. Technology may even be on the verge of digital immortality, which forms a focal point of the game's main story. In many ways, this is a technical wonderland.
But this is ultimately a dystopia, a world where corporate greed has created an unsustainable level of wealth inequality, where law enforcement and government is riddled with corruption and criminal gangs run essentially unchallenged so long as they play by the corporations' rules. Indeed, as with any good cyberpunk dystopia, it is the technical marvels that provide much of the tension in this world, with people abusing technology for their own nefarious gains, be it through the inevitable weaponisation of cybernetics, the unshackling of AI, or by direct brain hacking for various ends.
Players will explore this world through the eyes of "V", a protagonist of the player's design who will begin from one of three starting points (nomad, street-kid or corpo) before becoming a mercenary for hire. This being an RPG, players will choose various stats for their characters that help determine their abilities going forward, but Cyberpunk 2077 never locks you into a particular path or class, allowing players a refreshing amount of freedom to vary their play-style at will.
It is worth talking about everything that Cyberpunk 2077 does right, and to be clear there are a lot of things that the game does very well indeed.
Night City might well be one of the greatest videogame settings of all time from a design perspective. The scale and level of detail in this city is simply unparalleled. It is clear that a great deal of love has gone into crafting this city, with every nook and cranny seemingly carved by hand and dripping with atmosphere. It's absolutely stunning to look at and surprisingly diverse, with an array of different neighbourhoods and landmarks, as well as a vast expanse of wild desert beyond the city limits to explore.
If you are playing on a high-end PC (more on that later) then this is a visually spectacular game. From the breathtaking vistas, to the textures, lighting and character models, this is a beautiful game if you have the hardware to do it justice. Some spontaneous moments are so striking that they almost look like they could have been carefully framed by a professional cinematographer. I'm not a big screenshots of videogames kind of guy, but there have been moments here that I felt moved to capture, so impressed was I by the quality and composition.
A great deal of attention has also been paid to the sound, be it the ambient sounds of the city or the excellent original score. Night City even features a line up of radio stations full of completely original music. While that last component can feel inconsistent (seriously this is cyberpunk, why so few retro or synthwave tunes?) it's all generally of a very high quality and fits the atmosphere extremely well. Voice acting is also generally very good (not so much with the protagonist's voice actor) and pairs well with the high quality of writing, although I must say I did find the romance dialogue to be a bit sophomoric, occasionally bordering on offensive.
The attention to detail here is often insane. I noticed NPCs playing guitars with accurate chord fingering, shoes making different footstep sound effects depending on the style of shoe, amongst other things.
Between the audio and visuals, I don't think a game has ever nailed the atmosphere of a setting quite as well as Cyberpunk 2077. Both elements are put to excellent use in the game's story and questing system, resulting in certainly one of the better story campaigns I can recall in recent years. The quests in general are very good: well written, incredibly directed, and full of different player decisions and variants that create the strong sense of player agency that you want from an RPG. The main campaign, it has to be said, was disappointingly short, but the real star is in the many and varied side quests. Some of these have stories that are at least as good, if not better, than the main campaign and most will in some way affect the ending you ultimately achieve. For this reason it is well worth not rushing the main campaign and taking your time to complete all of these side quests.
So Cyberpunk 2077 contains an incredibly presented game world with quests that are excellently designed and produced. It is clear that the developers were building something truly remarkable here. But as we so often see, sometimes the interests of the shareholders can run against the interests of the creatives (somewhat fittingly considering the themes of the game) and it is clear that after many years in development and several delays, CD Projekt was simply not willing to give the developers more time to realise this vision. The result is a game that in many places feels half-finished, poorly tested, or filled with obvious gaps from where content has been cut at the last minute.
This includes some obvious cut content such as ostensibly useless items left in-game which have had their apparent functions removed as well as defunct locations like an unused subway system that can still be accessed through glitches. It also includes some explicitly developer-confirmed cut content such as the ability to upgrade player apartments, rideable public transport and a third person camera view (seriously what is the point of all that character customisation if you never see it?).
It includes features that are still in-game but clearly half finished or unpolished, most notably the police/wanted system. Whereas previously police were intended to chase you in police cars and increase in intensity depending on the severity of your crimes, this all appears to have been replaced late on by a very rudimentary system. Police now spawn on foot right behind you as soon as you commit a crime, sometimes literally appearing out of thin air. If you hop in a car you're basically free because the police AI can't drive - strangely police driving AI does still appear to be in the game, it's just not used for some reason. Another example is the relationship system. Originally the plan was for V to be able to meet and enter into romantic relationships with characters, but at some point this was scaled down to just a single option per gender and orientation and is now entirely quest-based - ie, there is no actual relationship system, it's just an optional part of the quest line with no interactivity outside of these quests.
Perhaps the most egregious example of missing content is the lack of player customisation after the start of the game. A huge part of the hype over this game has been the extent to which you can customise your character (hair, tattoos, cybernetics, etc), yet for some reason you can only do this right at the start of the game. That's right, you can't change your hair style or colour, you can't get additional tattoos, and even though you can augment your body with cybernetics it doesn't actually affect your appearance at all.
Then there's the bugs, oh lord the bugs. Let me say this up front: if you are planning on playing this on console, don't! The console versions are just broken, unplayable to such an extent that the game has actually been pulled from the Sony game store. I can not stress this enough: if you have a good gaming PC, play it there, if not, then wait until they patch the current problems.
Even on the relatively stable PC build, this is a buggy game. This can range from the mildly irritating; lips not moving in cutscenes, invisible clothes, janky physics, people/vehicles spawning inside of things or falling through the floor; to the infuriating; on-screen notifications that won't go away, things exploding for no reason; to the downright game-breaking; missions getting stuck, unreachable objectives, save corruption. Often, things just don't work in this game and it's not like these bugs are hard to reproduce. There's no good reason for them to have not been patched out in development other than that it was rushed to market.
But I can forgive most of these issues. The quantity of cut content is disappointing when compared to what had been promised in the lead up to release, however I ultimately tend to think that what is in the game is more important than what is not. Many of these missing/cut features will no doubt be added post-launch anyway. I can even forgive the bugs (except for the broken console port, seriously DO NOT play this on a console), after all I've played and enjoyed many notoriously buggy RPGs over the years (the Bethesda RPGs come to mind) and these will surely be patched in due course.
Instead, the biggest issue for me lies in what is otherwise its greatest strength: the game world. While Night City may be absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to, it is a dead place, a piece of beautiful window-dressing with nothing behind the curtain. Right now, Night City serves mainly as a backdrop as you move from quest marker to quest marker, with little else to do. There are no activities, no games, no social life, no bars, very few shops. You can come across some repeatable "crimes in progress" events that basically amount to a bland shootout with cookie cutter badguys, but otherwise there really isn't much reason to explore this incredible place and that's a pity.
If anything, playing Cyberpunk 2077 makes you really appreciate the incredible work that developers like Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption) have been doing when it comes to open world gaming. Those games have living, breathing, dynamic worlds and have done for years.
This brings me to a very surprising core criticism of this game. Far from the cutting edge revolutionary title it was tipped to be, Cyberpunk 2077 feels strangely dated in a number of ways. From the disappointingly lifeless open world, to the lack of avatar or vehicle customisation, to the poor AI (drivers in particular are very basic, just following a set path and unable to navigate around obstacles), to the rudimentary police system, to the bullet-spongy enemies, this just feels like a weirdly outdated game for something that was supposed to be so cutting edge. Production on Cyberpunk 2077 began seven years ago and it shows.
Yet despite all these issues, I am loving this game. It's a mess in so many ways and a shadow of what was expected, but what is here is so engrossing and the RPG elements very satisfying. I think ultimately while this may be a poor open-world game, it is still a very good action RPG. If you are willing to appreciate this game for what it is instead of what it is not, then you can lose yourself in this world and get your money's worth (but only on PC).
So this is a difficult game to evaluate. It's clear that more time was needed, at least another year, in order to realise the developers' original grander vision. It may well be that this vision can still be realised post launch. For now, though, we are left wondering at what might have been.
At its core, cyberpunk 2077 has the feel of a game with high ambitions that has simply not been finished. Where the game shines is through its superlative setting, storytelling and quest design, but in just about every other aspect there are other games that have done the same thing but better. The end result is, on the balance, a very solid game that nevertheless fails to be the generational milestone it was tipped to be.
Sunday, 20 December 2020
As with most of you, my new year's resolutions for 2020 went out the window pretty quickly. I did not travel to a new country in 2020, nor did I find a good opportunity to get back into driving after years without getting behind the wheel of a vehicle. But there was one challenge that I did manage to achieve. Last December I pledged that I would read one book every month in 2020. Here's what happened next.
It sounds pretty simple when I write it down, actually. But the reality, not so much. Some books are longer than others, and forcing yourself to meet that monthly deadline every single month without fail takes more discipline than one might expect. I'll admit there were times it felt like a bit of a slog, perhaps more so because of the self-imposed deadline. Oddly, this is probably the one challenge that was actually made easier by the ongoing global situation, having found myself with an overabundance of time due to the lack of going out and actually doing things. So one book for each month, plus a few bonus books (and some of the "just for fun" kind that I won't list here). Here's what I read, the good, the bad, and the downright neutral. Enjoy:
January - "The Secret Commonwealth" by Philip Pullman
After all these years, we finally get to see a continuation of the story of Lyra Belacqua, protagonist of Philip Pullman's classic His Dark Materials series. Truth be told, two books into this trilogy and I am still waiting to see what exactly it was that inspired Pullman to resurrect his long dormant creation, but even if that moment never arrives so far it has been a hugely enjoyable romp.
This latest entry in the series the sort of globetrotting adventure one would hope for, but also recognises that both its cast of characters and its target audience are a little older and more mature than they were in the original trilogy of novels, taking a darker turn in its content, particularly as it pertains to the mental state of the novel's protagonists. A very fine work of fiction, albeit nothing as of yet as seminal as its predecessors. We will wait and see what the final book has to offer.
February - "The Guest Book" by Sarah Blake
Often delightful. The Guest Book traces the fortunes of a family of American aristocrats across three generations from the interbellum to present day, and in particular their life spent on the family private island and its guest house. Flashforward to present day and the family, now on harder times financially, is looking to sell the island and all the memories that reside within its grounds.
There's a lot to like about this novel. It tackles the topic of social inequality from a perspective not commonly explored in fiction and manages to weave its narrative across a broader story about family, nostalgia and loss. Unfortunately other than its themes, the actual narrative is a bit thin and one gets the impression it is drawn out considerably longer than is justified. The Guest Book also suffers from having, to be frank, way too many different minor characters. Most barely even figure into the plot, are mentioned once and then promptly vanish. I can imagine it being tricky to keep track of if you don't read it in a condensed space of time as I did.
March - "The Supernova Era" by Liu Cixin
To quote the old football maxim, "it's a game of two halves...". The Supernova Era has perhaps one of the best set ups to a sci-fi novel that I have read in many years. A nearby supernova bathes the Earth in radiation, dooming the planet's adult population and requiring a sudden and urgent training of children in order to keep the world running in their absence.
February - "The Guest Book" by Sarah Blake
Often delightful. The Guest Book traces the fortunes of a family of American aristocrats across three generations from the interbellum to present day, and in particular their life spent on the family private island and its guest house. Flashforward to present day and the family, now on harder times financially, is looking to sell the island and all the memories that reside within its grounds.
There's a lot to like about this novel. It tackles the topic of social inequality from a perspective not commonly explored in fiction and manages to weave its narrative across a broader story about family, nostalgia and loss. Unfortunately other than its themes, the actual narrative is a bit thin and one gets the impression it is drawn out considerably longer than is justified. The Guest Book also suffers from having, to be frank, way too many different minor characters. Most barely even figure into the plot, are mentioned once and then promptly vanish. I can imagine it being tricky to keep track of if you don't read it in a condensed space of time as I did.
March - "The Supernova Era" by Liu Cixin
To quote the old football maxim, "it's a game of two halves...". The Supernova Era has perhaps one of the best set ups to a sci-fi novel that I have read in many years. A nearby supernova bathes the Earth in radiation, dooming the planet's adult population and requiring a sudden and urgent training of children in order to keep the world running in their absence.
The first half of this novel is brilliant. As with his other work (notably the Three Body Problem), Cixin has a knack for setting up an outlandish premise and following it through to its logical conclusion, imagining what one might actually do in such a situation and how it would play out in a manner that is extremely believable. Unfortunately about half way through, the novel takes a complete left turn into the realm of the unbelievable and nonsensical. It's an example of an author who clearly wants to make a satirical point, even at the expense of a coherent story, and it's a pity.
April - "Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is a brilliant novel and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about it. Daisy Jones tells the story of fictional band Daisy Jones and the Six, allegedly based loosely on the history of Fleetwood Mac, in the style of a documentary film. The quality of the writing here really is excellent in many ways. Vivid and believable characters with motivations that are explored to just the right extent without feeling like forced subtext. The pacing in particular is just about perfect, never feeling like the story is dragging whilst also never feeling like it has to rush through it's plot points.
I wouldn't surprised to see this one pick up a Debbie in a few days time. If you read one book from this list, I would make it this one.
May - "This is Going to Hurt" by Adam Kay
I remember seeing a live performance by Adam Kay at Imperial College freshers week (where he had studied medicine, before quitting medicine to become a comedian). While I thought he was hilarious, he somehow managed to deeply, deeply offend both my female friends and my LGBT friends who were with me that night. That should give you some clue as to the type of wit to expect with this novel.
April - "Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is a brilliant novel and I have absolutely nothing negative to say about it. Daisy Jones tells the story of fictional band Daisy Jones and the Six, allegedly based loosely on the history of Fleetwood Mac, in the style of a documentary film. The quality of the writing here really is excellent in many ways. Vivid and believable characters with motivations that are explored to just the right extent without feeling like forced subtext. The pacing in particular is just about perfect, never feeling like the story is dragging whilst also never feeling like it has to rush through it's plot points.
I wouldn't surprised to see this one pick up a Debbie in a few days time. If you read one book from this list, I would make it this one.
May - "This is Going to Hurt" by Adam Kay
I remember seeing a live performance by Adam Kay at Imperial College freshers week (where he had studied medicine, before quitting medicine to become a comedian). While I thought he was hilarious, he somehow managed to deeply, deeply offend both my female friends and my LGBT friends who were with me that night. That should give you some clue as to the type of wit to expect with this novel.
This is Going to Hurt serves as a memoir of the ever irreverent Adam Kay's days in medicine. A series of moments and snippets in a diary format that range from rolling in the aisles hilarious to tragic and some that are just downright nauseating, but always entertaining. It seems Kay may have finally struck the right balance between edgy and funny that allows his particular brand of humour to go mainstream, a TV adaptation is expected to land sometime next year.
June - "Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami
A collection of short stories penned by legendary Japanese surrealist author Haruki Murakami on the topic of relationships. Inspired by and sharing a name with the similar collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. As with any collection of short stories, the quality and tone of each tale varies, but the quality is as consistent and immersive as one would expect from the author.
June - "Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami
A collection of short stories penned by legendary Japanese surrealist author Haruki Murakami on the topic of relationships. Inspired by and sharing a name with the similar collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway. As with any collection of short stories, the quality and tone of each tale varies, but the quality is as consistent and immersive as one would expect from the author.
One often gets the impression that Murakami is inherently suspicious of women, as indeed the female characters in his novels often turn out to be hiding mysterious, often duplicitous sorts and sometimes these gender biases can grow a bit stale. Fortunately the short-form nature of this collection allows a greater variety of devices to be employed, including some that break refreshingly from the typical Murakami tropes that one might expect.
June Bonus - "An Average War" by Mike Peyton
Confession time: I had already started reading the previous entry last year. So by way of recompense, I added another (much shorter) novel to this month's reading list. An Average War is the autobiographical tale of somewhat noted illustrator Mike Peyton and his adventures during the war.
June Bonus - "An Average War" by Mike Peyton
Confession time: I had already started reading the previous entry last year. So by way of recompense, I added another (much shorter) novel to this month's reading list. An Average War is the autobiographical tale of somewhat noted illustrator Mike Peyton and his adventures during the war.
One can tell from the quality of the prose that Peyton is not a professional wordsmith, but he has much to say and does so in an engaging fashion. These are stories that range from the exciting and adventurous to heartbreaking, often told with dark humour. Some incidents are so farcical as to be scarcely believable, but that only serves to highlight the tragic reality that at the end of the day these wars are just fought by regular people in all their flaws and idiosyncrasies.
July - "Agent Running in the Field" by John le Carré
The final work of the recently deceased espionage legend. Le Carré's career spanned six decades and includes such seminal pieces of work as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Night Manager and The Constant Gardner.
Agent Running in the Field, to be quite blunt, is le Carré's Brexit novel, inspired by the real life events of the past few years and in particular the Russian intelligence efforts behind Trump and Brexit. Le Carré makes no apology for his frank and to the point political commentary, but one wonders if his desire to explore contemporary politics has come at the expense of the story itself. This is a good novel, but undeniably among the more simplistic and straightforward in the le Carré bibliography. Still, the opportunity to see a master of the espionage genre tackling such current and relevant events is a treat you will not want to pass up.
July Bonus - "Superman: Red Son" by Mark Millar
In most cases I might have included this among the "for fun" items that don't make the list, but Superman: Red Son is one of those graphic novels that is so sensational that is genuinely merits consideration among more traditional forms of literature.
July - "Agent Running in the Field" by John le Carré
The final work of the recently deceased espionage legend. Le Carré's career spanned six decades and includes such seminal pieces of work as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Night Manager and The Constant Gardner.
Agent Running in the Field, to be quite blunt, is le Carré's Brexit novel, inspired by the real life events of the past few years and in particular the Russian intelligence efforts behind Trump and Brexit. Le Carré makes no apology for his frank and to the point political commentary, but one wonders if his desire to explore contemporary politics has come at the expense of the story itself. This is a good novel, but undeniably among the more simplistic and straightforward in the le Carré bibliography. Still, the opportunity to see a master of the espionage genre tackling such current and relevant events is a treat you will not want to pass up.
July Bonus - "Superman: Red Son" by Mark Millar
In most cases I might have included this among the "for fun" items that don't make the list, but Superman: Red Son is one of those graphic novels that is so sensational that is genuinely merits consideration among more traditional forms of literature.
Red Son is an alternate telling of the Superman mythos: what would have happened had Superman's spacecraft crashed in then Soviet Union instead of the United States, and he then grown up into an ideological soldier of communism rather than the posterchild of the American way of life. It's a great premise and Millar makes the most of it crafting, for me, one of the best comicbook stories of all time.
August - "Once Upon a River" by Lorian Hemingway
This one sounded good on paper. A mystery tale set against the backdrop of towns along the river Thames, a period setting, a tapestry that touches everything from folklore, to science, magic and myth. Unfortunately the execution is far less wondrous than the pitch.
August - "Once Upon a River" by Lorian Hemingway
This one sounded good on paper. A mystery tale set against the backdrop of towns along the river Thames, a period setting, a tapestry that touches everything from folklore, to science, magic and myth. Unfortunately the execution is far less wondrous than the pitch.
The story itself is not bad, but it is paced so excruciatingly poorly, with everything stretched out and packed with unnecessary filler. After the enticing opening scene, the novel takes a drastic detour and doesn't return to the main plot for more than 100 pages. Dozens of pointless and irrelevant characters are introduced and their backstories fleshed out for no apparent reason. It's meandering, plodding, and ultimately not worth sticking with to uncover its deeper meaning.
September - "Exhalation: Stories" by Ted Chiang
A series of short stories by renowned author Ted Chiang, who you may know as the author of the short story on which the Oscar winning film Arrival was based. The stories contained within Exhalation cover a variety of topics from mankind's place in the universe, to the nature of humanity, free will and technology.
On the whole I found this collection to be less impressive than his first anthology, but still well worth reading. Most stories are good, some are brilliant, and only one felt like it overstayed its welcome.
October - "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell
David Mitchell is known for his dizzyingly ambitious works of fiction, most notably Cloud Atlas. Notoriously obtuse, multi-layered and often with a strong underlying link to the supernatural and metaphysical. By contrast, Utopia Avenue almost seems oddly traditional by his standards. This made for odd reading as, on the surface, the novel bore many similarities with Daisy Jones, concerning itself also with the story of a fictional band in the 1960s. Indeed for the first half of the novel it follows many familiar story beats. But don't you worry Mitchell fans, persevere and eventually it starts to get every bit as weird as you would expect.
September - "Exhalation: Stories" by Ted Chiang
A series of short stories by renowned author Ted Chiang, who you may know as the author of the short story on which the Oscar winning film Arrival was based. The stories contained within Exhalation cover a variety of topics from mankind's place in the universe, to the nature of humanity, free will and technology.
On the whole I found this collection to be less impressive than his first anthology, but still well worth reading. Most stories are good, some are brilliant, and only one felt like it overstayed its welcome.
October - "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell
David Mitchell is known for his dizzyingly ambitious works of fiction, most notably Cloud Atlas. Notoriously obtuse, multi-layered and often with a strong underlying link to the supernatural and metaphysical. By contrast, Utopia Avenue almost seems oddly traditional by his standards. This made for odd reading as, on the surface, the novel bore many similarities with Daisy Jones, concerning itself also with the story of a fictional band in the 1960s. Indeed for the first half of the novel it follows many familiar story beats. But don't you worry Mitchell fans, persevere and eventually it starts to get every bit as weird as you would expect.
I actually loved this book. I felt it had the perfect balance between a rich, traditional story and the classic David Mitchell weirdness, making for one of the more accessible entries in his bibliography. Certain parts can make for difficult reading and you will certainly gain the most from this text if you are familiar with the man's work, but this is very much a worthwhile novel.
November - "The Invisible Life of Addie Larue" by V. E. Schwab
Addie Larue makes a deal with the devil to live forever, the trade-off being that no one will ever remember who she is and thus she is unable to ever form any lasting relationships with anyone. Then one day 300 years later she meets someone who does remember her, but why?
This was a pretty good one. Takes a fascinating premise and runs with it. Often these high concept stories peter out when they can't think of a reasonable justification or resolution, but Schwab packs enough interesting twists and turns that the plot never becomes stale and impressively manages to find a satisfying conclusion that neither succumbs to trope nor banality.
December - "Migrations" by Charlotte McConaghy
For my final book of the year I decided to pick something from the annual best sellers' list on Amazon, place my luck in the wisdom of the crowd. The result was Migrations, a novel set in a not-too-distant future where most animal life on Earth is extinct due to pollution and mankind generally being a bit shit. Our protagonist manages to talk her way onto a fishing vessel to allow her to follow perhaps the last ever avian migration, only she has ulterior motives...
December - "Migrations" by Charlotte McConaghy
For my final book of the year I decided to pick something from the annual best sellers' list on Amazon, place my luck in the wisdom of the crowd. The result was Migrations, a novel set in a not-too-distant future where most animal life on Earth is extinct due to pollution and mankind generally being a bit shit. Our protagonist manages to talk her way onto a fishing vessel to allow her to follow perhaps the last ever avian migration, only she has ulterior motives...
I sometimes get the impression that there are novels out there that succeed not because of their quality but because of their statement, and this is one of those novels. It's not bad by any means, the quality of writing is strong, with an absorbing sense of atmosphere and place. There just isn't a huge amount there beyond "humans bad". Most of the novel is spent filling in the tragic backstory of our protagonist, which is serviceable enough, if emotionally manipulative, and nowhere near as interesting a setting as its initial premise. Just about worth reading but there are better novels on this list.
So there it is. Twelve months in books. Do I dare take on the challenge again next year? Only time will tell.
Friday, 18 December 2020
Genre Plunderphonics
Label Modular
Producers Robert Chater
The unconventional career-to-date of The Avalanches has become the stuff of mythos in the music industry. The elusive purveyors of plunderphonics stormed onto the scene in 2000 with Since I Left You, an experimental debut that would go on to define the genre and draw widespread critical and commercial acclaim. Yet for the longest time it appeared that the group may go down as a one-album wonder, the sophomore effort Wildflower taking some sixteen years before it finally saw the light of day thanks to a seemingly never-ending litany of legal, creative and personal setbacks. It was worth the wait. Wildflower turned out to be every bit as much a masterpiece as its predecessor, earning a place on this blog's top ten albums of the past decade among other accolades.
The traditionally troublesome third album has seen no such drama, arriving a relatively brief four years after Wildflower. The result is We Will Always Love You, an album that on first listen feels very different from what the band has previously produced, yet no less brilliant.
Musically, this feels like quite the departure for the band. If the first two albums were noted for their high energy party style, WWALY feels distinctly more introspective and bittersweet. Core themes of loss and the passage of time feel like a fitting reflection of this year and it permeates throughout the production of this album. This album sees itself as a love letter to those that have come before us; samples of deceased artists from the past century, immortalised through their work. An explicit statement of love and remembrance beamed straight into the heavens. Even the album cover reflect this notion, featuring an image converted into sound and back into an image of Ann Druyan, creative director of the Voyager Golden Record project, the objectives of which dovetail closely with the ambition of this album.
This latest album is also notable for its shift away from the trademark plunderphonics of their work-to-date and into more traditional songwriting. The Avalanches still make use of samples aplenty, but with a greater focus on original instrumentation and vocals. Indeed, just about every song on this album features a completely original set of vocals from a lineup of mostly all-star collaborators including MGMT, Jamie xx, Blood Orange, Rivers Cuomo (of Weezer fame), Karen O (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs fame), Kurt Vile, Johnny Marr of The Smiths, and many others.
One could be excused for worrying that this change in style might deprive the band of some of their uniqueness, but such thoughts are quickly dashed by a display of the same fundamental creativity that made the first two albums so memorable. At its heart, this is very much an Avalanches album, brimming with the same sense of nostalgia and multi-layered ingenuity that we have come to expect. If anything, the fact that the music is this good only serves to highlight how talented this group is when it comes to songwriting.
As with the first two albums, WWALY is less a collection of songs and more a single thread that runs from start to finish. Each track flows logically to the next by way of a contextually seamless interlude, like different movements of a singular piece. The music is good enough that each track can be enjoyed in isolation, but certainly on the first listen I recommend a full play with your undivided attention. For this reason it can be difficult to immediately pick just one or two stand out tracks, but on repeated listens a few key moments will emerge and stay longer in the memory.
Running Red Lights is a highlight. A dreamy and wistful pop song featuring a career best vocal performance from Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. It's a great song because it sounds so deceptively poppy, appearing on the surface like your typical radio-friendly pop song, but with enough subversion and unexpected musical deviations to retain that classic Avalanches edge. Title track We Will Always Love You, meanwhile, serves as a mission statement for the album, repurposing a long forgotten sample of the Roches into the centrepiece of what feels like a love letter beamed into space.
On the more playful side, Interstellar Love pays homage to its cover star Ann Druyan and her (literally interstellar) love story with famed scientist and father to the Voyager Golden Record, Carl Sagan. The result is a slice of feel-good and one of the album's catchier tracks. For those seeking some pure adrenaline fuelled music to dance to, Music Makes Me High is a welcome throw back to the band's sunnier previous work and a welcome respite from the album's otherwise more somber tone.
But particular mention needs to be made of the excellent collaboration with MGMT, The Divine Chord. This song is everything, a cosmic trip of the highest calibre. This collaboration takes the best qualities of the Avalanches and MGMT and produces a work of beauty that is simultaneously lonely, optimistic and oddly comforting.
These are highlights, but really there is wonderful work to be found throughout, from We Go On's tragically poignant tribute to the story of Karen Carpenter, to the mellow psychedelia of Gold Sky, amongst several others that would be worth mentioning.
As a whole, this is an excellent album. The quality of production is sublime throughout, indicative of a team of musicians who are increasingly confident in honing their craft. In a strange way though, it does sometimes feel like something has been lost without the roughness of the first two albums. Those songs weren't great because of their technical proficiency, but for their raw, carefree energy. In smoothing out the production, it sometimes feels like the music is (as strange as it is to say) a little bit too perfectly formed.
It is also a shame that by the time WWALY released in mid-December, we had already heard most of the songs. No fewer than six singles were released in advanced of the album's launch, some as far back as February. No doubt this bizarre rollout will have been to some extent a result of the pandemic, but it does mean that on first listen the album may not blow you away as much as it might have done had you been hearing all these songs fresh for the first time.
This is a great album from a band that is clearly not afraid to evolve their style and in doing so reveal an entirely new depth to their songwriting talent. While it may not quite hit the same ecstatic heights as their landmark first two albums, We Will Always Love You is nevertheless a wildly memorable cosmic ride and arguably their most finessed and technically accomplished work-to-date. It still feels weird to live in a world with regular new Avalanches albums, but I suspect I could get used to this.
Must Listen :
Running Red Lights
Tuesday, 8 December 2020
Developed by Ubisoft Toronto
Published by Ubisoft
Genre Action-Adventure
Platform PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Stadia
A great game needs to successfully marry the essential trio of concept, execution and fun. Those that only manage to pull off two of the three will always feel as though they have fallen short.
Watch Dogs: Legion is the latest entry in Ubisoft's Watch Dogs franchise. For the uninitiated: picture an open world action game in the style of Grand Theft Auto, but with more computer hacking. The unique hook of the Watch Dogs world is the ability to get up to all kinds of Mr. Robot-style computer wizardry. Using your in-game phone you can disable security systems, remote control vehicles and drones, create distractions and perform any multitude of other fun shenanigans.
But this is not just "Anarchy: the Videogame". The Watch Dogs franchise differentiates itself from its peers with its boldly political worldview, never more so than they have done with this latest iteration. With Legion, Watch Dogs takes its aim firmly at Brexit. Set in a near future London where Brexit has happened, and the country has devolved into a far right dystopia where politicians get away with literal murder and corporate greed runs amok (in other words, 2021). Players are tasked with organising the resistance, recruiting freedom-loving Londoners to fight against the corrupt powers that be, and take back the streets for the people.
The big new feature with Legion is "play as anyone", the idea that you can recruit literally any person you see in the game into your ragtag bunch of hacktivist rebels. That drunk football hooligan at the pub? Sure. Kindly meter-maid? You bet. Batty old pensioner who you wouldn't think could hurt a fly? Of course, and she will absolutely decimate a highly trained squad of assassins in a heartbeat. You can even recruit enemy NPCs with a little extra work that offer infiltration benefits. Basically anyone you see walking around London, friend or foe, can be added to the team.
This impressive feat is achieved through some pretty clever randomisation algorithms. Every NPC in the game has a randomised physical appearance, personality, backstory, skillset and voice - there are apparently twenty or so voices in game, which are modified in pitch and speed to create the illusion of variety, to mixed success.
As a concept, I think it's fantastic. The London setting obviously appeals to me as a lifelong London resident, while the far-too-close-to-home political storyline will hold extra significance for those of a more moderate or left wing persuasion who have been horrified by the events of the past few years. The ability to live out some rebel fantasy and stick it to fictional baddies who are clearly allegories for the baddies of the real world provides some undeniable catharsis.
The execution, unfortunately, is somewhat mixed. As is usually the case with randomisation in games, the algorithm can produce some weird results. This can include some pretty terrible looking or sounding characters and, more problematically, some weird combinations. In my play-through I came across old white ladies with thick Jamaican accents, posh suited men with "chav" voices, and several other jarring results that frankly didn't work. In addition, despite the efforts that have supposedly gone into the game to create variety in NPCs, I only ended up encountering five or so distinct voices. Of my thirty-strong gang of rebels I had maybe fifteen with the same bland cockney yobbo voice, one effete British posh-guy, one Irish accent, and most of the rest with the same "chav" voice remixed into different pitches. This may be simply a bug that will get ironed out, but in my experience at least I found a disappointingly slight amount of variety.
This system also has a few fundamental issues to it. In particular, Legion sorely lacks any kind of a character progression. What the game really needs is some kind of an RPG style skills and levelling system that adds an actual character arc for the people you recruit. Without this, it all just feels a bit superficial. The characters you recruit are little more that action figures that you pick out for a particular look or ability, there's no real depth to them and no narrative beyond that which you imagine for yourself. That character you recruited might only have a few short lines of history in the game, but in their mind the player might have their own sense of who this character is and what they're about that helps enrich the experience. Gamers without that sense of imagination might find it a bit lacking.
But for all its flaws, this play as anyone approach is ambitious and undeniably fun, particularly when you find the right group of characters. My core team included a smarmy, alcoholic private detective, a corporate IT assistant and homebrew drone enthusiast, a street artist, along with many others. It was a pretty awesome group. If you're like me you'll spend most of your playtime roaming around finding characters you like, and leave the main story campaign until you get bored. That's fine, but eventually it does wear thin.
It doesn't help that there's not actually all that much to do in this game. Aside from recruiting characters, there is a main story campaign, 2-3 "defiance" objectives in each part of town that allows you gin up a rebellion, and a single stream of repeatable hacking missions that are pretty bland. The endgame in particular is really disappointingly lacking in content and could have used a few more types of repeatable or procedurally generated missions. London is beautiful in-game, but they really could have done more with it.
The core gameplay itself is pretty fun. Solid stealth mechanics, serviceable ranged and close combat. It's competent rather than spectacular, but it feels right. The pinnacle comes with the addition of remote spider-bots and drones that are capable of infiltrating a building through means not available to humans, such as flying or squeezing through tight air-vents. The ability to hack into computer systems provides a lot of fun options, whether it's jumping between cameras to get close to the target and hacking remotely, or abusing the security systems to mess with the enemy. There is also a series of upgrades that the player can purchase to augment all of the above and add a few additional tricks to the repertoire.
There's good bones here, but ultimately I think so much of the development time for Legion was spent on trying to make this wildly ambitious play as anyone idea work that they've neglected the game in other key areas. The result is something that is undeniably good fun to play, with a clever gimmick that sometimes works, but not a huge amount of depth or longevity. If they can tighten up the randomisation algorithm and expand the game with a chunky mission pack, then Legion could be truly great. For now it's merely good, a proof of concept for something much grander.
Monday, 30 November 2020
Created by Peter Morgan
Network Netflix
Starring Olivia Colman, Tobias Menzies, Helena Bonham Carter, Gillian Anderson
Genre Historical drama
Running Time 45-60 minutes
Until now, Netflix's The Crown has been something of a nostalgic fantasy. A sumptuously crafted, if highly romanticised, depiction of historic events and figures that are grounded enough in the world around us to feel relevant, yet distant enough to seem almost like the malleable icons of Arthurian legend. Yet as the story rapidly draws nearer to present day and enters the time of living memory, these depictions inevitably land closer to home and to controversy.
As a series, The Crown has something for everyone: history, politics, melodramatic posh people. Through it all, what makes the series so brilliant is the absolutely superlative production quality. It's been consistently brilliant and won a bunch of Debbie awards, plus a few others that no one cares about like the Emmys. But no matter how good a series is, I rarely come back to do a review of later seasons unless there is something noteworthy enough to justify a revisit. This is one of those situations.
Otherwise longtime fans are likely to find the same series that they know and love. The Crown's fourth season is another lavish piece of prestige television, except with an added dose of melodrama. If you ever found yourself wishing that The Crown could be a bit more like Downton Abbey, this season is for you.
With its fourth season, The Crown enters the 1980s. You all know what that means. Any drama about the royal family was inevitably going to reach this point. It was always going to be a headline moment in the series. It was pretty much guaranteed to be a shitshow in one way or another. Yes, this is the Princess Diana series.
The depiction of so beloved a figure presents challenges. Diana's deeds and untimely demise have ascended her image almost into the realm of national folklore. To write this person's story in such a way as to present the real individual without offending the... is a bold undertaking, doubly so for the actress who will be tasked with capturing this essence, and in doing so become for many people the living image of Diana as she is seen in the public discourse.
But Diana is not the only figure of controversy here. Season four of the Crown also marks the first appearance of Margaret Thatcher, one of the more divisive political figures in recent British history.
So how do you even begin to analyse this? Ultimately I think there are two questions to ask here: 1) how accurate/fairly are these figures being depicted. and 2) how well written/acted are they (and thus ultimately, does it make for "good television"?).
The Royal Family, much more so than in previous seasons, is depicted as cold and arrogant. Frequently they are shown to belittle those beneath their level and regard others as pawns in their political machinations. This extends to Princess Diana, who is depicted as a marriage of convenience, a camera-friendly smokescreen while Charles continues his affair with Camilla basically throughout. Diana herself is not portrayed as some kind of saint, as we have become accustomed to seeing her depicted in recent years. This Diana is shown to be an ambitious, self-centred drama queen who craves status and attention.
There have been accusations that the writers of this show are playing up the drama for sensationalist reasons. But truthfully a lot of what is shown here matches up quite closely to that which is publicly known and confirmed. Many of the incidents of Diana craving the spotlight are based on documented events. If anything, the writers have shied away from depicting probably the most shocking of all documented incidents, one which Diana herself confirmed in a BBC interview: that she deliberately threw herself down the stairs while pregnant with William, basically as a cry for attention.
To be fair, there are some instances where the truth appears to be stretched here in the name of drama. I have seen credible doubts raised as to whether Charles really was pursuing an open affair with Camilla throughout the marriage. In one scene Phillip appears to threaten Diana in what can only be seen as an ugly nod to the despicable Diana conspiracy theories. But ultimately the truth is that the Charles and Diana marriage really was a messy, ugly story in which no one comes off particularly well, and that appears to be fairly depicted here.
Margaret Thatcher on the other hand has quite the interesting portrayal here. At first the writers seem almost to want to humanise her character to an unrealistic degree, depicting her as meek and awkward in the face of the Royal Family's arrogance and snobbery. They emphasise her middle class roots and show her struggles against the repressive political patriarchy. In fairness they do also allude to her darker side: the allegations of corruption, her callousness towards the poor, her megalomania, her baffling views on gender equality, but it seems strangely at odds with how she is depicted at other times during the season and I am not sure if the writers really do as good a job as they can (or as was done in the film Iron Lady) in depicting a complete portrayal of the character.
But controversies aside, have they maintained the high quality of production from the previous seasons? Well it's The Crown, of course they have. The acting and production is for the most part as impeccable as you would expect.
Emma Corrin is the big newcomer as Princess Diana and she provides a captivating performance in a difficult role that manages to dominate every scene in which she is a part (as Diana should do). Her Diana is in equal parts adorable and troublesome, sympathetic and frustrating. Corrin looks every bit a star in the making and I look forward to seeing where she goes in the future.
Gillian Anderson's Thatcher is sadly a bit more disappointing. Anderson is a wonderful actress, but her Thatcher comes off as far too cartoonish with the over the top neck craning, posture and belaboured vocal impression. Sometimes when it comes to portraying a historical figure less is more.
Otherwise longtime fans are likely to find the same series that they know and love. The Crown's fourth season is another lavish piece of prestige television, except with an added dose of melodrama. If you ever found yourself wishing that The Crown could be a bit more like Downton Abbey, this season is for you.
Sunday, 22 November 2020
Created by Mike Flanagan (based on the works of Henry James)
Network Netflix
Starring Victoria Pedretti, Olivier Jackson-Cohen, Amelia Eve, T'Nia Miller
Genre Supernatural
Running Time 45-65 minutes
I had high expectations coming into this. Creator Mike Flanagan is establishing himself as one of the leading names in horror through a growing filmography of spooky hits that include the likes of Oculus, Hush, and Ouija. The first season of his The Haunting anthology series, The Haunting of Hill House, has so far been his crowning achievement: just the right amount of scary with a level of production quality and artistic ambition far beyond its peers - one episode is audaciously filmed as (seemingly) a single camera shot, while another "The Bent-Neck Lady" remains some of the finest horror story telling of the past thirty years. In particular, I was impressed by the subtle attention to detail of the series - the first season famously would do things like change the position and expressions of statues in between camera shots and hide ghostly figures in plain sight without drawing attention to them. Subtle and barely perceptible details that are nevertheless noticeable enough to create a general sense of unease. The Haunting of Hill House earned a runner-up place in the end of year Debbie Awards for best new TV series.
The Haunting of Bly Manor is the second season of this series. Same actors, but completely different characters, setting and source material. Whereas Hill House was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, Bly Manor is based on numerous works of 19th Century author Henry James, most notably 1898's The Turn of the Screw. But while this is ostensibly a continuation of Flanagan's Haunting anthology, viewers would do well to temper their expectations. This is in no way The Haunting of Hill House 2.
Without wanting to spoil too much, the setting is this: a young au pair arrives at the country estate of Bly to look after its two young children who have lost both their parents to tragedy. The manor is populated by a team of full time staff and various other entities, but as the au pair begins to settle in to her new life she finds herself haunted by the pain of a past romance. To be honest I'm not even sure I would classify this as a horror series (I have gone with the genre "supernatural" instead). Sure, there are ghosts, but for the most part the ghosts aren't anything to cause fright. In Bly Manor, ghosts are more like sad memories than malevolent entities. A reminder of lost loves and unspeakable wrongs, rather than Hill House's cruel tricksters. That's not to say that the show lacks for scares or chilling imagery, but these moments are used more sparingly and do not take the primary focus of the series in the way that was the case with Hill House.
Bly Manor is essentially a gothic romance where the true evils reside in the base instincts of man and the unjust machinations of society. The spooks and ghouls, such that they are, are more tragic figures to be pitied than feared, and the main drivers of conflict lie in the weight of personal duty and familial obligations. It all makes for an impressively complex and psychological tale, albeit a slow burning one that never feels fully formed until its final moments.
While this may be a very different type of show, the quality is still generally high. Bly Manor is well made, with gorgeous visual and audio and a slick production (and yes the hidden ghosts return, although to a much lesser extent). The filmmaking in general comes off as a bit less artful and ambitious than its predecessor, which is perhaps not surprising with Flanagan largely stepping back from directorial duties, but this is still a very competently composed series. I will say that the narrative feels a bit weaker than Hill House, perhaps due in part to its slow-burning nature. The story itself is not bad, but the way it unwinds over some ten hours feels less focused, less tight, and a bit more self-indulgent. It almost feels as if they had to stretch it out in order to fill Netflix's ten hour runtime request. Ultimately it does all come together in a satisfying, if emotionally manipulative, ending, but I can't help but feel that they could have been more disciplined in editing and cut out a fair bit of the repetition in getting us there.
I have to commend the creators of this series for being willing to try something so completely different to what worked in the first season. Television is an industry where fans and critics alike like to be able to neatly categorise everything, and from its first season The Haunting was neatly categorised as horror. But as Bly Manor reminds us, that word "haunting" can have many different meanings. If the first season gave us a haunting of nasty thrills and chills, Bly Manor gives us a haunting of a more lingering and tragic nature. It is nevertheless a very bold move to switch up genres to such an extent, one that risks alienating an existing fanbase. But the payoff is that The Haunting is now much more than just a genre pastiche. This is a vehicle capable of exploring any creative niche its creator so chooses. I, for one, am excited to see where he takes us next.
Bly Manor is good, but not as good as Hill House. Viewers coming into this series expecting more of the same will probably be disappointed - this is more Patrick Swayze's Ghost than Wes Craven after all. But those who can come into this with an open mind will find a polished and strangely nostalgic haunting of a different nature.
Saturday, 7 November 2020
At this time last year, with Donald Trump on the verge of impeachment for high crimes, I said that there was little doubt we were witnessing the final days of the Trump Presidency. So it has turned out. The results of the 2020 election are in. It's done. Trump is out. He will lose by a substantial margin in both the popular vote and electoral college, and in doing so become only the fourth President in modern history to lose a bid for re-election. Here's how it happened.
Results
First I would like to clarify, the purpose of this post will be simply to discuss the election results. What happened, what they mean, and what happens next. This is not going to be a review or retrospective of the Trump Presidency as this blog posted back in 2017 for Barack Obama. That will come later. Now it is time just to observe and digest the events of the past week.
Joe Biden has been elected President. While the results in many places have yet to be finalised, it now appears likely that he will end up having won the national popular vote by several million votes as well as the electoral college by a significant margin that includes the "blue wall" that Clinton lost in 2016 and adds formerly deep red states such as Arizona and Georgia. Joe Biden has won more votes than any Presidential candidate in American history and will likely win by the second largest margin since 2000 (the largest being Obama's first victory in 2008).
Meanwhile in the Congressional races Democrats have once again won a majority in the House of Representatives. As I have previously discussed, this is no mean feat considering how historically gerrymandered the House districts are; an anti-democratic practice essentially meaning that Democrats need to win by a wide margin just to scrape a bare majority. This majority looks like it will end up being slightly less than that won in 2018, which itself is no great surprise given that they were up against an incumbent President this time, and still represents a solid majority of the national vote.
As expected, Democrats will also make gains in the Senate, however at the time of writing it remains to be seen whether they will take a majority. With the two races in Georgia entering a runoff election, we will likely not know the answer to this until January.
These results are largely in line with what was expected pre-election. My own prediction at the start of the week had Biden winning 313 electoral votes. It is currently expected that he will win 306, with every state having been called correctly aside from Iowa (6 votes) and Maine's 2nd Congressional District (1 vote). I say this not to brag, but to show how close to pre-election expectations the results have ended up being. The forecasts were, once again, more or less correct.
Despite this, a narrative seems to have formed early on that the pollsters were all wrong. It is fair to say that the margins are narrower than predicted, but the discrepancy appears to have been greatly exaggerated by the unprecedented election day/mail-in vote difference that has been caused by the combination of Covid-19 and the Republican party's own deliberate machinations.
When all the votes are counted it appears likely that Republicans will have over-performed relative to the polls by about 2-3%. Such a polling error easily accounts for an underperformance in the House of 10 or so seats. Difficult to comment on the Senate with races still outstanding. The potential results range from -3 to +1 as compared to my prediction. If you land somewhere in the middle and say that Democrats underperformed by 1-2 seats in the Senate, that is also very much in line with a 2-3% polling error. It's a modest discrepancy, but hardly unusual and potentially explained by causes other than polling error.
For starters, a 2-3% polling error is well within historical expectations. In most cases it is also well within the pollsters' stated margin of error. To the extent that there may be any actual polling error, there are many plausible explanations for why this may be. If there was momentum in Trump's direction in the closing days of the election then it is entirely normal that his performance would beat the polls by 1-2% (conversely this effect may also be behind Joe Biden's surprise win in Georgia).
My readers will also recall that I raised in my election preview the possibility of there being an unaccounted for "pandemic factor" in the pre-election polling, ie perhaps Democrats were less inclined to turn out because they were worried about catching the virus, whereas Republicans have been told for months that the virus is not a big deal or even non-existent and so had no such reservations. Alternatively maybe the pandemic presented a response bias where those who were able to work from home had a greater response rate than those who were out in the world. Personally this is what I consider to be the most plausible explanation for any apparent broad polling miss, and could easily explain a 2-3% discrepancy.
That is not to say that there were not some anomalous results that require further analysis. There were clear significant polling errors in Florida (just as there were in 2018) and Wisconsin, as well as the Senate race in Maine that are not explained simply by the broad 2-3% error suggested above. But despite the hype you may have heard, the level of polling error apparent across most results appears to be neither unusually large, nor particularly surprising.
I think the main takeaway for you all is this: despite all the noise, all the drama, the shenanigans and the slow trickle of results, it looks like the election has gone basically as expected. There was no massive shock, no credible claims of malfeasance (though that evidently hasn't stopped them from putting forward a litany of non-credible ones!). We expected the election night results to be skewed in Trump's favour, but it has been pretty clear since at least Wednesday that this election would end with a Joe Biden victory. Perhaps the most surprising thing from the 2020 election is just how unsurprising the final results appear to be.
Interpretation
These results are not surprising. The outcome has been clear for weeks, if not months. Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't been paying attention.
Donald Trump entered this race as the incumbent President. Incumbency advantage is a very real phenomenon in American politics. Americans do not like to admit they were wrong, and to be quite frank a lot of people don't really follow political news that closely and simply vote for the person they know. Under any other circumstance, he should have been heavy favourite to win this election. But Donald Trump entered this election with a historically low approval rating, a pandemic raging out of control, and the ignominy of being the only President in modern history to oversee a net reduction in jobs over the course of his tenure. Those weaknesses have ultimately cost him re-election.
It is worth noting that even before the pandemic began, Trump trailed Joe Biden in the polls. This was not some late game-changing shift, Trump has been historically unpopular throughout his Presidency. A constant cloud of corruption and scandal has left Trump as one of only four President in modern history to have majority disapproval at the end of their first term. So perhaps it should come as little surprise, then, that he will become one of only four Presidents in modern history to lose a bid for re-election.
Really the only thing that has made this election feel even vaguely uncertain has been the unprecedented disparity between election day/mail-in votes and the deliberately drawn out counting process. In truth this has been little more than a mirage that has resulted in an election that feels markedly less decisive than the final results are likely to show. It is important to stress here that this is absolutely by design. Trump and the Republicans spent months telling their voters to vote in-person rather than by mail, then fought tooth and nail in the courts and state legislatures to delay the counting of mail-in votes as much as possible. It's a baffling and cynical strategy. The intention was clearly to have numbers look as favourable as possible on election night, with a view to claiming victory before all the votes were counted. As far as electoral strategies go, this has to be one of the most asinine I can recall. It didn't work, and it's baffling that they really thought that it would.
These sad, silly games aside, the outcome of the election was rarely in doubt. The outcome was obvious to most people as early as Wednesday morning when it became clear that Biden would carry the rust belt. Once the final vote tallies have been counted Joe Biden will lead by decisive margins close to those predicted. This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been looking at the numbers, not just in recent weeks and months but years.
A defining feature of this Presidency has been the perpetuation, by the President, of an alternate reality bubble. This is an alternate world where the news outlets are fake, where literally fictional terrorist attacks become real, and where every scandal and negative event is simply a non-existent hoax. It's an alternate reality bubble where 20,000 lies become true. Millions of Republican voters bought into it, because they wanted it to be true, and Republican officials played along, because they like winning elections.
What we are seeing now is that bubble crashing hard against reality. Donald Trump's pretend world was never real. All those bad things that happened under his presidency really happened, and the news media for the most part reported it fairly. I don't want to come off as overly harsh, but there really is no other way to say it. Facts are facts regardless of whether you like them. This is reality, and in 2020 reality bites hard for Republicans.
The election is over now, but the hard work begins. This country needs to be rebuilt, our divisions need to be healed. It is time to call an end to the conspiracy theories, the silly games and hyper extreme "partisanship to the bitter end" that we have seen in recent years. Donald Trump's rhetoric over the last few days has indicated that he is willing to burn down the country rather than accept his defeat. This cannot be tolerated by his supporters. Enough is enough Republicans, it is time to end the nonsense and move forward together.
On a final note I would like to pay great tribute to the election workers throughout the country and from both parties who have largely conducted this election in a smooth and orderly fashion despite unprecedented circumstances and unique pressures being applied from various sources. In recent weeks we have seen disgraceful attempts to influence or suppress the vote, to pressure the electoral process. We've seen armed protestors making personal threats against poll workers and their families, and now we appear to be ending the Trump presidency amid a fog of delusion and conspiracy theories. They have faced deliberate attempts at sabotage from forces both domestic and foreign. Yet, throughout it all America's proudest institutions have held strong and prevailed. It is a great victory for America and a victory for democracy in general.
Conclusion
So there it is. Democrats win the White House, the House of Representatives, and make gains in the Senate. There will be much more to discuss in the coming weeks and months, including a final retrospective on the Trump Presidency, and a preview of the priorities and expectations of the Joe Biden administration. Until then, rest easy, the national nightmare is over.
So there it is. Democrats win the White House, the House of Representatives, and make gains in the Senate. There will be much more to discuss in the coming weeks and months, including a final retrospective on the Trump Presidency, and a preview of the priorities and expectations of the Joe Biden administration. Until then, rest easy, the national nightmare is over.
Thursday, 29 October 2020
We are now less than one week away from the 2020 Presidential election and so far it has been a pretty uneventful and traditional campaign... nah just kidding, it's been every inch as much of a muck fight as one would have expected. The first term of Donald Trump is coming to a fittingly chaotic conclusion. The question now is whether he will in fact win a second term, or be replaced by the challenger Joe Biden. In this post I will attempt to shed some light on the likely outcome and make a few final predictions.
Introduction
To say that this has been an unusual election would be to put it mildly. Donald Trump is not a usual President and even as an incumbent he has seemed intent upon a "burn everything to the ground" approach to campaigning. He began the year as one of the most divisive and least popular incumbents in modern American history, freshly impeached for high crimes, amid a backdrop of near constant scandal and criminal investigation. This was before the pandemic even started.
What to expect? First let's begin with the fundamentals. An incumbent President usually does win re-election. In the last hundred years, only four out of eighteen Presidents have failed to win re-election on attempting to do so. Incumbency advantage is very real at the Presidential level. The economy is weak at the moment, but fortunately for Trump he seems to have been attributed only minimal blame for this. On top of this, the nature of the electoral college system appears to give Trump something of an advantage, to the point where he was able to win in 2016 despite losing the popular vote by millions of votes. In an ordinary year, you would expect a sitting President in this position to be a comfortable favourite for re-election, perhaps even as much as a 75% favourite. But Donald Trump has been an unusual President at the best of times. He was hugely unpopular even before the pandemic hit, and routinely trailed Biden in the polls. Then the pandemic did hit, Trump (rightly) took massive criticism for his response, and his polls sunk even lower to a point from which they have never really recovered.
That we haven't even mentioned the ongoing foreign election interference (mainly Russia but also allegedly China and Iran) speaks to how completely insane this election already is. That being said, I don't consider this to be a significant cause of uncertainty as to the election result, simply because any impact of these efforts, by their nature, one would expect to already be represented in the polling.
But to hell with that, we're going to predict anyway. Now let's give you the summary verdict that you came here for: The Ephemeric predicts Joe Biden to win the Presidency and the Democrats to hold the House of Representatives and retake the Senate.
Presidential Election Verdict: Joe Biden Elected President
Predicted Electoral Map: Joe Biden (D) - 313, Donald Trump (R) - 225.
The above map is based on data from a variety of aggregators, including Pollster, Fivethirtyeight, and analysts including Sabato and Cook Political, and shows the expected electoral map. The rest is pretty self explanatory: dark blue represents safe Democrat wins, light blue leans Democrat, grey is toss up. Meanwhile on the other side, light red to dark red represents lean to likely Republican.
House of Representatives Verdict: Democratic Majority
Current House Map: Democrats - 232, Republicans - 197.
Predicted House Map: Democrats - 240, Republicans - 195.
Approximate Net Change: Democrats gain 8-12 seats.
This is going to be the shortest part of this article. Very few analysts consider the Republicans to have any chance at all of taking back the majority in the House, and I concur.
Current Senate Map: Democrats - 47, Republicans - 53.
Predicted Senate Map: Democrats- 51, Republicans - 49.
Approximate Net Change: Democrats gain 4 seats.
Key states to watch: AZ, ME, CO, NC, IA, GA, KS, MT
If there has been one silver lining for the Republican party these last two years, it is that they managed to retain control of the Senate against the blue wave of 2018. This was not a surprise, even with a national situation that was highly favourable to Democrats that year. The Senate map in 2018 was one of the most lopsided in recent memory, very favourable to Republicans with Democrats defending several seats in deep red states. The 2020 map, in fairness, is also a decent Senate map for Republicans, though not nearly so much as in 2018. The combination of a more favourable Senate map plus strong national conditions make Democrats a slight favourite to win a majority of the Senate.
So there's a good six or so close races here, with Democrats only really needing to pick up one or two. All else being equal with such a number of close races, historically you would expect them to prevail in at least a few of them. Democrats will feel good about picking up the additional two seats they need.
Conclusion
So there it is. By no means a foregone conclusion, but the polling right now strongly suggests an election night that results in a Democratic trifecta, perhaps as much as a 7 in 10 likelihood. The unique conditions of 2020 and unprecedented threats being made against the democratic process are certainly setting a national mood of uncertainty. But for all the drama and theatricality, more often that not these things end up going more or less as expected. I understand the doubt, but ultimately expect the polls to be proven correct.
Despite all the drama the polls have painted a pretty consistent and unambiguous picture. Biden leads, and pretty comfortably. His current national polling average of around 9-10% would be one of the largest margins of victory in the popular vote in modern history, far greater than Clinton's 3% popular vote victory in 2016 and greater even than Obama's landslide 7% victory in 2008. The state-level polling suggests a slightly closer race, with an implied national margin more in the order of 7-8%, but this is still pretty substantial by historical standards. The polls are pretty clear, Biden is ahead, and in any other election year this would be looking like a foregone conclusion. But from the lack of debates, to the global pandemic, to the attempted kidnappings and literal threats to overrule a democratic vote... this has not been a normal election.
So why isn't this a foregone conclusion despite Biden's commanding lead in the polls? First let's address the elephant in the room, the 2016 election. In 2016 the polls also pointed towards a Trump defeat and yet he won. If the polls were wrong in 2016, couldn't they be wrong again in 2020?
This idea that the polls are wrong or that they can't be trusted is something of a myth, albeit a persistent one. In 2018 the polls were pretty much spot on. Meanwhile the polling error in 2016 was nowhere near as significant as is commonly believed, and should not have come as a surprise given the high level of uncertainty being shown in the polls at the time. Hillary Clinton's final polling average in 2016 had her at a 4% national advantage and she won by 3%, pretty accurate indeed. The error at state-level was a little worse (WI, MI and PA in particular), but can be easily explained by the high level of uncertainty evident in the polls. While Hillary did lead in the state-level polling, she was still only polling in the mid 40s, with undecided voters numbering in double digits. That implies a high degree of uncertainty in the polls that people simply missed or ignored. Even with this uncertainty, the polling error was still mostly within or close to the margin of error. The reality is not so much that the polls were bad, but that people were simply misreading them and far more confident in Hillary's narrow polling leads than they should have been.
That is the big difference this year. To put it quite simply, the 2020 polls don't look like the 2016 polls. Biden is not polling in the mid 40s, he is polling at or above 50% nationally and in key states. Undecided voters are basically non-existent. Biden's margins are bigger than Hillary's, the polls show far fewer undecideds and thus less uncertainty. For Trump to win at the polls he needs a much bigger polling error than we saw in 2016.
This is not to say that Donald Trump does not have a chance. Just that the main uncertainty in the race comes not from the polls, as is commonly claimed, but from other factors. The biggest such factor, by far, is Covid-19.
The truth is, no one really knows what an election this year is going to look like. There has not been anything quite like this in recent memory, and we can only guess as to how, if at all, the pandemic will affect voting. We simply don't know whether or how the pandemic will affect turnout on election day, nor if such an impact would materially benefit one side over the other.
Nor, unfortunately, can we rule out a significant impact from various electoral shenanigans. The Trump regime's attempt to sabotage the postal service has been the subject of much criticism, and he has been completely open about his willingness to challenge the election results in the court if need be. Trump has stated on more than one occasion that it was important to have conservative justices on the Supreme Court to ensure he could swing a close election. Reportedly, there is at least one state government considering legislative manoeuvres to flat out overturn the vote if need be. Then there is good old fashioned voter suppression. This ranges from removing voters from the registers without notifying them, to reducing the number of ballot drop-off boxes in Democratic-leaning districts, to voter intimidation.
Perhaps most troubling, Trump's politicisation of mail-in voting has created a dynamic where the mail-in vote leans heavily democratic and the in-person vote is expected to lean heavily Republican. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the President could hold a lead based on the election day in-person votes and then challenge in the courts to have states stop counting, or dismiss entirely, the mail-in vote.
That such nightmare scenarios can't be ruled out is a damning indictment of American democracy. But ultimately I doubt that anything of this nature will have enough of an impact to truly swing the election. Many mail-in votes are cast days or weeks before election day and for a lot of states will be counted even before the in-person votes. Nor is it particularly clear that voter suppression efforts will really work, or affect Democrats so disproportionately as to materially change the result (especially if such measures are targeted at in-person voters that, as we have already discussed, are expected to lean Republican). The fact is that every election has these theories and stories of purported efforts to "rig" the election, and they usually amount to very little. Trump is using these inflammatory claims to depress voter turnout, Democrats are using it to fire up their base. Barring something truly unprecedented, I expect the election to be determined by the vote, as always.
That we haven't even mentioned the ongoing foreign election interference (mainly Russia but also allegedly China and Iran) speaks to how completely insane this election already is. That being said, I don't consider this to be a significant cause of uncertainty as to the election result, simply because any impact of these efforts, by their nature, one would expect to already be represented in the polling.
To be clear, none of this is to suggest that Trump does not have an ordinary electoral path to victory. He does, albeit a narrow one in the area of 20% (don't kid yourself, 20% chances can and do happen!). But increasingly it is looking as though his re-election chances depend on a combination of inherent pandemic uncertainty or anti-democratic shenanigans, and that is not a good position in which to be.
So this is the state of the race in a nutshell. Joe Biden leads and, barring something truly unprecedented, appears likely to win. But this is a year of unprecedenteds. Despite what anyone tells you, there remains enough uncertainty that no prediction can be called truly sound.
But to hell with that, we're going to predict anyway. Now let's give you the summary verdict that you came here for: The Ephemeric predicts Joe Biden to win the Presidency and the Democrats to hold the House of Representatives and retake the Senate.
Presidential Election Verdict: Joe Biden Elected President
Predicted Electoral Map: Joe Biden (D) - 313, Donald Trump (R) - 225.The above map is based on data from a variety of aggregators, including Pollster, Fivethirtyeight, and analysts including Sabato and Cook Political, and shows the expected electoral map. The rest is pretty self explanatory: dark blue represents safe Democrat wins, light blue leans Democrat, grey is toss up. Meanwhile on the other side, light red to dark red represents lean to likely Republican.
First thing's first. This is an unambiguously bad map for Donald Trump. He could win all of the toss up states above and still lose the election. He could win all the toss up states plus any one of the Democratic-leaning states and still lose the election. Those states won't even be enough and currently he trails in the polling average for all of them except Ohio. That sums up how difficult a position he is in heading into this final week.
A closer look at the polls shows Trump facing difficulties across the board. The suburban shift towards the Democrats that handed the party a blue wave in 2018 has continued through 2020. Women, a demographic that already leaned Democratic, have shifted even further to the left, including white women, a demographic that actually tilted towards Trump in 2016. Incredibly, Biden leads Trump among seniors, a demographic that almost always votes Republican (turns out seniors care a lot about Covid-19). The only demographic that bears any good news for Trump is among minorities, with whom he still does poorly but better relative to 2016.
You can see the impact of these trends on the map above, where Biden currently holds substantive leads in the key rust belt states and has even made in-roads into traditionally red states like Arizona (where Trump's animosity towards McCain has surely hurt the incumbent), Texas, and Georgia.
Looking at the toss up states, Trump could conceivably lose all of them but I don't think he will. His lead in Ohio has been small, but consistent, and the district level data looks promising for him. I also think he will win Florida. Biden has led in Florida for basically the entire year, but the state has a pretty clear track record of overestimating Democrats' in the polls, even in the 2018 midterms which were otherwise a blow-out for Democrats. Similarly while Biden has led consistently in North Carolina (another state that tends to overestimate Democrats), that lead does appear to be narrowing and I expect that this (admittedly minor) momentum could take Trump over the finish line there.
The opposite appears to be true of Georgia. Trump has led this state narrowly for most of the election cycle, but recent polls indicate a late surge for Biden. This is a state without a history of overrating Democrats that came extraordinarily close to going blue in both 2016 and 2018. If this momentum holds then there is a good chance that 2020 could be the year for Democrats in Georgia. The X-factor in this state, sadly, is corruption. In 2018, Georgia was widely criticised for voter suppression tactics, its lack of transparency, and suspiciously destroyed voting records in the wake of a razor thin vote. It could be enough to swing an otherwise close election.
But while these may be the closest and most interesting states at the moment, they are not the most important. Biden doesn't need to win any of these states. If he does, then it is almost certainly game over for Trump, but Biden could lose them all and still quite handily win the election.
No the key states, as in 2016, will be the rust belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and in particular, Pennsylvania. These are the must-win states that will determine who wins the election. If Biden wins them, he will almost certainly be President. If Trump wins them, he will almost certainly be President. The problem for Trump is that right now all of them show pretty decent Biden leads.
Of these, Wisconsin in particular looks rough for Trump. As one of the nation's worst-hit Covid states, Wisconsin was always going to be in an anti-incumbent (and anti-Trump in particular) mood. But the real damage was done in Kenosha over the summer where Trump was widely criticised for his handling of peaceful protests, which ultimately resulted in several dead at the hands of armed right wing militia. Wisconsin is a state that had been shifting right for several years now and not too long ago appeared to be Trump's most favourable in the region, but at this point it looks a safe bet to be carried by Biden.
Michigan is another state that Trump just about edged in 2016, but in which he has been polling poorly throughout this cycle. The most left-leaning of these three states, run by a popular Democratic Governor with whom Trump has inadvisedly insisted on waging a war of words, to the point where he almost appeared to have called for an armed rebellion, an accusation that can't have been helped by the recently foiled attempt by right wing militia (see the pattern here?) to kidnap the Governor.
But let's not mince words, Pennsylvania is the state. If you watch one state this election, it's this one. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is one of the most electorally valuable in the country. Trump has basically no plausible path to victory that doesn't involve winning this state. Conversely while Biden does have a plausible path to victory without it (by way of Arizona), he arguably becomes the underdog if Trump carries the state (also taking into account that if Trump overperforms in PA, he likely also overperforms in other demographically similar states). There is simply no state that is as important to this election as PA and there is a very good chance that this will be the single most determinative state.
To be quite frank, Pennsylvania also has a Republican controlled legislature and bizarre electoral laws that block the counting of any early or mail-in votes until after election night. So if there is any state where Trump could conceivably pull some shenanigans to block or overrule the popular vote, it's this one. To be clear, I still think this is incredibly unlikely to happen (or to work if it does happen), but tragically in today's America it can't be ruled out as a possibility.
Fortunately for Trump, Biden's lead in Pennsylvania has also been narrower than his lead in Michigan and Wisconsin. Despite being a sort of second home state for his opponent, Trump has managed to avoid making the sort of catastrophic blunder here that may have well have put WI and MI beyond his reach. To be clear: Joe Biden does lead the polls in this state and has done so consistently, but the race is close enough that it would only take a larger than normal polling error to put it into play, and the entire election along with it.
But just as this race could plausibly move in Trump's favour relative to the polls, it could equally do so in the opposite direction. Incredibly, Trump appears to be holding leads in deep red states like Montana, Kansas and (above all) Texas that are at least as narrow, if not more so, as the key rust belt states he needs to take from Biden. So yes, this is still a map where Trump could conceivably win, but it's also a map where Joe Biden could run the board and produce a truly historic landslide.
Whichever way you look at it, this is a bad map for Trump. Trump really has only the one plausible path to victory through Pennsylvania, but Biden has several potential options. More importantly, Biden leads in all the key states and either leads or is close enough in enough non-key states that you would expect him to pick up a few of those as well. That the closest battleground states appear to be the likes of Georgia, Iowa and Texas, rather than Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania is a very, very bad sign for Trump. He is playing defence at a time when he is already behind, and time is running out for him to turn it around.
House of Representatives Verdict: Democratic Majority
Current House Map: Democrats - 232, Republicans - 197.Predicted House Map: Democrats - 240, Republicans - 195.
Approximate Net Change: Democrats gain 8-12 seats.
This is going to be the shortest part of this article. Very few analysts consider the Republicans to have any chance at all of taking back the majority in the House, and I concur.
In 2018, Democrats rode a blue wave to a House majority with a historic 8-9% national margin. This result was achieved despite the fact that midterm elections are typically less favourable for Democrats and despite the fact that House is gerrymandered to the point where Democrats need a strong majority of the vote just to break even (see my 2018 post for a reminder of what "gerrymandering" means and why it is an antidemocratic stain on the country). In 2020, the national environment appears to be at least as favourable as 2018 (or at most 1% or so worse), plus the addition of the inherent benefits that the Democratic party typically sees in higher-turnout Presidential years. It is also material that progress has been made in numerous states to end the practice of gerrymandering.
All these factors suggest that Democrats should not only hold onto their majority, but are even poised to expand it further, even with all else remaining equal. My expectation is for a modest gain in the region of ten seats. No fewer than five, but no more than fifteen.
Senate Verdict: Democratic Majority
Current Senate Map: Democrats - 47, Republicans - 53.
Predicted Senate Map: Democrats- 51, Republicans - 49.
Approximate Net Change: Democrats gain 4 seats.
Key states to watch: AZ, ME, CO, NC, IA, GA, KS, MT
If there has been one silver lining for the Republican party these last two years, it is that they managed to retain control of the Senate against the blue wave of 2018. This was not a surprise, even with a national situation that was highly favourable to Democrats that year. The Senate map in 2018 was one of the most lopsided in recent memory, very favourable to Republicans with Democrats defending several seats in deep red states. The 2020 map, in fairness, is also a decent Senate map for Republicans, though not nearly so much as in 2018. The combination of a more favourable Senate map plus strong national conditions make Democrats a slight favourite to win a majority of the Senate.
There are 35 Senate races this year. Democrats need to pick up a net of four for a majority, or three if they also win the Presidency (with the Vice President casting the tie-breaking vote). It just so happens that there are three clear pick up opportunities where I would consider the Democrats to be favourites to win: Arizona, Colorado, Maine.
First Colorado. This is, for me, a non-race. Colorado has been a solid blue state for the last few elections and it looks especially so in 2020. The Democratic candidate is John Hickenlooper, a huge name in Colorado and a popular former Governor. I'm not going to beat around the bush here, I don't see any shot for Cory Gardner. Given the national mood and where the state is at in 2020, Democrats should pick this one up comfortably and I really can't see any other outcome.
Arizona is a pretty interesting one. Historically a fairly deep red state, Arizona has been low-key shifting towards the Democrats over a few electoral cycles. 2018 proved to be the breaking point, with Democrats very narrowly winning a Senate race, the first statewide race the party has won in many years. But 2020 has been a completely different beast, with Democrats leading consistently and comfortably in both the Senate and Presidential races for basically the entire cycle. The Republican party's self destruction in this race has been baffling to watch, appointing the losing candidate of 2018 Martha McSally to this seat (and thus to become the presumptive party nominee). Losing candidates rarely do any better the second time around, especially when they've been holding the seat by appointment without having won it in the first place. She is an awful choice for a candidate and she has run an awful race. By contrast, her opponent is Mark Kelly, former astronaut and national hero without a political bone in his body, whose wife is a beloved former Congresswoman and mass-shooting victim. It seems incredible to say, Arizona is not a race in which the Democrats expected to be competing, but they're winning this race and at the moment they are doing so quite comfortably.
Then there's Maine. The Republican incumbent Susan Collins has been in big trouble since her vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I don't think there's anyone in the world who would envy the tightrope she has had to walk as a Republican in a solidly blue state, but even under challenging political conditions she has done an exceedingly poor job of it. From her much derided, fawning speech announcing support for Kavanaugh, to her flip flops, she has (whether fairly or unfairly) become a poster-child for spineless sycophancy in politics, and it looks like her luck may have finally run out.
So that's three pick ups. But Democrats are almost certain to lose a seat in Alabama, where incumbent Doug Jones only eked out his unlikely victory by merit of being up against an accused pedophile (and even that was narrow). So they need at least one more, preferably two. But beyond these three, the map starts to look tougher for Democrats.
Cal Cunningham had been looking a tidy favourite to win in North Carolina, but recent polls have shown that race (and the state as a whole) narrowing in recent days in tandem with a minor sexting scandal that Cunningham has faced. He still leads in this race, but it's tight, and with the momentum arguably against him I don't think Democrats can rely on this race.
Elsewhere, Democrats appear to have taken something of a surprise polling lead in Iowa and trail narrowly in a Kansas race that has proven divisive on the Republican side. Montana, of all places, appears to be a pure toss up, with popular former governor Steve Bullock running neck and neck with the Republican incumbent. Then there's Georgia, a state that is not only crucial in the Presidential race, but also features two Senate races and polling that appears to be trending in the Democrats' favour in recent days. Both races in that state appear to be tied at the moment, with Democrats either slightly ahead or slightly behind depending on which poll you look at. The Georgia races represent good pick up opportunities, but it should be noted that due to Georgia's run-off system, if no candidate gets 50% of the vote on election day, the top two candidates head into a run-off at a later date, by which point the political environment may not be as favourable for Democrats.
These are the key races, but there are a few more that are still worth watching. First up is Michigan, one of the few states that Democrats are defending and a potential GOP target if they have a good election night. Currently, as in the Presidential race, Democrats look to have a consistent if modest polling lead, but it's worth watching. Keep an eye also on South Carolina, of all places, where Jamie Harrison has staged an unlikely, record breaking insurrection against prominent Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
So there's a good six or so close races here, with Democrats only really needing to pick up one or two. All else being equal with such a number of close races, historically you would expect them to prevail in at least a few of them. Democrats will feel good about picking up the additional two seats they need.
Conclusion
So there it is. By no means a foregone conclusion, but the polling right now strongly suggests an election night that results in a Democratic trifecta, perhaps as much as a 7 in 10 likelihood. The unique conditions of 2020 and unprecedented threats being made against the democratic process are certainly setting a national mood of uncertainty. But for all the drama and theatricality, more often that not these things end up going more or less as expected. I understand the doubt, but ultimately expect the polls to be proven correct.
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