The US election is now done and we can confirm one very important point. That the vote counting in the USA is properly screwed up - please see this Tweet reporting ongoing counting in a New York house district on the 23rd of December. As a reminder the vote was on the 3rd of November. Sunderland it is not.

However we also learned that my predictions weren’t awful but were also not very good - in 2012 I won £120 from my bets and predicted every state without too much trouble, my 2020 record is less impeccable.

This US election campaign has simultaneously been very static and very fast moving. Biden’s lead has remained pretty steady and, if anything, actually expanded since Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis - taking a 10% average lead in mid-October that has since declined to “only” 9%. To state the obvious this is a good lead to have a week out. Never say never but this hasn’t really been a close election so far, despite a lot of punditry implying it is.

I confess that as a general rule I don’t find US politics hugely interesting. Some aspects of American culture are quite alienating and focusing too much on their politics really brings those aspects to the fore - guns, gerrymandering and Protestants caring about abortion? How odd.

However every four years the terribly flawed but deeply compelling presidential elections roll around and suddenly it all becomes fascinating for a while. So I’m doing some predictions about a month out, I’ll make no bones of the fact that I want the Democrats to win and will be viewing it from a blue lens but I intend to be as impartial in my calls as possible.