[jkic47]

Pretty cool site reminiscent of the 538 analysis of elections past. I wonder how the model will react if Biden drops out before the election, though, since the blue polls would suddenly be "obsoleted" (wrong word, I know) with a new incumbent.

[seanmcdirmid]

It is too late for Biden to bow out. Although the chance of either Biden or Trump dying before the election is uncomfortably high.

[TeaBrain]

We haven't had an election like it in over 50 years, but in 1968 the democratic candidate was Hubert Humphrey, who entered the race too late to participate in any primaries.

[mensetmanusman]

Every year they get older, they have a higher chance of surviving until the next year. It’s a weird thing about aging. Of course until you die that is.

[AnimalMuppet]

How do you figure? As I read the actuarial tables, I do not see any way of interpreting the data that makes your statement true.

[myfavoritetings]

I think what they're saying is an 82 year old is more likely to make it to 83 than an 81 year old is

[plonk]

They're both supposed to be in good health though, we have Biden's public yearly checkup report. I don't think many old people get scans and full-body checkups every year and then die of something catastrophic with no warning?

[mikeodds]

I didn’t realise his checkup was public [1]

I thought there would be more around neuro in there. Interesting that both recent presidents are (purportedly) non drinkers.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Health...

[plonk]

I wonder if he does CT/MRI/angiograms to find any vascular abnormalities. Seems to be a big cause of sudden death, but they don't talk about it. One CT for a 70-year-old head of state doesn't sound like too much?

[ta1243]

Bush II was tee-total too wasn't he?

[okaram]

Still, their actuarial chance of dying within a year is >5%, given their age and sex.

Even with scans and checkups, at that age, a bad case of the flu can kill you, or start you on that path. And I don't think we have any reliable non-invasive ways of detecting heart attack risk, or aneurism risk, those kinds of things.

[plonk]

> heart attack risk

Not sure, but don't ECGs find cases of severe plaques or narrowed arteries? Or most cases of heart disease.

> aneurism risk

An angiography should find most cases, from some quick research. "The CTA sensitivity, specificity and accuracy was 80%, 43% and 73%, respectively. The CTA sensitivity for aneurysms < 3 mm and 3 mm – 5 mm in size was 30% and 81.5%, respectively (p = 0.024)." [1]

Agree on the rest though.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10244944/

[pyuser583]

Not an expert, but my experience is old people can decline very fast.

It’s literally the best possible outcome of old age: being energetic and in full capacity, declining quickly and passing on.

The alternatives are dying early, or a long period of dependency.

But yeah, that’s how old people die.

[refulgentis]

My priors would go the opposite way: a full-body checkup cannot clear out the plaque in my arteries, lower my blood pressure, strength my vascular walls, and there's no miracle drugs that definitively address those. I think of a checkup that says "good to go, won't die in the next year!" is more like an auto checkup, where we do diagnostics then can take definitive action.

That being said saying odds are one of them dies before the election is uncomfortably high isn't something I'd subscribe to. Quick check here, using N=age-google-told-me and N+1, gets 1 in 18 and 1 in 13, 6% and 8%. If they were 60 it'd be 1%, 70, 2%.

https://www.candidmoney.com/calculators/death-probability-ca...

[spywaregorilla]

Actuarial tables tell you basically nothing about a specific individual. For that you would want to look at some personal. Like, say, a full body checkup.

[refulgentis]

Yeah thats a good point, I agree, a full body checkup tells us stuff about an individual, but it doesn't heal them (or at length: meaningfully rule out, or affect, odds of dying in the next year)

[plonk]

Apparently [1], Biden at least has "controlled" cholesterol, a normal EKG, some asymptomatic and controlled fibrillation. The number of experts who consult the guy every year is actually impressive.

The usual 70-year-old is probably a risky bet, but surely 10 specialists plus a team of generalists would make a more predictive yearly checkup. I think he's going to lose through normal politics and not by way of a heart attack.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Health...

[ta1243]

The chance of them both dying is uncomfortably low.

Seriously, the best two candidates the entire USA has to offer are these washed up octagenarian politicians?

[mensetmanusman]

They are a symptom of a gridlocked and extortionist political system that serves the elite.

[Mountain_Skies]

Since either of them winning would mean a term limited incumbent in 2028, my guess is that both parties will nominate a Millennial candidate for the next election, both messaging that they're the party of fresh ideas for the future.

[seanmcdirmid]

The parties barely have control over who gets nominated, no one in the Republican Party thought Trump was a good idea in 2016 at the start of the primaries. It only matters who gets votes, and the Republican side skews old enough that a millennial would have problems.

[QuesnayJr]

Can't Biden bow out any time before the Democratic National Convention in mid-August? I don't expect that he will, but he could.

[krapp]

It would be political suicide for the Democrats not to go with a sitting incumbent President as their candidate, especially against a candidate who was formerly President.

[Mountain_Skies]

Different states have different deadlines for getting on the ballot. The DNC is already going to have to a pre-convention virtual convention where they legally nominate Biden so he can get on the ballot in Ohio. The physical convention will be for rallying the party behind him. If they were to switch to someone else at the convention, at the very least Ohio would retain Biden on the ballot. Ohio does allow for 'faithless' electors, so Biden winning Ohio while the official nominee won other states might not be the worst thing provided the electors could be trusted to switch their vote to whoever the DNC put up in place of Biden.

[QuesnayJr]

When is the Ohio deadline?

[TheCleric]

I would bet large amounts of money that Biden doesn’t drop out before the election. It would be unprecedented and there’s no indication it would happen.