The 2020 Presidential and Senate polling nowcasts: we need more small State polling!
The 2020 Presidential and Senate polling nowcasts: we need more small State polling!
For the past five weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days, using the following formula:
– States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups.
– States where the range is between 3% to 5% are light colors.
– States where the range is between 5% and 10% are medium colors.
– States where the candidate is leading by 10% plus are dark colors.
As I emphasized last week, polls are really just nowcasts, snapshots in time that will change as circumstances change.
To cut to the chase, there are no changes this week compared with last week. Biden is leading comfortably in the Electoral College vote, not even counting States that are only “leaning” in his direction:
But there has been a fair amount of polling in the past week or so. The below map shows only those States that have been polled in the last 10 days. The only change in the color coding is that any “lean” of even less than 1% is shown in the appropriate color (to differentiate polled from non-polled States):
As I’ve been anticipating, it looks like there is a small “reversion to the mean” particularly occurring in the States of the Confederacy, but also note Ohio, which was just polled for the first time in several months, and showed a slight Biden lean.
Next, last week I wrote that I would very much like to see more State polling in the red States, because there are GOP Senators who should be targeted that we don’t even know are vulnerable as of this point.
To demonstrate that, below are two maps. The first shows those Senate seats that are up for elections in 2020:
Now here is a color coded map based on all Senate polls in those States for the last 60 days (again, coding even very slight “leans” in the appropriate color to differentiate from non-polled States):
I want to emphasize several things about this second map. First of all, with the exception of Montana and Kansas, which are *extremely* tight, all of the other races have shown *consistent* leans in the same direction. As a result, I am not terribly sanguine about any Democrat’s chances in the Deep South, even though Georgia and South Carolina have been polling relatively close. It is also pretty clear that Democrats donating to the Texas and Kentucky races are throwing their money away. That same amount of money would go a long way in Maine, Iowa, Montana, and help in North Carolina as well.
But most importantly, note the almost complete lack of polling in the High Plains and Mountain West. These are small States in terms of population and cost of media markets, but their Senate votes count just as much as the largest States. Where there has been polling – Iowa, Montana, and Kansas — the Democratic candidates are extremely competitive.
So there is a crying need for more polling in these States, and also New Hampshire, and maybe even West Virginia. If there is going to be a “blue wave” Presidential election, we are needlessly flying blind as to potential inexpensive pick-ups in an expanded Senate map.
FOUND IN THE COMMENTS AT: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/07/why-are-republicans-being-such-assholes/
The main reason that “a thousand people a day” doesn’t bother them is that the majority of those people are those people–just means fewer Democratic votes come Election Day. Plus, as I noted in a comment on Levintova’s unemployment post up the page a ways, the onrushing eviction crisis is to them just another tool of voter suppression. If your state has no same-day registration, getting kicked out of your home will mean you have between 60-90 days before the election to A) find a new house, B) move all your possessions, C) do A & B with a drastic cut in your gummint-augmented unemployment, and D) reregister with your new address before your state’s deadline or face being turned away at the polls. Sounds outlandish, but hey, if they don’t mind lettin’ us die to jump-start the economy, why balk at makin’ us homeless to keep us from voting them out?
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If Republicans can create enough chaos, they then might be able to use their state legislatures to decide the outcome of the presidential election regardless of the popular vote. Any number of excuses could be used (destroyed postal service, no funding for state government, threats of violence at the polls, etc..) Unfortunately, this could probably be constitutional (the state legislatures get to decide how their electors are allocated) and most likely upheld by the Roberts court, who’s main interest has been maintaining Republican power (though not necessarily Trump’s) The thing is, as Thomm Hartmanan has repeatedly pointed out, they just have to disrupt enough states electoral votes so that Biden doesn’t get a majority and then the result is thrown to the house, where the vote is by state, which would probably result in a Republican victory. Not a fun scenario, but definitely not outside the realm of possibility given the current circumstances.
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SCARIEST SCENARIOS I’VE EVER READ
Evidently it’s hard to remember that
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016.
The Real Reason Biden Is Ahead of Trump?
He’s a Man
NY Times – Peter Beinart – July 27
A narrative has formed around the presidential race: Donald Trump is losing because he’s botched the current crisis. Americans are desperate for competence and compassion. He’s offered narcissism and division — and he’s paying the political price.
For progressives, it’s a satisfying story line, in which Americans finally see Mr. Trump for the inept charlatan he truly is. But it’s at best half-true. The administration’s mismanagement of the coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter protests only partially explain why the president is trailing badly in the polls. There’s another, more disquieting, explanation: He is running against a man.
The evidence that Mr. Trump’s electoral woes stem as much from the gender of his opponent as from his own failures begins with his net approval rating: the percent of Americans who view him favorably minus the percent who view him unfavorably. Right now, that figure stands at -15 points. That makes Mr. Trump less popular than he was this spring. But he’s still more popular than he was throughout the 2016 campaign. Yet he won.
What has changed radically over the past four years isn’t Americans’ perception of Mr. Trump. It’s their perception of his opponent. According to Real Clear Politics’s polling average, Joe Biden’s net approval rating is about -1 point. At this point in the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s net approval rating was -17 points. For much of the 2016 general election, Mr. Trump faced a Democratic nominee who was also deeply unpopular. Today, he enjoys no such luck.
Why was Mrs. Clinton so much more unpopular than Mr. Biden is now? There’s good reason to believe that gender plays a key role. For starters, Mrs. Clinton wasn’t just far less popular than Mr. Biden. She was far less popular than every male Democratic nominee since at least 1992. Neither Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry nor Barack Obama faced overwhelming public disapproval throughout their general election campaigns. Hillary Clinton did. …
Ballot marking begins in 70 days.
Tick-Tock.
The Republicans’ demographic trap
Boston Globe – Thomas E. Patterson – July 27
(Thomas E. Patterson is a professor at the
Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.)
… Voters under 30 have backed the Democratic presidential nominee by a 3-to-2 margin over the past four contests. And as they’ve aged, these voters have leaned more heavily Democratic while also turning out to vote in higher numbers. They now include everyone between the ages of 21 and 45 — more than 40 percent of the nation’s adults.
Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb of their own making, and it could send them into a tailspin. Although the politics of division that Republicans have pursued since Richard Nixon launched his “Southern strategy” in the late 1960s — a blueprint to shore up the vote of white Southerners by appealing to racial bias — has brought new groups into their ranks, including conservative Southerners, evangelical Christians, and working-class whites, it has antagonized other groups. …
The Republicans’ demographic trap
The GOP’s ideological trap
The GOP’s media trap
The GOP’s money trap
The GOP’s moral trap
This series is adapted from Patterson’s book
“Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself?”
Cracks in the Republican Party establishment are getting bigger
via @BrookingsInst
… As Republican leaders find themselves forced to distance themselves from the president they will also begin discussions about what their party looks like in the post-Trump era. For starters they may want to dip into a new book by Thomas E. Patterson, a professor at Harvard University. Titled Is the Republican Party Destroying Itself, the book outlines five traps the party has found itself in. …
One of the key problem with any polls is conformism of the respondents: answering the poll in a certain way does not necessary means that the person intends to vote this way.
He might be simply deceiving the pollster providing the most “politically correct” opinion. In this sense any poll conducted by an MSM does not worth electrons used to display its results.
Add to this the fact that you need to reach people on cell phones. Only a certain category of people will answer such a call. Limiting yourself to a landline distorts the sampling in more then one way by definition.
The key question of November elections that will never be asked in polls: Will a majority of voters side with the protesters? Or they will view them as rioters. In the latter case this looks like a Nixon elections replay.
It has been observed that people who actually will vote for
Trump in November may be too embarrassed to admit it.
Anyway, the ‘small’ heartland & deep-south states that
are still Red are actually quite large (compared to MA
where I am, although MA is comparatively large
for New England, and certainly with the largest
NE population) But ‘small’ means population, no.
It would be great if such states would vote Dem for
a change, but chances are slight. And the deal
where they get disproportionate electoral votes
due to their senatorial personages is solidly
baked into the Constitution, so that’s that.
And, of course, NE has twelve Senators, adding
nicely to our Electoral College entitlement, even
though our overall population is relatively small.