2020 Presidential Election

[OldPhiKap]

I’m going to infer from the below that Trump’s internal polls are saying the same thing about this demographic that external polls are saying.

“Suburban women, would you please like me? Please. Please,” Trump said. “I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush, 2016

"Please clap, you ungrateful women, I kept 'them' out of the neighborhood." -- Donald Trump, 2020 (translated)

I don't think Donald understands the problem here . . . .

[Tripping William]

"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush, 2016

"Please clap, you ungrateful women, I kept 'them' out of the neighborhood." -- Donald Trump, 2020 (translated)

I don't think Donald understands the problem here . . . .

And then there’s this effort to narrow the polling with seniors (which may be critical to places like, oh, say, Florida):

612A551E-D8AC-43AE-B296-950D63CDE9C0.jpg

[bundabergdevil]

And then there’s this effort to narrow the polling with seniors (which may be critical to places like, oh, say, Florida):

612A551E-D8AC-43AE-B296-950D63CDE9C0.jpg

Hah. That’s actually pretty funny but I’m not sure the implied negative association with being senior will win the hearts and minds of seniors.

And they’re 3 years apart for crying out loud! They both need to eat Colon Blow, if you know what I mean.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku42Iszh9KM

[YmoBeThere]

And then there’s this effort to narrow the polling with seniors (which may be critical to places like, oh, say, Florida):

612A551E-D8AC-43AE-B296-950D63CDE9C0.jpg

Which is interesting given his age...

[OldPhiKap]

They both need to eat Colon Blow

Don't we all, my friend. Don't we all.

[Nrrrrvous]

That's a fascinating link & a little horrifying to anyone grateful for the bill of rights - or any of the other Amendments for that matter.

Seems hard to square the theory that the Congress could override an Amendment with ordinary legislation and then use a procedural mechanism / tagline - #thislegislationnotsubjecttoreview without getting smacked back into place by Marbury. I mean . . . What if they come after the ymmm beer crew? Impugning the 21st is fighting words.

The Ymmm beer crew?!?! We are a peaceful group and quite civic minded. Just yesterday we were quoting President Ben Franklin.

"They'll have my snifter when they pry it from my cold..."

Wait, that's not how that goes?

[gumbomoop]

I have no expertise re the reliability of various polling organizations. Don’t recall hearing about this one. Is it A+ rated, C-, F? Its recent poll certainly seems at the very high end of “Biden’s winning.” Biden by 17, with only 3% undecided??

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-17-points

”Opinium’s findings for the Guardian suggest that a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour.

Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. Democrats also injected momentum into existing supporters, with voters for Biden now more likely to turn out, up from 75% in September to 82% this month.”

[PackMan97]

My wife and I are no longer undecided. We filled out our absentee ballots yesterday.

[JasonEvans]

I have no expertise re the reliability of various polling organizations. Don’t recall hearing about this one. Is it A+ rated, C-, F? Its recent poll certainly seems at the very high end of “Biden’s winning.” Biden by 17, with only 3% undecided??

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-17-points

”Opinium’s findings for the Guardian suggest that a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour.

Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. Democrats also injected momentum into existing supporters, with voters for Biden now more likely to turn out, up from 75% in September to 82% this month.”

Opinium is a British pollster with scant track record here in the US. They have had very good results polling on British politics and were close to spot on regarding the Conservatives latest victory in 2019. Just days before the election, Opinium had it Conservatives 46, Labour 31, Lib Dems 13. In the final tally it was Conservatives 43.6, Labour 32.1, Lib Dems 11.6... so that is a pretty darn accurate poll.

But, there are things about the US public that make it different from the UK. I have no idea what kind of efforts Opinium has made to talk to other US pollsters to learn from past mistakes that have been made polling US elections.

And while it is easy to look at 17 points and say, "17 POINTS!?!?!?!" that number is not exactly far out of line with what highly regarded polls from NBC/WSJ (Biden +14) or CNN/SSRS (Biden +16) found. If you look at all the high-quality American pollsters, we are seeing everything from Biden +8 to Biden +16. It feels like the race is probably somewhere around 10 or 11 at this point, but that doesn't make a 17 point Biden lead something unlikely to be seen.

The bottom line, of course, is that Biden appears to be well on his way to a resounding victory. Trump will need more than a late "undecideds break for him" kind of switch to make this a truly competitive race.

[ClemmonsDevil]

I have no expertise re the reliability of various polling organizations. Don’t recall hearing about this one. Is it A+ rated, C-, F? Its recent poll certainly seems at the very high end of “Biden’s winning.” Biden by 17, with only 3% undecided??

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-17-points

”Opinium’s findings for the Guardian suggest that a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour.

Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. Democrats also injected momentum into existing supporters, with voters for Biden now more likely to turn out, up from 75% in September to 82% this month.”

Nate's take. They have no rating because he has no idea of their history.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1316165171744825344

[CameronBornAndBred]

I have no expertise re the reliability of various polling organizations. Don’t recall hearing about this one. Is it A+ rated, C-, F? Its recent poll certainly seems at the very high end of “Biden’s winning.” Biden by 17, with only 3% undecided??

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-17-points

”Opinium’s findings for the Guardian suggest that a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump’s disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats’ favour.

Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. Democrats also injected momentum into existing supporters, with voters for Biden now more likely to turn out, up from 75% in September to 82% this month.”

Opinium is a British pollster with scant track record here in the US. They have had very good results polling on British politics and were close to spot on regarding the Conservatives latest victory in 2019. Just days before the election, Opinium had it Conservatives 46, Labour 31, Lib Dems 13. In the final tally it was Conservatives 43.6, Labour 32.1, Lib Dems 11.6... so that is a pretty darn accurate poll.

But, there are things about the US public that make it different from the UK. I have no idea what kind of efforts Opinium has made to talk to other US pollsters to learn from past mistakes that have been made polling US elections.

And while it is easy to look at 17 points and say, "17 POINTS!?!?!?!" that number is not exactly far out of line with what highly regarded polls from NBC/WSJ (Biden +14) or CNN/SSRS (Biden +16) found. If you look at all the high-quality American pollsters, we are seeing everything from Biden +8 to Biden +16. It feels like the race is probably somewhere around 10 or 11 at this point, but that doesn't make a 17 point Biden lead something unlikely to be seen.

The bottom line, of course, is that Biden appears to be well on his way to a resounding victory. Trump will need more than a late "undecideds break for him" kind of switch to make this a truly competitive race.

I've seen those high numbers echoed elsewhere, and by folks who correctly called Trump's win in '16. Not quite 17 points, but way up there.

A pair of polls that accurately predicted in 2016 that Donald Trump would win the election have released their predictions for the 2020 US election, and it does not bode well for Mr Trump.
---
On 12 Oct, the IBT poll predicted that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden will beat Mr Trump by 8.5 percentage points. The USC poll predicted an even stronger victory, placing Mr Biden 13 percentage points ahead of Mr Trump.

Both of those, but especially the second one, equate to landslides.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/polls-pre...154918794.html

[JasonEvans]

And then there’s this effort to narrow the polling with seniors (which may be critical to places like, oh, say, Florida):

612A551E-D8AC-43AE-B296-950D63CDE9C0.jpg

I mean, Trump is the very definition of an undisciplined candidate. I'm sure he just saw this during his hours of scrolling through his twitter feed and sent it out. It is pretty funny, but is a terrible message for him toward seniors. While he was pleading with suburban women to come to his side, the major shift we are seeing in this election is among seniors. They backed him pretty solidly in 2016 (he won them by about 9 points) but polls show him losing seniors this time, perhaps by double digits (CNN recently had Biden winning seniors 60-31, ouch!!). Convincing folks who voted for you last time to vote for you again is Trump's easiest path to getting back in this race. And yet here he is essentially mocking this core constituency. Does anyone think Trump thought for even a second about the message that image conveyed before sending it out? Sheesh!! Someone from the campaign really needs to take away Trump's cell phone.

-Jason "it really feels at times like he is trying to lose" Evans

[PackMan97]

I mean, Trump is the very definition of an undisciplined candidate.

-Jason "it really feels at times like he is trying to lose" Evans

It worked for Trump in 2016, so of course he thinks it will work in 2020. All the polls are fake polls. Just wait until election day.

[JasonEvans]

The USC poll predicted an even stronger victory, placing Mr Biden 13 percentage points ahead of Mr Trump.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/polls-pre...154918794.html

Don't even get me started on the USC poll!! It is bad, bad, bad. You should largely ignore it.

The USC poll is being done with a consistent sample of the same voters. They found folks many months ago and just keep on polling the same voters. While there can be some merit in that approach, it is also perilous. It means that if you accidentally chose a skewed/biased sample at the start, there is no way to correct it. What's more, they always just poll a small portion of the sample every day, rolling through the entire sample over a 2 week period. This means that at any given moment we are not looking at a new result, we are looking at results that are taken over a 2 week period. A lot can happen in 2 weeks but the USC poll gives equal weight to what folks are saying today and what other folks said a fortnight ago. You can see how that would be problematic.

And you want to see something even more damning? It is clear that one half of the USC sample is skewed toward Biden while the other half is skewed toward Trump. This is just how their sample was randomly selected from the start, but because they are using a fixed group of poll participants, there is no way to correct for it. Look at this graph of their poll based on 7-day polling averages... it looks like a wave as the pro-Trump crowd comes into the sample and then the pro-Biden folks replace them.



I'm not saying the USC poll is worthless, but it needs to be looked at separately from other polls because it is using a completely different methodology, one which most polling experts feel is of very limited value.

[CameronBornAndBred]

I'm not saying the USC poll is worthless, but it needs to be looked at separately from other polls because it is using a completely different methodology, one which most polling experts feel is of very limited value.

I was merely pointing out that as noted in the article, it was one of two who correctly called 2016, and now both are going drastically the other direction.

[gumbomoop]

[Seniors] backed him pretty solidly in 2016 (he won them by about 9 points) but polls show him losing seniors this time, perhaps by double digits (CNN recently had Biden winning seniors 60-31, ouch!!).

The difference between the two bolded phrases is utterly dumbfounding to an ignoramus, me, re poll reliability.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

NBC scheduled a town hall for Trump tomorrow night at the same time that Biden is doing one on ABC. NBC apparently independently checked and were OK with Trump's health. Savannah Guthrie is hosting but it will be audience questions. I am surprised that NBC would run this directly against Biden - I know that the news business is a tough battle but it just doesn't make a lot of sense. If I had a nickel for every time that Trump says that his event has better ratings than Biden's...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...rsday-n1243300

[JasonEvans]

NBC scheduled a town hall for Trump tomorrow night at the same time that Biden is doing one on ABC. NBC apparently independently checked and were OK with Trump's health. Savannah Guthrie is hosting but it will be audience questions. I am surprised that NBC would run this directly against Biden - I know that the news business is a tough battle but it just doesn't make a lot of sense. If I had a nickel for every time that Trump says that his event has better ratings than Biden's...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...rsday-n1243300

Feels like it would be a lot more interesting and of service to the voters to have one at 8pm and the other at 9pm (or something like that). No reason to do them at the same time. I wonder if the Trump camp insisted on doing them at the same time so he could do a ratings comparison.

[ClemmonsDevil]

NBC scheduled a town hall for Trump tomorrow night at the same time that Biden is doing one on ABC. NBC apparently independently checked and were OK with Trump's health. Savannah Guthrie is hosting but it will be audience questions. I am surprised that NBC would run this directly against Biden - I know that the news business is a tough battle but it just doesn't make a lot of sense. If I had a nickel for every time that Trump says that his event has better ratings than Biden's...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...rsday-n1243300

Wow. Still interrupting each other.

[Rich]

Feels like it would be a lot more interesting and of service to the voters to have one at 8pm and the other at 9pm (or something like that). No reason to do them at the same time. I wonder if the Trump camp insisted on doing them at the same time so he could do a ratings comparison.

Even if Biden's ratings are higher, the Trump camp will assert fake news, alternative facts, or a conspiracy by the left wing media, so it doesn't really matter. The only meaningful ratings comparison at this point is the one up to and on November 3.