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Let me share some general thoughts about Biden that may illuminate some of these threads I’m participating in. Polls 18 months out are def very early. And I share many of the concerns abt the viability of Biden’s candidacy as other express. Polls can definitely change.
2/ It wld be crazy to say the June 2019 polls say he’s the best candidate so let’s hurry up and nominate him. You definitely need to see him manage the intensity of the campaign. Polls are limited evidence at this point.
3/ But they do provide some outside metric against which to judge our assumptions. And I see a lot of people unwilling to do that. So we come up with, well no one is really paying attn yet. So the polls don’t mean anything.
4/ But there’s lots of evidence that people are paying very close attention, to a historic degree for this early in the campaign. And Biden’s actually gotten stronger in the face of that. In fact, in the face of a lot of terrible press. Or at least terrible press ...
5/ within the Twitter ecosystem. (His numbers have leveled off and fallen back a bit since his announcement surge. But he’s still held on to a lot of it.) I think many Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents (which is not the same as moderates) are just really ...
6/ focused on ending Trump’s presidency. And for them the mix of governmental experience and perceived electability is much more important than litigating his position on issues from decades ago.
7/ On this front it is important to note that electability in this case isn’t just a polling feedback loop. The dynamics of primary polls and general election polls are very different. Perceptions of electability drive primary polls. Pretty much by definition they don’t ....
8/ drive general election polls. To me Biden’s campaign just seems low energy for lack of better word. How much of that is age vs running a front runner campaign I don’t know. One point that I keep an eye on is that Biden consistently polls best with voters with low ...
9/ educational attainment. You can snark and say well what do they know. But this is actually pretty critical. High education levels are highly associated with supporting Democrats. Against someone like Trump appeal among less educated voters is a pretty big deal.
10/ Highly educated Democrats are going to vote for the Democratic nominee regardless. It’s with less educated voters that a lot of the electoral battle will happen. In any case, my argument here is not that Biden is the strongest candidate. I’m kind of surprised he’s ...
11/ polling as well as he is. I am simply saying that we shld be very wary of allowing our own preferences skew our analysis of the strength of the candidates or be guided by our personal or group echo chambers. Polls aren’t dispositive but they are data outside ...
12/ our assumptions and theories. So we shouldn’t ignore them. Polls can definitely change. But our assumptions might simply be completely wrong.
