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It's pretty much a myth that early-state polls tell a different story than national polls. fivethirtyeight.com/features/natio…
Biden is at 27.5% in an average of early state polls (weighted by the number of Dems in each state). That's almost identical to his 28.6% in national polls over the same period. Warren & Sanders are actually underperforming their national polls *more* than Biden in early states.
Perceptions that the early state polls differ from national polls are based on ignoring NV and SC and focusing only on IA and NH. That's quite problematic IMO as it vastly reduces the role of black, Hispanic and working-class Democrats, who are more plentiful in NV/SC than IA/NH.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
With current political coalitions, there's no such thing as a great Senate map for Democrats given the (deliberate) bias of the Senate toward rural states. Rather, there are *OK* maps for Democrats (e.g. 2022), terrible ones (e.g. 2018) and various gradients in between.
In 2022, D pickup opportunities would include WI, PA, FL, NC (& possibly AZ and GA depending on the outcome of special elections). Not bad. But those are also all states that voted for Trump! Presidents don't tend to pickup seats in those sorts of states in the midterms.
Related: One of the best uses of political capital a Democratic president could spend in her first 100 days to increase the long-term chances of major progressive reforms would be to push for DC & PR statehood.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
One thing I wonder about Warren is whether the ferocity of the backlash from certain parts of the D establishment to her emerging as a frontrunner caught her campaign by surprise.
There were many "establishment warming to Warren!" stories, which indicated she was preferred to Sanders at a minimum (and maybe most others too). But the moment she (almost) catches Biden in polls, there's an outpouring of anxiety rather than, say, a bunch of endorsements.
We can debate the reasons for that backlash. Misogyny is always a potential ingredient.

But if she thought she could simultaneously seem like a populist to the left, and a wonky, left-but-not-TOO-far-left pragmatic Dem to moderates/the establishment, that's been challenging.
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Nate Silver
@NateSilver538
One thing is that this latest Buttigieg surge is that he initially gained only ~1 point or so after last month's debate, but the media declared it was a huge surge ... and now he's seemingly having a more significant surge, at least in the early states.
Some evidence of this: Buttigieg's net favorability numbers, though they were already quite good, didn't actually improve in this poll from Monmonth's previous one. He's just been more salient in the conversation so more voters have him as their first choice.
p.s. This is a bit of the risk candidates face in attacking Buttigieg. They potentially elevate his profile and keep him in the news. You don't face that problem as much when attacking Biden, Sanders or Warren since they're already household names.
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Related threads

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Victoria Brownworth
@VABVOX
In data from @FiveThirtyEight and GDELT tracking, #Biden is leading TV mentions. This is pushing down poll numbers for other candidates.

Biden - 4,317
Sanders - 461
Warren - 1,090
Harris - 146
Buttigieg - 88
O'Rourke - 118
Booker - 142
Klobuchar - 47
Yang - 41
Castro - 21
These numbers should embarrass the MSM. #Harris is polling 4th yet she has less than 2% of #Biden's mentions, only 10% of #Warren's. #Buttigieg is polling right behind Harris and he has only half her mentions. Yet #Booker is almost equal to Harris. While #Castro--almost nothing.
The week showed a big drop in mentions for #Harris and #Sanders, despite high profile appearances for both on major TV shows. The disconnect is striking, particularly since both have rolled out new policy and important changes in their campaigns.
Read 6 tweets
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Victoria Brownworth #EqualityActNow
@VABVOX
Calling Pennsylvania "#Biden's home state" as an excuse for why his base of operations isn't Delaware, where he was senator for THREE DECADES, ignores that he's trying to deflect from what Delaware stands for and what he did there when #Warren is going to hammer him on it.
#Biden never lived in #Philadelphia, ever.
He was born in Scranton, a white town upstate that is diametrically oppositional from Philadelphia which is majority black and the poorest big city in America.
Biden moved to Delaware from Scranton, PA when he was TEN.
It's fine to decide to distance yourself from the place--DELAWARE, not PA-- you lived for SIXTY SIX YEARS & where you grew up, got married, raised your kids & grandkids. But don't pretend it's because you are FROM Philadelphia when you just want our votes & your state is tiny.
Read 11 tweets
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
@maggiekb1
When should you donate money to a political candidate? Last year, I did a story on what social science can tell us about how $$ affect election outcomes. fivethirtyeight.com/features/money…

And I have a few criteria I came away with from that ...
1. Donate during the primaries. Your money matters more. In fact, by the time we hit the general the outcomes are determined so much by partisanship and gerrymandering that a LOT of politicians are probably raising/spending because of inertia more than usefulness to outcome.
2. Donate to people you dig, but who are not incumbents and have no name recognition. That's one of the spots where $ and advertising seem to actually matter to outcomes.
Read 8 tweets
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Annie Duke
@AnnieDuke
THREAD.

1/ I was looking through twitter today and saw how much people mistrust forecasts of the election. We are pretty bad at thinking probabilistically and it seems as if once a candidate is somewhere over 60% we default to assuming they are 100% to win
2/ so if they lose we declare the forecast (or the polls) wrong! This is, of course, aided and abetted by a lot of pundits. It’s very frustrating because I am not sure how we can fix the problem.
3/ Certainty is what people want. They don’t want to hear that one candidate is 25% and the other 75%. They want to know for sure. And the pundits are often more than happy to give them what they want, offering more certainty than the data offers.
Read 20 tweets
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Another Planet's Hell 🌊
@cravennewworld
Don't let #polls determine whether or not you vote. Don't assume a victory or a loss based on current polling. Why? Because they are inherently flawed, and not truly reflective of a whole group of people of any sort. (more)
2/ Polls have two major aspects: Sample and Methodology. These are the parameters that define how the poll is taken and how accurately it reflects a population.
3/ Let's start with sample, also called sample size. It tells you how many people are polled to get the results. Most of the big polls you see in the news have a sample size somewhere around a thousand. This works for the pollsters, because it's a manageable
Read 24 tweets
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Janie Velencia
@JanieVelencia
Polls this week show that the Mueller investigation is gaining more support all the while Trump is losing support. fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump…
On Aug. 20, Trump had a net approval rating of -10 percentage points. Aug 21st Manafort & Cohen found & plead guilty. Since then Trump's approval has been falling. Now at -14 points.
More people now say the investigation is serious, more say Trump should testify, and more say he should be impeached.
Read 4 tweets

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