Thread: one of the reasons I love covering House races is that analyzing things at a district level can reveal a lot of micro-trends before they show up nationally or even statewide...
I’d venture to guess my friends @nathanlgonzales, @kkondik and I get to see more unique data sets of presidential polling than just about anyone in the country (b/c no competent House-level pollster doesn’t poll the top of the ticket).
As the 2016 campaign intensified, I saw something I now think of as “the shift.” In a lot of heavily white working class districts (think northern Maine/Wisconsin etc.), Trump leads that had been ~5% in Sept had blown open to 15%+ in Oct., etc.
A lot of this polling was never publicly released, but both parties were detecting it. And a lot of statewide/national polls weren’t showing it, perhaps b/c of sparsity of PA/WI/MI polls, failure to properly weight whites by education, etc. But it turned out to be real.
Fast forward: today, Biden is polling spectacularly in heavily college+ suburban districts (he’s ahead in a few districts Clinton lost by 10%+!) *and* impressively overperforming Clinton in white working class districts.
But as the campaign intensifies and more casual voters start tuning in, I consider Biden’s support in white-working class districts much more fragile. A lot of these politically low-engaged voters live in a local news/info ecosystem that is much Trump-friendlier than elsewhere.
The upshot for Biden: because white-working class voters have dwindled as a share of the eligible electorate *everywhere* since 2016, Trump needs to not only get back to his 2016 margins w/ these voters but significantly up their turnout to stay in the game. Possible, but tough.
Bottom line: as much as I watch all the state/national polls that generate all the buzz, I’ll be watching these district polls like a hawk. So far, I haven’t seen much evidence of “the shift” part deux. Maybe it will never happen! But it’s still August. Long way to go.
