I think it's fairly clear that our polling suggests that Biden's rebounded among northern white rural voters, whether in ME/MN/IA, but not at all in the South (not surprisingly):
Rural/exurban white voters:
TX: Trump 80, Biden 16
GA: Trump 82, Biden 14
IA: Trump 45, Biden 42
With Biden lagging a bit in PA compared to other Obama-Trump states in the polls, I think it's reasonable to theorize that the Appalachian white vote has been a bit more like the Southern rural white vote in this respect, or maybe even trended further Trump
This pattern has shown up in a number of recent primaries, including the GOP '16 primary. Trump swept the Southern/Appalachian white vote, including PA, while he struggled a bit in the more Midwestern/northern states
Ohio is an interesting mix here: the northwestern part of the state is more reminiscent of the Upper Midwest; the eastern/southern part of the state is more Appalachian. It was pretty stark in the GOP '16 primary, in fact
Also interesting to compare this to self-reported 2016 vote among validated '16 voters:
Iowa: Trump 50, Clinton 36
Texas: Trump 83, Clinton 12
Georgia: Trump 85, Clinton 13
Looking across all of our polling, you can see an interesting pattern of Dem suburban v. rural gains by region. I think it makes a lot of sense of the shifts we see
PA is the rare state with some northern metros but kinda southern rural. Bad combo for Biden. A state like AZ--very little rural vote, Sun Belt metro--could be great for Biden, as our poll found. No surprise to see Biden surges in rural north, like our MT poll
Here again, Ohio is an interesting case. It does have plenty of suburbs and you could call them northern, but they are *red* suburbs, unlike PHI, for ex., and that could be the real factor underpinning whether Biden has opportunities for a big breakthrough
I didn't label that clearly btw--but that chart is only among white voters, hence the Trump lead in the metro South
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One thing I've been experimenting with since our GOP oversample this summer: weighting our polls by each partisanship subgroup, which has the consequence of ensuring that each subgroup used in weighting has the right number of Dems and Republicans
The main downside is that our estimates for self-reported education by voter file party are modeled, and that's something I've had pause about. I'm gradually getting more comfortable with it, as the party x edu tallies for the typically weighted sample seem consistent with subgroup
Perhaps surprisingly, there's essentially no difference in our topline results between polls weighted by party and those weighted across the full population. The differences by subgroup are surprisingly minor, as well
I happened to be looking a lot at Pew data last few weeks, even before this most recent partisanship study, so I wanted to share a few interesting observations about trends I noticed in their data pewresearch.org/politics/2024/…
One thing I noticed: subtle but persistent, multi-year differences between the partisan splits by demographic on the Pew ATP -- the mostly mail-to-web panel they use for this study -- and the Pew NPORS study (the one-off high-incentie mail survey they use for weighting the ATP
The most striking thing, IMO, is that the Pew ATP consistently has more age and racial polarization than the NPORS
A few outtakes:
-- By our (rough and preliminary) estimates, this looks to be yet another zero-persuasion (off Biden '20) special. We'll have to see final vote history, but at least in Nassau it looks just as we'd expect given the party reg turnout
-- We'll see how the dust settles, but I do think it could be significant if the result is interpreted as showing Dem strength on the border messaging. If that narrative takes hold + Dems are emboldened to follow on, that's quite helpful on their worst issue
1) Specials are driven by turnout. The data is unequivocal as long as I've been looking at them with our rich data, going back to 2017. That should not be remotely surprising, as the as the people who know about/vote in specials are highly parstisan -- just like all of you!
2) Special elections therefore tell us something about enthusiasm/engagement among highly engaged voters, which is helpful in predicting low turnout contests. It is less significant as turnout increases, but may still helpful to Dems (see favorable LV/RV gap in NYT/Siena '23)
We have a new NYT/Siena national survey, and it's an interesting one -- with the public sympathetic toward Israel but disapproving of Biden on the issue and split on whether Israel should continue military operations.
It also has interesting '24 numbers... nytimes.com/2023/12/19/ups…
Trump leads 46-44 among RVs, but *Biden* actually leads in our first measure of the likely electorate nationwide, 47-45.
The split is driven by a huge gap in vote choice by turnout history: Biden+6 among '20 voters; Trump+22 among 2020 nonvoters nytimes.com/2023/12/19/ups…
We've seen a similar pattern in our polling over the last year, with Biden excelling among regular and esp '22 voters.
But this is the largest split by '20 vote, and as a consequence it's a bigger LV gain for Biden than prior polls would have shown.
One thing I've seen over the last few days: a lot of people asserting that, in a variety of different ways, pre-election polls aren't very useful for demographic subgroups
I have to completely disagree.
Stepping back, it's my long-standing view that the pre-election polls are the best basis for post-election estimates -- and, in particular, better than exits.
For ex, all these estimates were based on pre-election polling: nytimes.com/2016/06/10/ups…
This was already true back in 2012 and 2016, but it's become indisputable in the era of early voting. The exits are mostly pre-election polls at this point. AP/Votecast is just a pre-election poll. Catalist is also derived from pre-election polling. And so on.