There are signs that Trump's Electoral College is fading. In our current average, there's just a .7 point gap between the popular vote and the tipping point state nytimes.com/2024/09/25/ups…
Our national Times/Siena polling this year shows a very 2022-like pattern by state.
This pattern holds (if a bit noisier ofc) in our three Harris-Trump polls.
I do think it's worth cautioning how tenuous Harris' EC-PV gains are - any meaningful error in MI/WI/PA would quickly restore much of Trump's advantage. This is not a robust edge (unlike Trump '16/20, where he still would have had a big edge even if WI, for ex, was D+5)
One question I've seen throughout my replies: does a seemingly strong result for Harris in PA signal a 2020 polling error repeat?
That's obviously hard to say, but I want to flag one thing that caught my eye: our polls do not show Harris doing well with the white working class
In PA, it's Trump 61-Harris 34; nationally, it's Trump 67, Harris 30. In each case, that's >= 10 points worse than our final pre-election polls four years ago. It's also worse than the estimated Biden '20 finish with these groups.
This doesn't rule out a polling error, whether by chance or bias. The polls entered the field immediately after a debate; this is a classic environment for response bias (notably, she leads PA bc of gains with college educated whites, who may be most likely to react to news).
The NYT/Siena poll is far from perfect - and in general I worry more about people expecting it to be perfect than I worry about it getting insufficient credit.
But the poll is very different from the others - and the differences help explain its record
Staying on the LV question: from its inception until last week's CNN/SSRS state polls (give them applause), the NYT/Siena poll was the only public poll incorporating self-reported vote intention and a model of turnout based no vote history
(in our data, someone's history of voting = more predictive of turnout than self-reported turnout intention -- though blending the two does best of all)
FiveThirtyEight released a new model today, showing Harris with a 58% chance to win. But it's clearly a very different model and I think it's important to hear more about the differences
The previous model made Biden the favorite bc it gave 4:1 weight to fundamentals > polls -- a view that would make Trump stronger today and perhaps still ahead.
Now it gives 4:1 weight to polls > fundamentals -- which would have made Trump a large favorite before
Importantly, the methodology page implies that the model would give more weight to polls > fundamentals all along, so this isn't a function of being one month closer to the election
Kamala Harris puts the Sun Belt back in play, with the race tied across AZ, NC, NV, GA
AZ: Harris 50, Trump 45
GA: Trump 50, Harris 46
NV: Trump 48, Harris 47
NC: Harris 49, Trump 47 nytimes.com/2024/08/17/us/…
The poll basically shows the race returning to "normal," with Harris obtaining far larger margins among Black, Hispanic and young voters, propelling her to nearly a 10 pt gain across the four states nytimes.com/2024/08/17/ups…
I probably wouldn't focus too much on the exact results by state. Individual state polls are a little noisy, and we were bound to get some head-scratchers eventually after conveniently getting identical 50-46 results in each of PA/MI/WI
That said, it is worth noting that the sample does look a little blue. It's about a net-1 pt more Democratic, Dem-leaning and 2020 'Biden compared to the last time we polled these three states in May. This could be an indication of a shift in response patterns, though it could indicate change in attitude as well
I do think the idea of a 'real' 1 pt change in Dem PID/Biden recall, etc., to be fairly plausible. Not only is that a fairly small shift, but no one can deny that the national political environment hasn't changed in a huge way over the last few weeks