In general, I'm pretty open-minded about the range of possibilities in this election. I'm also very slow to judge pollsters based on crosstabs, since I think so much of what goes on down there is just noise that cancels out. But...
Quinnipiac has had *a lot* of polls showing Biden doing really, really well among white southerners, including white southerners without a degree in the Deep South. And hey, maybe it'll happen. But that's a far-fetched possibility IMO, and pollster bias is the easier explanation
And no, I don't know why or how. I mean, even our sample of white no degree voters in ATL+inner burbs was just 30% Biden--I assume they call outside of those four counties. Biden was at 13% in the rest of the state
I think a Biden lead--even a comfortably lead--is a totally plausible poll result. I just think Biden at 29% among white voters without a degree is an implausible way of getting there.
Lindsey Graham holds modest lead in the race for U.S. Senate in South Carolina, according a new Times/Siena poll.
Graham leads Harrison, 46 to 40.
Bill Bledsoe--who has dropped out--holds 4 percent, and another 2 percent won't vote for Senate. nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/…
Notably, Graham quite a bit better in interviews over the last two nights during the confirmation hearings.
He ran well behind the president over the weekend, but ran well ahead of the president over the last two days. Maybe noise. Maybe not. It'll be interesting to see.
In the presidential race, Donald Trump holds a slightly larger 49 to 41 percent lead over Joe Biden.
One seemingly tedious task that I've come to enjoy is recoding the race of our respondents who say they're of 'some other race,' and then offer an answer. You never know what you're going to get
There are constants: Irish and Italian-Americans identifying as such. A handful of racists: "Aryan." Ridiculous answers: "Ginger," "a big fat gay mulatto!" Interesting detective work, where an interviewer types an obscure answer phonetically--"Chupic"--and you figure it out
('Chupic" appeared to be 'Cup'ik' an Alaska Native tribe, and the respondent was in the geographic part of western Alaska for it, which was fun)
I honestly don't understand why people want to push undecided voters to make up a mind in a race when they barely know the candidates. Knowing that they're undecided is a lot more valuable
There are some structural reasons why we do get higher undecided voters than other polls:
--probablistic LV screen keeps some number of people who say they won't vote, who are far likelier to be undecided
--we have far more low turnout voters, who are far likelier to be undecided
--we're naming the third party candidates, and in any given survey a decent number are backing a minor party candidate, even if I don't tweet about them
Biden's lead is up to 12.7 on the USC tracker, his all time high. election.usc.edu
It's a particularly interesting day to take note of the USC tracker, since it's a two week field-period and it's been two long weeks since the first presidential debate. So today will be the last day, I believe, with any pre-debate data.
Biden's lead has grown 3.2 pts since 9/29
Biden's gains ought to begin to slow once all of the pre-debate interviews are cycled out. It could even begin to decline, if more recent interviews are better for Trump than immediately post-debate. So it'll be a relatively interesting few days for following the USC trends
Joe Biden leads in Wisconsin and Michigan by a significant margin, according to new Times/Siena polls.
Biden leads Trump by 10 in Wisconsin, 51 to 41 percent.
Biden leads by 8 in Michigan, 48 to 40 nytimes.com/2020/10/12/ups…
Perhaps the most interesting result: Gary Peters (D) holds just a 1 point lead over John James (R), 43-42, in the race for US Senate in Michigan, down from a 10 point lead in June
The polls offered little reason to think that the last week's events had worked in the president's favor, at a time when every week counts.
Voters overwhelmingly thought he should have participated in the virtual debate, and thought Harris won the VP debate