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16 Oct, 9 tweets, 2 min read
Republicans lead in Alaska, according to a new Times/Siena poll, as voters sour on the president but hesitate to embrace Dems.
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Trump leads Biden, 45 to 39. Jorgensen (L) at 8.
Sullivan leads Gross, 45 to 37. Howe (AIP) at 10.
Trump approval 47/47
nytimes.com/2020/10/16/ups…
In the US House rematch, Don Young leads Alyse Galvin 49-41, about the same as the outcome two years ago.
What to make of those third party tallies? I mean, I'd sure guess a lot of it will drop off at the ballot box. But Alaska does have a reputation for backing minor party candidates. Looking at their attitudes about Trump, it's not super obvious that anyone's poised to benefit
One thing that's clear in the poll: the GOP has a big Anchorage problem, which is basically acting like a very cold, dark part of the Sun Belt. The rest of the state, however, isn't really budging.
And as an aside, the presidential race is a point closer here than the rounded numbers suggest, with Trump leading by 5 points, 44.69 to 39.45. Now that we're getting close, probably shouldn't overlook a point here and there.
The sample is stratified and weighted by six regions, but we don't report crosstabs with fewer than 50 respondents so we collapsed them into two for this purpose
The six regions were urban Anchorage, suburban Anchorage, Fairbanks/Southeast, Juneau/Peninsula, Kenai/Matanuska Susitna, the rest of the state
Trump only won two of the six regions but won them bigly: the Fairbanks/Southeast region and Kenai/Matanuska Susitna.
(that's the green and light blue parts of the map)

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Nate Cohn Profile picture
17 Oct
As an aside, it's worth thinking about why the Ralston/NV-based predictions tend to hold up, while it can be embarrassing elsewhere. I think there are two basic reasons
1: The relationship between party registration and presidential vote has stayed tight there. If the electorate is D+5, they often win by 5! Simple, but it's not true in a lot of places. Worse still, that relationship has changed a lot in many states: your old rules don't work
2: The NV early vote is both really large as a share of the electorate and relatively unbiased. So if the early vote is D+4 or whatever, the final electorate is usually about the same. Again, really simple, but totally untrue in many places.
Read 5 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
17 Oct
You'll see a lot of early voting statistics out there that cite the partisan makeup of early voters, like, say, a D+15 among absentees in Florida, based on registration.
But remember this: the presidential preference of these voters is even more skewed than the party reg.
This works both ways, to be clear: if a hypothetical early vote is D+15 by reg and the election day vote is R+15, then the early vote might be Biden+25 and the election day vote might be Trump+25 (just as an ex.)
Basically, the reg Dems/GOP/Ind voting early are all better for Biden than those who intend to vote on Election Day, and vice versa. If you prefer: the force drawing Dems than Reps to mail is also luring a relatively Dem set of Reps/INDs, and the most Dem set of Dems, and so on.
Read 5 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
17 Oct
We've done three NC polls over the last year. We can join them up to the NC state absentee data, so we know whether they've voted early or not. Here's how they've split so far:
Abs: Biden 69, Trump 22 (n=295)
Early: Biden 55, Trump 35 (n=172)
No vote: Trump 46, Biden 42 (n=2083)
I should note that I'm pretty much of the view that the early vote numbers tell us basically nothing about the ultimate partisan balance of the electorate in this particular election, unless we basically reach the point that certain scenarios are mathematically eliminated
In our polling so far, Democrats and Republicans are just as likely to say they'll vote, but Democrats are way, way likelier to say they'll vote early. So Ds can do basically anything in the advanced vote and I'll still think the likeliest outcome is GOP counters on Election Day
Read 6 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
16 Oct
As you probably know, we're going to have an Alaska poll out at 1PM today. It's a notoriously tough state and this was our first time polling it. Long time listeners know that sometimes our first time polling a state can be messy! I didn't think this one fell in that category
TBH, I'd rather poll Alaska than Michigan. And if we had to do it again, I think we did learn a little bit to help tighten it up even more--though I'm comfortable with what we've got.
On cautionary step we took: we only went for N=425. We just didn't know whether rural AK was just tough like totally absolutely horrible. We didn't want to be in a position where we literally called every number we had out there without enough responses.
Read 8 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
15 Oct
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.
Read 10 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
15 Oct
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)
Read 8 tweets

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