Share this page!

Nate Silver Profile picture
Twitter logo
19 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
The thing is that Trump has very little leverage here. He needs the debate a lot more than Biden does.
Unless Stepien thinks Trump would be so bad that debating would lower his comeback odds, even though Trump generally wants high-variance strategies.

It's not crazy: Trump historically loses ground following debates and his messaging has been even more erratic than usual lately.
Like, if this is what's coming out of Trump these days, it's not clear that Stepien wants him debating, especially if he could also impact downballot races.

Pretty good chance of a cancellation now I'd think.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Nate Silver

Nate Silver Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @NateSilver538

Nate Silver Profile picture
21 Oct
You could probably convince me that the race has tightened by half a point. On the other hand, there had been a bit of a state poll vs. national poll gap, and Biden got some pretty good state polls this morning. projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/ Image
As @Nate_Cohn wrote yesterday, there are also some reasons to think the race might tighten a bit. Indeed, that's what our model predicts (it has Biden winning the popular vote by ~8, not ~10). But Trump needs it to tighten by *more than a bit*. nytimes.com/live/2020/pres…
There's a ton of national polling so no one poll is going to influence our average much. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the IBD poll. But that won't stop some people from looking only at that poll and not the many other polls in the average.

Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
20 Oct
Folks, Biden's lead didn't shrink from 7.3 points to 3.6 points in PA in a week (as per RCP) at the same time it was steady or slightly growing nationally. This is why you need poll averages that take a longer time horizon and/or adjust for house effects. projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/presiden… Image
RCP's averages are extremely subject to who happens to have polled the state recently, which is often the spammier, lower-quality pollsters, and that's been especially true recently with live-caller polls not having been terribly active in the states over the past 2 weeks.
I love many things about RCP, but if you have an average and 1/3 of it consists of Trafalgar and InsiderAdvantage and 0% of it consists of live-caller polls, it's not going to be a very reliable average. Image
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
20 Oct
A comparatively good morning of polls for Trump, although it says something about the state of play when you see a poll showing him 9 points behind nationally and say to yourself "hey, not bad!".

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/presiden…
To reiterate this point, on one of Trump better days of polling recently, he only decreased Biden's odds from a 87.5% chance of winning the Electoral College as of our final model run last night to 87.2% now. (Not a statistically significant change.)

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-…
Part of that is because Trump's better polls, in the context of what we've seen recently, means state polls that look like they did before the debate (i.e. consistent with a 7-8 point Biden national lead), which is still not a great position to be in with 14 days to go.
Read 4 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
19 Oct
The polls have been in something of a holding pattern for the past few days, with two distinguishing features.

First, Biden's lead in national polls is very steady. It was 10.4 points a week ago and it's 10.7 points now.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/presiden…
You really have to squint/cherry-pick to see a Trump comeback in the national polls. The IBD/TIPP tracking poll has bounced around a bit in a vaguely pro-Trump direction, I guess. But the other two tracking polls (USC and SurveyMonkey) show a steady/increasing Biden lead.
There's also a lot of non-tracking poll national data, and it's just become very routine to see double-digit leads for Biden, especially in the higher-quality polls.
Read 10 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
18 Oct
Although everyone's waiting for that last twist of fate as with the Comey letter in 2016, more often the final two weeks of a campaign can be anticlimactic, with it being too late to shift tactics or change that many minds.
But everybody's anxiety level is very, very high. So there's usually a lot of jumping the gun at minor stories, any claims about shifts in the polls, etc. Looking at polling averages can be helpful in this regard: projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/presiden…
Even a 10-point lead isn't safe for Biden because 1) it's closer in the swing states 2) there's still *some* time for the race to tighten 3) polls can be wrong (although they'd have to be quite wrong, not just a little wrong, but I digress...)
Read 6 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
17 Oct
So far, returned mail ballots are D +31 (not a surprise given what polls show) whereas the set of mail ballots that have been requested but not yet returned are "only" D +17. Why does this matter?

electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-202…
If (as this data shows) Dems are returning their ballots sooner, then mail ballots cast closer to Election Day—which in many states, will also be counted later—may not be as D as mail ballots overall. They could even wind up being R-leaning, conceivably.
This means there might not be as much of a blue shift in states with late-counted mail ballots, especially ballots that arrive after Election Day in states that allow that, as people might assume.
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @NateSilver538