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Nate Silver Profile picture
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21 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Obviously a fairly awful result for Trump in Michigan, but these other ones he can live with given that Fox News state polls have actually had pretty good numbers for Biden this year.
Overall, though, this was a day that brought some clarity. One of Trump's worst days of state polling in a while, but one of his better days for national polls, closing what had been a gap between them. Both now seem to point to perhaps a 9 or 9.5 point Biden lead nationally.
We also learned that high-quality polls in PA are continuing to cluster around a 6 or perhaps 6.5 point Biden lead, and high quality polls in Florida are +3 or +4 Biden, on average. That's what our model thought all along rather than being thrown off the scent by spammy polls.
The data in the Midwest has been a bit more confusing. You can find a few comparatively bright spots for Trump in WI and OH polls recently, but not many in MI or IA. It's probably mostly noise.

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More from @NateSilver538

Nate Silver Profile picture
22 Oct
It's definitely a source of uncertainty and different ways that pollsters are handling early and mail voting vis-a-vis likely voter models probably explains some of the differences we're seeing between polls right now.
I think there's *probably* more upside risk than downside risk for Democrats here (i.e. that turnout will be bluer than likely voter models project) but I can also imagine scenarios where it leads pollsters to underestimate the R vote instead.
For instance, if you had a fixed estimate of turnout (as X% of registered voters) and you put people who had already voted first in the queue, then mostly GOP election day voters might get crowded out. That's a weird way to do a likely voter model but some pollsters might do it.
Read 5 tweets
Nate Silver Profile picture
22 Oct
Based on an update we'll be releasing later today, we're now projecting total turnout in the presidential race to be 154 million, with an 80th percentile range between 144 million and 165 million. In 2016, turnout was 137 million, by comparison.
The primary ingredient in our turnout estimate is polls that ask people whether they're more or less enthusiastic about voting than usual, and those polls are showing record levels of enthusiasm.
We've also increased our estimate based on academic research showing expanded voting options (e.g. no-excuse absentee voting) tends to increase turnout, as well as new @ElectProject estimates of the voting-eligible population, which is higher than what we'd used previously.
Read 5 tweets
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/
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…
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.
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 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.

Read 4 tweets

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