Emerson has been banned by us for a month now because of MTurk data quality issues. Not including it regardless of what the poll says.
Also, the n=145 among Black voters here. A 36 point swing right would be well outside the margin of error for the Black subsample.
I need to stress that *I COULD VERY EASILY BE WRONG*. All I'm saying is that if Youngkin wins, the path to victory will look *nothing* like what these polls suggest. Data points to a McAuliffe win, but if D turnout is low or Youngkin swings suburbanites, it could change.
I'm just saying that this is not good data. Like in California recall, we currently have a series of very questionable polls that are not worth the paper they're printed on. I'm not dumb enough to say it's safe D. I'm just saying that these polls are bad.
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#VAGov polls have largely been junk, but Youngkin can win this race. But the early vote suggests that turnout for both sides will probably be fine, so if he wins, he wins by swinging significant amounts of college-educated voters (specifically college-educated whites).
No polls have been showing a significant swing right with college voters, though. They've either been showing the race close because Black voters swing right by 35 from 2020, because non-college whites swing right by 25, or because their partisan screen is ridiculously R-heavy.
I find the "non-college whites swinging right by 25" part a bit questionable because Trump's support is already very, very high in most of the rural white areas, so unless you've seen a catastrophic collapsed with Virginia urban whites (questionable?), I don't see the math.
Model updated for #VAGov with the new @Suffolk_U poll. The forecast from @Thorongil16 and me is D+5.8. Suffolk is the second high-quality pollster to show a close race, so let’s dive in 🧵
I will say this: if you firmly believe crosstab examination is not a useful exercise, please stop reading. Nothing I say will be of any utility to you, because we have fundamentally different ways of going about this. Save yourself the time and stop reading.
Suffolk’s poll only has an N=500. You need to be careful with the window of results you consider as a result. Anyways, the racial crosstabs are okay; McAuliffe wins Black voters 81-8, and I would wager that undecideds here are expected to break Democratic.
Heading into the final week or so before the election, here’s how @Thorongil16 and I have things shaping up for #VAGov. We still have this race as fairly stable and think McAuliffe should win by about six-and-a-half points. His odds of winning are a bit over 80% (likely D).
Democratic early vote has really surged recently, as folks like @samshirazim, @ZacharyStarbuc1, and @WinWithJMC have noted. This week will be crucial for Democrats, but they had a very good weekend and continue to see their base areas go up in share of statewide votes cast
As folks like Zachary and Sam have noted, NOVA will likely be fine for Democratic turnout. Areas like Richmond are lagging a bit, but that probably isn’t enough for Rs, who currently have their own troubles with getting whites in Southwest VA to remember an election exists.
Points in favor of a Youngkin victory: Biden's approval is horrific, so independents might break R, and and Democratic turnout is undeniably lagging currently, so you could see him eke out a 1-2 pt win.
Points against: Virginia 2012-2020, and he *still* can't clear 46% in polls.
That last part is especially telling for me, because in every poll, the undecideds have been disproportionately Democratic, and we know from a lot of polling data that split ticket voting is quite low in this race right now. So the median scenario shouldn't be a tossup IMO.
Polling already seems to price in a Republican turnout/enthusiasm advantage, and even with that, Youngkin isn't crossing 46%, which is a problem. People are eventually going to decide, so he'll have to get a good bit of crossover votes he's not currently getting.
Here are all public, nonpartisan polls of likely voters conducted in October for #VAGov. Polling points to a D+4 race, but it really depends on the screen used. This stuff is really hard to model!
CBS/YouGov had two LV models, so both are included (but weighted by half to ensure that double-counting isn't a problem), and Monmouth's LV model was D+2, so we used that; our rule is to use LV results wherever possible.
That doesn't really favor a party; sometimes we put in things like D+2 instead of the tie among registered voters in Monmouth, but then we've also omitted the Fox D+11 poll of registered Virginia voters, so...
We've updated the model made by @Thorongil16 and I with the Monmouth poll.
Our forecast is at D+6.7, with an 84% chance of Democrats winning, making our rating Likely Democratic. You can view the county margins at striderforecasts.com. 🧵[1/]
The Monmouth poll is absolutely not a good one for Democrats. Let's not dance around it. Even if you take the educational splits and weight it with our screen, which is 52% college-educated, you get a D+2 margin. This is not good.
What's going on, though?
From every poll, we see that Biden voters choose McAuliffe while Trump voters choose Youngkin, with little middle ground. But independents have taken an 18 point swing *in a month* in this poll. They were McAuliffe +9 last month, Youngkin +9 this month.