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.
The recalled electorate is Biden +7. Again, I think that probably makes the poll undershoot Democrats by a bit, but it is within the window of plausibility, and that’s what you mainly look for here. It would be consistent with a point or two of an R enthusiasm edge.
The college-educated electorate is interesting; they have educated voters breaking for McAuliffe by a ~52-37 margin or so, which would be a 6 point swing right from 2020. The question here is how undecideds break.
Well…this group actually voted for Biden and still approves of him by a fair bit — they think the country is on the right track by a healthy margin in this poll (50-44) and so I believe it’s more likely that they break Democratic on the whole.
What can this poll tell you, then?
- That polling indicates a close race
- That more Democrats appear to be undecided at the moment and that if they break as expected, McAuliffe should probably win by a few points (eyeballing it, this poll would indicate 2-4 points, I think).
- That polling indicates a close race
- That more Democrats appear to be undecided at the moment and that if they break as expected, McAuliffe should probably win by a few points (eyeballing it, this poll would indicate 2-4 points, I think).
Anyways, our forecast isn’t based off one poll; it’s based off fundamentals and an aggregation and breakdown of high-quality polls, almost all of which are non-partisan (we’ve taken a couple D and R internals that give detailed crosstab data, but that’s it). The forecast is D+5.8
If more polls come out showing a narrow race, it’ll tighten. It’s gone from 7.6 to 5.8 of late, so it’s responsive to polling. It does not take early vote into account, though that has seen promising signs of late. Follow @ZacharyStarbuc1 or @samshirazim for information on that.
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