A quick check on where the #VAGov model made by @Thorongil16 and I stands at the moment -- margins available at striderforecasts.com.

Democrats are still forecasted to win by a touch over 3.5. Race remains Lean Democratic with a 68% win probability, in our eyes.
Some definite late movement in our model to Youngkin, but in our eyes, this is not enough.

Firstly, Virginia is a highly educated Biden +10 state. We begin with a heavier McAuliffe prior due to turnout dynamics that, based on education and propensities, would be more Dem-leaning
I do think some polls have drifted towards heavily R samples; Fox poll yesterday was an example, and based on some of the margins, I think the Echelon poll oversamples Rs. Hard to tell, but I do not think there has been this much movement re: turnout dynamics in the 2 weeks
It is absolutely plausible that Youngkin has begun to swing a lot of voters. Some polls also indicate this. The model's caught on to this possibility and has dipped to reflect this increased chance. This, in my eyes, is Youngkin's main lane to victory, given VA demographics.
I continue to believe that we're on track for a pretty educated electorate. I will caution you against reading too much into the early vote "drops". This also means you'll see a much higher % of voters show up on e-day than in 2020...which means splits will likely be less R.
Is that enough for Youngkin? Maybe. He has a lane, and anyone telling you he doesn't isn't looking at the recent mountain of data. But given everything, I'd still rather be McAuliffe, and I think he still pulls it off. But this has wide error bands, and I could *easily* be wrong.
in typical Lakshya fashion I am now late to something so bye for now. Anyways, for more VA analysis, follow @Thorongil16 and me.

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More from @lxeagle17

29 Oct
I can't find crosstabs for this, but on the surface, this is probably not what you want to see if you're Terry McAuliffe. A continuation of the "late movement" theme; whether that's an artifact of LV screens being wonky is unclear, but it goes in the model (D+4.1 now).
pre-emptively to those saying McAuliffe's margin has plunged in our model: in the last 3 days, we've added in the Fox, Washington Post, and Echelon polls. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that it'll change the forecast!
Something in this poll is that enthusiasm is at comparable levels across party lines, so this would indicate Youngkin is pulling a *lot* of Biden voters over to his side. Whether that's a reasonable estimate or not, I don't know, but that's his actual path to victory.
Read 5 tweets
29 Oct
A pretty reasonable poll and electorate screen that tells us more of what we knew: a close race, where more Biden->Youngkin crossover is happening rather than McAuliffe/Trump. Anyways, something interesting is how downballot races like the AG/LG appears to be 3-4 points more Dem.
Youngkin outperforming Trump by 15 or so with noncollege whites would be interesting. I think his path to victory is going to involve some gains with noncollege whites and more gains with college whites, especially if given this level of ticket splitting, but let’s see.
Yeah it’s only a 43% educated electorate but also, if you want to play that game, dragging it up to 50% or so would only give you like a D+3 result at best, so…still a very close race, once again.
Read 4 tweets
28 Oct
Every poll has two parts: the electorate screen and the margins among the demographics. The electorate screen is where you give a representative sample of what you think the electorate will look like. The crosstab margins are the margins among those groups. 🧵
If the electorate screen is broken, there’s a problem. It means that the poll will not be representative of the state. Because fundamentally, you’re giving the results that would occur in an electorate different from the one that actually exists. Allow me to construct an example.
Say that a state is 40% Black, 20% Latino, and 40% White. Your poll would probably want to match up in terms of demographics — You cannot poll all 3M voters in the electorate, so you need a good sample to allow you to approximate what you think the electorate resembles.
Read 9 tweets
27 Oct
Given recent polling trends, the model's converging to ~D+5, in my read. That'll likely be what our forecast ends up as (and thus on the border of lean/likely Dem too). The confidence interval here would be D+2 to D+8.
If I had to be forced to pick, I guess I'd take the under? Just because it's not really statistically safe to rely on a polling miss of >4 points even accounting for the flaws I've discussed. But honestly, I'd just go with the forecast, because my punditry has never been great.
I think a lot of the polls aren't great, but part of analysis is setting your rules beforehand and then following them. We add in just about every poll we can *unless* it's from a banned agency or violates our pre-set rules on internals/data quality/data collection procedures.
Read 5 tweets
27 Oct
#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.
Read 5 tweets
26 Oct
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.
Read 9 tweets

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