Whether early voting numbers can be helpful in determining a potential winner is a question that has been batted around for some time. But the bigger question is simple: why is it that we are not looking at early voting numbers as a means to judge the accuracy of the polling we are seeing? After all, these are tangible numbers than can be compared in real time to what the polling has been suggesting. Right now the tangible numbers look absolutely nothing like the polling would suggest as it pertains to early voting numbers.
Either way...
We have heard about disappointing early voting numbers for Democrats in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states over the past few days. After Democrats secured massive leads over the first few days of early voting, Republicans have made their way back to respectable, if not favorable numbers.
More to the point, there are enough polls out there that suggest Registered Democrats should be approximately two times more likely to vote by mail or vote early than Registered Republicans. But that sort of dominance simply is not happening. So the question becomes: does one bad apple (polling question) spoil the whole bunch? Or should we not be concerned that the polling we are relying on was simply out to lunch on the questions regarding early voting?
Early voting numbers have become increasingly worrisome for Democrats. In many states they are running behind where they were at in 2016 when compared to Republican early vote totals. Even in some states where they believe they are banking a slightly larger advantage (such as Nevada), those states do not seem to be battleground states that Trump would need to win.
We have heard about disappointing early voting numbers for Democrats in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states over the past few days. After Democrats secured massive leads over the first few days of early voting, Republicans have made their way back to respectable, if not favorable numbers.
Now I understand that in some polling, they are polling early voting based on whether you are a Biden voter or a Trump voter. But that will still be dominated by partisan political breakdown as Democrats will still make up over two thirds of Biden's overall support. When you talk about Independents breaking, you might be talking the difference between 13-14 percent of the overall vote total and 15-16 percent of the overall vote total being Independents who vote for Biden. Independents only make up about 30% of the electorate and they are the most prone to vote third Party.
More to the point, there are enough polls out there that suggest Registered Democrats should be approximately two times more likely to vote by mail or vote early than Registered Republicans. But that sort of dominance simply is not happening. So the question becomes: does one bad apple (polling question) spoil the whole bunch? Or should we not be concerned that the polling we are relying on was simply out to lunch on the questions regarding early voting?
In other words, if you cannot trust these polls to get early voting numbers relatively close, then should we trust them to get the rest of it accurate?
124 comments:
We all knew the polls would get closer as the election got closer. All those biden big lead polls were bogus. We knew it. But now they have to put out their best predictions in the best three days.
Your only way of being correct, if the voting turnout on November 3rd, strongly supports the President.
A large percentage of the people who have waited to vote on the election day are over 60 years old.
In Florida, the diverse Hispanics are in 3 major groups. The Cuban American and the Venezuelan American voters favor the President.
The other group is the Puerto Rican group, and they don't like the paper towel tossing President.
If by 9:00 PM EST the Vice President is going to be the President the reality show Presidency will be taken off the air.
One other thing is that the poll takers have been very careful about the mistakes in the last election cycle.
A distrust is something to cling on, as the evidence looks bad for the President.
Trafalgar, the only pollster who correctly predicted Trump winning PA, WI, MI, FL, NC, is calling for a Trump win.
Roger, IF Trump Wins.
What will you do?
IF, Biden's win, he will be my President.
Just like Obama was my President.
You mean the President you called a black monkey in the White House and called his wife a cheap Chicago whore?
We have heard about disappointing early voting numbers for Democrats in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states over the past few days.
That is completely incorrect.
Over 80 million people have already voted as of today.
You used to analyze information without partisan bias.
I try very hard to avoid political bias in regards to information.
Amazing how Roger knows so much in fantasy/projection and so very little in Reality.
Did Audi Deliver your new A8?
Surely you have the $80,000.
You ignore that the pollster have been very careful.
Trafalgar, is the only place where someone agrees with you and your desire for the President.
"You mean the President you called a black monkey in the White House and called his wife a cheap Chicago whore?"
Yep, that one.
Big "Mike" is a Dyke
James, Trump has never been your President.
And , I don't tell ppl to shut up.
So rude.
No most havr not been careful. Especially tbr nsyional polls. They've been absurd.
"I try very hard to avoid political bias in regards to information." Roger
Actual data is not political, so, you're wrong, sgain.
Personal insults are discouraged by Thecoldheartedtruth.
Shut up kputz
Did Audi Deliver your new A8?
Surely you have the $80,000.
No, why not, you said it would happen in 2020.
Myballs said...
Trafalgar, the only pollster who correctly predicted Trump winning PA, WI, MI, FL, NC, is calling for a Trump win.
October 31, 2020 at 3:12 PM
______
The article you cited is dated Oct. 15th. It's now the 31st. Are you sure Trafalgar is still saying that?
On the 25th, Nate Silver called the Trafalgar polls "crazy."
This story from the New York Times doesn't mean that either side has the advantage.
More than 90 million votes have already been cast in the 2020 presidential election — about 65 percent of the total turnout in 2016, according to data updated Saturday afternoon by the U.S. Elections Project, an effort led by Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in American elections.
The number of early votes cast has already shattered the previous early turnout record set in 2016, thanks in large part to expansions of mail and absentee voting put in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 91 million ballots have been sent to voters through the mail, and as of Saturday, 57 million of them have been returned. Over 32 million votes have been cast early and in person, according to the Elections Project.
A New York Times analysis of polling and ballot-request data shows that more Democrats have requested absentee ballots than Republicans have, and that most Republicans are likely to vote in person on Election Day. Experts have warned against drawing conclusions about the outcome of the race from early vote data for that reason and others. (Indeed, Hillary Clinton’s apparent edge in the early vote was widely reported in 2016 in the days before she ultimately lost the Electoral College.)
Still, experts have acknowledged that the early vote data so far does suggest turnout may exceed the 139 million votes cast in 2016.
The early vote is being watched particularly closely in crucial swing states like Florida, a state the president narrowly carried against Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and where polling is showing Joseph R. Biden Jr. slightly ahead. Data from the Elections Project shows that about 8.3 million ballots have been cast in Florida, a total representing roughly 59 percent of the registered voters in the state.
In Texas, more than 9.6 million ballots had been cast as of Friday, more than the roughly 8.9 million Texans who voted statewide four years ago. Polling averages there show a tight race in which President Trump is ahead.
The actual turnout on November 3rd will determine the President in 2001.
My own observations of the people standing in line for hours to vote, give me a feeling of enthusiasm for the Democratic party nation wide.
Except 4hat Trafalgar had it right in 2016. Silver did not. That's the point.
You know, Kputz is not even worth being told to shut up. The more we TOTALLY ignore his inane nothingness, the more it bothers him.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/31/us/trump-biden-election
No most havr not been careful. Especially tar nsyional polls
Drinking early today ball less???????? According to the wonder......all pollsters results are being issued because they have not been careful.......BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! I guess that would be an interesting business model for a trump supporter!!!!
Grasping at straws
Silver says Trafalgar just got lucky.
That was then.
This is now.
"American hostage rescued in West Africa by SEAL Team 6 in daring raidThe rescue took place earlier Saturday in northern Nigeria"
Great Job CnC.
Silver's opinion means nothing
Trafalgar got all those states right in 2016. Silver is jealous. Trafalgar is factoring in the Silent Trump voters. Rightly so.
An interesting question, has the pandemic effected the polls? We probably won't know until after the election week.
Biden’s lead is also a little bit larger than Clinton's today.
After the [FBI Director James] Comey letter, Clinton’s lead went down to 3 or 4 points in national polls and 2 or 3 points in the average tipping point state. Only 72,000 votes in three states gave Trump the electoral college victory.
Biden is ahead by more like 7 points in the RCP average
There was no October surprise!
The Democrats have an advantage in fundraising.
They are flooding the airwaves in South Carolina to defeat Lyndsey Graham.
Trafalgar got lucky.
IMNSHO the Democrats are in the lead, and path to victory, unless something happens.
Silver's opinion means nothing
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! He makes a pretty good living opining balls.......you on the other hand post here!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!
“Who let all these people into my basement?”
— Joe Biden, addressing a drive in campaign rally.
The shy Trump voters even more pronounced This time. Even more do not want to be insulted, assaulted, attacked, or anything else for their support. But they're already voting.
Over 90,000 infections yesterday. It is going to disappear from his mind
Twitter Safety
@TwitterSafety
Our policies are living documents. We're willing to update and adjust them when we encounter new scenarios or receive important feedback from the public. One such example is the recent change to our Hacked Materials Policy and its impact on accounts like the New York Post.
This means that because a specific @nypost enforcement led us to update the Hacked Materials Policy, we will no longer restrict their account under the terms of the previous policy and they can now Tweet again.
https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1322298208236830720
ummm... it wasn't hacked and it wasn't Russian disinformation
James Woods
@RealJamesWoods
You essentially kept this story out of the news cycle for a week during the highest voting period of a presidential election. You are the #EnemyOfThePeople
As are all the journalists who sat on this and/or refuse to confront the Biden's
But people found out anyway
Slate
Don’t Panic
by William Saletan
The 2020 election is coming down to the wire, and millions of Americans are freaking out. They’re afraid President Donald Trump will surge at the end and win, as he did in 2016. But there are good reasons to think that won’t happen, based on measurable differences between the two elections. Joe Biden is in a much better position than Hillary Clinton was.
Biden already has more than 200 electoral votes—probably around 230—in the bag. To reach the 270 necessary to win, he just needs three states Clinton narrowly lost: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Let’s call these the core states. If Biden loses one of them, he could still get to 270 by taking Arizona, Florida, Georgia, or North Carolina. Let’s call these the bonus states.
Four days before the 2016 election, Clinton trailed Trump in all four bonus states. FiveThirtyEight recorded these deficits in its state-by-state “now-cast,” which tracked each candidate’s average share of the vote in polls. That left her no margin for error. Any loss in the core states was enough to sink her.
Biden, by contrast, has a healthy margin. Four days before the election, he’s leading Trump in the FiveThirtyEight poll average in all seven states. He’s ahead by 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania and by 8 to 9 in Wisconsin and Michigan. That’s well above Clinton, who didn’t have a five-point lead in any of those states. Suppose what happened in 2016 happens again: In the final days—due to late deciders, polling error, or the emergence of “shy” Trump voters—Trump gains as much ground against Biden as he did against Clinton. That’s 3.8 percentage points in Michigan, 4.1 in Pennsylvania, and 5 in Wisconsin. Guess what? Biden still wins all three.
But suppose Biden loses one. In that case, he’s likely to make it up from the bonus states. In Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, Trump’s margin against Clinton on the Friday before the election, as measured by the FiveThirtyEight “now-cast,” almost exactly matched the final result. No wave of “shy” voters materialized; no polls were suddenly “unskewed.” In those states, Biden now leads by 3.1 percent, 2.2 percent, and 1.7 percent, respectively. If he wins any of them, that’s insurance against a loss in the core states.
Biden isn’t just leading in more states. Across the board, his vote share is higher than Clinton’s was. On the Friday before the election, Clinton was averaging 48.8 percent in the core states and 46.3 percent in the bonus states. Biden is averaging 51.2 percent in the core states and 48.8 percent in the bonus states. To beat Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, all Trump had to do was pick up undecided voters. That wouldn’t suffice against Biden, since he’s above 50 in each of those states.
Could Biden lose the same ground Clinton lost, plus an extra couple of points? That’s unlikely, because his extra cushion isn’t an accident. It reflects an underlying difference: Clinton had extremely high unfavorable ratings. Most voters didn’t like her. (Many of them also disliked Trump, but they disliked Clinton enough to vote for Trump instead.) You could argue that some of the dislike for Clinton was sexist. But it proved to be an invisible ceiling—a glass one, if you prefer—on her share of the vote. She failed to top 47.5 percent in any of the seven states.
Biden’s ceiling is a lot higher. Compare their ratings in surveys taken by the same pollster at roughly the same stage of the race. In Pennsylvania, Clinton’s unfavorable rating was 56 percent, as measured by an October 2016 Quinnipiac survey. This month, the same pollster showed Biden at 43 percent. In Wisconsin, Clinton’s unfavorable rating stood at 52 percent in a Marquette survey. Marquette now shows Biden at 45 percent. In comparable surveys, Biden’s net favorable rating has beaten Clinton’s by 11 points in North Carolina, 13 in Wisconsin, 18 in Florida, 23 in Pennsylvania, and 27 in Georgia. Her average unfavorable rating across the five states was 56 percent. Biden’s is 45 percent. That’s the difference between winning and losing.
In fact, these numbers understate the gap. The last voters to make up their minds are independents, and they’re way more open to Biden than they were to Clinton. Among independents, in same-pollster comparisons, Biden’s net favorable rating has exceeded Clinton’s by shocking margins: 30 points in Wisconsin, 32 in Georgia, 38 in North Carolina, 44 in Pennsylvania, and 45 in Florida. Clinton’s unfavorable rating among independents, averaged across the five states, was more than 66 percent. Biden’s was less than 44 percent. Similar comparisons aren’t available in other states, but Monmouth polls show Biden doing 26 points better among independents in Arizona than Clinton did.
These structural differences explain, in large part, why Clinton lost and why Biden is likely to win. Even where her numbers were close to his, she was up against a ceiling. He isn’t. Trump could try to block ballots from being counted, but the number of ballots he’d have to invalidate would probably be far bigger than in previous contested elections. To win, Trump would need something that didn’t happen last time. He would need either a disproportionate turnout surge from his base—of which there’s no measurable sign—or a disproportionate failure of Biden supporters to vote. And if you’re for Biden, that’s in your hands.
Emerald Robinson ✝️
@EmeraldRobinson
The dirty little secret of pollsters and polling firms is that nobody talks to them. They usually have a 6% response rate.
That's right: for every 100 voters they call, only 6 talk to them.
Nobody should trust the polls.
There are lots of signs...
And if they are right after 2020 no sane person will
Balls the shy voters are the Biden supporters, because the President has encouraged violence against people who don't agree with him.
People from red states are posting on Facebook and Twitter feed telling about the crazy Trumpets
Wait for it...
the party of "science" learned nothing about polling in 2016
ROFLMFAO !!!
James, I see that your stocker has changed his name!
JamesNewLeaf's Fucking Daddy
You should make sure that he can't hurt you
Roger Amick said...
James, I see that your stocker has changed his name!
Quit stalking me roger amick
GET HELP !!!
And I'm not a black frontline worker stocking the grocery shelves for Joe Biden
racist roger
ROFLMFAO !!!
Lol, what a coward you are.
"You should make sure that he can't hurt you"
Equipo Trump - Text VAMOS to 88022
@EquipoTrump
Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is seen praising "Comrade Biden" and discussing their friendly 2015 meeting in a resurfaced video. It's DISGUSTING!
Joe Biden is TOO WEAK to stand up to the Radical Left! Only President Trump can stop SOCIALISM! #LatinosForTrump
https://twitter.com/EquipoTrump/status/1322341165522427904
Retired Orrin G. Hatch
@RetiredOrrin
The Biden/Harris campaign's promise of restoring integrity would mean more if they didn't focus their campaigns so heavily on long-debunked lies like this.
The "fine people on both sides" attack is one of the most persistent myths of the Trump era.
https://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/04/26/joe-biden-donald-trump-charlotttesville-fine-people-neo-nazis-column/3588970002/
Stoking racial division is a typical Biden tactic.
And it deflects from his obvious corruption issue.
Roger , at your "Home" 🤣, do you have a DNR?
Japan is a very densely populated country.
From the Wall Street Journal
Coronavirus Live Updates: New U.S. Cases Hit Fresh RecordThe U.S. recorded on Friday its highest daily number of coronavirus cases—99,300. Japan reported 778 new cases on Saturday, pushing its total to date past 100,000.
South Korea, Japan and the rest of Asia has handled the pandemic.
Even China
He won't be hugging up against Comrade Putin, or Kim, or Chi, or Erdogan, or Bolsonaro, etc. etc.
jon gabriel
@exjon
“I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists.”
-- Joe Biden, August 23, 2020.
Joe Biden
@JoeBiden
I'm not going to shut down the country.
I'm not going to shut down the economy.
I'm going to shut down the virus.
12:10 PM · Oct 30, 2020
Even Joe Biden doesn't listen to Joe Biden.
Or is he just wandering around in a haze with no idea what he's saying ???
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/covid-2020-10-30
Twitter troll squad
JamesNewLeaf said...
He won't be hugging up against Comrade Putin, or Kim, or Chi, or Erdogan, or Bolsonaro, etc. etc.
Obviously Biden would be too busy cashing their checks
Thanks for reminding
ROFLMFAO !!
They're not bad guys, guys.
Tim Young
@TimRunsHisMouth
Joe Biden is dressing up as a corrupt, decaying carcass for Halloween.
He spent a lot of time getting ready for this one
Tim Young
@TimRunsHisMouth
If you turn on MSNBC and CNN... their coverage is wall to wall COVID... the same talking point that the Biden campaign is focused on.
It's all they have, and smart people know it's not good enough.
so that's why their minions keep posting that here.
Except they are not smart enough to realize it's not good enough
ROFLMFAO !!!
We are going to party like it's 2016 all over again !!!
Because it kind of is !!!
Texas is in play.
Latino Democrats in battleground states have been hitting neighborhoods, trying to boost the digital work and phone banking they began when the pandemic hit. In Texas, the stakes are high now that the presidential race is considered a toss-up.
The pro-Biden organizers and volunteers point to four years of rule by a president who has failed their community, citing the growing pandemic, which threatens to wipe out gains in Latino wealth and is leading to a "historic decimation" of Latino families.
They also tell voters about President Donald Trump's continued attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his policy of intentionally separating children from their parents to deter immigration.
Scott Greenfield
@ScottGreenfield
University of Wisconsin-Madison, student govt unanimously voted to remove statue of Abraham Lincoln as a “remnant of White Supremacy.”
https://twitter.com/ScottGreenfield/status/1322205090258784256
talking truth to power in 2020
unanimously
Woke and uneducated, thanks "teachers"
And those not busy looting will be voting Biden/Harris to get out of their chains before they get out in the real world.
Twitter troll squad asshole
Ned Ryun
@nedryun
I’m informing my four kids that after they go trick or treating it’s gonna be 10% of their candy for the Big Guy.
and if you see slow Joe just tell them he's just dressed up as a zombie. Though VERY realistic
Quit stalking me roger amick
and GET HELP !!!
especially before election day.
If we think you are insane now wait until election night.
The neighbors will be calling 9-1-1
The shy voters are Biden voters???.
If you think that, there's no sense in me explaining it to you. Good grief.
You have said that there are millions of people who are afraid to say that they support the President.
But considering your past behavior here, I am not surprised.
You spent years on soars drinking George W Bush's bathwatter during the Iraq war era.
Twitter troll squad asshole
Twitter troll squad asshole
Built with pallets of cash
Satellite photos show construction at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site
Twitter troll squad asshole
I just want to say, I am very, very proud to have voted for the father of Hunter Biden.
A emailElection Update
Saturday, October 31, 2020
By Nate Silver
To borrow from Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, “I’ve seen enough.”
No, I don’t know who’s going to win the election. According to our forecast, President Trump still has a chance at a second term: a 10 percent chance to be more specific.
But — even though we’ll still get a ton of polls on Sunday and Monday — I’ve seen enough based on the polls we got earlier this week to know that things aren’t likely to change all that much in our forecast between now and just after midnight on Tuesday, when we’ll freeze it.
There just hasn’t been any real sign that the race is tightening. If anything, Joe Biden’s margins are expanding slightly in the Upper Midwest. And there isn’t any particular reason to expect the race to tighten either when more than 90 million people have already voted and the most important news story — that the United States just set a record for the number of COVID-19 cases in a day — is a negative one for Trump.
In fact, in many states, such as North Carolina, we’ve gotten what are likely to be the final polls of the state from most of the major polling firms. The one important exception is Pennsylvania, which some high-quality pollsters seem to have held out as the last state they’re planning to poll. And those polls could matter quite a bit. Pennsylvania is the most likely tipping-point state (around 37 percent of the time in our forecast), so any deviation from Biden’s current 5.1-point lead in the polls there — say, if Biden climbs to a 6-point lead or falls to a 4-point lead — could make a fairly big difference in our forecast.
But what we’ve seen so far in Pennsylvania doesn’t suggest much movement in the polls. We’ve gotten two live-caller polls since the debate: A Muhlenberg College poll published this morning had Biden up by 5 points, closely matching our average in the state. And a Quinnipiac University poll had Biden ahead by 7 — not quite as good a result as it might seem for Biden since Quinnipiac has generally had friendly results for Biden this cycle and their previous poll of the state had Biden up by 7 as well.
And if nothing changes at all in the polls, Biden’s chances of winning will nonetheless increase slightly by Tuesday morning in our forecast. That’s for two reasons:
Trump is still receiving a tiny boost in our forecast based on economic conditions and incumbency, currently amounting to an 0.2-percentage-point shift. But this will fall to 0 percent by Election Day.Uncertainty in the forecast will also be slightly reduced when we actually make it to Election Day.
That said, Biden’s current lead of 8 to 9 points nationally is quite large given our highly polarized political environment, so maybe a few of the remaining undecided voters will drift to Trump. Don’t be surprised if Biden drops to 86 percent — or jumps to 94 percent — in our final forecast.
But I don’t think that Biden and Trump are likely to escape the current zone that they’re in. Here’s what I mean by that. I think of election forecast odds as basically falling within the following four zones:
The Gray AreaThe Normal-Polling-Error ZoneThe Zone of PlausibilityThe Outer Reaches
The Gray Area is the closest zone, when it’s actually hard to tell who’s ahead, and different methods of averaging the polls or modeling out the results might give you different answers. The race isn’t in that zone this year: Biden is unambiguously ahead in the polls.
The Normal-Polling-Error Zone is a place we talked about in 2016, when we told you that Trump was only a normal-sized polling error away from beating Hillary Clinton. What did that mean? It meant that if polls were off by about the amount they’ve been off in past elections — by around 3 points, on average — and the error favored Trump, then he’d probably win the Electoral College. And that’s basically what happened, although the polling was worse in some states than others.
In probability terms, I think of the Normal-Polling-Error Zone as extending from the favorite having anything from around a 60 percent chance up to around an 84 percent chance of winning. That amounts to an error of no more than one standard deviation. Or to put it another way, it’s a zone where polling errors big enough for the underdog to win are going to occur quite routinely without anything particularly special having to happen. Polling is a challenging business, and while polls get the outcome right more often than not, nailing every election to within a point or two is hard.
The Zone of Plausibility. This is where we are this year. I think of the Zone of Plausibility as extending out to reflect an error of up to two standard deviations — so, it’s a race where the favorite has somewhere from an 84 percent to 98 percent chance of winning. You wouldn’t consider the underdog winning in an election like this to be a routine occurrence. But, well, it’s plausible, and it isn’t that hard to find precedents for it.
The polls were off by more than 7 points in 1980, for instance, underestimating Ronald Reagan’s margin of victory. (That would likely be enough for Trump to win in an election where he trails in the most likely tipping-point state, Pennsylvania, by 5 points.) Harry Truman beat the final Gallup poll in 1948 by 9 points in an upset victory. And the polls missed by 5 points in 1996, underestimating Bob Dole.
The @FiveThirtyEight nat'l polling average with 3 days until E-Day:
2020: Biden+8.6
2016: Clinton+3.9
2012: Obama+0.3
2008: Obama+6.7
2004: Bush+2.3
2000: Bush+3.6
1996: Clinton+13.8
1992: Clinton+7.6
1988: Bush+10.1
1984: Reagan+17.7
1980: Reagan+2.2
1976: Carter+0.03
— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) October 31, 2020
Now, we can debate exactly how applicable those precedents are today. There’s much more polling this year than in 1980 or in 1996. And in 1948, it wasn’t “the polling” that was off since there was just one polling firm, Gallup — maybe if there had been a Quinnipiac poll or something back then, it would correctly have forecasted Truman’s victory.
The point, though, again, is that a Trump win is plausible. And all the other models I’ve seen have Trump within the Zone of Plausibility too, although the Economist’s model, which has his chances at 4 percent, is pushing it a bit.
At the same time, though, a 2016-style polling error wouldn’t be enough for Trump to win. In the chart below — taking a page from The Upshot, which has also been doing this — I’ve taken our final polling averages in 2016 and shown how they compared to the actual results. And then I’ve shown what the results would be based on this year’s polling average if the polls were exactly as wrong as in 2016 in exactly the same states.
What if polls are as wrong as 2016? Biden still wins
State polling averages for Clinton pre-election and her final margin in that state. Current state polling averages for Biden, and what the margin would be if the 2016 errors were repeated
Democrats’ polling lead or deficitClinton 2016Biden 2020StatePolling AverageFinal MarginPolling AverageWith the 2016 error …Arizona-2.3-3.5+3.1+1.9Colorado+3.8+4.9+13.8+14.9Florida+0.5-1.2+2.1+0.4Georgia-4.0-5.1+1.6+0.5Iowa-3.4-9.4+0.1-5.9Maine+6.9-3.0+13.8+3.9ME-2-0.4-10.3+2.6-7.3Michigan+4.0-0.2+8.8+4.6Minnesota+5.9+1.5+8.9+4.5NE-2-0.7-2.2+6.2+4.7Nevada+0.7+2.4+5.8+7.5New Hampshire+3.4+0.4+11.1+8.1New Mexico+5.3+8.2+11.0+13.9North Carolina+0.7-3.7+2.4-2.0Ohio-2.0-8.1-0.9-7.0Pennsylvania+3.7-0.7+5.1+0.7Texas-8.5-9.0-1.0-1.5Virginia+5.4+5.3+11.4+11.3Wisconsin+5.4-0.8+8.6+2.4
Source: Polls
Takeaway? Joe Biden would win. In fact, he’d win 335 electoral votes, including those in Florida, Georgia and Arizona. A lot of these wins would be close — he’d win by around 2 points in Arizona and Wisconsin, by and less than 1 point in Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania, so he’d have to sweat a bit, but he’d win.
Meanwhile, while there are a lot of uncertainties this year that our model tries to account for — for instance, whether pollsters are correctly blending the early vote with the Election Day vote — there are other things that could make a big polling error less likely. For instance, the polls have been very stable so far in the race, and the large number of people who have already voted makes a last-minute shift even less likely. There are also few undecided voters: Joe Biden is polling at above 50 percent in all states that Clinton won except Nevada, plus Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania (albeit just barely; he’s at 50.1 percent there) and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. Those are enough to give him 273 electoral votes.
What’s beyond the Zone of Plausibility? Well, there are The Outer Reaches. But you don’t want to visit. It’s a cold, barren place, full of esoteric debates about whether probability distributions should have fat tails (ours do!) and how much you can distinguish, say, a 1-in-100 probability from a 1-in-1,000 one when you have only 15 or 20 elections in your sample to work from.
But we’re not in the Outer Reaches, and we’re very unlikely to wind up there before Tuesday. A Trump win remains plausible. And note that, with his 10 percent chance, our model is specifically referring to a legitimate win; we do not account for what we call “extraconstitutional shenanigans,” by Trump or anyone else, such as trying to prevent mail ballots from being counted.
Still, Trump isn’t in as strong a position as he was in 2016. As you can see in the table above, he’s polling worse than Clinton in every single battleground state. Polls can be wrong — indeed, the whole point of our probabilistic forecast is to tell you the chances of that — but they’re more likely to be wrong when a candidate’s lead is narrower. As of right now, Biden’s lead is large enough that Trump’s chances of winning are 10 percent, considerably lower than the 35 percent chance Trump had at this point in 2016.
Check out our latest 2020 election forecasts.
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In the last 78 years, no incumbent President, who has been President during an economic crisis has been reelected.
Hoover and Jimmy Carter.
I think that Scott is countercontuative.
He keeps going back 4 years.
Trump is the incumbent, not the outsider.
Biden is not Hillary Clinton .
The parallels don't apply
THE WASHINGTON POST:
White House Sidestepped FDA to Distribute Drug
The White House directed the distribution of 23 million ineffective and potentially dangerous hydroxychloroquine tablets to coronavirus patients in hard-hit areas around the country, setting aside the mandatory safety controls put in place by the Food and Drug Administration.
__________
At Trump's order, bottles of bleach will soon follow.
Fox News Doesn’t Want Trump Calling In on Election Night
Fox News President Jay Wallace told the New York Times that cable channel would be reluctant to put President Trump to air if he phoned in during the night.
Said Jay Wallace:
“Honestly, we’d have to see what was going on.”
Trump has changed his mind about election day
President Trump has reportedly called off plans to host an election night event at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., a person familiar with the plans told The New York Times.
The source told the Times that Trump will instead likely remain at the White House on Nov. 3.
This comes after the Trump campaign last weekend sent fundraiser emails to donors announcing a drawing that would give one winner, along with a guest, the chance to be flown to the nation’s capital, where they would stay for free and attend the Nov. 3 party at Trump Hotel as VIPs.
“November 3rd will go down in history as the night we won FOUR MORE YEARS,” the email read. “It will be absolutely EPIC, and the only thing that could make it better is having YOU there.”
At a press conference Monday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said she was not aware at the time of party preparations at the Trump Hotel, which Washingtonian reported is sold out for election night.
D.C.’s coronavirus regulations currently restrict events to a maximum capacity of 50 people, including all attendees and staff.
A Trump spokesman declined to comment when contacted by the Times.
Trump is trailing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in national polls, although the race is much closer in several key battleground states.
The latest Harvard CAPS-Harris survey of likely voters found Biden at 54 percent and Trump at 46 percent, with 57 percent of independents supporting the Democratic nominee.
A Hill/Harris poll released Thursday found Biden leading Trump by 3 percentage points in the swing state of Florida, with 51 percent of those surveyed in the key state of Pennsylvania backing Biden and 46 percent supporting Trump.
In North Carolina, the same poll showed the candidates are neck-and-neck, with Biden and Trump gaining 49 percent and 48 percent support, respectively.
Did he get an injection of bleach?
I'm going to check his Twitter feed!
I think it finally became clear to him how gloomy a thing it would be to lose and have a big party at his hotel to emphasize it.
DEMOCRATS GROWING MORE WORRIED
THE WASHINGTON POST:
Democrats Grow More Anxious About Pennsylvania
8:32 pm
“Joe Biden on Saturday prepared to mount a last-minute, two-day blitz of Pennsylvania, amid concern among some local Democrats about a potential late shift that would threaten his narrow advantage there and mirror President Trump’s 2016 comeback.
“Most Democrats still believe Biden will capture Pennsylvania, and he maintains a modest polling lead there, but their confidence has eroded in recent weeks with emerging signs of a tightening contest in the state, according to elected officials, strategists and party activists. Both sides believe the outcome in Pennsylvania will be crucial in determining who wins the White House.”
NATE SILVER REMAINS CONFIDENT
Nate Silver says
The Poll Would Have to Be Way Off for Trump to Win
8:35 pm
Nate Silver: “There just hasn’t been any real sign that the race is tightening. If anything, Joe Biden’s margins are expanding slightly in the Upper Midwest. And there isn’t any particular reason to expect the race to tighten when more than 90 million people have already voted and the most important news story — that the United States just set a record for the number of COVID-19 cases in a day — is a negative one for Trump.
“In fact, in many states, such as North Carolina, we’ve gotten what are likely to be the final polls of the state from most of the major polling firms. The one important exception is Pennsylvania, which some high-quality pollsters seem to have kept as the last state they’re planning to poll. And those polls could matter quite a bit. Pennsylvania is the most likely tipping-point state (it delivers the 270th electoral vote around 37 percent of the time in our forecast), so any deviation from Biden’s current 5.1-point lead in the polls there — say, if Biden climbs to a 6-point lead or falls to a 4-point lead — could make a fairly big difference in our forecast.
“But what we’ve seen so far in Pennsylvania doesn’t suggest much movement in the polls.”
New Mexico move to Trump.
Nevada moves Trump.
THE WASHINGTON POST:
Fauci Offers Blunt Assessment of Trump
8:51 pm
“President Trump’s repeated assertions the United States is ’rounding the turn’ on the novel coronavirus have increasingly alarmed the government’s top health experts,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Dr. Anthony Fauci:
“We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”
Fauci also noted that Joe Biden “is taking it seriously from a public health perspective” while Trump is “looking at it from a different perspective.”
Republicans Seek to Void 100K Votes In Texas
8:41 pm
“A federal judge in Texas scheduled an emergency hearing for Monday on whether Houston officials unlawfully allowed drive-through voting and should toss more than 100,000 votes in the Democratic-leaning area.
“In a brief order, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Houston on Friday agreed to hear arguments by a Republican state legislator and others that votes already cast at drive-through voting sites in the Houston area should be rejected.”
It's anvm interesting argument, whether drive thru voting is legal or not.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said that if he loses, it's his fault.
I don't agree with their description of the opposition as a MSM attempt to destroy him.
But this is interesting.
A different Republican President with this record would be sailing to re-election, yet Mr. Trump has trailed in the polls for months. He has certainly faced the most fanatical opposition of any modern President. The idea that he’d lead some anti-democratic coup was always absurd. More realistic was that the bureaucracy and a partisan press would work together to undermine the political rookie’s ability to govern.
So they have, and to a degree even we didn’t anticipate. The Russia probe was an FBI attempt to stop his election, and then undermine his Presidency, fomented by the Clinton campaign. Insiders leaked his conversations with foreign leaders, and Democrats were determined to impeach him for something, which they did without evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors.
Yet Mr. Trump’s own chaotic governance has too often handed his enemies a sword. His narcissism made him think he could control FBI director James Comey, and his indulgent tweet about taping Mr. Comey triggered a special counsel. He is often reckless and makes needless enemies. He is not the only cause of America’s political divisions, but he has contributed to them. He has had four chiefs of staff, four national security advisers, and he often trashes good people as they depart.
As we warned in 2017, Mr. Trump has also squandered his ability to persuade with false claims. That lack of credibility came home to haunt with Covid-19. Mr. Trump’s policies—on vaccines and resources—are better than his critics claim. But his habit of personalizing everything, engaging in petty feuds, and making Panglossian claims of “rounding the turn” have cost him support, especially among seniors.
There’s no reason to think Mr. Trump’s governance would change in a second term. His disruption worked in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, but he has returned to the same playbook this year when the public is in a different frame of mind. Americans want calm realism on Covid. For all of his cunning and marketing flair, he has missed this change in the national mood. By focusing so much on himself, he has helped Mr. Biden make the election a referendum on the incumbent rather than a choice.
***
The best argument for re-electing Mr. Trump is as a brake on a Democratic Party that is increasingly radical on the economy and the culture; Mr. Biden won’t be able or willing to do it. A GOP Senate could also be that brake, though the Senate’s fate may depend on how well Mr. Trump does. Covid and partisan passions make this election even harder than usual to handicap. Voters who want a centrist President Biden should split their tickets.
If Mr. Trump does lose, and takes a Republican Senate down with him, the cause will not be weak Republicans, incompetent campaign staff, or even the relentless partisanship of the press. Joe Biden and the Democrats couldn’t make Mr. Trump the fourth incumbent in a century to be fired after a single term. Only Donald Trump could do that.
This always amuses me
The Russia probe was an FBI attempt to stop his election, and then undermine his Presidency, fomented by the Clinton campaign. Insiders leaked his conversations with foreign leaders, and Democrats were determined to impeach him for something, which they did without evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors.
The FBI is not a partisan organization
There is no evidence of widespread vote fraud.
It has occurred but our country has had free and fair elections for 240 years, the only nation on earth has done that!
Your COVID-19 PCR test result was NEGATIVE
The silent majority is tired of being silent.
All the Trump rallies popping up, including in CA, combined with where the candidates have been campaigning, tell us where all the energy and momentum is.
The former leadership of it certainly was.
Impeached Trump today at Reading PA COVID rally:
“If we win on Tuesday or — thank you very much, Supreme Court — shortly thereafter…"
The silent majority ran a Biden campaign bus off the freeway in Texas.
President Donald Trump's campaign rallies between June and September may have caused some 30,000 coronavirus infections and more than 700 deaths, according to a new study by Stanford University economists.
That's 700 people who would have voted for the President .
Maybe you should Google all of the Trump supporters hospitalized just for showing that support. Hypocrite.
In Trump’s America it’s ok to run your opponent off the road. Voter intimidation & suppression are what you do. Don’t live in Trump’s America.
Negligent homicide charges should be considered
Happy Sunday sensless.
Friend’s post
Nailed it!
Dear White Evangelicals,
I need to tell you something: People have had it with you. They’re done. They want nothing to do with you any longer, and here’s why: They see your hypocrisy, your inconsistency, your incredibly selective mercy, and your thinly veiled supremacy. For eight years they watched you relentlessly demonize a black President; a man faithfully married for 26 years; a devoted father and husband without a hint of moral scandal or the slightest whiff of infidelity. They watched you deny his personal faith convictions, argue his birthplace, and ridicule his character—all without cause or evidence. They saw you brandish Scriptures to malign him and use the laziest of racial stereotypes in criticizing him. And through it all, White Evangelicals—you never once suggested that God placed him where he was,
you never publicly offered prayers for him and his family, you never welcomed him to your Christian Universities, you never gave him the benefit of the doubt in any instance, you never spoke of offering him forgiveness or mercy, your evangelists never publicly thanked God for his leadership, your pastors never took to the pulpit to offer solidarity with him, you never made any effort to affirm his humanity or show the love of Jesus to him in any quantifiable measure.
You violently opposed him at every single turn—without offering a single ounce of the grace you claim as the heart of your faith tradition. You jettisoned Jesus as you dispensed damnation on him.
And yet you give carte blanche to a white Republican man so riddled with depravity, so littered with extramarital affairs, so unapologetically vile, with such a vast resume of moral filth—that the mind boggles.
And the change in you is unmistakable. It has been an astonishing conversion to behold: a being born again.
With him, you suddenly find religion. With him, you’re now willing to offer full absolution.
With him, all is forgiven without repentance or admission.
With him you’re suddenly able to see some invisible, deeply buried heart. With him, sin has become unimportant, compassion no longer a requirement. With him, you see only Providence.
And White Evangelicals, all those people who have had it with you—they see it all clearly.
They recognize the toxic source of your inconsistency.
They see that pigmentation and party are your sole deities.
They see that you aren’t interested in perpetuating the love of God or emulating the heart of Jesus. They see that you aren’t burdened to love the least, or to be agents of compassion, or to care for your Muslim, gay, African, female, or poor neighbors as yourself.
They see that all you’re really interested in doing, is making a God in your own ivory image and demanding that the world bow down to it. They recognize this all about white, Republican Jesus—not dark-skinned Jesus of Nazareth.
And I know you don’t realize it, but you’re digging your own grave in these days; the grave of your very faith tradition.
Your willingness to align yourself with cruelty is a costly marriage. Yes, you’ve gained a Supreme Court seat, a few months with the Presidency as a mouthpiece, and the cheap high of temporary power—but you’ve lost a whole lot more.
You’ve lost an audience with millions of wise, decent, good-hearted, faithful people with eyes to see this ugliness.
You’ve lost any moral high ground or spiritual authority with a generation. You’ve lost any semblance of Christlikeness. You’ve lost the plot. And most of all you’ve lost your soul.
I know it’s likely you’ll dismiss these words. The fact that you’ve even made your bed with such malevolence, shows how far gone you are and how insulated you are from the reality in front of you.
But I had to at least try to reach you. It’s what Jesus would do.
John Pavlovitz
We have a genius here who couldn't care less about the harassing and assaulting of Trump supporters just for showing that support, as well as the rioting, violence and destruction of businesses, all being done by the left. But he's outraged over a bus. This is why he has lost respect on the board.
Trump responded by saying I love Texas
Violence and looting is unacceptable and should be prosecuted
A brand new poll shows the President is in danger.
The New York times reported
Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat.
Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is ahead of Mr. Trump in the Northern battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as well as in the Sun Belt states of Florida and Arizona, according to a poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College. His strength is most pronounced in Wisconsin, where he has an outright majority of the vote and leads Mr. Trump by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat.
A massive turnout could lead to a tsunami
Election at Hand, Biden Leads Trump in Four Key States, Poll Shows https://nyti.ms/2HWkHNp
Blogger Roger Amick said...
Trump responded by saying I love Texas
He's a bigger dick than rat and the goat fucker combined....Words do matter and imagine being on that bus with all those presumably armed white supremacists trying to drive you off the road and all the asshole in chief can come up with I Love Texas!!!!!!!!! He is a sick fuck!!!!!!
A NY Times poll has Biden ahead. I'm shocked.
Trump's minority support is at historic levels. And the Silent majority is now speaking out. Trump drew 57000 at a PA rally yesterday according to secrwt service. Biden can't draw a roomful. Trump may well win big.
A large number of the people who didn't vote in 2016, are voting against the President.
The silent majority is going to vote against the President.
Further details from the New York times article. That don't look good for the President.
More broadly, Mr. Trump is facing an avalanche of opposition nationally from women, people of color, voters in the cities and the suburbs, young people, seniors and, perhaps most significantly, new voters. In all four states, voters who did not participate in 2016, but who have already voted this time or plan to do so, said they support Mr. Biden by wide margins. That group includes both infrequent voters and young people who were not yet eligible to vote four years ago.
In Wisconsin, voters who did not cast a ballot in 2016 favor Mr. Biden by 19 points. They have a similarly lopsided preference in Florida, where Mr. Biden leads by 17 points. The advantage with people who sat out 2016 is 12 points in Pennsylvania and 7 points in Arizona.
Many of the those who said they did not vote in 2016 said they had already voted this year. In Florida and Arizona, more than two thirds of nonvoters in 2016 who were identified as likely voters this year said that they had already cast a ballot. That figure was 56 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Pennsylvania.
A record turnout will most likely result in the Democratic party to sweep the Senate majority, and state legislators across the country
As of this morning
91,746,538 Americans have already voted.
That's 40% of the registered voters
Hardly. The early voting was supposed to heavily favor Biden. It is not. Aside for the big media polls, there's nothing to support a big day for Biden.
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked that you are shocked loser......A short time ago you were calling for a trump win in NY!!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAAPAAAAAA!!!!
vor Biden. It is not.
Ballz.....your opinion is only that....opinion!!!!!!! Your only basis is words from the trump echo chamber!!!!! LOLOLOLOL~!!!!!!
Actually I said NY is in play because not the NYC exodus and the regular tv ads that we never got before.
Meanwhile, MN dem leaders are very worried 5hay Trump will flip the state red for the first timev in nearly 50 years.
Not my,opinion. It's the early analysis.
Sure ballz.....BWAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! By whom?????? I am sure you can post that piece.......LOLOLOLOL
There was a peaceful demonstration in North Carolina were pepper sprayed. The video is very disturbing
Alamance County sheriff’s deputies and Graham police pepper-sprayed people — including a 5-year-old girl and other children — who were participating in the “I Am Change” march to the polls on Saturday afternoon.
A racially diverse group of about 200 people walked with a police escort from Wayman’s Chapel AME Church to Court Square, where they held a rally encouraging people to vote. The event was organized by Rev. Greg Drumwright, a Burlington native who leads the the Citadel Church in Greensboro, according to his website.
At least three politicians participated in some parts of the event: the current mayor of Burlington, Ian Baltutis; Democratic candidate for county commissioner Dreama Caldwell; and Democratic school board candidate Seneca Rodgers.
At one point, the marchers held a moment of silence in the street in honor of George Floyd, the Black man killed while in police custody in Minneapolis earlier this summer.
After the moment of silence concluded, law enforcement told people to clear the road.
Then the police officers used pepper spray.
regular tv ads that we never got before.
Wow ballz.....that is some compelling BS on your part.....I sure hope the early analysis is better than that!!!!!!
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article246861942.html
Balls, Minnesota is not in play
It certainly is dumbass.
"Still, the incident was celebrated by President Trump, who tweeted one clip of the confrontation along with his praise: “I LOVE TEXAS!"
How can anyone support a man who pretends to be a Christian when it is convenient and the rest of the time is praising and promoting violence and hate?
Quite the retort there sport....can't back up shit so you start the trumpian name calling....Typical of low IQ trump slurpers who know the end is near!!!!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/minnesota/
Biden has a 10% lead
Balls, open up your mind.
You spend too much time watching Fox news and reading right wing websites
I can't find one website, right wing or left that support your opinion
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/minnesota/
Who gives a shit about 538? He was sure Hillary was a shoo in.
You guys keep using as your evidence polls that have been wrong for months. They've undercounted shy Trump voters for 4 years. Those voters don't want the harrassment, aggravation and even violence against them. So they remain silent. But the sure as hell are already voting.
Look at the crowds, the momentum, the minority support 8nsteaf of clinging to these polls.
Anonymous Myballs said...
You guys keep using as your evidence polls that have been wrong for months.
BWAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! How can they be wrong before any counts have occurred?????? The minority support???? Crowds of stupid people are indicative of just being stupid as the virus spreads from the events!!!!!!! Keep wishing ballz.....that is your only hope typical of low IQ brain damaged trumpet losers....
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