What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

2020 Presidential Election Polling Thread (3 Viewers)

spodog said:
Why would you doubt the outcome of what 1,003 people said on a particular day as a way to determine what 130,000,000 casting votes in a few weeks will do?

Pollsters are modern day PT Barnum protege's.    As long as people keep lapping up what they are selling, they keep cranking it out.    Matters not whether it means anything at all.    
Click to expand...
I'd be willing to place a friendly wager with you -- I think Biden's final vote share will be within three points of his average two-way RCP vote share on election day. Not too bad for some unscientific garbage. If I lose, you'll pick a forum-appropriate avatar that I have to use for a month, and vice versa. Whaddya say?

 
spodog said:
Here is some goofball looking stressed that ran a professional polling organization, back in '08, trying to explain away why his company and all of his competitors all got their polling wrong on the CA Prop 8 voting:   Well, uh

And here is the same guy, 8 years later, still making excuses, after his polling company was 100% wrong on the 2016 Presidential voting polls:  must have been late deciders.   Only in this second clip, he seems even more stressed because he has lost all of his customers and his underwriter (aka corporate sugar daddy) pulled his funding.  His company (Field Poll) was in the process of shutting down due to incompetence as this second clip was filmed. 
Click to expand...
This is why this ranking is important when evaluating the pollster.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/

 
caustic said:
ABC / Washington Post (A+):

NATIONAL
Biden 54%
Trump 42%

Their national poll was the most accurate of 2016.
Click to expand...
Interesting twitter thread with more details: Link

ABC/Washington Post - National Poll (change from last):

Biden 54 (n/c)
Trump 42 (-2)
Jorgenson 2

Biden increases his already large lead from two weeks ago, leading independents by 12.

They are tied among men, but Biden leads women by 23(!) points.

Biden leads seniors 49-48.
 

Look at these education splits on the ABC/Washington Post poll among white voters:

White w/ no college degree: Trump +26
White college graduate: Biden +31

That's a 57 net point gap with white voters between not having a college degree and having one. Just an amazing divide.
 

Another area with huge divides are on religion. From the ABC/Washington Post poll:

White evangelicals: Trump +59
White non-evanglical protestant: Biden +11
White Catholic: Biden +6
No religion: Biden +54

The gap between white evangelicals and no religion is massive.
 

The biggest reasons Trump is losing to Biden by so much is the erosion w/ white voters and seniors.

In 2016, he carried whites nationally by 20(!) points. In the ABC/Washington Post poll today he leads them by just 2.

Trump won seniors by 17 in 2016, today *Biden* leads by 1.
 

And if you want to know why Trump is working so hard to limit early and mail-in voting - from the ABC/Washington Post poll:

Trump leads those who plan to vote on election day by 32 points, 64-32.

Among those who plan to vote early or by mail, Biden leads by 44 points, 70-26.
 

 
Interesting article in the New Yorker interviewing the RCP Senior Politics/Elections Editor, Sean Trende.

Excerpts:

Why should we trust the polls?

Generally speaking, the polls have been pretty good over the years, and given enough time you'll do better with polls than just your gut instinct. But polls are imperfect instruments. When you trust the polls, you need to trust them for what they are, which is not oracular, perfect insights of wisdom but, rather, a good metric of where things stand right now.

Is there anything in the polls that you are concerned about this time? Anything along the lines of not weighting by college education?

There’s a possibility that the problem wasn’t, in fact, that pollsters weren’t weighting by college education. That was the big, easy fix. But maybe it was something else. We don’t know what it is. The 2018 results give me some pause. I look at the polls showing Biden with twenty-per-cent-plus leads among older voters, with boomers voting roughly the same as millennials, and Gen Z, and that makes me nervous. I can tell myself a story about why that would happen, but I can also tell myself a story about conservative Trump voters hearing, “Hi, I’m from NBC/Wall Street Journal polling,” and hanging up the phone because they don’t trust the mainstream media. That makes me very nervous.

So, then, what would need to change for Trump to win? What, in addition to the polls being wrong, are we going to look back at in a month and say, “Boy, we were sure wrong when we talked in October”?

The story I have mentally pre-written is that job-approval thing. He had gotten up to like forty-six per cent [among likely voters], which means that a lot of these undecideds are probably going to break for him, because they ultimately approve of the job he’s doing.

If what we’re seeing right now is just differential response, which is a well-established phenomenon. When there’s a big blowup in the news cycles, one party won’t answer polls. That could be what we’re seeing right now. And so if, in a couple of weeks, this has gone back to him being at forty-five or forty-six per cent, and he’s leading Biden on the economy by eight, nine points, that’s the story for why he wins if he does.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-to-make-sense-of-the-polls

 
Last edited by a moderator:
McBokonon said:
Pretty solid wishcasting there.
Click to expand...
I don't think so. I think the vote will track pretty closely to the likely voter approval rating.

Right now fivethirtyeight has his weighted average at 43.8%. He's been right around 44% for over a month now. I think it would need to be close (or above) to 46% for him to have a shot at winning. That's where his approval rating was around the time he was elected in 2016.

 
Trump will win and I believe it's going to be a total landslide.. If you look at stats, the GOP has registered a ton of new voters in key battle ground states. Wouldn't shock me if places like NY and California is alot closer then it's ever been. People in those states are tired of the Democratic leadership.

 
squistion said:
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1314958874080763907

New polls show Trump's support is collapsing nationally. He's trailing not just in battlegrounds but, according to private GOP surveys, he's repelling independents to the point where Biden has drawn closer red states like Montana, Kansas and Missouri.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/us/politics/trump-biden-sun-belt.html
Click to expand...
Polls mean nothing.. Biden is actually polling worst then Hillary in some states he is suppose to win. 

 
PennStater77 said:
Trump will win and I believe it's going to be a total landslide.. If you look at stats, the GOP has registered a ton of new voters in key battle ground states. Wouldn't shock me if places like NY and California is alot closer then it's ever been. People in those states are tired of the Democratic leadership.
Click to expand...
bummer. was gonna vote on Tues but guess I won’t now :kicksrock:

 
rockaction said:
Is there anything in the polls that you are concerned about this time? Anything along the lines of not weighting by college education?

There’s a possibility that the problem wasn’t, in fact, that pollsters weren’t weighting by college education. That was the big, easy fix. But maybe it was something else. We don’t know what it is. The 2018 results give If what we’re seeing right now is just differential response, which is a well-established phenomenon. When there’s a big blowup in the news cycles, one party won’t answer polls. That could be what we’re seeing right now. And so if, in a couple of weeks, this has gone back to him being at forty-five or forty-six per cent, and he’s leading Biden on the economy by eight, nine points, that’s the story for why he wins if he does.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-to-make-sense-of-the-polls
Click to expand...
G. Elliott Morris talked about this a bit on twitter a few days ago, saying polls that account for non-response have only shifted 1-2 points towards Biden in the last couple weeks while the others have shifted 2-3+. He’s a bit skeptical of a 10-point Biden lead right now. That said, he designed his model to account for non-response (unlike other forecasters) and it still shows Biden with a 92% win probability.

David Shor has some concerns similar to Trende’s wrt persistent error from 2016 to 2018 in predominantly white/non-college states. His solution is to primarily look at national polls and disregard most state polls, because national polls typically get a better sample of low social trust voters. It’s hard for me to totally look away from state polls but he makes a pretty convincing case.

 
PennStater77 said:
Trump will win and I believe it's going to be a total landslide.. If you look at stats, the GOP has registered a ton of new voters in key battle ground states.
Click to expand...
I think you might be missing part of the picture here. For example, 

As North Carolina's total number of registered Democrats dwindles, the largest growth in registrations totals there has been among those not choosing either party – the number of unaffiliated voters in the state has increased 324,000 since November 2016. 
 
"The truth of the matter is it's sort of in vogue to be unaffiliated. They look at what's going on in Washington and partisan gridlock and breakdown, and there's just not a real reason to register as an affiliated if you're coming out of college and coming out of high school, it's just not really the cool thing to do," said Jackson.  "But the truth is, when they go to the ballot box, we see them overwhelmingly choosing sides for Democrats."
Click to expand...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voter-registration-republicans-swing-states-narrow-gap/

 
PennStater77 said:
Trump will win and I believe it's going to be a total landslide.. If you look at stats, the GOP has registered a ton of new voters in key battle ground states. Wouldn't shock me if places like NY and California is alot closer then it's ever been. People in those states are tired of the Democratic leadership.
Click to expand...
Your take is so far out of step with the rest of the world; it reminds me of a homer for a last-place team (with its star player on the injured list) talking about winning the championship.

Democrats have voter registration advantage in 4 battleground states

Republicans gain ground in voter rolls, but Democrats hold edge in battleground states

 
PennStater77 said:
https://bongino.com/voter-registration-data-in-battleground-states-shows-huge-boost-for-gop
Click to expand...
This doesn't say what you seem to think it does.

The Bongino website is selectively including purged voters in their list of "gains". They're combining the number of new voters with the number of deleted voters.

However, there is one gaping problem with that method: most of the purged voters did not vote in 2016. That's why they were purged. So, the Democrats aren't really losing voters here, because those people didn't vote Democrat in 2016, anyway.

Furthermore, the Bongino website goes on to conclude that if the polls are just as wrong in 2020 as they were in 2016, then Trump "has an easily path [sic] to an electoral victory". But the same gaping flaw comes into play again: the 2016 polls were based, in part, on those purged voters. But now that the pollsters know that those people won't be voting, they have adjusted the polls accordingly.

Finally, the Bongino website only talks about 3 states (Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina). But at this point those states are no longer essential for Biden to win. So even if Trump wins all 3, he still won't have an "easily path" to victory -- he'll have to hold narrow leads in Ohio, Iowa, AND Georgia, AND flip either Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin or Minnesota.

 
Gr00vus said:
I don't think so. I think the vote will track pretty closely to the likely voter approval rating.

Right now fivethirtyeight has his weighted average at 43.8%. He's been right around 44% for over a month now. I think it would need to be close (or above) to 46% for him to have a shot at winning. That's where his approval rating was around the time he was elected in 2016.
Click to expand...
I do remember yes/no approval ratings as being more accurate than the typical multiple choice polls in the 2016 election.  Not sure about the exact reason, but they seem to bring out a more honest response.

 
Leroy Hoard said:
I do remember yes/no approval ratings as being more accurate than the typical multiple choice polls in the 2016 election.  Not sure about the exact reason, but they seem to bring out a more honest response.
Click to expand...
Yep. As someone who wants Trump out of office, his stable 44% approval rating with likely voters right now is too close for comfort.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Gr00vus said:
Yep. As someone who wants Trump out of office, his stable 44% approval rating with likely voters right now is too close for comfort.
Click to expand...
I agree, much like last time it makes it closer.  My only positive thought is that the weaker 3rd party field this time might help diffuse things to the point that Trump might need a slightly higher threshold to carry things again. Maybe 48%?

 
Leroy Hoard said:
I agree, much like last time it makes it closer.  My only positive thought is that the weaker 3rd party field this time might help diffuse things to the point that Trump might need a slightly higher threshold to carry things again. Maybe 48%?
Click to expand...
Nah, I'm thinking if he's sitting around or above 46% on election day, there's a really good chance he wins the election again.

 
NBA ratings down 70%, what does this say about the upcoming election? Is this the "real" pulse of the country and the election?

 
GROOT said:
NBA ratings down 70%, what does this say about the upcoming election? Is this the "real" pulse of the country and the election?
Click to expand...
Yes, that’s it. We should ignore all the polls and instead predict the election on NBA TV ratings.

 
GROOT said:
NBA ratings down 70%, what does this say about the upcoming election? Is this the "real" pulse of the country and the election?
Click to expand...
I don't see the connection.    The NBA ratings are probably down because the playoffs are happening during football season.  What does that have to do with the election?

 
Marauder said:
I don't see the connection.    The NBA ratings are probably down because the playoffs are happening during football season.  What does that have to do with the election?
Click to expand...
:goodposting:

Also:

the MLB playoffs (down 39 percent), the NFL (down 14 percent), the NHL playoffs (down 25 percent) and the Stanley Cup Final (down 61 percent) are all experiencing ratings drops.
Click to expand...
:shrug:

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Gr00vus said:
Following on with support for my pessimism, RCP only tracks Biden at +0.9 over Hillary in this area. Not a huge difference.
Click to expand...
To be fair, those 2016 numbers are from 10/17/16, ten days after the Access Hollywood tape broke. Biden is doing quite a bit better than Hillary was on election day.

Election day 2016:

Trump -21 (37.5 fav, 58.5 unfav)
Clinton -12.6 (41.8 fav, 54.4 unfav)

Current:

Trump -11.3 (42.9 fav, 54.2 unfav)
Biden +6.9 (50.6 fav, 43.7 unfav)

So obviously things can change quite a bit between now and election day, but just like the polls, 2020 candidate favorability has been much steadier than in 2016. And a lot more people have already voted at this point, too. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Joe Bryant
Election Deniers Are Bad, Right?
20 21 22
Replies
1K
Views
29K
knowledge dropper
knowledge dropper
GordonGekko
Arielle Scarcella: How One Can Turn Conservative While Still Holding Traditional Liberal Values (7/25/22 20:14 PST)
Replies
3
Views
308
Juxtatarot
Juxtatarot
GordonGekko
(Baby Formula Shortage): Biden ADMITS He Knew Of Crisis In Early April (4/27/22 23:53 PST)
8 9 10
Replies
494
Views
12K
GordonGekko
GordonGekko

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 4 (members: 0, guests: 4)
Top