The recalled 2020 vote in the poll doesn’t match the actual 2020 election results. It’s pretty clear they got an abnormally conservative sample for the Florida poll, and per usual, Nate refuses to acknowledge that possibility.
I also don’t understand how polling nationally with abnormally large Florida and Texas subgroups is an even remotely legitimate polling technique. It obviously distorts results.
But polling and political media are broken, and this is just more evidence of that fact. What else is new?
Cohn's reply to that is that the makeup of the FL electorate has changed. It's gotten more Republican. I kind of buy it. That said I don't think we lose FL by 13. Cohn says his FL subsamples average R+9, which is plausible.
That is exactly the point. With so many Republicans moving into FL, if the responders answer truthfully about 2020 votes, whether cast there or in another state, the recalled vote simply cannot be just Trump +3.
This can mean one of two things. Either it is evidence of Harris being in better shape in the electoral college because if Trump wins Florida by double digits then the national polls are better for her than we thought. Or, more likely, it is yet another pro-Trump outlier than shows that the NYT polls are off this cycle.
As I asked above, what's the constituency that's swinging to Harris to account for her national lead because the numbers aren't adding up?
Polls suggest she's doing much worse than Biden four years ago in two of the most populous states (Florida and New York) and no better than Biden in another of the most populous states (Texas).
Polls suggest she's doing worse with men of every race and ethnic composition.
The polling aggregate shows she's doing no better, and in some cases worse, that Biden did four years ago in the battleground states.
What does this leave? What's the insurgent demographic for Harris driving her national popular vote lead? College-educated women who are neither in battleground states nor the most populous states in the country? How does this math work?
I can't speak to Florida but as we've talked about on here in the past, I think, New York has taken a rightward shift over the past 4 years, both in primary and general elections. Covid hit us hard, crime (real and perceived), was not handled in a politically smart manner, and abortion rights were something that locals felt were secure in our state so not as big of a motivator. At least that's one theory for some discrepancy.
RE: Abortion rights being seen as "safe" in NY -- I don't buy that at all.
Almost all abortion rights groups consider Oregon to be the state that has the strongest abortion rights in the country.
And yet, abortion rights is the number one issue here this year for federal and state candidates, and was the number one issue here in 2022 as well. Tina Kotek even used the issue effectively against conservative Democrat turned independent Betsy Johnson, who, while nominally is pro-choice, was seen as not being progressive enough on the issue (while a state legislator she had voted against several abortion rights strengthening measures).
I don't know for certain, obviously. But these are two separate states. In the 2022 midterm Dems ran heavy on abortion, Republicans ran heavy on crime, and it seemed like their message won out.
You do raise some good points, but to be clear, it is “a” poll, not “polls” showing her doing “much worse” than Biden in FL. The polling aggregate on 538 has her down 5, which should be within the MoE to equal Biden’s 3.5 loss (and I assume includes this poll which would bring her numbers down). NY is a different matter, as the polls do show Harris performing a good bit worse than Biden did. I see Tigercourse’s response below, which is a good theory, but will also note that the aggregate shows Trump getting 39.7% of the vote. In 2020 he received 37.8% of the vote. If the undecided’s in these polls strongly break for Harris (which I do think is more likely than not) then you’re not looking at a massive gain for Trump in NY either.
I also disagree with your assertion that the polls show she is doing worse in the battleground states. The polling aggregates show that either candidate can win all of these states, exactly what we would anticipate from a swing state. Now if you want to argue that she is polling worse than Biden, I will agree. But he underperformed, there is no reason to believe that Harris will underperform to the same extent.
This FL poll certainly does support your predictions more than mine. However, when faced with a single data point that differs so much from all the others, the default position should be to treat it as an outlier until there is additional data to support it. It’s certainly possible that Sienna’s modeling is accurate and everyone else has it wrong, but even before this poll they were coming up with far more R friendly results than the other pollsters, so this shouldn’t really be that much a surprise and certainly shouldn’t be immediately treated as fact.
My comments were weighted heavily in the direction of Siena's sample but also sprinkling in data from the other states, which I agree is incomplete and leaves plenty of room for discrepancy, but even without accounting for a 10-point shift to Trump in Florida, the numbers still don't add up. They imply some scenario where small, uncontested blue states are getting much bluer while smaller, uncontested red states are also getting a fair amount bluer.
You're right that all seven battleground states are entirely in play, but in five of the seven, Harris is polling at least nominally worse than Biden's results from 2020. It's within the margin of error in all of them, but again, where's the growth? Where is Harris doing better than she was in 2020 to cancel out the places and the demographics for which she's flat or doing worse than Biden?
Those are not significant differences and can just as easily be attributed to rounding errors than actual under performance. If you buy the theory that a glut of R narrative pushing polls are distorting the aggregate (I’m undecided but lean towards yes) then those are actually pretty good results for Harris. She’s tracking pretty much where Biden did in the swing states, while having a 2.7 point lead nationally. Biden won by 4.5, so if you really do want to argue that she’s doing nominally worse in swing states and significantly worse in NY, a decrease of ~2 points nationally doesn’t seem to contradict that.
The polls don’t actually point to Harris growth unless I’m missing something (which I will freely admit is possible).
Certainly a reasonable take. It's still interesting to speculate on what the coalitions will look like based on the information available, questionable as it is.
Broken how? I agree with Mark that it’s possible, but most of the polls we’ve seen are reasonable. If you’re referring to the manipulation these companies do for modelling then yeah, I do think that is a fundamental flaw. But as far as the actual numbers, I’m not expecting the final results to be too far off from what we’re seeing. I suspect the final results will be somewhere between Harris +4 to Trump +2 of the aggregate.
This is about where I expected Florida to land this year and the column articulates my suspicions that the other polls were using outdated modeling. If New York and Florida have really moved 10 points toward Trump while Texas has stalled at 2020 results, and yet the country at large is Harris +3 as the poll finds, that would indicate she's doing very well in the battleground states. It's certainly a plausible scenario but I'm still having a hard time pinning down what constituency exists that's swinging hard toward Harris. Is it reasonable that she's really doing that much better with women....just not women in New York, Florida, or Texas? It doesn't add up.
BTW, if you think no much real preference change in 2020 voters, but simply a redistribution by migration, a lot redder Florida and NY, could mean some states getting bluer across the board.
If we win, I don't think it will be because of demographic surges toward Harris but due to intensity of vote by people who already vote for us and /or depression of Trump vote from Republicans who are growing weary of his incompetence and bull shit.
But who though? It doesn't look as though it will be Texans. It's definitely not gonna be Floridians or New Yorkers. Those three states themselves account for 18% of the country. Polling in battleground states--which account for another 17% of the population--are collectively no better than they were for Biden and point to a couple of states that Biden won being much harder gets this time.
Men appear to be shifting rightward. The data suggests Harris is performing worse with Hispanics, perhaps decidedly so. I'm trying to understand the geography and the demographics of a Harris win based on the available information and trend lines. Where do these people fueling Harris' victory live if not Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, or Wisconsin, and they're also neither men nor Hispanic?
I think we can take NY as a given. If we don't win NY, we're fucked.
I highly doubt we win Florida or Texas.
The intensity would be in the swing states you list. Women and thinking men who are outraged on abortion rights, young people who lean liberal on cultural and environmental issues, and independent voters who just look at Trump as he is today and go no. I have to assume there is a swing constituency who values the continuation of democracy.
We are not talking about losing NY. If that happens, well sh*t hits the fan everywhere.
The issue is, NYT/Siena/Cohn is saying NY would be a 12-15pt race. That is a similar red shift of some 8-11pt, comparable to the red shift they are seeing in Florida.
I think there are also a bunch of non-swing states that are under the radar where Harris will do better. Some red, some blue: like Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Alaska. Not big states, per se, but they add.
I think Harris is going to do very well with white voters for a modern Democrat. She probably will achieve the best score ever for a Democrat with college educated whites (and college-educated voters generally), which is now like 40% of the electorate.
In this Tweet thread, G. Elliott Morris explains how 538 compensates for unserious pollsters that really are not in the business of polling, but rather have found an extremely cost-effective way to influence the news narrative. (My words.) These pollsters have a strong partisan lean (almost all of them heavily Republican) and are "flooding the zone", striving to impact the polling averages. Simon Rosenberg and others have made the point that they appear to be coordinated.
Here is G. Elliott Morris’ explanation of how 538 deals with this challenge.
(Nitter is a way of seeing Tweet threads and accessing X / Xitter.)
.
PS. To the experts and pros here: I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts on the challenges of weighting and compensating of skewed polls. Likewise on the accuracy of the various poll aggregators – 538, Nate Silver, RCP...
I'm always going to be skeptical of the idea that you can take data from dishonest pollsters and just hammer it until it's useful via pollster ratings, weights, house effect adjustments, etc. At that point, why not just drop them from the ratings? In October 2022, Civiqs polled WA-Sen and found Murray up 14 (nailing the eventual margin). But right at the end seven polls from (R) pollsters dropped that had the race tied or near it. I don't know there's a better product to be had from taking polls like that and trying to minimize their impact and unskew their lean, as opposed to just calling their bluff and not including them.
Two points: In 2022, numerous pollsters were clearly working very hard to create a Red Wave expectation. That Red Wave never materialized. Those unserious R-skewed pollsters along with most pundits, were very wrong – while people such as Simon Rosenberg, Tom Bonier, Christopher Bouzy and Jennifer Rubin who kept telling us they were seeing no sign of a Red Wave, were right. Moreover, if the New York Democratic Party had done its job with GOTV, we would have kept the House!
Second, in fairness, Morris actually addresses what the average would look like based solely on high-quality polls (with 538 ratings of 1.5 or higher).
Yeah, it's headache-inducing to try and pretzel all these numbers into a single narrative/explanation that makes sense. I'm happy to do that once we have actual election results but otherwise, it seems like a futile effort and they could be so far off from reality that it doesn't matter anyway.
The 2010 red wave was partly bc of Rasmussen. He created a narrative, the news ran with it and everyone was freaking out over Obamacare and Dems are going to lose. The size of that wave was manufactured bc it became a self-fulfilling prophecy bc of Rasmussen.
The reach seats *checks notes* have Democrats leading? Yes, obviously big grain of salt because internal, but I didn’t think this district would ever show something like this. Meeks won by 7 points against Bohannan in 2022 and Trump won it 51-48! At absolute best, I was expecting a tie. I guess her very weak primary performance (55-45) was a harbinger of general election problems.
If Iowa's 1st & 3rd flip (Miller-Meeks & Nunn), I'll be jumping for joy with a split House delegation for a state like Iowa I was losing faith in over the years with Democrats being all locked out as of now!! 💙🇺🇲
That's aggressive but I don't have a huge problem with it. My guess is its based on some recent polling and things they've heard from the campaigns that the President and Senate numbers are coalescing. If the numbers say static I could see them moving it back to Lean D in the final week.
Like I said, Wisconsin Democrats are going to have to be out in FORCE especially in Dane & Milwaukee counties (70% average in each of those 2 blue hubs) to stop Trump & Hovde. WI is always close no matter what and turnout/margins matter!! 😢💙
Unlikely Harris goes well above 70% in Milwaukee. Biden did better than any previous Dem nominee with 69%. Would be very positive if Harris matches that number. Dane, on the other hand, could near 80% given trends in the district (Biden 75%, Clinton 71%). Also looking for Harris to cut the margins in the WOW counties.
The WOW are more important and our side has been cutting into the Republican margins(what I mean by more important is that we know the GOTV game in Milwaukee and Dane will be run by a great state party apparatus)
My concern based on what I'm hearing from my brother and other family in Kenosha County is that misogyny and racism is raising it's ugly head, and people who would have voted for Biden won't vote for Harris. I'm concerned about Wisconsin with the older, white population.
My brother is solidly Democratic, but he runs a couple large social activities, and he says some who voted for Biden won't vote and some for the orange one.
I put credence in my brother's pulse of Midwest vibe because he was telling me in 2016 that Trump would probably win. That thought process was quite of of sync with my California liberal bubble.
Out of curiosity, is he reporting the demographics of the Harris-skeptical voters? Working-class? Black? Just in general, Democrats seem to have a huge downscale problem and I could see misogyny as yet another way that the downscale problems is manifested.
His social groups are somewhat mixed. My brother's social group is primarily 70ish ,white, working class, but he also volunteers with his grandchildren's sports teams where he's dealing with parents or high schoolers, better educated, and more ethnically diverse. He's suggesting problems primarily with white people but in both age groups.
Yeah, I think the issue that's making this race "so close" is the racism and sexism in the population. I think she'll eke it out in Wisconsin, but it'll take a massive GOTV effort for women and voters of color.
I'm not an expert on Wisconsin, but my guess is the latter makes more sense, since it'll likely go to funding Ben Wikler's GOTV operation which will help every Democrat on the ballot.
Looks like a decent poll, recalled vote was 50-45, new voters are tied which brought Harris's margin now to 3-4. Looking at the poll it looks like they got way more respondents out of the south but then corrected the poll to the actual percentage of the souths population.
The blue firewall in Pennsylvania is beginning to take shape, with a +112,000 lead as of this morning. Democrats' share of the vote will shrink, since Dem counties are reporting returns far earlier than GOP counties, but the absolute lead will continue to grow, as outstanding Dem ballots exceed Republican ballots in both blue counties and larger red counties like Lancaster, Westmoreland, and York. The Democratic rate of return is also higher in 17 of 18 counties that have reported at least 10%, which bodes well for enthusiasm.
That said new GOP ballot requests topped Dem requests possibly for the first time yesterday, a trend that may continue as Republicans place greater emphasis on early voting. Philadelphia continues to disappoint with ballot requests, which are down 61% compared to 2020 vs -53% in Allegheny, -51% in Delaware, and -49% in Montgomery. Not sure what the party's doing down there, but they need to do a better job banking votes.
I think you can draw comparisons between counties. Only 4,000 more Democrats have requested ballots in Philly compared to Allegheny, despite the former having many more registered Dems. There's a lot to like with the Pennsylvania numbers, but Philly's not really part of that.
When you compare mail-in ballots in PA, I would also include how the current figures compare to the final numbers in 2022. 2024 requests are already higher than the total of 2022 but the D-to-R ratio is now slightly lower than 2020 with yesterday closing the gap significantly but I wonder if that's due to the smaller counties updating weekly rather than daily like some of the larger counties. Democrats hold a 526k request advantage & a 112k returned ballot advantage with three weeks left to request mail-in ballots.
It varies by election. Four years ago we had a firewall of nearly 1.1 million. We obviously won't need a lead quite that large given the reversion to in-person voting, but we'll probably want more than 500k. Fetterman's advantage was around 590k. There's a Substack called Pennsylvania Powered that does very insightful analysis on this.
2022 was an anomaly. Fetterman won mail by almost 49% (800k) while losing E-Day by roughly 19.5% (525k). The ratio we're looking for right now is from 2020: 62.9D-25.4R-11.7O. Currently, the ratio is 61.1-27.4-11.5, with Rs getting a big bump yesterday but I'm not sure how often the smaller & redder counties are updating their #s. VoteHub updates their #s daily at roughly 8am EST.
While it's true that there are still a lot of people moving there, there are also a lot of people leaving. Extremely high home insurance rates are being exasperated by climate change and more intense hurricanes and flooding, like we are seeing this week.
Those are mostly felt by home owners and not renters though yeah? Although it could be passed on to renters through increased rates. Are there party breakdowns of home owners in FL? My guess would be that it favors Republicans but don’t think I’ve ever seen that data.
The renters problem may actually be worse; high rents in a low wage state(imo both are major)The party breakdown of home ownership would be fascinating but I've never seen the data
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer had an article last year talking about a couple that votes Democratic moving from Florida to the Philly suburbs because of DeSantis. And geographic sorting based on political preferences has been gaining for years.
Due to Hurricane Milton alone, there's already reports that a sizable chunk of the population has left Florida temporarily. No doubt that will affect voting significantly.
My late 70’s aunt, who had been staying with friends farther inland in Pasco County since Helene took out her house, has been evacuated to a high school gym now. She’s put down a deposit and is supposed to have been getting an apartment nearby rather than leaving the state as I’d expected, but who knows what that looks like after Milton.
The one helped by Cousin Kirk (?) the firefighter IIRC. God bless her. I hope she rides out the new storm safely and recovers completely from all of this.
Let's see how close Murcasel-Powell gets against Scott first(after her Moskovitz and Deegan; possibly Jane Castor); I would add I don't see any statewide potential for any black candidate but Maxwell Frost in the future
So, Trump sent Covid tests to Russia while Americans were struggling to get tests. WTF.
Also, fuck Bob Woodward. He knew of how bad Covid was and didn't tell anyone, so that he could publish tell-all books later on. He had blood on his hands. Don't buy his books, which rewards bad behaviour.
The journalistic class loves to do this. Maggie Haberman holding onto critical information so that she could retain access and publish lucrative books later pissed me off to a massive extent and was a key reason why I stopped reading the NYT a few years ago.
In a letter obtained by CNY Central, the New York State Board of Elections scolded the Onondaga County Board of Elections in an October 4 memo, which shares 'grave concern' from the State regarding an ongoing backlog of voter registration applications, absentee / early-vote-by-mail requests and other tasks.
The backlog is confirmed by the State to have swelled to more 20,000 unprocessed forms entering October. This was a violation of New York State Law and Federal Law according to the State's letter.
I have to say, we should never be surprised by reports of incompetence or idling by NY State or City employees. I'm sure some of us could say much more about that...
“Senator Mitt Romney, the retiring Republican from Utah and onetime standard-bearer of a party that has shifted under his feet, said Tuesday that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the election because it might hamper a critical role he could play in helping to rebuild the G.O.P. down the line,” the New York Times reports.
He's so stupid! He thinks voting to convict him in the Senate and saying he won't vote for him won't hamper this role he thinks he could play but endorsing Harris would. No, I think the truth is that he's being spineless.
The stupidest part is Romney thinks there is anything he can do to "rebuild" the republican party if they lose this year.
- Republicans lost in 2008, and moved further to the right immediately afterwards.
- Republicans lost the 2012 election, and responded by moving further to the right.
- In 2016, they won, and responded by moving further to the right.
- In 2020, they lost, and responded by moving further to the right.
Romney himself had to abandon nearly all of his moderate tone in order to win the 2012 primary, and then spent the general election trying to re-moderate his image unsuccessfully. After every defeat other than 2020 — because Trump went even further fascist MAGA than before — the republican base has derided their defeated candidates of yesteryear by greater and greater amounts. Even their successful candidates of yesteryear, for that matter.
What possible thought process could lead Romney to conclude that a republican loss in 2024 would result in them (1) not moving further to the right, and (2) even if the prior did happen, that the republican base would want him to be part of that process?
He's either stupid, lying, or delusional. Based on his history, I'm going with mostly lying with a dash of delusional.
The former head of the Florida Republican Party said he’s supporting Vice President Harris after “trolling” from other Republicans over the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.
Al Cárdenas said in his appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that natural disasters have “always been a bipartisan issue.”
“Both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to assist the people in harm’s way,” Cárdenas added. “Well, you know, the White House asked Congress to pass a bill to — a supplemental bill — to really help people with these disasters, because we may be running outta cash. All of a sudden, the trolling, the Trump operatives and everybody else started saying, ‘Well, they’re giving that money to illegal immigrants.’ Not true.”
"the International Association of Fire Fighters last week declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential race"
I understand that unfortunately, many firefighters are racist and sexist. I would have to think that problem with some of the rank-and-file went into the decision not to endorse.
Double digit Florida? A bit larger deficit than I expected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/upshot/florida-poll-harris-trump.html
TX -6 is pretty much in the line.
The recalled 2020 vote in the poll doesn’t match the actual 2020 election results. It’s pretty clear they got an abnormally conservative sample for the Florida poll, and per usual, Nate refuses to acknowledge that possibility.
I also don’t understand how polling nationally with abnormally large Florida and Texas subgroups is an even remotely legitimate polling technique. It obviously distorts results.
But polling and political media are broken, and this is just more evidence of that fact. What else is new?
Cohn's reply to that is that the makeup of the FL electorate has changed. It's gotten more Republican. I kind of buy it. That said I don't think we lose FL by 13. Cohn says his FL subsamples average R+9, which is plausible.
That is exactly the point. With so many Republicans moving into FL, if the responders answer truthfully about 2020 votes, whether cast there or in another state, the recalled vote simply cannot be just Trump +3.
NYT/Siena with Trump leading Harris by 13–14 points in Florida? Incredulous I am!
This can mean one of two things. Either it is evidence of Harris being in better shape in the electoral college because if Trump wins Florida by double digits then the national polls are better for her than we thought. Or, more likely, it is yet another pro-Trump outlier than shows that the NYT polls are off this cycle.
As I asked above, what's the constituency that's swinging to Harris to account for her national lead because the numbers aren't adding up?
Polls suggest she's doing much worse than Biden four years ago in two of the most populous states (Florida and New York) and no better than Biden in another of the most populous states (Texas).
Polls suggest she's doing worse with men of every race and ethnic composition.
The polling aggregate shows she's doing no better, and in some cases worse, that Biden did four years ago in the battleground states.
What does this leave? What's the insurgent demographic for Harris driving her national popular vote lead? College-educated women who are neither in battleground states nor the most populous states in the country? How does this math work?
I can't speak to Florida but as we've talked about on here in the past, I think, New York has taken a rightward shift over the past 4 years, both in primary and general elections. Covid hit us hard, crime (real and perceived), was not handled in a politically smart manner, and abortion rights were something that locals felt were secure in our state so not as big of a motivator. At least that's one theory for some discrepancy.
RE: Abortion rights being seen as "safe" in NY -- I don't buy that at all.
Almost all abortion rights groups consider Oregon to be the state that has the strongest abortion rights in the country.
And yet, abortion rights is the number one issue here this year for federal and state candidates, and was the number one issue here in 2022 as well. Tina Kotek even used the issue effectively against conservative Democrat turned independent Betsy Johnson, who, while nominally is pro-choice, was seen as not being progressive enough on the issue (while a state legislator she had voted against several abortion rights strengthening measures).
I don't know for certain, obviously. But these are two separate states. In the 2022 midterm Dems ran heavy on abortion, Republicans ran heavy on crime, and it seemed like their message won out.
What would covid have to do with New York going to the right? Trump tried to kill us off!
You do raise some good points, but to be clear, it is “a” poll, not “polls” showing her doing “much worse” than Biden in FL. The polling aggregate on 538 has her down 5, which should be within the MoE to equal Biden’s 3.5 loss (and I assume includes this poll which would bring her numbers down). NY is a different matter, as the polls do show Harris performing a good bit worse than Biden did. I see Tigercourse’s response below, which is a good theory, but will also note that the aggregate shows Trump getting 39.7% of the vote. In 2020 he received 37.8% of the vote. If the undecided’s in these polls strongly break for Harris (which I do think is more likely than not) then you’re not looking at a massive gain for Trump in NY either.
I also disagree with your assertion that the polls show she is doing worse in the battleground states. The polling aggregates show that either candidate can win all of these states, exactly what we would anticipate from a swing state. Now if you want to argue that she is polling worse than Biden, I will agree. But he underperformed, there is no reason to believe that Harris will underperform to the same extent.
This FL poll certainly does support your predictions more than mine. However, when faced with a single data point that differs so much from all the others, the default position should be to treat it as an outlier until there is additional data to support it. It’s certainly possible that Sienna’s modeling is accurate and everyone else has it wrong, but even before this poll they were coming up with far more R friendly results than the other pollsters, so this shouldn’t really be that much a surprise and certainly shouldn’t be immediately treated as fact.
My comments were weighted heavily in the direction of Siena's sample but also sprinkling in data from the other states, which I agree is incomplete and leaves plenty of room for discrepancy, but even without accounting for a 10-point shift to Trump in Florida, the numbers still don't add up. They imply some scenario where small, uncontested blue states are getting much bluer while smaller, uncontested red states are also getting a fair amount bluer.
You're right that all seven battleground states are entirely in play, but in five of the seven, Harris is polling at least nominally worse than Biden's results from 2020. It's within the margin of error in all of them, but again, where's the growth? Where is Harris doing better than she was in 2020 to cancel out the places and the demographics for which she's flat or doing worse than Biden?
Which swing states are you referring to?
PA - Biden +1.2 result, Harris +1 aggregate
NC - Biden -1.4, Harris -1
NV - Biden +2.5, Harris +1
GA - Biden +0.2, Harris -1
AZ - Biden +0.3, Harris -1
WI - Biden +0.6, Harris +2
MI - Biden +2.8, Harris +2
Those are not significant differences and can just as easily be attributed to rounding errors than actual under performance. If you buy the theory that a glut of R narrative pushing polls are distorting the aggregate (I’m undecided but lean towards yes) then those are actually pretty good results for Harris. She’s tracking pretty much where Biden did in the swing states, while having a 2.7 point lead nationally. Biden won by 4.5, so if you really do want to argue that she’s doing nominally worse in swing states and significantly worse in NY, a decrease of ~2 points nationally doesn’t seem to contradict that.
The polls don’t actually point to Harris growth unless I’m missing something (which I will freely admit is possible).
Frankly, my response is that polling, institutionally and universally, is hopelessly and irrevocably broken, and I expect we'll see that in a month.
Certainly a reasonable take. It's still interesting to speculate on what the coalitions will look like based on the information available, questionable as it is.
Broken how? I agree with Mark that it’s possible, but most of the polls we’ve seen are reasonable. If you’re referring to the manipulation these companies do for modelling then yeah, I do think that is a fundamental flaw. But as far as the actual numbers, I’m not expecting the final results to be too far off from what we’re seeing. I suspect the final results will be somewhere between Harris +4 to Trump +2 of the aggregate.
Reminds me of the ABC-Washington Post poll from October 2020 that had Biden winning Wisconsin by 17.
It reminds me of the actual 2022 election results from Florida.
This is about where I expected Florida to land this year and the column articulates my suspicions that the other polls were using outdated modeling. If New York and Florida have really moved 10 points toward Trump while Texas has stalled at 2020 results, and yet the country at large is Harris +3 as the poll finds, that would indicate she's doing very well in the battleground states. It's certainly a plausible scenario but I'm still having a hard time pinning down what constituency exists that's swinging hard toward Harris. Is it reasonable that she's really doing that much better with women....just not women in New York, Florida, or Texas? It doesn't add up.
I am guessing Trump +7-9. Cohn said their less weighted version (simple avg?) would be +9. The weighting seems to get a bit redder Black voters.
Recalled 2020 votes Trump+7 is completely plausible. Maybe even a bit too generous!
Anyway, once the hurricane passes, we will see a lot of in person votes, how/who are turning out. We will have a better picture.
BTW, if you think no much real preference change in 2020 voters, but simply a redistribution by migration, a lot redder Florida and NY, could mean some states getting bluer across the board.
Right. It would seem that way, but it's not reflected in battleground state polling, most of which is consistent or worse than Biden's 2020 numbers.
If we win, I don't think it will be because of demographic surges toward Harris but due to intensity of vote by people who already vote for us and /or depression of Trump vote from Republicans who are growing weary of his incompetence and bull shit.
But who though? It doesn't look as though it will be Texans. It's definitely not gonna be Floridians or New Yorkers. Those three states themselves account for 18% of the country. Polling in battleground states--which account for another 17% of the population--are collectively no better than they were for Biden and point to a couple of states that Biden won being much harder gets this time.
Men appear to be shifting rightward. The data suggests Harris is performing worse with Hispanics, perhaps decidedly so. I'm trying to understand the geography and the demographics of a Harris win based on the available information and trend lines. Where do these people fueling Harris' victory live if not Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, or Wisconsin, and they're also neither men nor Hispanic?
I think we can take NY as a given. If we don't win NY, we're fucked.
I highly doubt we win Florida or Texas.
The intensity would be in the swing states you list. Women and thinking men who are outraged on abortion rights, young people who lean liberal on cultural and environmental issues, and independent voters who just look at Trump as he is today and go no. I have to assume there is a swing constituency who values the continuation of democracy.
We are not talking about losing NY. If that happens, well sh*t hits the fan everywhere.
The issue is, NYT/Siena/Cohn is saying NY would be a 12-15pt race. That is a similar red shift of some 8-11pt, comparable to the red shift they are seeing in Florida.
I think there are also a bunch of non-swing states that are under the radar where Harris will do better. Some red, some blue: like Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Oregon, Washington, Alaska. Not big states, per se, but they add.
I think Harris is going to do very well with white voters for a modern Democrat. She probably will achieve the best score ever for a Democrat with college educated whites (and college-educated voters generally), which is now like 40% of the electorate.
Really, just look at the results from the 2022 midterms. We're going to see patterns like that continue.
I won't get excited about any individual poll. Harris has generally been close in other Florida polling. But really, who knows?
In this Tweet thread, G. Elliott Morris explains how 538 compensates for unserious pollsters that really are not in the business of polling, but rather have found an extremely cost-effective way to influence the news narrative. (My words.) These pollsters have a strong partisan lean (almost all of them heavily Republican) and are "flooding the zone", striving to impact the polling averages. Simon Rosenberg and others have made the point that they appear to be coordinated.
Here is G. Elliott Morris’ explanation of how 538 deals with this challenge.
https://nitter.poast.org/gelliottmorris/status/1843362936670302310#m
(Nitter is a way of seeing Tweet threads and accessing X / Xitter.)
.
PS. To the experts and pros here: I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts on the challenges of weighting and compensating of skewed polls. Likewise on the accuracy of the various poll aggregators – 538, Nate Silver, RCP...
I'm always going to be skeptical of the idea that you can take data from dishonest pollsters and just hammer it until it's useful via pollster ratings, weights, house effect adjustments, etc. At that point, why not just drop them from the ratings? In October 2022, Civiqs polled WA-Sen and found Murray up 14 (nailing the eventual margin). But right at the end seven polls from (R) pollsters dropped that had the race tied or near it. I don't know there's a better product to be had from taking polls like that and trying to minimize their impact and unskew their lean, as opposed to just calling their bluff and not including them.
Two points: In 2022, numerous pollsters were clearly working very hard to create a Red Wave expectation. That Red Wave never materialized. Those unserious R-skewed pollsters along with most pundits, were very wrong – while people such as Simon Rosenberg, Tom Bonier, Christopher Bouzy and Jennifer Rubin who kept telling us they were seeing no sign of a Red Wave, were right. Moreover, if the New York Democratic Party had done its job with GOTV, we would have kept the House!
Second, in fairness, Morris actually addresses what the average would look like based solely on high-quality polls (with 538 ratings of 1.5 or higher).
Yeah, it's headache-inducing to try and pretzel all these numbers into a single narrative/explanation that makes sense. I'm happy to do that once we have actual election results but otherwise, it seems like a futile effort and they could be so far off from reality that it doesn't matter anyway.
The 2010 red wave was partly bc of Rasmussen. He created a narrative, the news ran with it and everyone was freaking out over Obamacare and Dems are going to lose. The size of that wave was manufactured bc it became a self-fulfilling prophecy bc of Rasmussen.
I'm skeptical. Just what percentage of votes do you think Rasmussen was responsible for?
The reach seats *checks notes* have Democrats leading? Yes, obviously big grain of salt because internal, but I didn’t think this district would ever show something like this. Meeks won by 7 points against Bohannan in 2022 and Trump won it 51-48! At absolute best, I was expecting a tie. I guess her very weak primary performance (55-45) was a harbinger of general election problems.
NEW #IA01 Poll by @dccc / @BohannanIowa
Christina Bohannan (D): 50%
Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R): 46%
https://x.com/JoelWeingart_/status/1843616791257296906
If Iowa's 1st & 3rd flip (Miller-Meeks & Nunn), I'll be jumping for joy with a split House delegation for a state like Iowa I was losing faith in over the years with Democrats being all locked out as of now!! 💙🇺🇲
Cook moves WI senate to tossup.
https://x.com/CookPolitical/status/1843636229599793566
That's aggressive but I don't have a huge problem with it. My guess is its based on some recent polling and things they've heard from the campaigns that the President and Senate numbers are coalescing. If the numbers say static I could see them moving it back to Lean D in the final week.
Like I said, Wisconsin Democrats are going to have to be out in FORCE especially in Dane & Milwaukee counties (70% average in each of those 2 blue hubs) to stop Trump & Hovde. WI is always close no matter what and turnout/margins matter!! 😢💙
Unlikely Harris goes well above 70% in Milwaukee. Biden did better than any previous Dem nominee with 69%. Would be very positive if Harris matches that number. Dane, on the other hand, could near 80% given trends in the district (Biden 75%, Clinton 71%). Also looking for Harris to cut the margins in the WOW counties.
The WOW are more important and our side has been cutting into the Republican margins(what I mean by more important is that we know the GOTV game in Milwaukee and Dane will be run by a great state party apparatus)
My concern based on what I'm hearing from my brother and other family in Kenosha County is that misogyny and racism is raising it's ugly head, and people who would have voted for Biden won't vote for Harris. I'm concerned about Wisconsin with the older, white population.
Are they considering voting for that other candidate of color – the thin-skinned Orange Man?
My brother is solidly Democratic, but he runs a couple large social activities, and he says some who voted for Biden won't vote and some for the orange one.
I put credence in my brother's pulse of Midwest vibe because he was telling me in 2016 that Trump would probably win. That thought process was quite of of sync with my California liberal bubble.
Out of curiosity, is he reporting the demographics of the Harris-skeptical voters? Working-class? Black? Just in general, Democrats seem to have a huge downscale problem and I could see misogyny as yet another way that the downscale problems is manifested.
His social groups are somewhat mixed. My brother's social group is primarily 70ish ,white, working class, but he also volunteers with his grandchildren's sports teams where he's dealing with parents or high schoolers, better educated, and more ethnically diverse. He's suggesting problems primarily with white people but in both age groups.
Maybe it reverses and women and people of color come out more for Harris to compensate
Yeah, I think the issue that's making this race "so close" is the racism and sexism in the population. I think she'll eke it out in Wisconsin, but it'll take a massive GOTV effort for women and voters of color.
Walz was a really, really good choice, though. They should probably send him to Wisconsin more.
Do I need to send money to Baldwin now? Or would a contribution to the Wisconsin Democratic Party be a better investment?
I'm not an expert on Wisconsin, but my guess is the latter makes more sense, since it'll likely go to funding Ben Wikler's GOTV operation which will help every Democrat on the ballot.
I'm leaning that way. He's such a brilliant party chair! I'll look at my bank account tonight.
WI Party 100%. Let Ben spend the money. He knows more than you about WI.
That's for damn sure!
Are they just bored?
Wow..that Florida (oops)
Siena national poll meanwhile has Harris up 49-46 (but by 4 if you round apparently): https://scri.siena.edu/2024/10/08/new-york-times-siena-college-national-poll-3/
Looks like a decent poll, recalled vote was 50-45, new voters are tied which brought Harris's margin now to 3-4. Looking at the poll it looks like they got way more respondents out of the south but then corrected the poll to the actual percentage of the souths population.
The blue firewall in Pennsylvania is beginning to take shape, with a +112,000 lead as of this morning. Democrats' share of the vote will shrink, since Dem counties are reporting returns far earlier than GOP counties, but the absolute lead will continue to grow, as outstanding Dem ballots exceed Republican ballots in both blue counties and larger red counties like Lancaster, Westmoreland, and York. The Democratic rate of return is also higher in 17 of 18 counties that have reported at least 10%, which bodes well for enthusiasm.
That said new GOP ballot requests topped Dem requests possibly for the first time yesterday, a trend that may continue as Republicans place greater emphasis on early voting. Philadelphia continues to disappoint with ballot requests, which are down 61% compared to 2020 vs -53% in Allegheny, -51% in Delaware, and -49% in Montgomery. Not sure what the party's doing down there, but they need to do a better job banking votes.
I won’t compare to 2020 due to the pandemic.
I think you can draw comparisons between counties. Only 4,000 more Democrats have requested ballots in Philly compared to Allegheny, despite the former having many more registered Dems. There's a lot to like with the Pennsylvania numbers, but Philly's not really part of that.
When you compare mail-in ballots in PA, I would also include how the current figures compare to the final numbers in 2022. 2024 requests are already higher than the total of 2022 but the D-to-R ratio is now slightly lower than 2020 with yesterday closing the gap significantly but I wonder if that's due to the smaller counties updating weekly rather than daily like some of the larger counties. Democrats hold a 526k request advantage & a 112k returned ballot advantage with three weeks left to request mail-in ballots.
Here are some resources that I use:
2020 - https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html
2022 - https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2022?calc_type=voteShare&count_prefix=final_eav_voted_count_&geo=All&geo_type=statewide&state=PA&view_type=state
2024 - https://projects.votehub.us/pages/early-voting-tracker
In PA, it's supposed to be over/under 500k advantage is what we're looking for, right? My memory is a bit fuzzy on that exact number from years ago.
It varies by election. Four years ago we had a firewall of nearly 1.1 million. We obviously won't need a lead quite that large given the reversion to in-person voting, but we'll probably want more than 500k. Fetterman's advantage was around 590k. There's a Substack called Pennsylvania Powered that does very insightful analysis on this.
2022 was an anomaly. Fetterman won mail by almost 49% (800k) while losing E-Day by roughly 19.5% (525k). The ratio we're looking for right now is from 2020: 62.9D-25.4R-11.7O. Currently, the ratio is 61.1-27.4-11.5, with Rs getting a big bump yesterday but I'm not sure how often the smaller & redder counties are updating their #s. VoteHub updates their #s daily at roughly 8am EST.
Yes; win Philly by 500,000 is the better metric
Re: Florida
While it's true that there are still a lot of people moving there, there are also a lot of people leaving. Extremely high home insurance rates are being exasperated by climate change and more intense hurricanes and flooding, like we are seeing this week.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/economics/leaving-florida-rcna142316
Given DeSantis, I wouldn't be surprised if Democrats are disproportionately leaving.
Maybe, but everyone is feeling the pain of dramatically increased insurance rates.
Imo (as a Florida resident) this is a bigger reason
Those are mostly felt by home owners and not renters though yeah? Although it could be passed on to renters through increased rates. Are there party breakdowns of home owners in FL? My guess would be that it favors Republicans but don’t think I’ve ever seen that data.
The renters problem may actually be worse; high rents in a low wage state(imo both are major)The party breakdown of home ownership would be fascinating but I've never seen the data
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer had an article last year talking about a couple that votes Democratic moving from Florida to the Philly suburbs because of DeSantis. And geographic sorting based on political preferences has been gaining for years.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment
Due to Hurricane Milton alone, there's already reports that a sizable chunk of the population has left Florida temporarily. No doubt that will affect voting significantly.
My late 70’s aunt, who had been staying with friends farther inland in Pasco County since Helene took out her house, has been evacuated to a high school gym now. She’s put down a deposit and is supposed to have been getting an apartment nearby rather than leaving the state as I’d expected, but who knows what that looks like after Milton.
The one helped by Cousin Kirk (?) the firefighter IIRC. God bless her. I hope she rides out the new storm safely and recovers completely from all of this.
Thanks.
They probably don't care but they can still request a VBM(it's a simple process)
Exactly. Just go to the suburbs of Georgia and North Carolina to see how many FL license plates are on the road.
This is making FL even redder than what-if just counting the inflow.
Or the coast of Connecticut in the summer.
Snowbirds? They still vote in Florida.
I was thinking about significant number of working age adults relocated to the suburbs around ATL, CLT, and Triangle, month by month.
And the fact that you have two big hurricanes back-to-back is what is really increasing the liabilities.
Do we know any potential Democratic candidates who are going to be running in the 2026 gubernatorial race when Governor Ron DeSantis is termed out?
Let's see how close Murcasel-Powell gets against Scott first(after her Moskovitz and Deegan; possibly Jane Castor); I would add I don't see any statewide potential for any black candidate but Maxwell Frost in the future
Val Demings?
Not seeing that; personally, she chose the wrong race, wrong opponent, and wrong year
NJ 7: Sue Altman internal has her down 47-45 to Kean.
I do have to keep remembering that this seat is still R-held; the only NJ Rs I remember are Van Drew the backstabber and Smith.
Rep. Van Drew, the ultimate time waster. It’s been almost 20 years since I learned that name!!! Trash.
So, Trump sent Covid tests to Russia while Americans were struggling to get tests. WTF.
Also, fuck Bob Woodward. He knew of how bad Covid was and didn't tell anyone, so that he could publish tell-all books later on. He had blood on his hands. Don't buy his books, which rewards bad behaviour.
https://x.com/nytimes/status/1843654220383240293
Harris already hit him hard on this, just now, with Howard Stern.
Awesome!
The journalistic class loves to do this. Maggie Haberman holding onto critical information so that she could retain access and publish lucrative books later pissed me off to a massive extent and was a key reason why I stopped reading the NYT a few years ago.
Must be Cook’s Republican day.
Two new House race rating changes:
#NJ07 Toss Up to Lean R
#VA07 Lean D to Toss Up
In a letter obtained by CNY Central, the New York State Board of Elections scolded the Onondaga County Board of Elections in an October 4 memo, which shares 'grave concern' from the State regarding an ongoing backlog of voter registration applications, absentee / early-vote-by-mail requests and other tasks.
The backlog is confirmed by the State to have swelled to more 20,000 unprocessed forms entering October. This was a violation of New York State Law and Federal Law according to the State's letter.
https://cnycentral.com/news/local/threatens-integrity-of-upcoming-election-state-scolds-onondaga-co-board-of-elections
I have to say, we should never be surprised by reports of incompetence or idling by NY State or City employees. I'm sure some of us could say much more about that...
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/08/romney-wont-endorse-harris/
“Senator Mitt Romney, the retiring Republican from Utah and onetime standard-bearer of a party that has shifted under his feet, said Tuesday that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the election because it might hamper a critical role he could play in helping to rebuild the G.O.P. down the line,” the New York Times reports.
He's so stupid! He thinks voting to convict him in the Senate and saying he won't vote for him won't hamper this role he thinks he could play but endorsing Harris would. No, I think the truth is that he's being spineless.
If he actually thinks that(I think he knows this is utter bs); then he's delusional
The stupidest part is Romney thinks there is anything he can do to "rebuild" the republican party if they lose this year.
- Republicans lost in 2008, and moved further to the right immediately afterwards.
- Republicans lost the 2012 election, and responded by moving further to the right.
- In 2016, they won, and responded by moving further to the right.
- In 2020, they lost, and responded by moving further to the right.
Romney himself had to abandon nearly all of his moderate tone in order to win the 2012 primary, and then spent the general election trying to re-moderate his image unsuccessfully. After every defeat other than 2020 — because Trump went even further fascist MAGA than before — the republican base has derided their defeated candidates of yesteryear by greater and greater amounts. Even their successful candidates of yesteryear, for that matter.
What possible thought process could lead Romney to conclude that a republican loss in 2024 would result in them (1) not moving further to the right, and (2) even if the prior did happen, that the republican base would want him to be part of that process?
He's either stupid, lying, or delusional. Based on his history, I'm going with mostly lying with a dash of delusional.
If Romney wants to REALLY rebuild the Republican Party, he needs to drop the trickled-down economics part of its agenda.
Otherwise, I'm not sold on what he wants to do.
Imo Romney is kinda irrelevant at this time
Rather, but an endorsement of Harris from him still would have been helpful.
Agreed
https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-florida-gop-chair-backs-193216110.html
The former head of the Florida Republican Party said he’s supporting Vice President Harris after “trolling” from other Republicans over the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.
Al Cárdenas said in his appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that natural disasters have “always been a bipartisan issue.”
“Both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to assist the people in harm’s way,” Cárdenas added. “Well, you know, the White House asked Congress to pass a bill to — a supplemental bill — to really help people with these disasters, because we may be running outta cash. All of a sudden, the trolling, the Trump operatives and everybody else started saying, ‘Well, they’re giving that money to illegal immigrants.’ Not true.”
Should also be noted that Al Cardenas is married to Ana Navarro, long-time Bush Republican who has been a staunch outspoken Never Trumper.
I've never thought Cardenas to be a divisive Republican. He's quite civil.
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/08/union-snub-blindsided-harris-campaign/
"the International Association of Fire Fighters last week declined to endorse either candidate in the presidential race"
I understand that unfortunately, many firefighters are racist and sexist. I would have to think that problem with some of the rank-and-file went into the decision not to endorse.
Since when have firefighters been big supporters of national Democrats?
They supported Biden(but you have a good point)
Dunno, maybe back in the times of Roosevelt and, like, Truman?
They were big supporters of John Kerry's presidential campaign and endorsed him early on in the primaries.
https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/america-votes/firefighters-union-that-typically-backs-democrats-declines-to-endorse-harris
https://politicalwire.com/2024/10/08/fbi-arrests-man-who-planned-election-day-attack/
It's not enough that we have all these white racists doing shit; there are still Islamic extremists in the wings, too.