US Politics: Election Impending

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

more about how lower turnout than expected in one area can wreck polling accuracy. 

This is true, albeit the differences in turnout that piece is suggesting would be rather negligible on the overall margin.  And of course, if we're looking at Florida's early voting turnout, it clearly suggests that's not going to be a problem overall.  Plus the Florida GOP has been perhaps the most vigilant state party in the country on suppressing turnout since before I moved there, suggesting almost any increased turnout statewide is bad news for them.  Or at least they clearly have thought so for this entire century.  Further, this lag apparently seems isolated to Miami:

Quote

“Democrats have a big turnout issue in the Hispanic community in Miami-Dade,” said Florida-based Democratic data analyst Matt Isbell. “Hispanic Democrat turnout is only 48% while the Republican Hispanics are at 57%. This large of a gap doesn't exist in Broward or Orange. It is a Miami problem.”

 

[Kalbear]

True, though the only way dems have a shot in Florida is if they rack up really big margins in miami.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

True, though the only way dems have a shot in Florida is if they rack up really big margins in miami.

I think this conventional wisdom is outdated.  Biden has a huge opportunity to substantially improve Hillary's performance throughout the I-4 corridor, and such a development aligns with the differences of Biden's coalition compared to HIllary's and Obama's - improvements with especially suburban women and college educated whites, as well as white women in general.  Plus the Puerto Rican vote in the Orlando and Tampa areas is much more welcoming territory.  If he can perform how he should with these demos there - and he keeps the senior vote within a 5 point margin - the numbers indicate he should win (if everything's on the level of course).  That's pretty much exactly what today/yesterday's Monmouth poll showed.

[Gorn]

Wow, Hawaii are currently at 104.5% of their 2016 turnout. Texas is at 95%.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Killjoybear said:

True, though the only way dems have a shot in Florida is if they rack up really big margins in miami.

Rely on Miami politics at your own peril.

[IheartIheartTesla]

All right, I keep oscillating between euphoria and despair, and the news out of Florida is no exception. Should note that Florida is always close and this time is no exception.

The last few polls have been good for Biden, but there are some caveats. Monmouth and Q-pac are always good for him, and Q-pac actually showed a steep decline from the last poll. Marist doesnt weigh by education (but Biden did better than last time by 4 points). Per Nate Cohn, this is still a tight race there. Although the other Nate seems to think Florida is slowly moving from toss-up to leans democrat. Who knows? I do think we cant count on it for an early election night TKO. Georgia or Arizona may be a better option.

[Fez]

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/711037?unlock=SRT6SBVCJHPBFJTS

Charlie Cook sounding surprisingly confident in his predictions (considering his love of toss-ups). He doesn't call specific states (other than MI/WI/PA/NE-2/ME-2 for Biden), but does say he thinks the national public polling is being dragged down by bad pollsters and that Biden is still up 9 or 10 points. He's predicting a 5 or 6 seat gain in the senate for Democrats, and about 10 extra seats in the House.

[Maithanet]

2 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

The last few polls have been good for Biden, but there are some caveats. Monmouth and Q-pac are always good for him, and Q-pac actually showed a steep decline from the last poll. Marist doesnt weigh by education (but Biden did better than last time by 4 points). Per Nate Cohn, this is still a tight race there. Although the other Nate seems to think Florida is slowly moving from toss-up to leans democrat. Who knows? I do think we cant count on it for an early election night TKO. Georgia or Arizona may be a better option.

I'm still skeptical that AZ is really going to be called on election night.  They'll do better than 2016 or 2018, but that much better?  I have doubts.

I think if we want a clear KO on election night, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina are the best bets.  Biden is notably weaker with Florida Hispanics than Clinton was.  I mentioned a few weeks ago, but as much as people like to shit on Clinton's campaign, their Florida operation (particularly with Latinos) was pretty good, and it's not a big surprise that Biden is struggling to match it.  However, if you look at something like this*, which breaks down district level polling, you can see that Biden is doing better then Clinton in all of the competitive districts across Florida EXCEPT FL-27 (Miami-Dade).  But if Biden really is doing 5 (or hell, even just 2 or 3) points better than Clinton in most of the rest of the state, that is more than enough to overcome both Trump's 2016 margin and an underperformance in Miami.   Pollsters are aware of Biden's struggles in Dade.

 

* Apologies for the sketchy link, it's from this guy's twitter account, and I've checked a few of the polls involved and they're real, he's just aggregating them. 

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm still skeptical that AZ is really going to be called on election night.  They'll do better than 2016 or 2018, but that much better?  I have doubts.

It might not get called. But my understanding is that because they start processing early, so many people always vote by mail there, and Democrats were faster than Republicans in returning ballots, there's a decent chance that there may actually be a bit of a blue mirage there; the opposite of what happens in PA and WI.

And while we'd all love confirmation that Biden won on election night, the concern is stopping Trump from falsely saying he won. Biden being up in AZ accomplishes that, even if he doesn't win it for another few days.

But we'll see.

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

It might not get called. But my understanding is that because they start processing early, so many people always vote by mail there, and Democrats were faster than Republicans in returning ballots, there's a decent chance that there may actually be a bit of a blue mirage there; the opposite of what happens in PA and WI.

And while we'd all love confirmation that Biden won on election night, the concern is stopping Trump from falsely saying he won. Biden being up in AZ accomplishes that, even if he doesn't win it for another few days.

Somewhat (a call is obviously preferable, but being up still helps a lot).  I agree that Democrats being up seems possible.  It's also likely that NC isn't going to get called unless someone is up by quite a bit, but I'm hoping that Dems are up there too (if they are, they'll win). 

[Gaston de Foix]

37 minutes ago, Fez said:

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/711037?unlock=SRT6SBVCJHPBFJTS

Charlie Cook sounding surprisingly confident in his predictions (considering his love of toss-ups). He doesn't call specific states (other than MI/WI/PA/NE-2/ME-2 for Biden), but does say he thinks the national public polling is being dragged down by bad pollsters and that Biden is still up 9 or 10 points. He's predicting a 5 or 6 seat gain in the senate for Democrats, and about 10 extra seats in the House.

Good analysis although a little contradictory on the Senate side: if all senate seats fall with presidential vote then CO, ME sureshot Dem wins, AZ, NC, GA, GA, IA in the toss up category and SC, MT, KS in R kitty.  Either you get a fat Biden win with at least three of AZ, NC, GA and IA going his way or the Dems don't get 5-6 seats.  Some candidates are running ahead of the presidential nominees though: I expect NC to go Cal's way while the much more deserving Greenfield and Ossof fall short.   

But the truth is that I think there are too many uncertainties to be certain of anything right now.  Hindus believe that we live in Kaliyug - the age of darkness where the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.  Trump winning in 2016 was kind of a Kailyug result in the first place.  And it's peculiarly Kaliyug that the thing that sunk him (assuming he's sunk) has also entailed the death of 210,000 people in this country and the suffering of countless more.    

[Maithanet]

Early vote update, 10/30:

Nationally - 83.5 million votes cast (61% of 2016 total votes)

Swing state votes, as percentage of 2016 total votes cast:

Pennsylvania - 34%

Michigan - 51%

Wisconsin - 55%

Florida - 82%

Georgia - 87%

North Carolina - 86%

Arizona - 80%

Nevada - 82%

Texas - 100%

 

Texas (and Hawaii) have both surpassed their 2016 vote just in early voting!  Looks like FL, GA and NC are all going to break 90%, but fall just a bit shy of the mark.  Still, it's undeniable that turnout is up, and early voting is dominating in the swing states.  Very realistic that we could already have 75% of the vote in for FL, GA, NC, and TX. 

[Fragile Bird]

In the last couple of days I’ve seen a marked increase on CNN of pro-Trump ads of the fire and doom variety. If you want an America where corporations aren’t sending jobs to foreign workers, where rioting and looting doesn’t happen, where criminal illegal aliens aren’t being sheltered in cities etc etc etc, send a message to Washington!

And it’s a different group running a slightly different ad every time.

It amazes me that they are running the ads on the big fake news station. I guess you don’t have to run them on Fox, or do they run there too?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

In the last couple of days I’ve seen a marked increase on CNN of pro-Trump ads of the fire and doom variety. If you want an America where corporations aren’t sending jobs to foreign workers, where rioting and looting doesn’t happen, where criminal illegal aliens aren’t being sheltered in cities etc etc etc, send a message to Washington!

And it’s a different group running a slightly different ad every time.

It amazes me that they are running the ads on the big fake news station. I guess you don’t have to run them on Fox, or do they run there too?

They’re trying to suppress turnout.

I voted two weeks ago.  I love when Trump ads come up on games I play.  It is money he wasted.

[IheartIheartTesla]

More fire to throw on the Florida early voting oil. Anyhoo, when all is said and done we will probably regret reading the tea leaves of early Florida voting, like 2016...and 2012....and maybe all the way till the beginning of the republic.

[Maithanet]

12 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

More fire to throw on the Florida early voting oil. Anyhoo, when all is said and done we will probably regret reading the tea leaves of early Florida voting, like 2016...and 2012....and maybe all the way till the beginning of the republic.

I firmly believe that Biden's path to winning (particularly in Florida) is improving on Clinton's numbers with NPA/Independents and Republicans.  Early voting is not going to show that.  Yes, Biden wants high Democratic turnout too, and he's getting it.  Poor turnout in Miami-Dade county is a little concerning but by no means crippling. 

If there's a big state where (maybe) you could estimate whether Dems have the gas to win or not based on early voting, it would be Texas.  At the very least, you can see that the biggest counties are going to increase their 2016 vote totals by 20-30%, and if Biden is getting margins like Beto (or better?) in those areas, then that is a LOT of votes, definitely enough to overcome Trump's 800k margin from 2016. 

The other question is how much additional turnout can Trump get in rural Texas.  Texas has never been a swing state before, so we really don't have an idea of what it looks like when infrequent voters all show up.  If infrequent voters in rural Texas are just as conservative as the frequent voters, then Biden probably falls short.  But if not, it could be a very good day for Texas Democrats. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah, I dont think Texas releases any party ID affiliation data, so you'd have to either do it by county turnout and Clinton/Beto margins, or by demographics (age, gender and race) and try to extrapolate (unknown) margins. None of those will end up being particularly accurate.

 

[Maithanet]

13 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Yeah, I dont think Texas releases any party ID affiliation data, so you'd have to either do it by county turnout and Clinton/Beto margins, or by demographics (age, gender and race) and try to extrapolate (unknown) margins. None of those will end up being particularly accurate.

Yeah, it's virtually impossible. 

I think a county level estimate based on turnout we're seeing combined with results from Clinton/Beto vs Trump/Cruz could give you an idea.  But you'd almost assuredly do better just to look at polling data.  NYT's poll was quite clear that Biden is crushing it in the suburbs in a way that's never before been seen, but that without improvement in the rurals and urban areas, he'll probably fall just short.  That story makes sense to me - there's a reason winning Texas is hard.

IF you think that Biden can significantly improve on both turnout and margins in the suburbs compared to Beto, then maybe he can get over the top.  After all, Beto only lost by 2%.  But Beto was also more popular with Hispanic voters than Biden is, and Trump is more popular with rural Texans than Cruz is.  So I fully expect Trump to overachieve in rural Texas.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Just a couple new polls, Rasmussen now has Biden up by 3 so I think they will eventually get to Biden +5 or 6 by some late deciding nonsense to herd with the others. They also have Trump up by 1 in NC, so this is great news for Joe Biden!

At the same time, PPP (Dem pollster, B rated) has Biden up in FL and PA by identical margins (+7). Not sure if that means anything

[Maithanet]

9 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Just a couple new polls, Rasmussen now has Biden up by 3 so I think they will eventually get to Biden +5 or 6 by some late deciding nonsense to herd with the others. They also have Trump up by 1 in NC, so this is great news for Joe Biden!

At the same time, PPP (Dem pollster, B rated) has Biden up in FL and PA by identical margins (+7). Not sure if that means anything

This late in the race, there are so many polls coming out, I'm just looking at the top nonpartisan pollsters and trying to ignore the rest.