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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The polling continues to look solid for Biden

The latest WH2020 average from RealClearPolitics is above and shows it getting back to what it was before the Republican convention. According to the latest RCP calculation Trump is 7% behind nationally.
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On topic, currently looks good for Biden, but I don't think anyone will make the mistake of thinking it a shoe in this time.
91% of Trump 2016 voters are still voting for the President with 7% voting for Biden, 88% of Hillary 2016 voters are voting for Biden with 9% having switched to back Trump.
Biden only leads because of third party voters in 2016 who back Biden by 59% to just 18% for Trump
However if they go back to voting third party then Biden is in trouble
https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/august-2020-presidential-race-tightens-after-party-conventions
Also a scheme for redundant hardware to be donated. I have several laptops I have outgrown that can still do things like browse the web and office apps.
Also issuing data only sims. My supplier for mobile does 8gb of data for 10£ thats 520 a year per child and I am sure councils could negotiate that down and only supplied to the disadvantaged. 8gb is more than enough for school work in normal times though maybe not the current distant learning.
There are three things that could be done straight away at little cost that would help the disadvantaged that want to learn a hell of a lot more than banning private schools
He doesn’t spend his time in New York and California, he spends his time in places like Flint, Michigan, where the election is going to be decided
I may vote for Biden if I was American (though I would have voted for Trump over Sanders) but I also would have voted for Hillary in 2016 so am not in the demographic Biden needs to win anyway given it is Trump 2016 and third party voters and voters who stayed home last time he needs to win over in the swing states
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/04/ship-rescued-migrants-eu-sea-tanker-malta-european
https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/1299309425379901440?s=20
https://twitter.com/MMFlint/status/1300062465921822720?s=20
5th Sep.
Michigan: Biden 52%, Trump 41%
There's also the possibility that something might happen to Trump. (E.g. either on the current military story or something else, what if he insists and insists that he didn't do something, asks "what kind of animal would do that?" etc. - as he has done with this story - and then a tape or clip appears that proves unambiguously that he did do it? A Republican who isn't Trump might still run away with this. Mike Pence is at 390. The others are all at 1000.
She'll take the money, the title, but not the name. Why not? Because she doesn't want people to remember that she became a baroness for selling SCO a bogey in 2014&for leading us down the path ever since. U turn after u turn&never once in SCO's best interest.
These are not Robby Mook-style idiots.
Pennsylvania was the one result they got right.
Clinton suffered both from low turnout among Democrats and Trump hoovering up a very good share of independents. You can't pull off a strategy of trying to rectify both those things, and Sanders argued in the primaries Democrats should target turnout even if it meant losing some independents, whereas Biden said he'd go after the independents even if it meant some Democrats stayed at home. He is doing what he was selected to do in the primaries and said he'd do.
On balance, while Biden has flaws as a candidate, I think he's pursuing essentially the correct strategy. Yes Rick Snyder is a fairly controversial figure in Michigan and I am sure some people in Flint will be upset. But Snyder won two gubenatorial elections as a Republican in Michigan by appealing to the same independents who Biden is targeting.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/mi/michigan_trump_vs_clinton-5533.html
He's brought more shame on England.
The former Manchester City player Yaya Touré has been dropped from playing in Unicef’s annual charity football match after reportedly posting a pornographic video in a WhatsApp group with other players and offering to hire sex workers for them.
Touré will no longer take part in the event after complaints were made about messages he sent to a group with fellow players in the children’s charity event. He reportedly posted a video showing a naked woman in a bath and offered to hire 19 sex workers for his teammates.
Sources told the Sun, which first reported the news, that a string of complaints were made about Touré to Soccer Aid, Unicef’s annual charity football game between former stars, and he faced criticism at a hotel on Friday morning during a breakfast with other players before the game on Sunday.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/sep/05/yaya-toure-dropped-from-charity-match-after-inappropriate-joke
Says they are anything but complacent.
The entire DNC has been burned by 2016, plus and I mean PLUS, they aren't making any of Hillary's campaigning mistakes.
If the polls show Biden losing/slipping in key states, they won't hide it, they'll be out there campaigning.
Also, they are working by Michael Corleone's maxim on your enemies.
https://twitter.com/edinburghpaper/status/1302225915766804481?s=20
Toure and Walker admitted their lack of moral hygiene.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1302222782583967745?s=20
😉
She says the comments on Facebook/Twitter under their pages is littered with people with the 'Q' as their profile pics spamming the comments with #SaveOurChildren
Hardly a surprise that the French 2010 World Cup campaign was a bit of a disaster!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2020/09/05/tottenham-working-plans-open-4000-seats-highest-paying-fans/
In 2018, a few days out from the election Trafalgar had McSally (GOP) winning Arizona by 2% (she lost by 2%), Heller (GOP) winning Nevada by 3% (he lost by 5%), Cruz (GOP) winning Texas by 9% (squeaked in by under 2%).
That's cherry picking on my part too, as they had some better ones that night (they called it the right way in Florida, for example, albeit overstating GOP lead). But if you're thinking about the quality of a pollster, you need to look more broadly.
Yes, the pollster with the most extreme effect in the direction of a particular party will sometimes look good by calling wins others don't, but they will also have false alarms. In 2018, you'd have certainly been better listening to other pollsters.
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/20/09/04/1754206/zuckerberg-warns-of-post-election-violence
(and that no matter who wins in the end, there will be cross-party support for taking Facebook down a peg or two. That’s what really keeps Zuckerberg up at night).
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1301939346883465217
Who are you going to want to see if you've got limited capacity, the plebs who pay £40 a ticket/season ticket holder, or those of us who pay north of £300 a match?
The only scenario I could see that is even "possible" is for Trump to step down due to medical issues (or a truly horrendous scandal) and Pence to ascend to the Presidency.
Arsenal are doing the right thing, although they are insisting that season ticket holders pay a down payment on their 2020-21 season ticket to get access to the ballot (I'm not bothering with it as I don't think it will be much fun).
So, not to divert, but on PT the scores on the doors for our Moderates Panel (which you insisted on) opining on whether Labour 2015 was a moderate offering is 4-1 for Yes.
Should we call that now as Yes? Or do you want to wait for another 7 opinions from other moderates to get the full 12?
(ps: forgot lady g and nick p as non-moderates).
If you want a panel you need to have it be impartial: anyone who voted for it would have to recuse themselves.
There was a clear choice in the primaries - target core voter turnout even at the expense of independents (Sanders/Moore) or target independents even at the expense of core voter turnout (Biden).
In terms of Moore pointing out poorer polls for Biden to make his case - sure, we can all pick cherries. Relatively few people think Biden has it in the bag, and the cherry pickers may be picking the right cherries. But playing the averages, there isn't actually a strong case for Biden to abandon the strategy primary voters chose him in order to pursue.
Normally I'm in the Main Stand, occasionally I used to get tickets in the Centenary Stand which is now the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand.
But if we're going on "who was closest to the actual result" in 2016, then it wasn't Trafalgar (who were about seventh - and overstated Trump in all the battleground states, even if they got the result correct), it was:
- Bloomberg
- USC
- IBD/TIPP
These three had Clinton national PV leads in 1-2% lead, against the 2% achieved.
Bloomberg has the race as 52-42
USC has it as 51-42
and
IBD/TIPP has it as 49-41
A good rundown of why the UK and EU don't agree on the LPF. As I've said many, many times - it's not state aid that's causing the issue, as it's written the EU could use it to veto (by ECJ arbitration) any regulation or law they believe undercuts them.
The government will never agree to it and I'm 100% sure that we will no deal if the EU insists on this kind of LPF mechanism. No sovereign nation could ever agree to it, we may as well hand over budgetary and regulatory powers to Brussels if it is included. If the Tory party agrees to have it under pressure then they're going to get voted out and a new government will get in and rescind the trade agreement and go to no deal.
They were not, really, really not. They used an entirely different data team. Clinton was determined to win 'her' way.
This time I have been vastly more inquisitive as to who is running the campaign.
So Trafalgar were closest to the EC margin and therefore the winner.
Plus Rasmussen had a 2% Clinton lead in 2016 and now have a 4% Biden lead even on the popular vote
Clinton seemed to think a large national polling lead would be enough. I think Biden will now do just about enough because of the veterans issue, but it's still going to be tight in swing states.
1) The polling average has Trump 3% behind, is it possible he's really only 2% behind?
Answer: obviously yes
2) Is there a plausible path for Trump to win the electoral college with a 2% popular vote deficit?
Answer: probably yes
The first of the two options was probably one-in-three (or maybe less), and the second, perhaps the two-in-five. Which meant anyone giving Trump odds of more than about 8-1 was an idiot.
Let's turn it around:
1) The polling average has Trump 7% behind, is it possible he's really only 3% behind?
Answer: yes, but that's a much, much bigger polling miss required. I'd say, it's probably a one-in-eight or ten shot.
2) Can Trump win with a 3% deficit on the night?
Answer: yes, but that's probably about the limit. Any more than 3% and - no matter how big Biden's leads in California - the votes have to go somewhere, and it would be really hard for Biden not to win with a 3% lead.
To win, Trump has to narrow the polling deficit from seven points to at most four or five. Is that possible? Yes. But it does need Biden's vote share to start dropping. And Biden's been stubbornly stuck around 50% for six months, nary changing irrespective of BLM, riots, CV19 or anything else.
If the election was held tomorrow, Trump would be a 10-1 shot. It is the uncertainty of events, and weakness of Biden in the campaign, that makes him a better chance today.
But OGH and David Herdson are absolutely correct: Biden is not a 50% chance he's a 70% one.
You are forgetting the fact that many Trump 2016 voters will not have voted for a Republican candidate for President since Bush Snr in 1988, the last Republican to win Michigan and Pennsylvania, or Reagan in 1984, the last Republican to win Wisconsin (with 1988 effectively Reagan's third term, they switched to Bill Clinton in 1992).
They are in effect white working class Trump Democrats much like the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s, they will only vote for Trump, they will not bother to turn out to vote for other Republicans. Trafalgar were the only pollster to pick them up in 2016
It reeks of Loser. It reeks of somebody who pretty much knows the game is up.
It is depressingly plausible
Trafalgar were closest in 2016 but still have Trump ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin
If you're going to argue that what they've done is develop a methodology that is more sensitive to what is really going on, ignoring 2018 polls is just dumb.
And you still haven't explained why Trump was such a mega draw when the GOP congressional candidates outperformed him in 2016.
Labour's 2015 offering WAS - per an independent panel of PB Moderates - moderate.
Back to Biden vs the ghastly Trump ...
Based on current polls (and they may of course change between now and November 3rd), I would say the same about the US Presidential election.
If the polls given Biden a seven point lead the night before, it's not going to be 270-268 or anything like that, it's going to be at a 100 vote Electoral College margin.
Current forecast (with the proviso that polls change) big Biden win.
But it's not actually that likely. Random wobble is a powerful force, and Trump would need to flip six or seven heads in a row.
GOP congressional candidates performed worse than Trump in 2018, they only did better in 2016 because they got Trump voters voting down ballot for them too after voting for Trump first, those voters did not turn out for them again in 2018 with Trump not on the ballot
But at a certain national polling lead, it requires heroic levels of vote dis-correlation for Biden not to win.
I think that level is somewhere between three and four percent.
If the national polls remain where they are, Biden will walk it.
Had Hunt or Javid prevailed rather than Johnson, Farage and the Brexit Party would have continued polling strongly in the high teens/low twenties making a GE impossible for the Conservatives - indeed, the question would have been whether there would have been defections from the Conservatives to the Brexit party.
As for this year's Presidential election, the Democrats in 2020 are going to be like Labour in 1997 and it may be that in concentrating on the marginal states they might miss winning more unlikely targets but I'm doubtful.
The question for me is the point at which the Trump vote will begin to realise the game is up and melt away leading to a bigger Biden win.
Biden is only ahead due to 2016 third party voters switching to him but they can switch back
Your arguement makes no sense. Trump was massively popular in 2016, so popular that more people voted for GOP congressional candidates than voted for Trump.
That doesn't make sense.
Trafalgar Group were the only pollster who correctly predicted the EC win for Trump in 2016 and their 2020 state polls are still showing a Trump EC win
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XzYLHOX50Bc
So there were more people passing on Trump but voting GOP in other contests on the ballot than the other way around.
Your point that turnout was lower in 2018 is utterly facile - it always is in midterm elections, not just when Trump is the President.
Given your liking for cherry picking, here's one for you. More people in Wisconsin voted for Romney in his defeat in 2012 than Trump in his great triumph in 2016. It doesn't really mean all that much - but it illustrates Clinton was poor at driving turnout in an important state, and that Trump wasn't quite engaging a whole new electorate in the way you assert.
Maybe - they don't publish their crosstabs so we don't know about their sampling and methodology. As has also been pointed out, not everybody views Trafalgar (and presumably Rasmussen) as favourably and Trafalgar's record isn't uniformly strong. As has been noted, they have a curious tendency for overstating the Republican vote (well, there's a thing).
The other factor is the much diminished number of undecided voters compared to this stage in 2016. Most people have mostly decided as witnessed by another pollster giving a Trump lead in a marginal State:
https://surveyresearch-ecu.reportablenews.com/pr/ecu-poll-of-likely-voters-in-north-carolina-trump-leads-biden-by-two-points-tillis-and-cunningham-tied-cooper-leads-forest-by-ten-points-other-statewide-races-competitive
As for last December, I'd argue Opinium were better than Survation and Mori not that bad. In the last 2-3 days every pollster bar Panelbase had an 11-13 % Conservative lead so the pollsters basically got it right.
Biden's Vietnam record also looks a bit dodgy
https://www.insidesources.com/joe-bidens-draft-record-looks-a-lot-like-donald-trumps-do-democrats-care/