“It’s so unworthy of a president. It’s beyond despicable. It’s soulless. It’s almost unspeakable in the middle of the pandemic to try to divide the country on a political basis when Covid-19 is really bipartisan.”
— Former Gov. Tom Ridge (R), quoted by the New York Times, on President Trump saying the coronavirus death toll from the coronavirus was actually not so bad “if you take out the blue states.”
Early Voting has begun!
Wow. Friday is a day for quality polls to be released. I have had to completely re-write the bones of this post from last night. Biden started the week with a FiveThirtyEight polling average margin of +7.3, which decreased to +6.6 yesterday. It is up to +6.8 so far today. Monmouth, Marist, and Siena (all A+ pollsters) dropped polls today – that is half of the best pollsters in the country. However, so far today Monmouth and Siena have not released national polls – just state polls. It’s a good sign that these pollsters are looking at battleground states. Most of the time, the outfits giving us state surveys are not top quality pollsters. The polls released earlier in the week were mostly from mediocre pollsters, with a few exceptions in the B/C and B- range. One (USC Dornsife – B/C) is worth considering some more because it is a tracking poll and it’s results have dipped significantly during the week. The silver lining is that before this week, the tracking poll was consistently showing double-digit advantage for Biden. Now, it is “regressing to the mean” and conforming to the national polling average (Biden +7).
Marist is the one A+ pollster with national results this week. If you recall, Marist was the most correct national pollster in 2016, just barely missing Clinton’s popular vote margin of victory. Today’s survey shows Biden with a ten point lead over Trump (52-42). That gives us about six percent undecided. That is consistent with what Charlie Cook has said about undecideds (to recap: he thinks there are about five percent truly undecided and half of those probably won’t even vote). More importantly, it is not enough to change the result in a ten point race. That’s not just because six is less than ten, but because even if Trump wins over a large portion of undecideds they will not all break his way.
An interesting thing in the polling recently is some indication that the race is tightening among adults (which includes voters and non-voters). Data for Progress (B-) has Biden up by 11 points (53-42) among registered voters. This is at least the second poll this week showing it closer among all adults (51-44). Not so long ago, pollsters who surveyed adults in addition to registered or likely voters found the reverse: bigger leads for Biden among adults than voters. Perhaps that is changing now, but why?* That’s an interesting question, but it also doesn’t really matter what people who are not going to or cannot vote think about the election. Let’s talk a look at the state-level polling we got this week (particularly today).
Biden is starting to poll better in some battleground states than nationally. That is not good news for Trump, who has conceded the popular vote and is focused on eking out another victory in the Electoral College. Michigan, Wisconsin, and even Arizona are starting to look out of reach for Trump. North Carolina is still close, but it’s another must-win for Trump, but not so much for Biden. Suffolk (A) released a poll this week showing Biden up in North Carolina by four points. The problem with this poll – as Nate Cohn pointed out today – is that it is not weighted properly for education (unless they think almost 70% of the electorate will be college-educated). This means that the actual margin is probably more like even unless they include voters with “some college.” In 2016, 36% of North Carolina voters were college-educated, but an additional 38% had some college. So, Suffolk might be right and Cohn may be wrong here. (If I find the time, I’ll try to dig into Suffolk’s methodology. No promises, however.)
New York Times/Siena (A+):
Arizona: Biden 49%, Trump 40%; Biden +9
Maine: Biden 55%, Trump 38%; Biden +17
North Carolina: Biden 45%, Trump 44%; Biden +1
EPIC/MRA (B+):
Michigan: Biden 48%, Trump 40%; Biden +8
Morning Consult (B-):
Wisconsin: Biden 51%, Trump 42%; Biden +8
What should we make of the polling showing Biden doing better in some battleground states than nationally? According to The Upshot (Cohn): “One possibility is that it’s just noise: The national polling is pretty sparse and often of fairly questionable quality. And some of the state polling for Mr. Biden — like the Quinnipiac poll — comes from firms with a record of showing him doing particularly well.
“But it’s also possible that it reflects a real split, perhaps driven by demographics: Most of the great results for Mr. Biden in recent state polls have come in overwhelmingly white states, and there are plenty of national (and state) poll results suggesting that Mr. Biden is running ahead of Mrs. Clinton among white voters but faring worse among nonwhite voters. If so, it might lead to seemingly surprising results for Mr. Biden in overwhelmingly white states like Minnesota and Maine without corresponding national leads.”
Senate Polling
Here’s a taste of this week’s Senate polling. There was quite a bit this week, relatively speaking. We’ll dig into the Senate polling more closely next week in a separate post (unless something more interesting breaks). Right now, the Democrats look good to win the Senate. But, it is likely to be close; perhaps even 50-50. If I had to guess right now, I’d say the Democrats net four seats and have a 51-49 majority. But, if Biden wins big that will likely move some seats into the Democratic column. A net of five to seven is plausible. If Biden wins by, say, twelve points nationally, then the Democrats could pick up even more seats. To be clear – so no one yells at me later – do not be surprised by a 50-50 split in January.
A new New York Times/Siena poll of key U.S. Senate races:
Arizona: Kelly (D) 50%, McSally (R) 42%; Kelly +8
Maine: Gideon (D) 49%, Collins (R) 44%; Gideon +5
North Carolina: Cunningham (D) 42%, Tillis (R) 37%; Cunningham +5
A new EPIC/MRA poll:
Michigan: Peters 45% (D), James (R) 41%; Peters +4
House News
Inside Politics sees the Democrats gaining eleven seats in the House. We’ll look at some of them next week in the fundraising post (see following paragraph). But, the strange thing this week is the Republican effort to remove Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). This move, which is destined to fail badly, is being pushed by the extremists who make up the GOP’s Freedom Caucus. Is this gambit to remind voters of Democrats’ support for Nancy Pelosi a smart move? It hasn’t worked before and there is no reason to think it will work again. And this time there could be consequences for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in the form of an official censure for using House procedures for purely partisan reasons. That may be the endgame for the ironically named Freedom Caucus. Maybe this is actually a way of weakening McCarthy so that Caucus member and [fill in your own expletive] Jim Jordan can become Minority Leader in hopes of one day becoming Speaker.
Not all the campaign finance reports are available yet, but from what I’ve seen thus far my prior ranking of Senate candidates to contribute to is still accurate. I would caution folks on one thing, however. Amy McGrath is not going to beat Mitch McConnell. Unless you have the dough to spread around to everyone, you are making much better bet donating to Jaime Harrison in South Carolina. He has a real shot at beating Lindsey Graham. McGrath raised a lot of money already and she still is down by double-digits (do not believe the Facebook ads). She doesn’t need the cash and she is not going to win. Give it to Harrison if you really want to support a Democrat who has a shot of upsetting one of the GOP’s biggest names in the Senate. Next week, I’ll have a list of a dozen or so House races to donate to.
Final Thought: Should Democrats be knocking doors?
There has been some chatter lately that the Democrats need to get out and start knocking doors. Bernie Sanders may have been the first person to say something publicly about it. Campaign organizers consider door knocking (also called canvassing) to be the best way to contact voters. But, due to the pandemic the Biden campaign has not been canvassing (as far as I know). I am skeptical that many people will answer the door these days to strangers, at least in states hard hit by the virus, but I could be wrong about that. Assuming roughly as many doors will open this year as any other year, I am not sure it’s a good tactic to refrain from door knocking. For folks that have done it, correct me if I am wrong, but normally one maintains a degree of social distancing anyway at the doors. It’s usually good practice to step back after knocking and not crowd the occupant’s personal space when she answers. Coupling that practice with a mask should be safe for the voter (but there is the issue of whether it is safe for the canvasser should the occupant not come to the door with a mask). I would not get too anxious about this since (1) Biden is doing so well right now, (2) states are starting to vote, and (3) concern over this in the media strikes me as another case of the media trying to make a close race where there is not one (this happens every cycle). If you are interested in hearing more about this issue, you can check out this Times article. If this is getting you anxious, I have something to cheer you up:
PROGRAM NOTE: I will not be blogging from September 24th through the 28th, which means I will not be able to write next Friday’s polling review post. So, I am going to skip Monday’s weekend review and do one polling review post next week on Wednesday. There will be posts on other issues on Monday and Tuesday. I plan to resume my regular schedule after the 28th.
* A related question: does it matter? Adults who are not registered voters cannot vote, and a sizable portion of the all adults sample must be non-voters since the national voter registration rate is about 75% of eligible adults.