If the margin was very narrow, then Trump and republicans might be able to find a way to retain power. However, when Biden wins by eight or more points, then they can’t. We are looking at 154 million votes being cast . Trump won a little more than 62 million votes in 2016. In 2016, 52% of seniors voted for Donald Trump .
Last time, it worked. In 2016, exit polls showed that 52 percent of voters ages 65 and older supported Trump. This year, polling suggests they’ve lurched heavily against him. A CNN poll this week showed Trump winning over just 39 percent of the same age group, compared to 60 percent who support Joe Biden — the latest in a series of polls showing seniors breaking in favor of Joe Biden.
Now, seniors vote at a greater rate than any other age group. The republican party started shrinking after Trump’s election. This trend has continued. As a result, registered Democrats outnumber registered republicans by 12 million voters. There are now more registered independents than there are registered republicans. Donald Trump is the first president in the 70 year history of modern polling to never earn majority approval. Trump is the most unpopular president to run for re-election since Gerald Ford.
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.On Jan. 1, 42.6 percent of Americans approved of President Trump’s job performance, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker (52.9 percent disapproved). That’s a pretty typical number for Trump.
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.Right now, 538 shows Trump’s disapproval rating at 53.5% to 42.7% approval, a negative 10.8% approval rating. That’s horrific. It’s also consistent. Year over year in general, mortality rates of health conditions are very stable. So, when we see a huge increase in deaths due to a certain health condition during a pandemic which relates to that condition, then it is very likely that the pandemic is responsible for the increase. That’s why we are looking at over 300,000 Americans dead due to the novel coronavirus. Now, the novel coronavirus is the dominant issue in this election . Trump deservedly has been given horrible marks for his handling of the novel coronavirus.
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.The CNN poll shows that 63 percent of people say Trump acted irresponsibly in handling the coronavirus risk to those around him, a posture which has included largely business-as-usual in the White House and largely maskless events and rallies. One of those events, the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court last week, appears to have become something of a superspreader event, with more than a dozen infections connected to it. Just 33 percent polled said Trump had been acting responsibly. Arguably the more stunning result from the CNN poll, though, was this: Just 12 percent of people said they trusted almost all of what they heard from the White House about Trump’s condition. Another 18 percent said they trusted most of it, but fully 69 percent said they trusted only some of it or none of it. This echoes other polls that have repeatedly shown even many Republicans don’t completely trust what the White House says more broadly about the virus
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Both the CNN and the NBC/WSJ polls reinforce that: Biden leads 52 to 35 in the NBC/WSJ poll and 59 to 38 in the CNN poll — slightly bigger even than Trump’s overall deficit.Trump’s posture toward masks also continues to be particularly dumbfounding.A recent Wisconsin poll showed something similar: 7 in 10 people supported a mandate, including 43 percent of Republicans
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Let’s review. The republican party has shrunk since 2016. They have turned suburban voters, especially suburban women, against him. Trump has lost millions of older voters, both due to death and flipping to supporting Biden at least in large part due to his mishandling of the novel coronavirus. His approval rating has been horrible and has not improved. He only won a little over 62 million votes last time. Clinton lost double haters by 17 points whereas Biden is winning them by 50 points. Biden has a positive favorability and Trump has a negative twenty two ( -22 ! ) point approval rating.
Due to the factors mentioned above, it is not likely that Trump gets more votes than he did last time. However, supposing somehow against all the data, that he added a couple of million more, then he would be at 65 million. Trump is not going to get more than 65 million votes. Still suppose that Trump exceeds his original vote total by 5 million votes and gets to 68 million votes and third party and write in votes are a little over 4 million votes and we get to 154 million votes. Then, Biden gets 82 million votes. Biden’s percentage, thus, would be 82 million over 154 million, about 53.25 % of the vote. Trump’s percentage, hence, would be 68 million over 154 million , about 44.16% of the vote. Biden would win by 9 percent. A huge turnout is a nightmare for Trump because there is a relatively low hard limit on how many Trump voters there are ; Trump’s ceiling is much lower than Biden’s . Truthfully, Biden’s floor is almost certainly greater than Trump’s ceiling. This is likely the worst case scenario IF we have the 154 million vote turnout predicted. If Biden wins the popular vote by 9 percent, then he wins the electoral college. A 9 point win with that kind of turnout means Biden is more likely to win Texas than Trump and Biden does win Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida, Iowa, and Ohio (in addition to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania).
Otherwise, let’s look at a more realistic scenario with 154 million votes cast, one where Biden wins 85 million votes and Trump wins 65 million votes (frankly, I don’t see more than 65 million votes for Trump) and the rest go to third party and write in. Then, Biden wins 55.2% of the vote and Trump wins 42.2% of the vote. That’s a thirteen percentage point win, the biggest since Reagan’s 1984 shellacking of Walter Mondale.
Now, let’s consider some more of what forecaster Harry Enten wrote about the data on 10/26 .
.The more interesting nugget in the poll is that Biden's net favorability was +1 point. A positive net favorability rating is the norm for Biden these days. Clinton, however, had almost universally negative net favorability ratings in the final month and nine days of the 2016 election.
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.This next part is very important :
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.Clinton's advantage was down to only about 4 points in the national average 9 days from Election Day 2016. Her advantage had been as high as 7 points with about 21 days to go. Clinton's 45% vote share was low enough that it left Trump with a lot of room in the final week of the campaign to corral voters who favored neither candidate at this point.
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Biden is well above 50%, at 52.3% of the vote. Clinton was at 45% and Biden is at 52.3%. Clinton lost the double haters by 17 points, but Biden is winning them by 50 points. Biden’s lead is 9.5 percentage points. Last time, Clinton was the faux incumbent and Trump had no record whatsoever as an elected official. Now Trump is the incumbent and voters disapprove of his presidency by a wide margin. In 2016, there was no pandemic that Trump had mismanaged. Now, in 2020, there is a pandemic that Trump, the incumbent, has mismanaged leading to 300,000 dead Americans and a wrecked economy . Voters are highly motivated. The lead is far too large for that many voters who dislike Trump to make mistakes with their ballot to give Trump an electoral college win.
.Biden’s lead has been far more stable than Clinton’s. Clinton would be winning, then losing, then winning by a lot, then winning by a modest amount… And she had the FBI investigation hanging over her ; Biden’s doesn’t and it wouldn’t have even credibility with voters at this point. Clinton’s last polls averaged to give her a 3.2 percentage point lead over Trump while she was at 46.8% in the polls nationally.
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.From a previous diary which I wrote :
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Okay, here we go, once again. Clinton’s lead was not 10 points at this point in time. In fact, her best lead was after the convention which gives a candidate (other than Trump) a temporary bump and that was 7.6 . However, it would jump up and down. It was incredibly volatile. She averaged between 46 and 48% of the vote.
We’ll start with 9/20 C+ means Clinton lead, T+ means Trump lead, 0 means tie, these are all polls listed at real clear politics .
T+3 , C+4 , C+ 3, 0 , C+1 ,C+6 , 0 , C+4 , C+6 , C+5 , T+4 ,C+6 , C+6 , C+6 ,
C+7 ,C+5 ,C+4 ,C+6 ,C+7 , T+2 , C+11 , C+5 , C+14 [only 447 LV] , C+7 , C+10 ,
C+8 , T+1 , C+10 , C+4 , C+8 , C+11 , C+12 [726 LV] , C+4 , C+9 , C+7 ,
C+4 , C+6 , C+6 , C+6 , 0 , C+12 , C+6 , C+13 , C+10 , C+8 , C+7 , C+2 ,
C+5 , C+3 , C+5 , T+2 , C+7 , C+2 , T+4 , C+1 , C+3 , C+6 , C+3 , C+5 ,
0 , C+4 , C+7 , C+1 , C+2 ,
and then the final polls which were :
C+5 , C+4 , C+5 , C+6 , C+4 , C+3 , T+3 , C+4 , C+1 , C+3 :
Her final polling average was a lead of 3.2 points with 46.8 percent of the vote.
She would have some good polls and a few good polls in a row, but then would return to a more modest lead. There were numerous polls where she held a lead of C+5 or less. In fact, let’s count those. 42 polls gave her a four point lead or less. She was tied or behind in a number of them. 10 polls where it was even or Trump led. There were 32 polls where she led by 6 or more points. In 34 polls, she led by 4 points or less.
Did she have some good polls ? Yes. But most of the polls were with leads of 5 points or less. That’s not at all the case with Biden. He is now leading by 10.1 points according to the model at 538.
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.The lead is now nationally 9.5 points, not 10.1 now. That’s not much of a difference, but I am noting that. Biden’s lead has been at least 6 points and he has been above 49.8% in the average of the polls since June 14th. For all but two weeks of that time period, Biden’s lead was greater than seven points. It has only grown. Consider what that lead has survived: Wisconsin and Portland and $800 million in attack ads and the RNC Convention and rallies and the debates. It’s survived all of that and has only grown. It’s now 9.5 % . The odds of Biden’s lead shrinking to less than five points now when it has survived over four months are almost infinitesimal. Trump’s strong disapproval rating is between 48 and 50 % . Almost all democrats strongly disapprove of Trump. It is vote or die time, both personally due to the pandemic and for our democracy . Our voters (with few exceptions) aren’t throwing away their votes by not following election rules. We aren’t going to lose so many of our votes that a nearly ten point lead won’t hold up. Again, if you win the popular vote by six percentage points, then your probability of winning the electoral college is 99%. We aren’t losing that many votes due to carelessness as motivated as our voters are. That theory is just for those who want to promote negative nonsense. There were only 47 million early votes cast last time. Voters have already cast almost 65 million votes already. 90 million votes were cast on election day in 2016. If another 15 million votes are cast prior to 11/3, then even if election day voting drops by nearly 20% (17.8% is closer) , we are looking at 154 million votes because we would only need 74 million votes to get there.
The economist has Biden’s probability of winning each of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania as above 90 % and 538 has Biden’s probability of winning Pennsylvania as at 85% ( a republican partisan firm, Insider Advantage has Trump up 3 and that affected 538’s margin for Biden in PA , a weakness that Nate Silver admitted regarding his model [click podcast on first link] . Nate specifically said that republican partisan pollsters throw out outliers in swing states which incorrectly and artificially reduce Biden’s true lead in his model. No other pollster has a lead for Trump in Pennsylvania and Biden is above 50%. The other pollsters all have leads for Biden of 3,5,5,6,7,8, and 10 meaning 6 is the median and 6.3 is the arithmetic mean for the others. Even so Biden’s lead, even with Insider Advantage, is over 5 points. ] Clinton only led by 2.1 percent and had 46.8% of the vote in the average of the polls in Pennsylvania while the undecided and third party vote was 8.5%, over four times her lead. She would lose the third party and undecided vote with 57% unfavorable rating, but Biden is above 50% and has a positive favorable number as noted above.
Biden’s lead is over seven points and he is over 50% at 51.4% in the average of the polls in Wisconsin. They give Biden an 89% probability of winning Wisconsin. Hillary may have led by 6.5% in the polls in Wisconsin, but she was only at 46.8% in the average of the polls and the sum of the third party and undecided vote was 12.9%, nearly twice what her lead was. Since she was so low, when the third party and undecided vote broke heavily for Trump, she lost. Biden is above 50% so even if the undecided vote broke 100% for Trump, Biden would still win and Biden has a positive favorability, not the 57% unfavorable rating that Hillary Clinton had.
Biden’s lead is over eight points and he is over 50% at 50.9% in Michigan. Biden’s probability of winning Michigan is 94% . Hillary’s lead was 3.6% and she was at 47.0 % in the average of the polls and the sum of the third party and undecided vote was 9.6%, more than twice her lead.
I want to point out some things about Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and the differences between Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. In 2016, the Democratic Party to which Hillary Clinton belongs, had controlled the White House for eight straight years. Only once since 1945 has the same party controlled the White House for twelve years. It is relatively uncommon. Hillary Clinton had a 57% unfavorable rating. Hillary Clinton had served in the Obama administration as Secretary of State. Hillary Clinton was under FBI investigation for many months. Hillary Clinton was only at 46.8% in the average of the polls in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and only at 47.0% in the average of the polls in Michigan. The sum of the third party and undecided vote was about twice her lead in Wisconsin and well over twice her lead in Michigan and Pennsylvania ; thus, when it broke heavily for Trump, she was done. Biden is above 50% in all three states. Trump only won 47.3% of the vote in Michigan, 47.2% of the vote in Wisconsin, and 48.2% of the vote in Pennsylvania. Mitt Romney who lost Wisconsin by 7 points in 2012 won more votes in Wisconsin in 2012 than Donald Trump did in 2016. Barack Obama won more votes in each of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in both 2008 and 2012 despite population growth. If we show up and get out our vote, then we win those states. A Democrat is the governor in all three states. We won all three of those states in 2018. If Biden wins over 48.5% of the vote in all three states since Trump won’t win more votes than he won last time (which was 48.2% in PA and lower in MI and WI), then he should win all three states and he is above 50%.
The difference between Hillary’s average in the polls and her percentage of the vote in each of these states was tiny. In Michigan the difference between her share of the vote in the average of the polls and her share of the vote in the election was 0.0% (47.0 -47.0 =0.0) , in Wisconsin the difference between her share of the vote in the average of the polls and her share of the vote in the election was .3% (46.8-46.5=.3), and in Pennsylvania the difference between her share of the vote in the average of the polls and her share of the vote in the election was .7% (47.5-46.8=.7) . If the polls are as accurate with Biden’s topline numbers as they were with Hillary’s topline numbers, then Biden can’t lose.
Biden is leading in Arizona, North Carolina, and Florida. Biden is competitive in Iowa, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio . 154 million turnout can mean we win all four of those states since we are only down by 1.5% or less in each of those states (We are actually leading in Iowa and Georgia). Trump has to win all seven of those states and then one of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
It is not 2016. Trump was not the incumbent then. Trump had not mismanaged the pandemic leading to 300,000 dead Americans and a wrecked economy in 2016. Hillary had terrible favorable ratings, but Biden is in positive territory. Biden is winning double haters by 50 points whereas Hillary lost them by 17 points. Hillary was the faux incumbent ; now, Trump is the real incumbent. Biden is not trying to stretch Democratic control of the White House from 8 straight years to 12 years which Hillary had to try to do and that is hard. Hillary’s leads jumped up and down and was down to 4 points at this point in the election. Her leads were very unstable. At the time, Hillary was facing an opponent who had no record as an elected official. Biden is facing an incumbent Trump with a terrible record. Hillary stayed between 46 and 48% of the vote in the average of the polls both in the critical swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania and nationally. HRC was at 47.0% of the vote or less in all 3 of those states in the average of the polls ; Biden is above 50% in all 3 states in the average of the polls. Biden’s lead nationally is 9.5 percentage points whereas Hillary’s was 4 percentage points at this time. Biden has flipped seniors. We are looking at record turnout, 154 million votes being cast.
In light of all of this data and context, Biden is going to win by a margin too large for them to be able to cheat their way to victory.
I have read too many Kossacks here who either wrote or recommended comments which promote a conspiracy theory that says that Trump will cheat his way to victory. Promoting this only discourages our voters. If one says that Trump’s cheating can overturn our cumulative voting, then one is removing the rationale for us voting . I read an absolutely idiotic comment that took the 2016 margin for Wisconsin and how many people sent in late ballots in the primary and concluded that Trump can cheat enough to win in Wisconsin. First, the margin for 2016 won’t be the margin for 2020. So, right there, they have shown us that they have their heads up their asses and are 100% committed to defeatism no matter how absurd the theory that they must commit to. The primary isn’t the same as the one opportunity to remove Trump in the general election. Voters in swing states know this.
It’s time to put up or shut up. If you believe that Trump is going to win the election (regardless of the conspiracy theory that is your vehicle to get to that conclusion) , then say so. Put down your name . I don’t mind writing here that Joe Biden / Kamala Harris are going to win this election. They will win the electoral college. They will win all three of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. So, here we are. I am putting myself down here on the record that Biden will win. I want all of you defeatists who are pushing this conspiracy shit that Trump can overcome a 9.5 percentage point popular vote lead nationally held by Biden and a perilous electoral college position to go on the record here. Don’t be shy. If you are going to promote this theory which discourages Democrats from voting because Trump will get rid of so many millions of votes that he can overcome a 9.5 percentage lead in an election with 154 million votes (which really shoots a huge hole in the theory), then put your name here and then we can revisit this diary every day for the next four years.
Trump ain’t going to win.
Damn conspiracy theory promoting defeatists.
Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020 · 11:12:48 AM +00:00 · Dem
538 makes some comments too :
First, a new InsiderAdvantage survey sponsored by the Center for American Greatness, a conservative media think tank, gave Trump a 3-point lead in Pennsylvania, which marks a 6-point swing in margin from its previous poll in mid-October. We, of course, can’t discount that this might be the case, but the ideological leanings of the pollster’s sponsor do give us pause. Similarly, a national poll from Rasmussen Reports/Pulse Opinion Research found Trump ahead by 1 point, a 4-point shift from its last survey, but Rasmussen has a well-known GOP house effect, or put another way, it consistently shows better results for Republican candidates than other polling firms.
We choose to be very inclusive when it comes to our forecast, so we toss almost everything into the polling kitchen sink. But on the whole, these recent polls may indicate some post-debate widening in the race rather than tightening, especially if you take the two quasi-partisan polls with a small pinch of salt (which we’d recommend).
Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020 · 11:32:23 AM +00:00 · Dem
I want to be clear: I understand people being fearful and traumatized after 2016, people who simply want to be reassured. We have been through hell and election night began a national nightmare and it is completely understandable to be worried after that. This is not aimed at people who are simply understandably worried after 2016.
This is about people promoting conspiracy theory shit that says our votes won’t count and Trump will cheat his way to a win. That discourages people from voting and it harms those who are not promoting CT but are just worried after this nightmare.
Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020 · 12:10:58 PM +00:00 · Dem
Considering eliminating poll (if possible) . As of the typing of this update in my polling, Biden / Harris had 103 votes and Trump / Pence only had 8 votes ! Woot ! Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have a random sample.
Tuesday, Oct 27, 2020 · 1:17:16 PM +00:00 · Dem
Some Democrats stay home when they don’t like their party’s candidate. That’s what happened in 2016.
If a person doesn’t like a candidate, then we can't meaningfully speak of their complacency towards how that candidate fares. If they don’t like a candidate, then they don’t care how that candidate does. So, to speak about complacency meaningfully, we must talk about people who really like a candidate. And since we are discussing complacency, then the issue is not voter suppression either.
So, we have people who really like a candidate. We’re talking about HRC here, so let’s just say it. So, this voter who really likes HRC either voted or they didn’t.
Let’s say that they voted. However, they didn’t vote for HRC. They skipped that part of the ballot. Again, we are thinking about voters who didn’t vote for HRC due to complacency. So, they skipped the presidential part of the ballot because they were complacent. This doesn’t work for me.
So, then they didn’t vote at all. Now, if they liked a mainstream centrist Democrat like HRC, then they probably liked a number of other Democrats on the ballot, some of whom were in races that were perceived to be closer. But even though the presidential election only comes around once every four years and there are a variety of ways to vote (and again we are not considering voter suppression because we are talking about voters who didn’t vote for HRC due to complacency) and even though they liked a lot of the Democratic candidates, they didn’t manage to vote for a single one of them and voter suppression wasn’t an issue for this voter. Were they complacent about all of their candidates ? Or is it that they only liked Hillary Clinton and her alone but didn’t vote for her or anybody she recommended ? None of this works.
It’s all stupid.
I am complacent about Steve Daines winning (actually I want Gov Bullock to defeat him soundly — but I am just giving an example) because I don’t like him. That doesn’t even make sense. It only makes sense to speak of the complacency of a voter if the voter likes a candidate.
Enough with the complacency.
I like Nate and his model can be helpful. I was surprised, therefore, to learn (in an article Nate wrote — Is Biden doomed if he loses Pennsylvania ) that Nate doesn’t understand the advantage that a candidate has of being over fifty percent vs way under fifty percent or the difference between having a positive favorability vs having a 57% unfavorable rating with 100% name recognition. He also doesn’t seem to understand the difference between Trump running as a candidate with no record as an elected official vs running as the incumbent who badly mismanaged the pandemic leading to 300,000 dead Americans. It’s disappointing that he doesn’t understand these basics.
He also seems to fault pollsters for not deliberately altering the data from their polls and not guessing for whom an undecided voter is going to vote. He seems to have this idea that zero undecided voters were going to vote for a major party presidential candidate in 2016. I don’t know where that idea came from. Looking at real clear politics polling, it’s crystal clear what happened. Hillary got about what her share of the vote was in the average of the polls and the undecided vote and some of the third party vote broke heavily for Trump. That does not mean that the polls were inaccurate. Hillary’s topline numbers in the average of the polls were within 1 percent of her share of the vote in the election in the three swing states that determined the election. The third party vote actually didn’t go down as much as it normally does. This means Nate is faulting pollsters because they marked undecided when the respondent said that they undecided.
If candidate A is the faux incumbent with a 55% unfavorable rating and 100 % name recognition has a 10 point lead over another candidate with no record as an elected official, 45 to 35 and the candidate which has 35% as the average of the polls wins, is this a big surprise ? Does this mean that the polling was off ? I’m not sure that it does. 20% of the vote is undecided or third party. However, if the 20% of the respondents indicated that they were voting third party or undecided and that is how the pollster marked them and the third party vote actually held up surprisingly well, then I don’t see how the pollster is to be faulted or the poll is to be faulted. The person I would fault is the person who claims to be an expert but believes that the ten point lead means that Candidate A is certain to win. A seemingly large lead doesn’t mean that much if you are in the low forties to 45 and have a terrible favorable rating and have 100% name recognition and are the faux incumbent facing a candidate with no record as an elected official and the third party and undecided vote is much larger than the seemingly large lead.
That’s the lesson from 2016. Big lead ? So, what . What’s your share of the vote in the average of the polls ? Are you above 50% or at least right on the cusp on 50% ? Do you have an FBI investigation going on ? Do 57% of registered voters find you dishonest or untrustworthy ? Do 57% of registered voters view you unfavorably ? Do you have 100 % name recognition ? Are you the faux incumbent ? Is the sum of the third party and undecided vote much larger than your lead ? The answers to those questions, especially the last one, tell us whether or not your “big lead” is likely to hold up.
I would rather have a smaller lead with a positive favorability and be above 50% than have a larger lead with a terrible favorability who is stuck at 45% .
