COVID SUMMER
I haven’t made an update on the Presidential race since July 3rd because, despite increased polling this month, nothing much changed. I think that’s a sign that the current captivating news stories of the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matters demonstrations for George Floyd, Breona Taylor and so many others have changed hearts and minds, but they haven’t changed any new minds in July. At least not any new minds who answer the phone for pollsters.
We shall soon see whether Trump’s quasi-martial law paramilitary actions are pushing even more people to come to their senses.
In July, I turned my attention to the Senate races, then to the House and gubernatorial races. I love to say that strange, seldom-used word, gubernatorial. :- ]
15-SEcond takeaway
Public Policy Polling (PPP) and Morning Consult (MC) are out with a slew of polls yesterday which confirmed some states and jiggled others.
320 Biden (19 Leaners), 93 Tossup, 125 Trump (9 Leaners)
270 Threshold: 58 Likely Ds. (FL, PA, MN Biden vs. WI, MI, NH, MN Trump)
Hot Contests: TX, OH, IA, GA and NC (Spend your time and money here, Joe!)
Editor’s Note: Since my methodology determines the likelihood of a current lead and does NOT PREDICT anything, I’m going to use the term “Solid D”, rather than “Safe D”, for leads >= 3 x Margin of Error (MOE) going forward.
BattleGrounds
Please note that if you line the states up from left to right based on likelihood of the presidential vote, all of these battlegrounds are to the right of the 270 Threshold. In other words, they are gravy, good chances to win more electoral votes and down-ticket races in purple and red states.
GA leaned toward Biden in June, Fox and PPP giving him 2-4 point leads, near the MOE. Now PPP and MC show Biden’s lead only 1 point. Tossup
NC leaned toward Biden in June, according to several pollsters. PPP shows Leans D, NBC/Marist shows Likely D, while MC and another show Tossup. This one’s tough, but I’m going to err toward uncertainty and call it Tossup.
TX Polls out since July 12 show LikelyD, Tossup, Tossup, LeansR, LeansD. Tossup
OH Still not heavily polled. Still a tossup. In June, Fox showed Leans D and Quinnipiac (Q) showed Tossup. In two large polls in July, YouGov/CBS shows Tossup and MC shows Leans R. Still Tossup
IA PPP shows Trump ahead by 1 point, a tossup. Spry Strategies, a new pollster that tends to have an extreme bias to the right, shows this one Biden +2. Tossup
Fluctuations
ME After nothing since March, 3 polls came out in July. Joe has Solid leads and 50% or more. ME is now Solid D and the ME-2 elector is Leans D based on a poll last year showing District 2 favoring Biden by 3 points.
VA MC produced the first poll of VA since May and it shows a Solid D lead.
AK thawed out enough in July to do 3 polls. They show Leans R, Tossup, Likely R. Leans R
States holding steady
AZ I see pundits like Cook, and the news outlets who repeat them, calling AZ a tossup for Pres and tossup or Leans D for Senate. Arizona is a very steady Leans D for Pres and Likely D or better for Senate candidate Capt. Mark Kelly.
FL Despite the news media’s fervent wishes for a battle royale in the biggest purple state, Florida is clearly in Likely D territory and two polls published on July 23 showed it to be Solid D. Might have something to do with the sheer incompetence and lives lost by their governor and president, DeSantis and Trump.
CO Every poll since July of last year shows Biden in the 51 to 56% range and Trump in the 35 to 45% range. Solid D
2 bluish states up north
MN At the risk of dating myself, I’ve always thought of Minnesota as the most reliable Democratic state because it was 1 of 6 states (+DC) that voted for Carter in 1980 and the only state (+DC) to vote for their favorite-son Mondale in 1984. (Massachusetts voted Republican both times.) In fact, the last time Minn voted for a Republican presidential candidate was Nixon in 1972. That year, only Mass and DC gave electoral votes to McGovern.
The North Star State (L’Etoile du Nord) was heavily settled a century and a half ago by Lutherans from Germany and then Scandinavia. Like the Lutheran denominations, some Minnesotans are conservative and some are more open-minded.
History notwithstanding, polls tend to show MN much closer than liberal bastions like CA, NY and MA. We keep seeing blue polls for Biden and Sen. Tina Smith, but many are close. Three polls out in the last week show MN Solid D (Fox), Likely D (Trafalgar), and Leans D (MC). Down to Likely D, and not comfortable don’t ya know.
WI If MN is stereotypically a Nordic state, then WI is traditionally a German state, producing beer, cheese and sausage from tidy farms with immaculate red barns. The Dairy State has produced extreme politicians on the left and the right. They had eight 20th Century Socialist mayors, including 3 in Milwaukee who served for a total of 38 years. The great liberal standard-bearer, former Sen. Russ Feingold, is a Cheesehead. Wisconsin also produced the Fascist travesties, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Gov. Scott Walker.
After 2016, I don’t think we can trust any lead in WI. July polls show Biden leads of Leans D, Likely D and Likely D. The median is Likely D.
A word about some outlier pollsters
Spry Strategies is a new Republican pollster with some wildly right-biased polls. New to me, not listed on 538, and started in Jan 2018, according to the founder’s LinkedIn page. Spry’s web says of its founder “Ryan is considered the premier pollster for Republicans across the South and especially his beloved Tennessee.” His LinkedIn page says “Ryan is a gunslinger who knows winning often means being the first to draw.” Even the company’s name suggests they are about strategies, not finding the truth. Alrighty then.
Here’s a story of their flawed poll of North Carolina at the end of May.
They are usually showing Republicans doing better than any other poll. I think they produced the poll that Trump noted in a recent interview “I have a poll that shows me winning.” Once in awhile, they are inline with other polls or even to the left, like the July 11-16 Iowa poll showing Biden leading by 2, while all other polls show him trailing by a point or two, except one that showed a tie.
I am going to largely ignore Spry Strategies unless they are the only poll for a given state in a given month. If my median category method produces a tie, I may use the presence of Spry to break the tie, which will usually mean a pessimistic approach for Democrats.
Gravis Marketing, Rasmussen (Pulse) and Trafalgar
Gravis Marketing has been a right-biased pollster for some time. I used to use them and Rasmussen as a worst-case scenario. That is, if the polls showed a Democrat at +4 and Gravis or Rasmussen showed a +1, I figured the Democrat was clearly in the lead, even Republican wishful thinking couldn’t imagine that Democrat trailing. Lately, I’ve seen some Gravis polls showing strong leads for Democrats, close to in line with others. I’ll take them on a case-by-case basis.
Rasmussen has had a big name with Fox Lies viewers for years as an automated poll with an almost guaranteed bias of 3 or 4 points to the right, but I have seen very little out of them so far this cycle. When they do release a poll, it’s been under the name of a “field service” spin-off, Pulse Opinion Research. I reserve the right to ignore Pulse and Rasmussen.
Trafalgar is another new one that is usually off to the right, but not as wildly as Spry. I’ll figure they’re another worst-case indicator or tiebreaker.
CNBC/Change Research NBC’s financial channel, CNBC, has been producing aggregated battleground and national polls, but also reporting the individual state polls that make up the battleground panel.
They have a big writeup about their national poll and their poll of an aggregate of battleground states, advertising tight MOEs of 1.94% for the battleground aggregate and 3.04% for the national. Yet, they report individual state numbers with small samples that happened to be in each state, without reporting an MOE on each state. 270ToWin dutifully reports the state numbers with fairly small sample size and no MOE. These numbers really should not be used on the state level!
Today’s cnbc polls
I got too long-winded and did not complete this last night.
Wouldn’t you know, CNBC would release a panel of polls today?
PA Here’s a prime example of what has happened when I tried to include CNBC polls. Looking at polls reported since 7/15, we see all blue except our friend Spry Strategies showing Trump ahead by 1. (Tossup ignore) CNBC 7/15 +8 pts ill-defined MOE that you could guess at 3.5% => (Likely D ignore). Monmouth +7 (4.9) => (Leans D). Fox +11 (3.5) => (Solid D). Gravis +3 (3.1) => (Leans D). MC +8 (2.1) => (Solid D). CNBC 7/29 +2 (~ 5.2) => (Tossup ignore).
So we have Leans D, 2 Solid Ds, a Gravis Leans D, CNBC Likely D and Tossup, Spry Tossup. The quality polls tell me Leans D, Solid D, Solid D. Median category of that is Solid D. Add in a reasonable Gravis poll and we have a tie, Leans or Solid D, which indicates Likely D. Add in Spry and the bogus CNBC panels, we get 2 Tossups, 2 Leans D, 1 Likely D, 2 Solid D, which indicates Leans D. Which do we pick?
I’m going to ignore the CNBC panels, because I am looking at STATE polls, not national or battleground panels. I’m keeping this Gravis poll and throwing out the Spry outlier. Yielding Likely D for PA.