not much new data - there are a variety of polls coming out. There may be a tendency towards what is called "herding" - nudging results to be closer to averages, which is a form of hedging one's bets. Not clear. There is a proliferation of so called red wave polls which do distort the averages in favor of Trump.
Going to pass on two things. One is a terrific explanation by a Josh Clinton from Vanderbilt U, a poli sci professor & co-director of their polling institute, which explains some of the issues faced by pollsters. You can read the entire piece here:
Let me offer just a bit. First to let you see what he views as the key issues for any pollster:
he 4 key questions for pollsters
After poll data are collected, pollsters must assess whether they need to adjust or “weight” the data to address the very real possibility that the people who took the poll differ from those who did not. This involves answering four questions:
1. Do respondents match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.? (This was a problem in 2016.)
2. Do respondents match the electorate politically after the sample is adjusted by demographic factors? (This was the problem in 2020.)
3. Which respondents will vote?
4. Should the pollster trust the data?"
Then, he gives examples of how things can change depending upon how you answer these questions, where the results can be margins for Harris ranging from 9% down to 1%.
Now building on that, some real data to keep in mind.
We know the gender differentiation in 2020 and in 2022. In 2020 the actual votes 52% and men 48%. In 2016 election 63.3% of women turned out and 59.3% of men, and in 2020 68.4% of women resgistered voters turned out versus 65% of males. In the 2020 census 50.9% of population was female, and 49.1 was male. The older the age cohort, the more women within that cohort. In 2022 64% of women voted versus 58% of men.
Now look at what we know about the early voting so far. In most states we can get data on gender breakout on who has voted. According to the Election Lab at the U of Florida,
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/
as of 9:38 PM on Oct 29, a total of 53,460,802 folks had already voted either by absentees received or in person voting (btw, this equals about 1/3 of the total vote in 2020), of which the gender breakout was Female 54.1% while male was 43.9%, or a margin of 10.2%. There has has been some exit polling done on a nationwide basis, and here are what I can find, as of yesterday:
ABC/Ipsos: Harris 62-33
CNN Poll: Harris 61-36
NYT/Siena: Harris 58-40
HarrisX poll: Harris 61-32
USAToday/Suffolk: Harris 63-34
And please note - these are results with the party breakout between Dems and Rs nationwide being about even (Please note - for some states, such as MI and VA, people are not registered by party).
So how do we interpret all this, remembering that some key states do not have much early in person voting (PA has none)?
Even while there may be a higher percentage of early voters who are Republicans this cycle versus 202, both because there is no pandemic goosing up D early voting and bc this cycle Rs are urging folks to vote early?
1. Women seem more motivated to vote early than men, even beyond the gender divide in voting
2. Clearly a fair number of R women must be indicating voting for Harris.
Also remind folks of the following - many states bar those with felony convictions from voting. Cata from the Department of Justice shows roughly 16% of felony convictions are of women.
Taking all of this together
- more women than men
- higher percentage of women tend to vote than men
- higher percentage of men than women barred by felony conviction
- clear evidence of women SO FAR (early voting) motivated to vote than men
- some consistent evidence that the early vote strongly favors Harris over Trump based on multiple exit polls
seems to indicate that Harris is in a STRONGER position than being shown clear in polling averages and in most polls.
We are still waiting to see impact of (1) Trump's MSG rally; (2) Michelle Obama's speech in Kalamazoo; (3) Harris's speech on the Ellipse.
Also worth noting - Harris & Walz going to battlegrounds, including beyond the Blue Wall 3, while Trump is going to Salem VA and Albuquerque NM as well as battleground. These two seem puzzling, since he is not competitive in either state, he will not be in House Districts that are competitive (NM is D, VA-09 is R), and there are not competitive Senate races in either state. Nor is either likely to raise much money. Some speculate that he is going to places where he has not been to get larger crowds to assuage his ego. Not privy to what is going on inside his campaign. I note that yesterday he was nearby me, in Drexel Hlll PA (Delaware County, not far from Haverford College) and apparently his crowd was under 1,000.
Make of this all what you will.
Peace.