Starting to see more polling showing “it’s a blue wave” than polling with Trump being ahead. That about sums up where we are right now in the cycle + just how much has changed since Biden dropped out. Before that, Biden’s best polls showed a tie or slight lead and worst had Trump winning in a wave.
Starting to see more polling showing “it’s a blue wave” than polling with Trump being ahead. That about sums up where we are right now in the cycle + just how much has changed since Biden dropped out. Before that, Biden’s best polls showed a tie or slight lead and worst had Trump winning in a wave.
Before anyone asks, no, there is zero downballot data showing that right now, the wave polls are outliers. The average is about D+2 right now in the GCB and Washington primary had it at D+4, so that’s about the range of where the data shows us to be currently. Slightly less or slightly more than 2020.
I wouldn't call this "blue wave" polling. But it also doesn't point to a Trump lead in the EC. The overall picture is pretty consistent - a very close race with a slight tilt to Harris.
Don't waves typically materialize in the final 1-2 weeks? Plus, there is so little reliable House polling its hard to say which seats will be swept up until we get some actual results.
Waves in a presidential year are pretty hard to come by to begin with. The last one would have been 2008 - and that materialized well before the election (I would argue in fact in 2006.)
The 2018 wave was also pretty evident long before the voting started (I mean we picked up a Senate seat in Alabama in late 2017 among other overachievements.)
As I recall, Doug Jones won because of the GOP’s "candidate quality problem". That issue seems even more prominent in this cycle, which explains why all the Democratic Senate incumbents except Jon Tester are polling well.
With challengers Mucarsel-Powell in Florida and Allred in Texas having longshot chances, we may just hold the Senate – despite an outrageously difficult map.
An aside: I do wish President Biden had appointed Doug Jones as Attorney General, rather than Merrick Garland.
Candidate quality was obviously a problem that year in Alabama, but if HRC (or any Dem) have won in 2016 you can bet that there just wouldn't have been enough enthusiasm to steal that seat.
So anything at 5+ is at wave level imo. There’s been a few polls that have shown that. They’re outliers, but they’re more frequent than ones showing Trump winning nationally.
What I see the polling showing is the blue wall fortifying, NV is far and away the least polled of the swing states and I think she's probably doing a little better there than the polling would indicate based on the state's history in that regard plus because its been been less polled the shitty right wing pollsters have had a disproportionate impact on the averages there. But NC looks like a total coin flip and Trump looks like he has a slight edge in AZ and GA.
While I disagree about what the polling writ large is showing, I do think this may end up being what we see with results. One theory I've had is that Harris will do way better with young voters than she is in polling and the main piece of evidence I've used is that while the horserace numbers tend to show it around Harris +10 with voters 18-29, there have been a couple of polls of just 18-29 voters and those tend to be much better for her. And one such poll dropped today, the Harvard poll showed her up 61-30. It makes sense on a couple levels, the fist being just the really small numbers you'll get in this cohort in a horserace poll gives it a really high MOE. But also, it intuitively makes sense to me that a MAGA young voter is more likely to answer a poll than the rest of their age cohort and so you're getting a more MAGA sample unless you're really focusing on making sure you get a representative sample.
Starting to see more polling showing “it’s a blue wave” than polling with Trump being ahead. That about sums up where we are right now in the cycle + just how much has changed since Biden dropped out. Before that, Biden’s best polls showed a tie or slight lead and worst had Trump winning in a wave.
Before anyone asks, no, there is zero downballot data showing that right now, the wave polls are outliers. The average is about D+2 right now in the GCB and Washington primary had it at D+4, so that’s about the range of where the data shows us to be currently. Slightly less or slightly more than 2020.
I wouldn't call this "blue wave" polling. But it also doesn't point to a Trump lead in the EC. The overall picture is pretty consistent - a very close race with a slight tilt to Harris.
Don't waves typically materialize in the final 1-2 weeks? Plus, there is so little reliable House polling its hard to say which seats will be swept up until we get some actual results.
Waves in a presidential year are pretty hard to come by to begin with. The last one would have been 2008 - and that materialized well before the election (I would argue in fact in 2006.)
The 2018 wave was also pretty evident long before the voting started (I mean we picked up a Senate seat in Alabama in late 2017 among other overachievements.)
As I recall, Doug Jones won because of the GOP’s "candidate quality problem". That issue seems even more prominent in this cycle, which explains why all the Democratic Senate incumbents except Jon Tester are polling well.
With challengers Mucarsel-Powell in Florida and Allred in Texas having longshot chances, we may just hold the Senate – despite an outrageously difficult map.
An aside: I do wish President Biden had appointed Doug Jones as Attorney General, rather than Merrick Garland.
Candidate quality was obviously a problem that year in Alabama, but if HRC (or any Dem) have won in 2016 you can bet that there just wouldn't have been enough enthusiasm to steal that seat.
Agree about Jones vs Garland.
Had a Dem won in 2016 that election wouldn't have happened at all, as Sessions obviously wouldn't have been appointed to anything.
For me, this is how I view ratings:
Tilt 0-2 points
Lean 2-5 points
Likely 5-10 points
Safe 10+ points
So anything at 5+ is at wave level imo. There’s been a few polls that have shown that. They’re outliers, but they’re more frequent than ones showing Trump winning nationally.
I recall that Obama won by about 8 in 2008 and brought something like 18 flipped House seats with him. That was a wave.
Ah, those halcyon days of youth. I was actively disappointed in the breadth of the Obama 2008 wave.
What I see the polling showing is the blue wall fortifying, NV is far and away the least polled of the swing states and I think she's probably doing a little better there than the polling would indicate based on the state's history in that regard plus because its been been less polled the shitty right wing pollsters have had a disproportionate impact on the averages there. But NC looks like a total coin flip and Trump looks like he has a slight edge in AZ and GA.
While I disagree about what the polling writ large is showing, I do think this may end up being what we see with results. One theory I've had is that Harris will do way better with young voters than she is in polling and the main piece of evidence I've used is that while the horserace numbers tend to show it around Harris +10 with voters 18-29, there have been a couple of polls of just 18-29 voters and those tend to be much better for her. And one such poll dropped today, the Harvard poll showed her up 61-30. It makes sense on a couple levels, the fist being just the really small numbers you'll get in this cohort in a horserace poll gives it a really high MOE. But also, it intuitively makes sense to me that a MAGA young voter is more likely to answer a poll than the rest of their age cohort and so you're getting a more MAGA sample unless you're really focusing on making sure you get a representative sample.