Generational Dynamics World View

[pbrower2a]

Almost a year ago I made a projection of the 2020 election based upon the polling matchups between Biden and Trump.

Quote:This is more a projection than a poll.

Using the categories of electoral-vote.com, solid dark shades are for leads in excess of 10% (strong), medium solid shades are for leads of at least 5% but less than 10% (weak), and medium shades around  something light gray (this site allows pale shades, but not frames) are for less than 5% (barely). 4% is the usual margin of error, although I would be tempted to say that for such states as Alaska, Montana, and Texas I would assign a bigger margin of error -- 5% or even 6%.

The map, using the criteria of electoral-vote.com but Atlas coloration:



Strong Trump (margin 10% or greater)
Weak Trump (margin 5-9.9%)
Barely Trump (margin under 5%)
exact tie -- white
Barely Biden (margin under 5%)
Weak Biden (margin 5-9.9%)
Strong Biden (margin 10% or greater)

Note that this is really a projection that takes account of states' electoral histories as well as short-term polling. In contrast to the recent polls that have shown a sharp turn away from Trump in the last two weeks or so, this projection makes the assumption that people who made such a turn away from Trump are at most 'shaky' voters for Biden and are likely to return to Trump as the news becomes less inflamed.  So if Biden made recent gains, then how solid are those? Not quite as solid as those ready to vote for him in  April, let alone January. That Arizona hasn't voted for a Democratic nominee for President since 1996 and not in a real binary election for President in that state (Strom Thurmond wasn't even on the ballot in Arizona in 1948) or that Texas hasn't voted for a Democratic nominee for President since 1976 matters greatly. That Iowa and Ohio voted for Trump by large margins in 2016 also matters.

https://www.cbsnews.com/2020-us-election...00-10abc1f

While surveying voters across the country is an integral part of the Battleground Tracker, this is more than your typical poll. It's really a big data project. We combine polling, voter files (from L2 Political), U.S. Census data, and historical trends to get a clear picture of what's going on in each state.

Here's how we put together that combination:

We know which candidates different types of voters are supporting from our polling, which includes much larger sample sizes — tens of thousands — than a typical poll;
We know how many people like them are in each state and county, as well as their turnout history, from voter files and Census data;
And we know each state's previous election results, which enables us to anchor our 2020 estimates to recent history.

This approach achieves better estimates in states without as much polling. In 2016, for example, scarce polling in certain states like Michigan or Wisconsin led some to believe they were not as competitive as they turned out to be. That picture might have been improved by considering that these states were full of the same kinds of voters shifting to the Republican Party elsewhere.

We don't know who will change their minds at the last minute -- or how.

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thr...l#pid55014

It was rosier for Biden than reality would be. This suggests that Donald trump's campaign picked up some edges that Biden couldn't. Democrats typically rely more heavily upon volunteers canvassing for votes -- which would prove impossible in 2020. Trump was more willing to put lives at risk, including his own with mass rallies that often proved super-spreader events for COVID-19. The Grim Reaper was in attendance at all of those events.

Category differences:

AS. MO, SC  solid Trump wins to Trump blow-outs
IA, OH, TX  bare Trump wins to solid Trump wins
FL solid Biden win to bare Trump win
NC bare Biden win to bare Trump win
AZ true toss-up to bare Biden win
MI, PA, WI solid Biden wins to bare Biden wins
MN Biden blow-out  win to Biden solid win
NV Biden blow-out to bare Biden win

... Trump did better than July polling suggested. I take this as an interpretation that he had a late charge that came up just short. He thought that he could win, but he was too far behind to succeed at that. 

  Trump did better than pollsters expected, and here is why:

(CNN)President Joe Biden won the 2020 election as polls suggested he would. His victory, however, ended up being tighter nationally and in a number of swing states than expected. The question of why that happened has dogged pollsters since the election.


On Tuesday, a number of Democratic pollsters (ALG Research, Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, GBAO Strategies, Global Strategy Group and Normington Petts) put out a statement as to why they think their internal polls were off. It jibes with a lot of the analysis I and others have said publicly.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the people who aren't answering polls are systematically different than those who do answer the polls. This is likely the case among White voters without a college degree. Additionally, voters who were less likely to turn out but still did seemed to favor former President Donald Trump at higher levels than expected.

Not being able to accurately gauge the preferences of non-college White voters is a huge problem for pollsters. This group has become increasingly Republican the last few cycles and favored Trump by around 30 points this past election cycle. They make up a larger share of the electorate than two key groups individually: voters of color and Whites with a college degree.



Pre-election polls suggested that Biden would make major gains with this group. It didn't happen. (Still, polls did a fairly decent job of gaming out what would happen in the rest of the electorate, such as the shift in Hispanics toward Trump.)

My own initial analysis after the election showed that the polling errors tended to be greatest in states where the non-college White share of the population was largest. It was not the case, however, that in most of these places that pollsters didn't have enough White voters without a college degree in their polls.