09-11-2020, 05:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-11-2020, 05:34 AM by Eric the Green.)
(09-11-2020, 12:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The point is to predict the likelihood of a win by one or the other at two months out. That means that polls from the time of the Republican National Convention or earlier are excluded in this effort. The point is to show that time matters greatly in a campaign.
Calculation may be messy soon because of early voting (including much absentee voting). Some people will have voted in September. Political realities involving COVID-19 may have forced the voting to be more by mail... and people may be seeing more in-your-face political advertising than is usual. Not many times can one say that two Presidential elections are really alike, so it is hard to say which one is the most unique. This one is weird for having two opponents in their seventies, and for having the definitive outsider (Trump) facing the most blatant insider that there has ever been.
It's best to have more than one poll though. I think fivethirtyeight does a good job of evaluating polls for their accuracy, recency and partisan lean. Using more than one method is a good idea too.
I would say Trump is an insider, because he's part of the 1% oligarchy of the country and represents their interests. Biden not having a college degree and a representative of the working class is not an insider, by that measure. But he's been inside Washington politics for almost 50 years.
Yet, I still think of him as that young 30 year-old boomer-cusper elected thanks to the McGovern campaign that I worked on, so to me he's the young guard representing the younger generation, the boomers. I know we aren't that anymore, the millennials take precedence now; but at heart and in a certain way, we still are. Many of us blue boomers are young in mind and heart, while Xers like Classic are lost in the past and represent sclerotic minds. Blue boomers form a natural alliance with the up and coming millennials.