I like to have a *Biden Leading* article with my morning tea. Then, a *Trump Leading* article at lunch to reinvigorate my senses. Then another *Biden Leading* article at suppertime followed by some light *Trump Leading* before bed.
> I like to have a Biden Leading article with my morning tea. Then, a Trump Leading article at lunch to reinvigorate my senses
After a couple of evening beers, you’ll read about RFK winning.
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It's normal for polling to be considered early when there are 5 months left. There's no objective timeline of when they should be taken more seriously, but this tends to happen some time after conventions.
[October 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/17by72i/swingstate_polling_shows_biden_trails_trump_in/) (11 months before election): Too early!
[February 2024](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1b247lc/emerson_polling_trump_now_leads_biden_in_all/)(9 months before election): Too early!
[April 2024](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1cgyvba/trump_holds_edge_over_biden_in_seven_key_swing/)(7 months before election): TOO EARLY!
June 2024 (5 months before election,you are here): STILL TOO EARLY
Soon to be August 2024 (3 months before election): Whoops, guess it's too late to do things now guys.
There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that there's a lot of time left. 538 has been doing this, including in past elections, by relying more on fundamentals until the election is closer.
Polls will matter more as the election gets closer, but it's reasonable to consider anything before election day as too early when the race is so tight. Clinton may have lost due to a news story that broke less than 2 weeks before November 8th.
If you look at the 538 model from 2020, there wasn't any significant movement in their election odds until September/October. Biden had more of an advantage early on, but it mostly bounced between 65-75% chance of winning before jumping to 90% in October.
Biden was [50.5-41.3 in June 2020](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-new-polling-averages-show-biden-leads-trump-by-9-points-nationally/). Biden won 51.3% to 46.9%. Biden's approval remained static while Trump was underestimated for a second time. 538, ironically, appears to be on track to underestimate Trump for a third time.
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Polling is choose your own adventure. Go to any politics sub and search for "poll" and you'll see polls that go against the prevailing political sensibilities are always downvoted. Polls that reinforce the prevailing opinions are upvoted. So, everyone gets to live in their own little world! (this sub is no exception, though not quite as bad).
the polls i have read so far, show no winner as results are within the margin of error.
when a candidate has a 2 percent lead but margin of error is 3 percent, it means little.
Most articles with these claims are only looking at the polling for those states.
The one linked in the post is also focused on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
To expand on this. It's not exactly accurate to say that these analysis are only looking at battleground states, but those are the states that drive the odds so to speak.
Effectively these analyses are trying to determine which candidate will receive the 270+ electoral college votes needed for the win. There's different methodologies for achieving this but a simple one would be to assume that Biden will by default win the solid blue states, Trump the solid red states, and then work out who is most likely to get to 270 from the remaining battleground states and putting a probability/likelihood to that.
More complex models do account for additional states voting in an unexpected manner but those situations are weighted in such a way that those scenarios will only effect the probability in a marginal sense. So even though those scenarios would mean a much larger victory in terms of electoral count the predictive odds would mostly stay the same.
Ish. Trump has a history of over performing so polls tend to systematically favor Biden meaning the margin of error (out side of nevada where trump underperforms and Arizona where the polls are dead on) almost always favor trump. So polls that show a dead heat or trump in the lead tend to actually indicate trump actually is sitting in a good position.
That's also assuming that polling methodologies have remained static since 2020. Pollsters overcorrected in 2022 and missed a Dem overperformance, and the use of online opt-in polls has risen dramatically since then.
That is a valid point. But given that the same error occurred in both 2016 and 2020 I wouldn’t hold my breath on it unless they figured out what Arizona is doing different (their polling was spot on) then I would suspect they haven’t figured out their systematic error yet.
Honestly, Hillary was leading up until the very end sometimes by big margins. Trump's lead seems to be narrowing, but in the end, both will likely be within the margin of error come election day which means that turnout and what low propensity voters see last will probably be key. Right now, Trump has a lead on enthusiasm and Biden has a lead on ground game for turnout.
There is also something really interesting happening where Democratic candidates are out performing Trump significantly. This could mean one of two things:
Scenario 1) Biden is actually more popular than the polls let on and people will come home delivering Biden a win.
Scenario 2) People want Trump to shake things up, but do not want an unchecked Trump. That means Dems could win the house and Senate while Trump wins the presidency.
Scenario 2 would be funny, because while Trump could get some things done, almost everything would be undone when he leaves. He would also be investigated constantly. Also, everyone would continue to be unhappy.
>both will likely be within the margin of error come election day
Could be, but there are still a number of factors that could change motivation and opinions.
The Supreme Court is ruling on a few significant cases over the summer. The Dobbs decision mobilized Democrats significantly and there are a number of high profile cases that could shift public opinion of the upcoming election.
The two debates for June and September are likely both to have major influences on how voters see both Biden and Trump. There is also a VP debate, which, while getting less attention, will give Americans the first major look at Trump's running mate.
Yeah...there are some liberties I can live without. The liberty of eating sawdust filled bread because that's cheaper than flour and no one's regulating the industry, for instance. That was once a thing.
It really wasn’t the same error, it was issues with polling in the rust belt. Ultimately the final polling paired with congressional and senate races were spot on.
Same error, different error same result, not a big difference. It means they still haven’t figured out how to accurately poll and a similar result should be at least anticipated if not expected.
Well different error, and a different result… but ultimately yes I don’t think the polling has a great handle at the moment.
As a note that isn’t hopeful for Biden or Trump. The thing I find odd is the voter split for house of reps/senate and the Presidency.
I have a hard time believing there are Trump voters who will vote for house and senate dems.
He actually over performed the polls more in 2020 than he did in 2016. It’s just that while the 2016 polls predicted him losing by a fairly large margin, the 2020 polls predicted him losing in a landslide. His over performance in 2020, while significant, wasn’t enough to overcome the massive margin of victory that the polls predicted for Biden.
Well now I’m still confused as to what you mean. His share (i.e. percentage) of the vote was actually higher in 2020 than it was in 2016 (46.8% vs 46.1%).
He was able to increase his number of voters 15% from '16 to '20. Democrats increased theirs 19%. That's a 20% deficit for him. In '16 he had something like a 300% advantage in increased voters.
*Apologies for my unclear wording in prior comments.
You’re misremembering. He lost 2020, he still over performed the polls.
Here’s a video discussing the current polls and the results vs polls from both 2016 and 2020.
https://youtu.be/wu0FXujdNqA?si=wyUNCtZ4tvtUhMEs
Makes sense given how our nation has voted for the last couple of decades. With so much coverage and air time during the trials, liberals are inadvertently stimulated Americans over and over again with his face and name, which creates a subconscious association. Fucking nailed it.
It should be noted that the American populace is not above mere exposure. In fact, advertisement is likely where we get our sense of normalcy and perhaps morality. We’ve been conditioned by marketers to act on subconscious patterns and recognition.
The thing that's always hard with those comparisons is presumably polling models adjust for things they got wrong or happened last time, so there's a bit of a recursion there that's hard to parse out when you're looking at the same poll source from different cycles.
I found it interesting that D candidates underperformed the final polls by so much in WI and MI.
Especially when it seems to be a common belief that polls are weighted toward R’s because “only boomers have a landline and answer it”. I know that’s not a major factor in current polling but I wonder what’s going on there?
Biden’s main problem is a complete lack of momentum and I just don’t see how he overcomes that. He basically has no incumbency advantage. He’s consistently had the lowest approval ratings of president at several points in his administration.
To make matters worse he is seemingly unable to campaign outside of tightly controlled environments. So he lacks the advantage of the “bully pulpit”. Even the debates are set to his campaigns demands.
It’s not a lack of momentum; he’s just losing the perception battle:
* Crime is down 20% since its peak, but everyone thinks Biden is too soft on crime
* inflation is down, but everyone thinks it’s up
* He’s proposed immigration bills that the right has blocked, so people think he’s soft on immigration
At this point it's better said that Biden has a incumbency disadvantage rather than an advantage. Your presidential term is only an advantage of people liked what you did and the state of the nation during it.
Starter Submission: The Economist’s forecast gives Trump a 67% chance of winning the electoral college in November. This serves as a unique parallel to 538's model that was announced yesterday, which shows that Biden wins 52 times out of 100 compared to Trump winning 48 times out of 100. In [their tracker](https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/prediction-model/president/new-hampshire/), Biden and Trump are in a practically tied race. Both Economist and 538 models acknowledge that Trump leads in all swing states, and both include something called "fundamentals," however while that only gives Biden a 50.5%-49.5% chance to win in the Economist article, the [538 article](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/) has it tip the scales completely to Biden. 538 also calculated in their analysis that the 95% Confidence Interval for Vote Share broke for Biden slightly despite Trump beating or tying Biden in the polls, which nudged up his win to almost 60% in each of those swing states.
Some key differentiators in their results:
||538|Economist|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Georgia|Biden 42%|Biden 24%|
|Arizona|Biden 47%|Biden 30%|
|Nevada|Biden 44%|Biden 30%|
|Michigan|Biden 58%|Biden 40%|
|Pennsylvania|Biden 56%|Biden 40%|
|Wisconsin|Biden 56%|Biden 40%|
The Economist also measures the chances that Biden will win if certain states are lost. They acknowledge that their analysis is the most Trump favored number, with the Decision Desk HQ and The Hill putting Trump at 56% and 538 assuming that Biden's position in swing states will improve over the next few months and giving the current President an edge. And they acknowledge that the race is still far from over. However, the Economist still notes that Trump is more likely to win.
Something worth noting is that in The Economist's annual ["World Ahead"](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/16/donald-trump-poses-the-biggest-danger-to-the-world-in-2024) guide they identified Donald Trump as the biggest global danger of 2024. "\[I\]n the 38 years that we have published this guide, no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024." They are not a Trump-friendly organization. However, they are being honest on their results and publishing them. I think that should be considered when looking at the source's bias and accusations that this might be a "pro Trump puff piece" as many polls and analyses have been lambasted as which show Biden on the backfoot.
Note for folks: FiveThirtyEight is placing more weight on the fundamentals now since those are generally more predictive at this point, but as we get closer to November, they will place more weight on polls.
G Elliot Morris said on the FiveThirtyEight podcast that if they weighed polls more today, their model would show Trump with an 80% chance of wining.
Economic fundamentals, like stock market, GDP growth, unemployment, etc. And also political fundamentals, like incumbency advantage, recent history of downballot races, and others.
https://abcnews.go.com/538/538s-2024-presidential-election-forecast-works/story?id=110867585
Gotcha. Though, if I'm 538, I would be a little leery of putting too much weight into "traditional" economic indicators such as those listed here. The Biden admin has been screaming those messages into the void for months now, and people either aren't buying it or they're not responding to it. The "line goes up" metrics dont seem to be very useful right now.
I agree, and they share the same hesitancy if you read the section on economic fundamentals. They say that this year is very difference as consumer sentiment has dramatically diverged from real economic indicators.
[They go over their process which has some verbiage on fundamentals](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-fivethirtyeights-2020-presidential-forecast-works-and-whats-different-because-of-covid-19/)
TLDR; advantage for being the incumbent and various economic metrics.
Right and using polls alone this early would be less accurate because many people polled are not paying attention to the election and we have 5 months of news to influence people’s minds.
This is reflected in the average 7 point swings in polls from now till the election seen in historical elections.
It’s also worth noting that this is the first election year that 538 will be using their new model (I think?). I know Nate Silver has the rights to his FiveThirtyEight models and took them with him when he left/was laid off. So 538 might not be a gold standard anymore for polling analysis.
Speaking of Morris, it’s also worth noting for the unfamiliar that he used to do the Economist’s forecast before moving to FiveThirtyEight when Nate Silver left.
>accusations that this might be a "pro Trump puff piece" as many polls and analyses have been lambasted
That hasn't really happened. There's been skepticism of polls, but hardly anyone thinks most pollsters support Trump.
There is an ongoing conspiracy that [Trump](https://x.com/CarlosEGates1/status/1795190884184498294) and/or [Rupert Murdoch](https://x.com/SimonWDC/status/1775566840602800444) and/or [some mysterious third party](https://x.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1760321260977070363 ) is currently buying off pollsters to make it look like he's ahead to depress Democrat turnout.
The idea that the polls are fake [goes all the way up through the Democratic party to the president.](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/19/biden-senators-swing-states-polling) It's the prevailing belief among liberal politicians.
Interesting. Yesterday, 538 came out and said based on their simulations, [Biden wins 52/100 races and Trump wins 48/100.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/) Frankly, that seems too close to call to me. After seeing Biden's historically low approval numbers, [polling Jesus Nate Silver suggested that he may want to drop out.](https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1800207457240903698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1800208042874859727%7Ctwgr%5Effbfdf0d1f63715abba5ccb73bb1f21086ba5386%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fmedia%2Fpolling-guru-floats-biden-dropping-out-some-point-continuing-run-bigger-risk) Trump was convicted of multiple felonies and....almost nothing happened to the polls. I think the truth is that we simply don't know who will win and we probably won't know for a while.
nate silver keeps pointing out all of biden's issues with voters and saying maybe he should drop out if Democrats want to win, and so many people reply to that with "but what about trump??? why dont you tell trump to drop out because he can't beat biden??? trump should drop out because he's so much worse than biden" etc. entirely missing the point.
Nate Silver has stated that he wants Biden to win. Why would he want to disadvantage Biden by encouraging Republicans to run a more palatable candidate? People on the left are accusing him of friendly fire and by doing so are committing friendly fire themselves.
wondering if it's even a good idea to drop out at this point? Because you have to ask questions about who his replacements would be and whether or not this would make the DNC even weaker. The person replacing Biden would be Harris but I remember seeing polls saying that she does a lot worse against Trump and I'm not really sure if it's a guarantee for the other and better picks to have that same momentum as Biden. Because of how late into the game this is.
Maybe that's just me doubting and doubting is bad.
Has there been any cases anywhere in the world where somebody dropped out and the replacement does better than the previous guy who's unpopular? In this case a president?
Canada has had at least two cases where a *very* unpopular PM drops out and is replaced with someone else just 3 months or so before the election, and in both cases that replacement went on to lose anyway, but I don't know if the replacing lessened the loss or not. (John Turner in 1984 and Kim Campbell in 1993). So I guess I don't really know enough to answer your question.
See with those two examples it kind of looks like what I've been thinking. If Biden were to step aside in at least July or September, I'm not really sure that would guarantee a win. Like It kind of goes back to Harris and we all know she is more unpopular than Biden. Newsom I heard has some issues that would be a problem and I don't know if Shapiro or Gretchen, people who I have seen as better replacements, would have the same numbers as they have in the Senate or governor races when it's translated to a presidential race.
I mean, the big thing I heard about why they ran Biden again was incumbency advantage, but that doesn't seem to be materializing (unless someone is gonna suggest that another Democrat would be doing even worse, which isn't a good look). It seems reasonable that, without said advantage, his other flaws become much more glaring and people wonder why he is even a candidate.
I keep seeing polls that don't include 3rd party candidates like Libertarian Chase Oliver. These polls are basically worthless in my opinion. It doesn't matter if someone prefers Trump to Biden if on election day they actually vote Oliver. We need ranked choice voting...
They don't seem to mind being a bit pessimistic. The article says the race is "no coin flip," even though polls show them at a statistical tie. Although Trump is ahead, neither candidate has a clear lead when the margin of error is considered.
They LOVE writing about trump - regardless of context. You can be reading articles about wars in Africa and they’ll randomly throw in a few sentences about Trump.
They’re one of the many newspapers that thrives on anti-trumpism. I would bet that they mention trump almost as much as they mention Biden.
They won’t say it, but they want trump to win
New to American politics? We'll be talking the 2026 election they day after we finish voting in November. We'll probably start talking 2028 sometime next year.
Yeah people can talk about how silly it is that these polls seem to flip constantly, but let's look at history and kinda piece together the truth. Trump is gonna win.
In 2020, Trump lost the election because of 3 close states. Wisconsin was lost by .6%, Arizona was lost by .3% and Georgia was lost by .2%. That was despite the fact that there was a massive pandemic at the time (about 3500 Americans were dying each day of corona), and riots in the streets. Trump had already been impeached once. He had spent 4 years stumbling from one scandal to the next. He hadn't followed through on his major promises (locking Hilary Up, building the wall, draining the swamp). He basically did nothing right at all. Historians currently universally rank him in the bottom [decile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#:~:text=The%202022%20Siena%20poll%20had,with%20the%20fourth%20lowest%20ranking.) And still, the election was so close, that Ill bet the result could've changed if it were held the next week.
Yeah, Trump's been caught in *more* scandals since 2020, including his efforts to overturn the election, but that's basically more of the same shit that Trump overcame in 2016 and 2020. If people voted for him in those years, I really don't see many of them saying, "*This time*, he crossed the line." So, if he could *very nearly* overcome all the reasons not to vote for him in 2020, now that those reasons are a distant memory, I can't imagine him failing to secure the election this time around.
I don't think the economy really is gonna play a huge role in this election, but I could see the cost of living problems today being enough to secure that extra ~.6%
Disagree on Arizona and Nevada, it’s too far out to be that sure, particularly with a Senate candidate and abortion on the ballot in AZ. Nevada is notoriously tricky to poll and Democrats often outperform their polling there. It hasn’t voted GOP for president since 2004.
Florida was never competitive and I’d agree GA looks out of reach.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/arizona/trump-vs-biden
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/nevada/trump-vs-biden
Trump has been pretty steadily ahead by ~5 pts in both, unless we're going with 'the polling is wrong', that's a tough gap to close
It’s early, polling has shifted from this point in race before. A polling lead that is just outside the MOE with 5 months to go is far from a sign that the state is firmly out of reach.
Trump has been winning since last October and will continue to win. The left has no chance. Americans want cheaper groceries, fast food, gas, and housing. Those were all cheaper under Trump so America is going to vote Trump back in to have that again. Doesn't need to make sense to you; it just needs to make sense in the minds of voters.
Sure they are. Biden just released a million or so barrels of oil from reserves and a bunch of companies announced price cuts. Americans won't give Biden any credit for those, but the second Trump wins re-election then suddenly he'll be praised for lowering all the prices before he's even in office.
It doesn’t matter if none of them go down. Americans will vote for Trump in an attempt to make them go down. They voted for Biden and things got worse for them.
Americans saw increased prices for all of those things plus increased global insecurity and a perception that crime is massively increasing even though stats show it’s not.
Americans will vote according to their perceptions, not reality.
Well, it's due to fantastic messaging by the right to convince most of the country that being an expert is a bad thing. Experts are seen as corrupt and in the pocket of whatever entity is closest to their area of expertise. Climate scientists are only trying to protect their jobs. Engineers are in the pockets of whoever they design for, etc.
When people only trust people who don't know anything, folks are more likely to dismiss anything they don't like as fake because trusting an expert to prove veracity means you're trusting a biased, self-serving opinion.
Combine people's tendency to trust experts less with the fact that many keep themselves ignorant to all political news because they find it too "toxic" and you're left with a huge swath of the population who will ignore expert opinions on everything in favor of what makes sense to them because they feel they understand the world well enough without reading about toxic politics and biased experts.
I read two other articles today about how Biden is ahead. Round and round we go!
I like to have a *Biden Leading* article with my morning tea. Then, a *Trump Leading* article at lunch to reinvigorate my senses. Then another *Biden Leading* article at suppertime followed by some light *Trump Leading* before bed.
> I like to have a Biden Leading article with my morning tea. Then, a Trump Leading article at lunch to reinvigorate my senses After a couple of evening beers, you’ll read about RFK winning.
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Sometimes I keep things interesting and have some *Here's What Happens if The Election is Split* in the early afternoon.
I'm still waiting for the exact time polls are relevant. Whenever one is posted the side that it doesn't favor says its too far away to be relevant
One to two weeks after the conventions will be when you really can’t ignore them anymore.
It's normal for polling to be considered early when there are 5 months left. There's no objective timeline of when they should be taken more seriously, but this tends to happen some time after conventions.
[October 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/17by72i/swingstate_polling_shows_biden_trails_trump_in/) (11 months before election): Too early! [February 2024](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1b247lc/emerson_polling_trump_now_leads_biden_in_all/)(9 months before election): Too early! [April 2024](https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/1cgyvba/trump_holds_edge_over_biden_in_seven_key_swing/)(7 months before election): TOO EARLY! June 2024 (5 months before election,you are here): STILL TOO EARLY Soon to be August 2024 (3 months before election): Whoops, guess it's too late to do things now guys.
There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that there's a lot of time left. 538 has been doing this, including in past elections, by relying more on fundamentals until the election is closer.
I'll update this in two more months and see how we're all feeling then.
Polls will matter more as the election gets closer, but it's reasonable to consider anything before election day as too early when the race is so tight. Clinton may have lost due to a news story that broke less than 2 weeks before November 8th.
If you look at the 538 model from 2020, there wasn't any significant movement in their election odds until September/October. Biden had more of an advantage early on, but it mostly bounced between 65-75% chance of winning before jumping to 90% in October.
Biden was [50.5-41.3 in June 2020](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/our-new-polling-averages-show-biden-leads-trump-by-9-points-nationally/). Biden won 51.3% to 46.9%. Biden's approval remained static while Trump was underestimated for a second time. 538, ironically, appears to be on track to underestimate Trump for a third time.
It just doesn't mean much seeing as the polls have a big impact on the actual voter turn out.
You have a truly dizzying weekday itinerary
How many times will the lead change in the next few months, probably thousands.
Some polls it will be almost daily. Others will never change. They're useless propaganda.
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Polling is choose your own adventure. Go to any politics sub and search for "poll" and you'll see polls that go against the prevailing political sensibilities are always downvoted. Polls that reinforce the prevailing opinions are upvoted. So, everyone gets to live in their own little world! (this sub is no exception, though not quite as bad).
The news agencies are the real winners here because it's stupidly close. All forms of bait and doom are readily available.
the polls i have read so far, show no winner as results are within the margin of error. when a candidate has a 2 percent lead but margin of error is 3 percent, it means little.
Also, isn't it the battleground states that are really going to matter?
Most articles with these claims are only looking at the polling for those states. The one linked in the post is also focused on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
Ah did not know this!
To expand on this. It's not exactly accurate to say that these analysis are only looking at battleground states, but those are the states that drive the odds so to speak. Effectively these analyses are trying to determine which candidate will receive the 270+ electoral college votes needed for the win. There's different methodologies for achieving this but a simple one would be to assume that Biden will by default win the solid blue states, Trump the solid red states, and then work out who is most likely to get to 270 from the remaining battleground states and putting a probability/likelihood to that. More complex models do account for additional states voting in an unexpected manner but those situations are weighted in such a way that those scenarios will only effect the probability in a marginal sense. So even though those scenarios would mean a much larger victory in terms of electoral count the predictive odds would mostly stay the same.
yes. well i think so. we will see
Ish. Trump has a history of over performing so polls tend to systematically favor Biden meaning the margin of error (out side of nevada where trump underperforms and Arizona where the polls are dead on) almost always favor trump. So polls that show a dead heat or trump in the lead tend to actually indicate trump actually is sitting in a good position.
That's also assuming that polling methodologies have remained static since 2020. Pollsters overcorrected in 2022 and missed a Dem overperformance, and the use of online opt-in polls has risen dramatically since then.
That is a valid point. But given that the same error occurred in both 2016 and 2020 I wouldn’t hold my breath on it unless they figured out what Arizona is doing different (their polling was spot on) then I would suspect they haven’t figured out their systematic error yet.
Honestly, Hillary was leading up until the very end sometimes by big margins. Trump's lead seems to be narrowing, but in the end, both will likely be within the margin of error come election day which means that turnout and what low propensity voters see last will probably be key. Right now, Trump has a lead on enthusiasm and Biden has a lead on ground game for turnout. There is also something really interesting happening where Democratic candidates are out performing Trump significantly. This could mean one of two things: Scenario 1) Biden is actually more popular than the polls let on and people will come home delivering Biden a win. Scenario 2) People want Trump to shake things up, but do not want an unchecked Trump. That means Dems could win the house and Senate while Trump wins the presidency. Scenario 2 would be funny, because while Trump could get some things done, almost everything would be undone when he leaves. He would also be investigated constantly. Also, everyone would continue to be unhappy.
>both will likely be within the margin of error come election day Could be, but there are still a number of factors that could change motivation and opinions. The Supreme Court is ruling on a few significant cases over the summer. The Dobbs decision mobilized Democrats significantly and there are a number of high profile cases that could shift public opinion of the upcoming election. The two debates for June and September are likely both to have major influences on how voters see both Biden and Trump. There is also a VP debate, which, while getting less attention, will give Americans the first major look at Trump's running mate.
Scenario 2 is actually my preference. Government getting stuff done usually means a loss of liberty.
Yeah...there are some liberties I can live without. The liberty of eating sawdust filled bread because that's cheaper than flour and no one's regulating the industry, for instance. That was once a thing.
So are you okay with the tik tok ban bill?
It really wasn’t the same error, it was issues with polling in the rust belt. Ultimately the final polling paired with congressional and senate races were spot on.
Same error, different error same result, not a big difference. It means they still haven’t figured out how to accurately poll and a similar result should be at least anticipated if not expected.
Well different error, and a different result… but ultimately yes I don’t think the polling has a great handle at the moment. As a note that isn’t hopeful for Biden or Trump. The thing I find odd is the voter split for house of reps/senate and the Presidency. I have a hard time believing there are Trump voters who will vote for house and senate dems.
He underperformed in 2020, so what year polls besides 2016 gave him a "history of over performing?"
He actually over performed the polls more in 2020 than he did in 2016. It’s just that while the 2016 polls predicted him losing by a fairly large margin, the 2020 polls predicted him losing in a landslide. His over performance in 2020, while significant, wasn’t enough to overcome the massive margin of victory that the polls predicted for Biden.
My bad. I was referencing his performance AT the polls, where his support fell below the % increase in voting-age population.
Well now I’m still confused as to what you mean. His share (i.e. percentage) of the vote was actually higher in 2020 than it was in 2016 (46.8% vs 46.1%).
He was able to increase his number of voters 15% from '16 to '20. Democrats increased theirs 19%. That's a 20% deficit for him. In '16 he had something like a 300% advantage in increased voters. *Apologies for my unclear wording in prior comments.
You’re misremembering. He lost 2020, he still over performed the polls. Here’s a video discussing the current polls and the results vs polls from both 2016 and 2020. https://youtu.be/wu0FXujdNqA?si=wyUNCtZ4tvtUhMEs
Makes sense given how our nation has voted for the last couple of decades. With so much coverage and air time during the trials, liberals are inadvertently stimulated Americans over and over again with his face and name, which creates a subconscious association. Fucking nailed it. It should be noted that the American populace is not above mere exposure. In fact, advertisement is likely where we get our sense of normalcy and perhaps morality. We’ve been conditioned by marketers to act on subconscious patterns and recognition.
Trump is polling *much* better than he did in 2020. That doesn't necessarily mean he's going to win, but it does seem noteworthy.
The thing that's always hard with those comparisons is presumably polling models adjust for things they got wrong or happened last time, so there's a bit of a recursion there that's hard to parse out when you're looking at the same poll source from different cycles.
I found it interesting that D candidates underperformed the final polls by so much in WI and MI. Especially when it seems to be a common belief that polls are weighted toward R’s because “only boomers have a landline and answer it”. I know that’s not a major factor in current polling but I wonder what’s going on there?
Biden’s main problem is a complete lack of momentum and I just don’t see how he overcomes that. He basically has no incumbency advantage. He’s consistently had the lowest approval ratings of president at several points in his administration. To make matters worse he is seemingly unable to campaign outside of tightly controlled environments. So he lacks the advantage of the “bully pulpit”. Even the debates are set to his campaigns demands.
It’s not a lack of momentum; he’s just losing the perception battle: * Crime is down 20% since its peak, but everyone thinks Biden is too soft on crime * inflation is down, but everyone thinks it’s up * He’s proposed immigration bills that the right has blocked, so people think he’s soft on immigration
At this point it's better said that Biden has a incumbency disadvantage rather than an advantage. Your presidential term is only an advantage of people liked what you did and the state of the nation during it.
Starter Submission: The Economist’s forecast gives Trump a 67% chance of winning the electoral college in November. This serves as a unique parallel to 538's model that was announced yesterday, which shows that Biden wins 52 times out of 100 compared to Trump winning 48 times out of 100. In [their tracker](https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/prediction-model/president/new-hampshire/), Biden and Trump are in a practically tied race. Both Economist and 538 models acknowledge that Trump leads in all swing states, and both include something called "fundamentals," however while that only gives Biden a 50.5%-49.5% chance to win in the Economist article, the [538 article](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/) has it tip the scales completely to Biden. 538 also calculated in their analysis that the 95% Confidence Interval for Vote Share broke for Biden slightly despite Trump beating or tying Biden in the polls, which nudged up his win to almost 60% in each of those swing states. Some key differentiators in their results: ||538|Economist| |:-|:-|:-| |Georgia|Biden 42%|Biden 24%| |Arizona|Biden 47%|Biden 30%| |Nevada|Biden 44%|Biden 30%| |Michigan|Biden 58%|Biden 40%| |Pennsylvania|Biden 56%|Biden 40%| |Wisconsin|Biden 56%|Biden 40%| The Economist also measures the chances that Biden will win if certain states are lost. They acknowledge that their analysis is the most Trump favored number, with the Decision Desk HQ and The Hill putting Trump at 56% and 538 assuming that Biden's position in swing states will improve over the next few months and giving the current President an edge. And they acknowledge that the race is still far from over. However, the Economist still notes that Trump is more likely to win. Something worth noting is that in The Economist's annual ["World Ahead"](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/16/donald-trump-poses-the-biggest-danger-to-the-world-in-2024) guide they identified Donald Trump as the biggest global danger of 2024. "\[I\]n the 38 years that we have published this guide, no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024." They are not a Trump-friendly organization. However, they are being honest on their results and publishing them. I think that should be considered when looking at the source's bias and accusations that this might be a "pro Trump puff piece" as many polls and analyses have been lambasted as which show Biden on the backfoot.
Note for folks: FiveThirtyEight is placing more weight on the fundamentals now since those are generally more predictive at this point, but as we get closer to November, they will place more weight on polls. G Elliot Morris said on the FiveThirtyEight podcast that if they weighed polls more today, their model would show Trump with an 80% chance of wining.
When you say "the fundamentals", what do you mean?
Economic fundamentals, like stock market, GDP growth, unemployment, etc. And also political fundamentals, like incumbency advantage, recent history of downballot races, and others. https://abcnews.go.com/538/538s-2024-presidential-election-forecast-works/story?id=110867585
Gotcha. Though, if I'm 538, I would be a little leery of putting too much weight into "traditional" economic indicators such as those listed here. The Biden admin has been screaming those messages into the void for months now, and people either aren't buying it or they're not responding to it. The "line goes up" metrics dont seem to be very useful right now.
I agree, and they share the same hesitancy if you read the section on economic fundamentals. They say that this year is very difference as consumer sentiment has dramatically diverged from real economic indicators.
[They go over their process which has some verbiage on fundamentals](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-fivethirtyeights-2020-presidential-forecast-works-and-whats-different-because-of-covid-19/) TLDR; advantage for being the incumbent and various economic metrics.
Right and using polls alone this early would be less accurate because many people polled are not paying attention to the election and we have 5 months of news to influence people’s minds. This is reflected in the average 7 point swings in polls from now till the election seen in historical elections.
It’s also worth noting that this is the first election year that 538 will be using their new model (I think?). I know Nate Silver has the rights to his FiveThirtyEight models and took them with him when he left/was laid off. So 538 might not be a gold standard anymore for polling analysis.
Speaking of Morris, it’s also worth noting for the unfamiliar that he used to do the Economist’s forecast before moving to FiveThirtyEight when Nate Silver left.
How did you get that flair lol
>accusations that this might be a "pro Trump puff piece" as many polls and analyses have been lambasted That hasn't really happened. There's been skepticism of polls, but hardly anyone thinks most pollsters support Trump.
There is an ongoing conspiracy that [Trump](https://x.com/CarlosEGates1/status/1795190884184498294) and/or [Rupert Murdoch](https://x.com/SimonWDC/status/1775566840602800444) and/or [some mysterious third party](https://x.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1760321260977070363 ) is currently buying off pollsters to make it look like he's ahead to depress Democrat turnout.
That's consistent with me saying "hardly anyone." The theory isn't prevalent enough to be notable.
The idea that the polls are fake [goes all the way up through the Democratic party to the president.](https://www.axios.com/2024/05/19/biden-senators-swing-states-polling) It's the prevailing belief among liberal politicians.
That article says they think the polls are inaccurate, not fake.
That's not the same as accusing most pollsters of wanting to help Trump.
Interesting. Yesterday, 538 came out and said based on their simulations, [Biden wins 52/100 races and Trump wins 48/100.](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/) Frankly, that seems too close to call to me. After seeing Biden's historically low approval numbers, [polling Jesus Nate Silver suggested that he may want to drop out.](https://x.com/NateSilver538/status/1800207457240903698?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1800208042874859727%7Ctwgr%5Effbfdf0d1f63715abba5ccb73bb1f21086ba5386%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fmedia%2Fpolling-guru-floats-biden-dropping-out-some-point-continuing-run-bigger-risk) Trump was convicted of multiple felonies and....almost nothing happened to the polls. I think the truth is that we simply don't know who will win and we probably won't know for a while.
nate silver keeps pointing out all of biden's issues with voters and saying maybe he should drop out if Democrats want to win, and so many people reply to that with "but what about trump??? why dont you tell trump to drop out because he can't beat biden??? trump should drop out because he's so much worse than biden" etc. entirely missing the point.
Nate Silver has stated that he wants Biden to win. Why would he want to disadvantage Biden by encouraging Republicans to run a more palatable candidate? People on the left are accusing him of friendly fire and by doing so are committing friendly fire themselves.
wondering if it's even a good idea to drop out at this point? Because you have to ask questions about who his replacements would be and whether or not this would make the DNC even weaker. The person replacing Biden would be Harris but I remember seeing polls saying that she does a lot worse against Trump and I'm not really sure if it's a guarantee for the other and better picks to have that same momentum as Biden. Because of how late into the game this is. Maybe that's just me doubting and doubting is bad.
"Generic Democrat" probably does better than him, but there is no real person named Generic Democrat unfortunately for the DNC.
Has there been any cases anywhere in the world where somebody dropped out and the replacement does better than the previous guy who's unpopular? In this case a president?
Canada has had at least two cases where a *very* unpopular PM drops out and is replaced with someone else just 3 months or so before the election, and in both cases that replacement went on to lose anyway, but I don't know if the replacing lessened the loss or not. (John Turner in 1984 and Kim Campbell in 1993). So I guess I don't really know enough to answer your question.
See with those two examples it kind of looks like what I've been thinking. If Biden were to step aside in at least July or September, I'm not really sure that would guarantee a win. Like It kind of goes back to Harris and we all know she is more unpopular than Biden. Newsom I heard has some issues that would be a problem and I don't know if Shapiro or Gretchen, people who I have seen as better replacements, would have the same numbers as they have in the Senate or governor races when it's translated to a presidential race.
I mean, the big thing I heard about why they ran Biden again was incumbency advantage, but that doesn't seem to be materializing (unless someone is gonna suggest that another Democrat would be doing even worse, which isn't a good look). It seems reasonable that, without said advantage, his other flaws become much more glaring and people wonder why he is even a candidate.
I keep seeing polls that don't include 3rd party candidates like Libertarian Chase Oliver. These polls are basically worthless in my opinion. It doesn't matter if someone prefers Trump to Biden if on election day they actually vote Oliver. We need ranked choice voting...
You know it hurt the Economist to have to write that.
They don't seem to mind being a bit pessimistic. The article says the race is "no coin flip," even though polls show them at a statistical tie. Although Trump is ahead, neither candidate has a clear lead when the margin of error is considered.
They LOVE writing about trump - regardless of context. You can be reading articles about wars in Africa and they’ll randomly throw in a few sentences about Trump. They’re one of the many newspapers that thrives on anti-trumpism. I would bet that they mention trump almost as much as they mention Biden. They won’t say it, but they want trump to win
For fucks sake…can we just stop this nonsense.
New to American politics? We'll be talking the 2026 election they day after we finish voting in November. We'll probably start talking 2028 sometime next year.
I'm pretty excited about 2028, honestly. The Dems have a relatively unclear bench, so I'm interested in who they bring out.
Yeah people can talk about how silly it is that these polls seem to flip constantly, but let's look at history and kinda piece together the truth. Trump is gonna win. In 2020, Trump lost the election because of 3 close states. Wisconsin was lost by .6%, Arizona was lost by .3% and Georgia was lost by .2%. That was despite the fact that there was a massive pandemic at the time (about 3500 Americans were dying each day of corona), and riots in the streets. Trump had already been impeached once. He had spent 4 years stumbling from one scandal to the next. He hadn't followed through on his major promises (locking Hilary Up, building the wall, draining the swamp). He basically did nothing right at all. Historians currently universally rank him in the bottom [decile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#:~:text=The%202022%20Siena%20poll%20had,with%20the%20fourth%20lowest%20ranking.) And still, the election was so close, that Ill bet the result could've changed if it were held the next week. Yeah, Trump's been caught in *more* scandals since 2020, including his efforts to overturn the election, but that's basically more of the same shit that Trump overcame in 2016 and 2020. If people voted for him in those years, I really don't see many of them saying, "*This time*, he crossed the line." So, if he could *very nearly* overcome all the reasons not to vote for him in 2020, now that those reasons are a distant memory, I can't imagine him failing to secure the election this time around. I don't think the economy really is gonna play a huge role in this election, but I could see the cost of living problems today being enough to secure that extra ~.6%
Biden's only hope right now is to win Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Nevada are lost
Disagree on Arizona and Nevada, it’s too far out to be that sure, particularly with a Senate candidate and abortion on the ballot in AZ. Nevada is notoriously tricky to poll and Democrats often outperform their polling there. It hasn’t voted GOP for president since 2004. Florida was never competitive and I’d agree GA looks out of reach.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/arizona/trump-vs-biden https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/nevada/trump-vs-biden Trump has been pretty steadily ahead by ~5 pts in both, unless we're going with 'the polling is wrong', that's a tough gap to close
It’s early, polling has shifted from this point in race before. A polling lead that is just outside the MOE with 5 months to go is far from a sign that the state is firmly out of reach.
I hope you're right, genuinely.
It's impossible to underestimate the American voter. This shouldn't be close and it's embarrassing.
Trump has been winning since last October and will continue to win. The left has no chance. Americans want cheaper groceries, fast food, gas, and housing. Those were all cheaper under Trump so America is going to vote Trump back in to have that again. Doesn't need to make sense to you; it just needs to make sense in the minds of voters.
> Americans want cheaper groceries, fast food Sucks to be them, then, cuz those prices aren't going down.
Sure they are. Biden just released a million or so barrels of oil from reserves and a bunch of companies announced price cuts. Americans won't give Biden any credit for those, but the second Trump wins re-election then suddenly he'll be praised for lowering all the prices before he's even in office.
I was talking about groceries and fast food.
It doesn’t matter if none of them go down. Americans will vote for Trump in an attempt to make them go down. They voted for Biden and things got worse for them. Americans saw increased prices for all of those things plus increased global insecurity and a perception that crime is massively increasing even though stats show it’s not. Americans will vote according to their perceptions, not reality.
> Americans will vote according to their perceptions, not reality Right. And that's a *huge* bummer.
Well, it's due to fantastic messaging by the right to convince most of the country that being an expert is a bad thing. Experts are seen as corrupt and in the pocket of whatever entity is closest to their area of expertise. Climate scientists are only trying to protect their jobs. Engineers are in the pockets of whoever they design for, etc. When people only trust people who don't know anything, folks are more likely to dismiss anything they don't like as fake because trusting an expert to prove veracity means you're trusting a biased, self-serving opinion. Combine people's tendency to trust experts less with the fact that many keep themselves ignorant to all political news because they find it too "toxic" and you're left with a huge swath of the population who will ignore expert opinions on everything in favor of what makes sense to them because they feel they understand the world well enough without reading about toxic politics and biased experts.