Political Dog 101

Politics, News, Comments & Other Good Stuff....

Don’t count your Biden chicken’s before they hatch?

By

Donald Trump and Joe Biden

That’s the word for CNN’s Harry Enten, and of course he’s Right….

For the past couple of months Joe Biden has been rising steadily in just about every national and state poll…

Donald Trump is at his lowest approval ratings in the polls…

Even leaks has indicated that Republican internal polling are at the same place…

But?

Four years ago Trump fooled himself and everybody else by losing the popular vote, but winning the electoral vote which is the one that counts for getting the job….

Some of the polls for Red state are NOT gonna hold up for Biden…

Biden’s people along with political pundits KNOW that….

Trump & Co are praying right now one would guess the same thing…..

But come September ?

We should watching thing much more closer to see how things are in the closing weeks of election campaign…

THEN we’ll get a beer idea on the final votes and if Joe Biden can indeed ride a Blue wave that brings other Democrats with him in to run things….

There is little doubt that former Vice President Joe Biden is ahead in the polls right now. He regularly posts double-digit advantages nationally and is ahead in the key swing states. If the election were held today, Biden would almost certainly be elected president.

But the election is not being held today. It’s being held in a little less than four months. That’s a lot of time.
And given the size of Biden’s lead (clear, but not a blowout), the race can definitely shift enough to characterize this race to be within the true margin of error.
To be clear, I don’t mean that Biden and Trump have similar chances of winning — far from it. Biden is clearly the favorite.
What I mean is that people often don’t realize what odds actually mean. Something may not have a likely chance of occurring, but it’s quite conceivable that it does happen.
Whenever you see a poll published, you’ll see the result comes with a margin of error. The margin of error essentially means that for a given population, 95% of the time a poll’s result will come within the margin of error of the true value. There’s a 2.5% (1 out of 40) chance a result will fall outside the margin of error on the low side, and a 2.5% (1 out of 40) chance a result will fall outside the margin of error on the high side.
It’s not shocking at all to receive a poll result back that’s outside the margin of error. It’s even less surprising when a poll comes in within the margin of error of the other results, though at the high or low end of the polling results published.
Borrowing from this margin-of-error concept, there’s literally no reputable forecast I know of that suggests that Biden’s advantage is outside that 95% confidence interval when projecting forward to November.
You can see how a race can change from this point forward by looking at history.
Earlier this month, I examined the 13 elections featuring incumbent presidents since 1940. I noted that in two of the 13 presidential contests, the difference between where the national polls were at this point and the eventual margin was greater than 10 points.
That’s more than the current margin between Biden and Trump. Two out of 13 times is well more than 2.5%. One of 13 times is plenty more than that.
If you were to expand to contests without incumbents, you will find even more examples of big swings. I wrote about the 1988 election a few weeks ago. The difference between the polls at this point and the election result (Republican George H.W. Bush by 8 points) and the polls in mid-July (Democrat Michael Dukakis by 5 points) was double digits….
…
Indeed, we still have a lot of events and potential game changers ahead of us.
There are the conventions, which sometimes (though not recently) have really shakenthings up historically.
We have an economy that seems to be more prone to shocks than usual, which could shift voter opinions.
Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic is bad right now, but there’s no real way of knowing how things will be when voters are casting their ballots. Perhaps the case rate will be lower. Maybe there will be better treatments. We just don’t know.
Speaking of the coronavirus, it feels like this campaign isn’t even really underway. Usually, a presidential campaign is the main news story by this point. But with the pandemic and the protests against police brutality, it’s been the number three story over the last month.
The campaign will eventually become the number one story. With a compressed time frame,…
image…NYPost

Recent Posts

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Do they pay this guy to write this stuff?

    Good work if you can get it I guess.

    I mean gee the Election isn’t today and things can change.

    Like WOW!

    What insight!

  2. I have heard three anecdotes from my mother the past two days about conversations they had with old friends or a neighbor, all in cases where they had not talked to these people in a while and somehow these people all brought up Trump and talked about how horrible he is and how badly he needs to go, etc. I know that the neighbor and his family used to be staunchly Republican at one time.

    There’s definitely a huge desire for people to vote against Trump which may not have been as fervent four years ago. And these conversations are putting my father in an awkward position with friends he has had for decades as the spell has not yet been broken.

    • Been saying THAT for a while CG about Trump’s support getting soft…

      Jack finally acknowledges that kinda backhanded…

    • Breaking voter news:

      My parents had an argument about Trump and apparently he agreed to a compromise of not voting for him. He will write someone in. I guess we all are then.

      But chalk this one up as a moral victory, Democrats!

      • So when I see that there are 6 random write in votes in the whole state of Illinois I’ll know 3 came from your family!

        • It appears Illinois law requires that the write in votes will only be counted for write in candidates who register with the state.

          CG should register himself as a candidate , then we could see those votes counted.

          However ,if he and his family write in Romney ,who undoubtedly will Not file such a candidacy?Their votes will disappear ,after being viewed by an unknown clerk ,and we will never be able to observe such.

          CG likely thinks he’s a better potential President than the present candidates anyway so this makes a certain amount of sense!

          • They are counted. I am under no illusion the write in choice would win. It’s about personal conscience.

            I am sure you all agree I would make a better President than Trump.

            • Here’s an interesting article about write-ins

              https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61036/does-your-vote-get-counted-if-you-write-joke-candidate

              From the article

              “Elections officials all over would really like it if you didn’t write in joke votes or unofficial candidates. Ballots with write-in votes usually have to be set aside and examined by an elections official so they can decipher the voter’s handwriting, determine their intent, and compare the vote to the list of official write-in candidates—all of which costs time, manpower and municipal money”

              I hope you throw a few extra bucks in with your taxes to pay for your “principle”. Oh and a couple bones for your folks votes too.

              • It is my right as a taxpayer and a citizen.

                The votes are tabulated at the local precinct, The people who “work the polls” have those totals right away.

                And since it is touch screen, no handwriting is involved. I think your article may be outdated or irrelevant.

                • I never said it wasn’t your right.

                  The article was written in 2015.

                  I use paper ballots to this day.

          • If it is any consolation, I am sure my brother will vote for Biden, but I don’t think he’s really a fan either.

          • He, he, he….

            Money vs Foregone concluded results in a Blue state primary?

            No hesitation….

                • You literally have no excuse for not voting in a primary besides it being a personal choice you made. If you want to say the results were going to be obvious, then all sorts of us can skip all sorts of elections, including general election.

                  I guarantee you Meeks and Biden will win in your district and state without your vote in November, so you might as well skip that one too.

                • Meanwhile?

                  Trump Approval Hits New Lows

                  The Navigator tracking poll finds President Trump’s job approval rating has hit a new low in the history of the poll, 39% to 59%.

                  For comparison, the FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Trump’s approval at 40% to 55%.

                  • These polls must be driving Trump & Co crazy…

                    Larry Sabato

                    NEW QUINNIPIAC National Poll. Biden leads Trump by 15% (52-37%). In June Q poll, Biden was +8. Trump’s job approval is down to 36% approve, 60% disapprove.

  3. At one point in Trump’s press conference today, he was asked if he thought of himself as the underdog.

    He said no and that the polls show him losing in places like Florida are all “fake” and he knows this because all sort of boats on the water down in Florida have Trump signs displayed on them and it’s a tremendous, tremendous thing.

    Yeah, how come nobody is doing polls of just boat owners to get the full picture?

  4. The Chairman of the South Carolina College Republicans,Will Galloway , has denounced Donald Trump.

    While I’m sure we would agree on little politically,

    Congratulations to this young fellow who shows much more integrity than his elders.

Discover more from Political Dog 101

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading