NOT MUCH Better….
But?
Better…..
And this is about National poll numbers …..
NOT the thing that actually counts….
The Electoral state numbers……
To a first approximation, not all that much has changed in the presidential race.
If you’d asked me six weeks ago — “hey Nate, what’s going to happen in the election?” — I’d tell you that Donald Trump would probably win an election held today, but that there’s still a long way to go and November is more or less a toss-up.
And if you asked me that today, I’d tell you the same thing.
Now, as you might imagine, this question isn’t hypothetical. People ask me this sort of thing all the time. And usually they aren’t satisfied with the “toss-up” answer and probe for further specificity — “c’mon man, who’s really going to win?”. Six months ago, if you’d given me a free bet on one of the candidates, I’d have taken Joe Biden. Six weeks ago, I’d have taken Trump. Today, I’d take … I’m not sure.
That’s not me being wishy-washy. It’s the honest and inevitable response when the probability of a forthcoming event is about 50/50. Psychologically, Biden being, say, a 53/47 favorite instead of a 53/47 underdog feels a lot different — but in practice, it’s the same damned thing. You do not want to be one of those people on the DC party circuitwho rounds up a 53 percent chance to 100 percent. Twitter can be even worse about this. Some people are obsessed with who is ahead in national polling averages today — but today doesn’t matter. November 5 does. And national polling doesn’t really matter either — the Electoral College does.
Nonetheless, if you’re the sort of reader who cares about the difference between a 53/47 edge in one direction or the other — and if you’re a Silver Bulletin regular, you probably are — it looks to me like Biden’s numbers against Trump have improved by a hair, probably to a degree that isn’t just statistical noise….
…
Between 23 polling organizations that surveyed the race in both periods — who said polling is dead? — Biden now trails Trump by an average of 0.8 percentage points, as compared to trailing by 2.2 points in the older version of the same polls.
This is a relatively visible change because Biden is now more often showing leads in national polls. He had just 4 outright leads (i.e. not counting ties) in the old batch of polls, as compared with 9 leads in the new batch. That’s still not great for Biden, because Trump retains an Electoral College advantage and has remained ahead in the large majority of swing state polls — something people obsessed with hyping up every Biden lead in a national poll conveniently ignore. Still, Biden has plenty of time to right the ship — is this at least a meaningful step in the right direction?….