- by New Deal democrat
A couple of interesting items were reported yesterday in terms of the actual *election* in the Presidential election.
First of all, Survey Monkey reported 50 individual polls for each and every State. Nate Silver rates them D-, so take with lots of grains of salt, but the fact remains that these polls are filling in a number of holes in individual State polling.
The results were largely in line with prior polling for the States where they have been done, but there were a few surprises:
In addition a to Florida and North Carolina, Biden is reported as leading in both Ohio and Georgia.
Arizona is reported as tied (a poor result for Biden), but on the other hand so are South Carolina and Missouri.
Finally, Trump is reported as leading in Nevada, as well as swing States Iowa and Texas.
Like I already said, take with numerous grains of salt, but I think this polling highlights Arizona and Nevada as being not “in the bag” for Biden. On the other hand, it reinforces other polling showing the upper Midwest as a “blue wall” again.
Secondly, the Cook Political Report issued a “2020 Demographic Swingometer” showing graphically what would happen if you were to take the exact demographic breakdown in the 2016 Presidential vote, and adjust it for changes in those demographics over the last 4 years (e.g., a slight increase in Minority population, and a slight increase in the number of college educated voters).
Here’s the graph:
To cut to the chase, if the vote in November were to break down exactly as the Presidential vote did in 2016, Biden would win with 307 Electoral votes.
Everybody is well aware of how the complacency that “Hillary has this in the bag” killed her in 2016. I doubt anybody will make the same mistake this year. Nevertheless, these two reports are further grounds for guarded optimism.
