I’ve heard reports of several polls that asked “Do you think President Biden should step aside as nominee?” However, what seems to be missing from those polls is a follow-up question along the lines of “If President Biden remains the nominee, will you vote for him anyway?“
It’s the superficiality of the questions that are in the polls (that are released to the public, anyway) that I think distort the results that are reported. 🤔😉😊
Yes, great point! This is why relying on polls over three months out from the election to make major decisions, like forcing out your incumbent candidate during an economic boom, may not be the best strategy.
You hit the nail on the head. Poll questions can (and often are) designed with a specific bias built in, forcing a yes/no answer that is then conflated to answer a bigger question. Depending on how questions are structured, will determine how it is answered. When the polls start to ask better questions about the qualities they want in a president, of course Biden does better because he is the better man. For some reason, corporate leaders (“because corporations are people my friends”) are trying Uber hard to make the voters think Biden is unable to do the job. The reality is that polls are only answered by those who choose to answer them. I don’t answer my phone to unknown callers making me unlikely to answer a telephone poll. Many polls lead you to a donation site and it is questionable if your answers are given if you don’t donate. Hell, I can’t afford to donate that much!!! I’ve attempted to answer GOP polls as well, but I don’t want them to actually have my email or phone number…I get enough by the party I do endorse. So if I’m a reflection of the general public, that means many of us aren’t answering the poll questions and that too skews the results
"Poll questions can (and often are) designed with a specific bias built in, forcing a yes/no answer that is then conflated to answer a bigger question. Depending on how questions are structured, will determine how it is answered."
Time to drag this out again, for I don't know the fiftieth time: I stopped worrying about trolls...I mean polls...after the Red Wave turned into a Red Dribble. In 35+ special elections since 2022 Democratic candidates have outperformed EVERY SINGLE TIME. They have won over 80% of the elections. If you rely on polls to win in this day and age you are going to be sorely disappointed. I frankly discount them and any professional in the field of elections pretty much admits at this point they are a political statement that say what the poll funders want to show. The media has a vested interest in portraying this election as a close one. Trump has never won the popular vote and I suspect, barring a repeat of 2008 or 1929, Trump and the GOP are going to get trounced this election.
That's my hope as well. The press lies and, and what they are lead people to believe is happening and what is *actually* happening are two very different things.
I expect many are of a "I hear Trump is leading so why bother voting for Biden. Well, fuck them, even if he's already lost I'm going to vote for Biden anyway because Trump is an asshole." mindset when it comes down to actually casting their vote.
Yup! This is my exact response to Poll Trolls who daily post or report cherry picked ones and then end with Biden Bashing rhetoric the last 3 weeks...when if everything was as bad as polls are accurate then yeah, PSYCHO Trump & EVERY PSYCHO MAGA Candidate should be up +30 +40 +50 points by now right? RIGHT?!
I look at the Election Win facts of the past 7 years: Dem Wins over PSYCHO MAGA Candidate (endorsed by Trump) losses from EVERY SPECIAL SEAT, RUNOFF, ABORTION BALLOT MEASURE (with another win in Montana just the other day!), MIDTERM, GENERAL ELECTION - I look at Lands' win in deep red Alabama this year, Stouzzi was "Polling" to lose vs. Serial Liar George Santos, and beat Santos by +8 points, anything over +5 is a landslide nowadays.
So yeah, the Sky Is Falling Rich Dem$ "Dem" Rich Donor$ using polling and a TEEVEE moment where both Biden AND Trump were awful for different reasons can STFU...
Polls do not VOTE. Debates do not VOTE. WE THE PEOPLE DO, AND IF WE ALL JUST CUT THE BS, ADMIT WE SEE WHAT SILICON VALLEY & HOLLYWOOD DONOR CLASS ARE TRYING TO FORCE (and we know exactly why THEY HATE THE PROGRESSIVE BIDEN HARRIS PRO-UNION ANTI RICH TAX CUTS!), AND JUST TURNOUT WITH ONE GOAL TO VOTE FOR BIDEN HARRIS, who are OUR SELECTED PRIMARY TICKET CHOSEN BY 14MILLION VOTERS, WE WILL WIN IN A LANDSLIDE VS THE MOST HATED, UNFIT, SOCIOPATHIC CRIMINAL CANDIDATE KNOWN AS LOSER J. CONMAN TRAITOR RAPIST FASCIST FELON TRUMP!
Yes, Biden and his enablers certainly have dropped us into an awful situation, haven’t they? Blame anyone you want for this mess, but this is all on Biden and the people who have been hiding his obvious decline, who have been shielding him from closer scrutiny. Perhaps you’re part of the 18% of Americans who think Joe Biden is still capable of seeing this through. If so, you might want to remove your partisan blinders. The last three weeks have been a total shit show, and the next 15 will be worse! Agreed. Any loss would be due to sabotage…self sabotage inflicted by the President and his camp.
As the who to run instead? The obvious answer is Harris. She inherits the infrastructure and money. But a blitz primary might be preferable to a coronation. It’s risky, it’s ALL risky! But doing nothing and hoping for the best is political malpractice on a scale hitherto unknown!!
Looks like a combination of wishful thinking and a recipe for alienating key groups of voters. It’s better than pure chaos but makes a lot of assumptions about outcomes that seem just as likely not to happen.
So, stand pat and hope for the best? That’s your solution to the mess we’re in? I can’t think of a worse idea!. Never mind the battleground states, there’s credible polling that suggests Biden is losing New Hampshire AND Virginia!
We are at DEFCON 1 here. If Biden were capable of turning this around, he would be out there these last three weeks, turning it around! But he’s not. Because he can’t! Time to wake up and face reality!
"And for all the smart, elite media members out there, it has been a failure of epic proportions that no one thought this was worth exploring further."
That sentence could be applied to nearly everything the media has done.
So Biden’s not way behind, he’s only a little behind? How comforting!
Bottom line Biden was too old to run when he announced. And guess what? He hasn’t gotten any younger since then . Stop with the gaslighting, stop with the delay. Stop enabling the Biden camp! He’s gotta go!
Yet another "Biden has to go!" with absolutely nothing beyond that.
What's the plan if he does step aside? Who would run instead? How would they deal with the very real issues of pissing off 14 million ardent Democrats whose primary votes just got thrown out by party insiders, needing to get on ballots in all 50 states where some deadlines for doing so are passed, having to build name national name recognition with barely 100 days left to go, dealing with a hostile media that will flood the airwaves and internet with "Dems in disarray" messages, raising money (barely 100 days, remember) to pay for all that and more, etc etc etc.
Everyone I've seen, from lowly Substack commenter to self-important TV pundit to "senior Democrat insider" that has called for Biden to be replaced has failed to offer anything beyond that. It's almost as if they don't actually have a plan other than complaining.
They're doing all they can to make sure Biden and the Dems lose so they can then self-satisfiedly say "Told you so!" while ignoring any loss would largely be due to their sabotage.
You’re accusing a guy who literally wrote a model to avoid cherry picking data of cherry picking data by cherry picking data? That’s… something.
And your hair splitting about “but he’s cherry picking the question!” isn’t convincing at all. Relying on “Who will you vote for” is not cherry picking when you’re trying to predict the results of an election.
Firstly, Jeremy isn't predicting the result of an election. Secondly, he's saying that pollsters like Nate Silver aren't taking many other factors into account.
And to be clear if your position is “well this is all about opinions anyway” then the article needs to be honest about this. In particular, it can’t have cheap shots about cherry picking, which make it sound like NS is doing something wrong by cherry picking data within a fundamentally empirical discussion. When in reality what you’re talking about is a debate that is fundamentally about cherry picking data, if data is involved at all.
It seems like my use of the phrase "cherry-picked" bothered you a lot. I'm not sure how else to address what NS is doing, though. He's going beyond his modeling, and is ramping up his punditry on the matter, with has included intense criticism of Biden's campaign and Biden-backers as ignoring or being oblivious to Biden's age issues. He's chosen this hill to die on, apparently--he's been very fixated on it. But it seems like a data-oriented modeler like him would also be interested in the other data that the polls are showing, and curious as to how Biden's been essentially tied in the head-to-head aspects of the polls when he's down dramatically in the age/mental acuity issue.
That's why I said "cherry-picked". He's focused on one aspect of the polling (age), and not mentioning or curious about other aspects (head-to-head, lies, character, etc.). I DO think he's doing something wrong here, his analysis is off because of this. He's a good data guy, but his political punditry doesn't have a great track record, and I think he's off the mark here as well. Yes, Biden's age/mental acuity is a concern; I'm concerned about it myself. But I will definitely be voting for Biden if he stays in, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. The poll I highlighted in my article shows that.
It'd be one thing if he was saying "I personally don't trust that Biden has good enough health or mental acuity to make it through the campaign". But he's mostly saying "The polls!! Look at the polls!! They all say people think Biden is too old and should step down!!" If you're going to use the polls as your primary tool to make a case, then use ALL of what the polls say, not just the one poll question that confirms your biases.
Re: 1: I’m sorry, what? The article is pretty clearly about the race and trying to predict its outcome. AFAICT the whole argument is essentially “look there’s this other evidence B that’s casting a new light on evidence A (core predictive evidence for the election)”. At the end of the day, that’s all about predicting the election and trying to make the case that Biden’s chances may be underestimated.
But even if I grant your point, Nate’s answer would probably be that his punditry isn’t what matters, but rather that the only way to look at it empirically is through a model (his, in his case). And that there probably isn’t a reliable, empirically-valid way of integrating those other questions about age/lies/etc to influence the model’s output. (There’s probably nowhere as much data, the questions can be ambiguous and therefore not equivalent between polls, for elections that have a low # of samples overall — and even much lower for candidates in this age range). Even if you did, that’d be a serious undertaking, where you would need to do some serious work looking at those questions in previous elections and trying to validate your expanded model against historical data. Therefore, trying to integrate it “on the fly” would amount to it “just being your opinion”. (He literally just made similar points in an article.)
Re: 2, that’s always the case — as such it is a trivial observation to make. A model always picks a set of factors it models and leaves the rest out. Then of course it is the duty of the modeler to observe when their model leaves out factors that, in an instance, turn out to be particularly relevant. But if that’s fundamentally the argument of the article, I’m not convinced at all. I could just as well make the case that the age problem actually *undermines* Biden even further than polls show right now (enthusiasm gap, etc). So essentially just a contest of opinions, again. Cherry picking some data to support your argument is not an empirically valid method, and therefore amounts to “just your opinion”.
The reports on polling are absolutely NOT being framed as polling about character and truth. That is the point of this article. The DNC and DLCC need to lead with that in their messaging, but they aren't. They are allowing big money donors to tell them what to do, the press is eating it up and spitting it out, and polls are shaky as a result of this blitz. It's disgusting. The Democrats should take a page from the GOP and stand behind their candidate on all fronts. Don't give in. We need stability and unity.
You yourself said it would be difficult to integrate those other questions in a poll. You basically said NS is not considering those data. Polls show whatever you want them to show.
Ok so you basically missed all the nuances in my point. You’re oversimplifying so much it’s just a strawman argument, and I’m not going to engage with that. If you want to understand my point then go back and read my message carefully and in full.
That age was not only salient, but decisive, was pushed on us as obvious, when it was not obvious at all. Too old Reagan, and, yes that was really a thing, won 49 States.
The answers of young voters are a testament to their ignorance and the extremely toxic information environment, one that has been deliberately toxified. Almost no outlet is reliable. Experience and education helps in dealing with it, especially not sleeping through history class.
What we just saw happen is absolutely unacceptable. We have to do something about it.
was heartened to see how Biden faired so markedly well, when I learned of these two questions of lies/age and “character to serve” Biden/Trump in this Marist Poll via Beau Fifth Column.
But I did not look deeper into the respondents age breakdown and the fact Biden is on the down side of both those questions for the 18-29 yr old demographic is mind-boggling and of concern. That age group was key both in 2020 and 2022 to Dem wins and GOP underperformance.
But they also are notoriously difficult to poll accurately due to the reasons mentioned above by Susan. So where does that leave us? I hope they come out and understand the utter cruelty and massive human suffering he represents and his desire to gut their ability to ever truly have a voice ever again. And he will be immune from an and all crimes.
Maybe another question to the halfway decent polls should try is: Who are you voting AGAINST?
That age group is brainwashed into blaming Biden for Gaza, but they are using his age as an excuse. No matter what, the Dems need to convince their big ticket donors that Biden is solid, and they need to energize their down ballot races. Apparently, us peon voters don't count. Like I heard today on MSNBC (can't remember which show), all the Dems who are calling for Biden to step down are worried about are "donors, donors, donors" but not "voters, voters, voters." This is why we need an expansion of SCOTUS and a challenge to Citizens United so that we get the big money out of politics. It's all about the money, money, money...and ain't that a shame?
Part of the problem with going too deep into crosstabs on a survey like this is that the response rate is so bad - especially in the 18-29 demo that you get a very small “n” that is highly subject to non-response bias and the pitfalls of bad weighting assumptions by the pollster.
There are much more in-depth surveys specifically of this age group that do not show much of any slippage in support for President Biden among Gen Z voters (Harvard Youth Poll, etc.).
The first thing to take residence in my head after reading his name is that Nate Silver needs to sit down and stfu. He left 538 for baseball. He doesn’t get to jump back in and expect any kind of audience when the subject is politics.
I’ve heard reports of several polls that asked “Do you think President Biden should step aside as nominee?” However, what seems to be missing from those polls is a follow-up question along the lines of “If President Biden remains the nominee, will you vote for him anyway?“
It’s the superficiality of the questions that are in the polls (that are released to the public, anyway) that I think distort the results that are reported. 🤔😉😊
Yes, great point! This is why relying on polls over three months out from the election to make major decisions, like forcing out your incumbent candidate during an economic boom, may not be the best strategy.
You hit the nail on the head. Poll questions can (and often are) designed with a specific bias built in, forcing a yes/no answer that is then conflated to answer a bigger question. Depending on how questions are structured, will determine how it is answered. When the polls start to ask better questions about the qualities they want in a president, of course Biden does better because he is the better man. For some reason, corporate leaders (“because corporations are people my friends”) are trying Uber hard to make the voters think Biden is unable to do the job. The reality is that polls are only answered by those who choose to answer them. I don’t answer my phone to unknown callers making me unlikely to answer a telephone poll. Many polls lead you to a donation site and it is questionable if your answers are given if you don’t donate. Hell, I can’t afford to donate that much!!! I’ve attempted to answer GOP polls as well, but I don’t want them to actually have my email or phone number…I get enough by the party I do endorse. So if I’m a reflection of the general public, that means many of us aren’t answering the poll questions and that too skews the results
"Poll questions can (and often are) designed with a specific bias built in, forcing a yes/no answer that is then conflated to answer a bigger question. Depending on how questions are structured, will determine how it is answered."
EXACTLY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSKwf4AIlI&ab_channel=BritishComedy
You can’t print what I think about Nate Silver.
Time to drag this out again, for I don't know the fiftieth time: I stopped worrying about trolls...I mean polls...after the Red Wave turned into a Red Dribble. In 35+ special elections since 2022 Democratic candidates have outperformed EVERY SINGLE TIME. They have won over 80% of the elections. If you rely on polls to win in this day and age you are going to be sorely disappointed. I frankly discount them and any professional in the field of elections pretty much admits at this point they are a political statement that say what the poll funders want to show. The media has a vested interest in portraying this election as a close one. Trump has never won the popular vote and I suspect, barring a repeat of 2008 or 1929, Trump and the GOP are going to get trounced this election.
That's my hope as well. The press lies and, and what they are lead people to believe is happening and what is *actually* happening are two very different things.
I expect many are of a "I hear Trump is leading so why bother voting for Biden. Well, fuck them, even if he's already lost I'm going to vote for Biden anyway because Trump is an asshole." mindset when it comes down to actually casting their vote.
Yup! This is my exact response to Poll Trolls who daily post or report cherry picked ones and then end with Biden Bashing rhetoric the last 3 weeks...when if everything was as bad as polls are accurate then yeah, PSYCHO Trump & EVERY PSYCHO MAGA Candidate should be up +30 +40 +50 points by now right? RIGHT?!
I look at the Election Win facts of the past 7 years: Dem Wins over PSYCHO MAGA Candidate (endorsed by Trump) losses from EVERY SPECIAL SEAT, RUNOFF, ABORTION BALLOT MEASURE (with another win in Montana just the other day!), MIDTERM, GENERAL ELECTION - I look at Lands' win in deep red Alabama this year, Stouzzi was "Polling" to lose vs. Serial Liar George Santos, and beat Santos by +8 points, anything over +5 is a landslide nowadays.
So yeah, the Sky Is Falling Rich Dem$ "Dem" Rich Donor$ using polling and a TEEVEE moment where both Biden AND Trump were awful for different reasons can STFU...
Polls do not VOTE. Debates do not VOTE. WE THE PEOPLE DO, AND IF WE ALL JUST CUT THE BS, ADMIT WE SEE WHAT SILICON VALLEY & HOLLYWOOD DONOR CLASS ARE TRYING TO FORCE (and we know exactly why THEY HATE THE PROGRESSIVE BIDEN HARRIS PRO-UNION ANTI RICH TAX CUTS!), AND JUST TURNOUT WITH ONE GOAL TO VOTE FOR BIDEN HARRIS, who are OUR SELECTED PRIMARY TICKET CHOSEN BY 14MILLION VOTERS, WE WILL WIN IN A LANDSLIDE VS THE MOST HATED, UNFIT, SOCIOPATHIC CRIMINAL CANDIDATE KNOWN AS LOSER J. CONMAN TRAITOR RAPIST FASCIST FELON TRUMP!
Yes, Biden and his enablers certainly have dropped us into an awful situation, haven’t they? Blame anyone you want for this mess, but this is all on Biden and the people who have been hiding his obvious decline, who have been shielding him from closer scrutiny. Perhaps you’re part of the 18% of Americans who think Joe Biden is still capable of seeing this through. If so, you might want to remove your partisan blinders. The last three weeks have been a total shit show, and the next 15 will be worse! Agreed. Any loss would be due to sabotage…self sabotage inflicted by the President and his camp.
As the who to run instead? The obvious answer is Harris. She inherits the infrastructure and money. But a blitz primary might be preferable to a coronation. It’s risky, it’s ALL risky! But doing nothing and hoping for the best is political malpractice on a scale hitherto unknown!!
I don't need to assume a causal relationship. A strong correlation is good enough.
How exactly does a “blitz primary” work? There is no structure or system in place to facilitate that - whatever it might be.
Look at this:
https://cdn.sanity.io/files/ifn0l6bs/production/378393d17d1d68d8f826593596b77c15372c25d3.pdf
Looks like a combination of wishful thinking and a recipe for alienating key groups of voters. It’s better than pure chaos but makes a lot of assumptions about outcomes that seem just as likely not to happen.
So, stand pat and hope for the best? That’s your solution to the mess we’re in? I can’t think of a worse idea!. Never mind the battleground states, there’s credible polling that suggests Biden is losing New Hampshire AND Virginia!
We are at DEFCON 1 here. If Biden were capable of turning this around, he would be out there these last three weeks, turning it around! But he’s not. Because he can’t! Time to wake up and face reality!
"And for all the smart, elite media members out there, it has been a failure of epic proportions that no one thought this was worth exploring further."
That sentence could be applied to nearly everything the media has done.
So Biden’s not way behind, he’s only a little behind? How comforting!
Bottom line Biden was too old to run when he announced. And guess what? He hasn’t gotten any younger since then . Stop with the gaslighting, stop with the delay. Stop enabling the Biden camp! He’s gotta go!
Yet another "Biden has to go!" with absolutely nothing beyond that.
What's the plan if he does step aside? Who would run instead? How would they deal with the very real issues of pissing off 14 million ardent Democrats whose primary votes just got thrown out by party insiders, needing to get on ballots in all 50 states where some deadlines for doing so are passed, having to build name national name recognition with barely 100 days left to go, dealing with a hostile media that will flood the airwaves and internet with "Dems in disarray" messages, raising money (barely 100 days, remember) to pay for all that and more, etc etc etc.
Everyone I've seen, from lowly Substack commenter to self-important TV pundit to "senior Democrat insider" that has called for Biden to be replaced has failed to offer anything beyond that. It's almost as if they don't actually have a plan other than complaining.
They're doing all they can to make sure Biden and the Dems lose so they can then self-satisfiedly say "Told you so!" while ignoring any loss would largely be due to their sabotage.
You’re accusing a guy who literally wrote a model to avoid cherry picking data of cherry picking data by cherry picking data? That’s… something.
And your hair splitting about “but he’s cherry picking the question!” isn’t convincing at all. Relying on “Who will you vote for” is not cherry picking when you’re trying to predict the results of an election.
Firstly, Jeremy isn't predicting the result of an election. Secondly, he's saying that pollsters like Nate Silver aren't taking many other factors into account.
And to be clear if your position is “well this is all about opinions anyway” then the article needs to be honest about this. In particular, it can’t have cheap shots about cherry picking, which make it sound like NS is doing something wrong by cherry picking data within a fundamentally empirical discussion. When in reality what you’re talking about is a debate that is fundamentally about cherry picking data, if data is involved at all.
It seems like my use of the phrase "cherry-picked" bothered you a lot. I'm not sure how else to address what NS is doing, though. He's going beyond his modeling, and is ramping up his punditry on the matter, with has included intense criticism of Biden's campaign and Biden-backers as ignoring or being oblivious to Biden's age issues. He's chosen this hill to die on, apparently--he's been very fixated on it. But it seems like a data-oriented modeler like him would also be interested in the other data that the polls are showing, and curious as to how Biden's been essentially tied in the head-to-head aspects of the polls when he's down dramatically in the age/mental acuity issue.
That's why I said "cherry-picked". He's focused on one aspect of the polling (age), and not mentioning or curious about other aspects (head-to-head, lies, character, etc.). I DO think he's doing something wrong here, his analysis is off because of this. He's a good data guy, but his political punditry doesn't have a great track record, and I think he's off the mark here as well. Yes, Biden's age/mental acuity is a concern; I'm concerned about it myself. But I will definitely be voting for Biden if he stays in, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. The poll I highlighted in my article shows that.
It'd be one thing if he was saying "I personally don't trust that Biden has good enough health or mental acuity to make it through the campaign". But he's mostly saying "The polls!! Look at the polls!! They all say people think Biden is too old and should step down!!" If you're going to use the polls as your primary tool to make a case, then use ALL of what the polls say, not just the one poll question that confirms your biases.
Re: 1: I’m sorry, what? The article is pretty clearly about the race and trying to predict its outcome. AFAICT the whole argument is essentially “look there’s this other evidence B that’s casting a new light on evidence A (core predictive evidence for the election)”. At the end of the day, that’s all about predicting the election and trying to make the case that Biden’s chances may be underestimated.
But even if I grant your point, Nate’s answer would probably be that his punditry isn’t what matters, but rather that the only way to look at it empirically is through a model (his, in his case). And that there probably isn’t a reliable, empirically-valid way of integrating those other questions about age/lies/etc to influence the model’s output. (There’s probably nowhere as much data, the questions can be ambiguous and therefore not equivalent between polls, for elections that have a low # of samples overall — and even much lower for candidates in this age range). Even if you did, that’d be a serious undertaking, where you would need to do some serious work looking at those questions in previous elections and trying to validate your expanded model against historical data. Therefore, trying to integrate it “on the fly” would amount to it “just being your opinion”. (He literally just made similar points in an article.)
Re: 2, that’s always the case — as such it is a trivial observation to make. A model always picks a set of factors it models and leaves the rest out. Then of course it is the duty of the modeler to observe when their model leaves out factors that, in an instance, turn out to be particularly relevant. But if that’s fundamentally the argument of the article, I’m not convinced at all. I could just as well make the case that the age problem actually *undermines* Biden even further than polls show right now (enthusiasm gap, etc). So essentially just a contest of opinions, again. Cherry picking some data to support your argument is not an empirically valid method, and therefore amounts to “just your opinion”.
The reports on polling are absolutely NOT being framed as polling about character and truth. That is the point of this article. The DNC and DLCC need to lead with that in their messaging, but they aren't. They are allowing big money donors to tell them what to do, the press is eating it up and spitting it out, and polls are shaky as a result of this blitz. It's disgusting. The Democrats should take a page from the GOP and stand behind their candidate on all fronts. Don't give in. We need stability and unity.
How is this addressing the points I raised?
You yourself said it would be difficult to integrate those other questions in a poll. You basically said NS is not considering those data. Polls show whatever you want them to show.
Ok so you basically missed all the nuances in my point. You’re oversimplifying so much it’s just a strawman argument, and I’m not going to engage with that. If you want to understand my point then go back and read my message carefully and in full.
That age was not only salient, but decisive, was pushed on us as obvious, when it was not obvious at all. Too old Reagan, and, yes that was really a thing, won 49 States.
The answers of young voters are a testament to their ignorance and the extremely toxic information environment, one that has been deliberately toxified. Almost no outlet is reliable. Experience and education helps in dealing with it, especially not sleeping through history class.
What we just saw happen is absolutely unacceptable. We have to do something about it.
What you don't get is that Biden has to win by close to, or a bit over 4 points in the national popular vote to win the electoral college vote.
He doesn't have much room for growth to achieve those nos, barring exogenous shocks.
What are you basing your 4 points national assertion on?
2016...Hilary lost electoral college narrowly and won popular vote by almost 4 points.
2020 Biden won electoral college narrowly and won popular vote by 4+ points.
This is because of the rightward bias of the electoral college, giving rural less populated states more apportionment .
This translates into the rightward bias we have today.
It seems to me you’re assuming a causal relationship between those numbers that probably isn’t there.
Oh, it’s there! It’s how Joe Biden won the election by 7 million votes and 43,000 votes at the same time!
Where do you get the 43,000? Biden won MI/PA/WI by a combined 255,000.
Had Biden lost AZ, GA and WI, he would’ve ended up with 269 electoral votes.YOU do the math!!
I don't need to assume a causal relationship. A strong correlation is good enough.
was heartened to see how Biden faired so markedly well, when I learned of these two questions of lies/age and “character to serve” Biden/Trump in this Marist Poll via Beau Fifth Column.
But I did not look deeper into the respondents age breakdown and the fact Biden is on the down side of both those questions for the 18-29 yr old demographic is mind-boggling and of concern. That age group was key both in 2020 and 2022 to Dem wins and GOP underperformance.
But they also are notoriously difficult to poll accurately due to the reasons mentioned above by Susan. So where does that leave us? I hope they come out and understand the utter cruelty and massive human suffering he represents and his desire to gut their ability to ever truly have a voice ever again. And he will be immune from an and all crimes.
Maybe another question to the halfway decent polls should try is: Who are you voting AGAINST?
That age group is brainwashed into blaming Biden for Gaza, but they are using his age as an excuse. No matter what, the Dems need to convince their big ticket donors that Biden is solid, and they need to energize their down ballot races. Apparently, us peon voters don't count. Like I heard today on MSNBC (can't remember which show), all the Dems who are calling for Biden to step down are worried about are "donors, donors, donors" but not "voters, voters, voters." This is why we need an expansion of SCOTUS and a challenge to Citizens United so that we get the big money out of politics. It's all about the money, money, money...and ain't that a shame?
Facts!
Part of the problem with going too deep into crosstabs on a survey like this is that the response rate is so bad - especially in the 18-29 demo that you get a very small “n” that is highly subject to non-response bias and the pitfalls of bad weighting assumptions by the pollster.
There are much more in-depth surveys specifically of this age group that do not show much of any slippage in support for President Biden among Gen Z voters (Harvard Youth Poll, etc.).
The first thing to take residence in my head after reading his name is that Nate Silver needs to sit down and stfu. He left 538 for baseball. He doesn’t get to jump back in and expect any kind of audience when the subject is politics.