State of the race - Nov 3rd

So a rush of Kamala Harris leading polls dropped this weekend, one even showing Harris winning Iowa. Tis to laugh. But there are a bunch of New York Times swing state polls spelling good news for Kamala Harris, among others. I just don't buy it.  Here's what I am seeing as of this morning:

I see Trump winning handily in Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. I also see him winning in Nevada and Pennsylvania by slim margins, and I see nailbiters that either candidate could win, in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Now let me caveat my own findings.

In Michigan there's a Marist poll that's got Harris ahead by 3, while the rest of the recent and reasonable polls have the race too close to call. So as a nailbiter I still think Michigan is leaning Trump but it is a too close to call state. With Trump typically overperforming his polling, I think this should still go Trump.  However, I do not say that with overwhelming confidence and it could be stolen by Democrat shenanigans. 

The story in Wisconsin is similar to Michigan; a Marist poll pulling the average towards Kamala. Looking at only the three polls that I think fit the late stage and reasonable margin of error, sample size and likely without sample issues, I see Trump at 50.5% and Harris at 49.5%. Tight but winnable for Trump.

North Carolina has swung closer to Trump, but all of the four polls I am including are what most consider right-leaning pollsters; Fox, Rasmussen, Atlas Intel and Trafalgar. I'm not suggesting these pollsters are wrong, but there is a risk of confirmation bias and polling bias overstating Trump support. 

The same is true for Georgia (two polls, both from the aforementioned group) and to a lesser extent, Arizona (three polls, two right leaning and one I am unfamiliar with). It is also the case for Nevada, with 3 reasonable late polls all showing Trump ahead, but all three are right leaning pollsters. That said I think the first two states are both pretty solidly Trump. Nevada is probably a lot closer but I'd give a slight edge to Trump.

That leaves Pennsylvania, where there are seven viable polls. On the left leaning side, the Washington Post has Harris ahead by roughly 1, Marist has her ahead by 3. The other poll I think skews a bit left is Quinnipiac, which actually has Trump ahead by 2. The right leaning polls are as follows, Fox - Trump +2, Insider Advantage - Trump +1, Rasmussen - Trump +2 and Atlas Intel - Trump +2. I think Trump wins the state.

Overall, I still see Trump winning the electoral college, handily, minus any malfeasance.

For what it's worth, for the national popular vote I am seeing Trump at 50.94%.

My swing state view as of Oct 22

This morning I read the TIPP national tracking poll that showed over the weekend the race was tightening. It had this to say:

Trump's weekend momentum has fizzled out, and Harris and Trump are locked in a tight contest. Despite Trump's earlier momentum, the TIPP tracking poll shows former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris tied at 48%.

My first thought was okay it's a tracking poll, there is a daily fluctuation that shouldn't be taken as gospel. So I decided to look further, and I discovered two things.  Firstly, despite the rounding, overall the details show Trump with a fractional lead at 48% and Harris somewhere around 47.7%. That is still a Trump lead, however small.  The second thing I discovered was that within their tracking poll, Trump did indeed drop from 49% to 48% on the rolling score while Harris gained from 47% to just under the 48% mark. That could be anything from a weekend Democrat response bias to real movement.  It's hard to tell.  

Keep in mind this is a national poll. If Trump is even in a national poll, he is in a strong position to win the national total vote count, which is of course, merely bragging rights. Perhaps it's a little more consequential this time around but that's a discussion for another time. What's interesting is that it matches a couple of my updated swing state results.  What really matters is the swing state polls.

Taking a look at the RealClearPolitics battleground state polling average (which are not the gold standard and why I try to average the polls a bit differently than RCP does) we see the following:

• Pennsylvania - Trump +0.8%
• North Carolina -  Trump +0.5%
• Georgia - Trump +2.5%
• Arizona - Trump +1.8%
• Wisconsin - Trump +0.4%
• Michigan - Trump +1.2%
• Nevada - Trump +0.7%

Here's what I am seeing as of this morning:

How does that compare to my previous snapshot? 

In my view, Trump has improved modestly in the sunbelt states of Arizona and Georgia (Nevada is statistically unchanged). In North Carolina and Pennsylvania there were no new polls so obviously, unchanged. In Wisconsin, Trump's lead has shrunk, perhaps mirroring the national TIPP findings.

As the polls begin to move in Trump's direction, the difference between my results and the RCP average has tightened. In Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina, our differences are negligible. In Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania I am seeing a much better Trump result than RCP and conversely, I am seeing a worse result for Trump in Nevada than RCP.

If my view is correct, Trump has a lead pretty much outside the margin of error cheating in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Those two states would bring his Electoral College total to 254 of the 270 needed to win. If Trump wins Michigan (his next highest lead) it would put him at 269. Arizona would put him over the top, being Trump's next highest lead over Michigan.  At just under 2% in the latter two states, Trump is likely to win, but they are not at a comfort level just yet.  With 13 days to go, I'm expecting one of two things; either a nailbiter finish with a Harris two-days-later, come from behind suspicious victory, or a Trump blowout win.

My swing state view as of Oct 21

Here's what I see when I look at the polls and include only polls from the last 10 days, with only Likely Voters, only polls of 700 or more respondents, and with a margin of error less than or equal to 3.5%. Just like RCP, I'm seeing a swing state sweep for Trump.

This would equate to a significant electoral college sweep for Trump. There's good news and worrisome news in this.  Firstly, Georgia and Pennsylvania look like they are approaching outside of margin of error leads for Trump. The worrisome part, the other states are all tin to razor-thin leads. The momentum is in Trump's favor BUT...

The Kamala Harris honeymoon was almost certainly a product of media and push-pollster hype. The polls 100% had to move towards Trump because the Harris leads were pure vaporware wishful-thinking, pie-in-the-sky unicorns and fairy dust. Which means that the polls have in reality, probably moved very little towards Trump.  I don't doubt he's leading, but the margins may indeed be slim in these key battleground states. And if that's true, vote tabulation malfeasance is a risk.

And the spin continues

The spin has spun out of control, from the disastrous Kamala Harris interview, right on into some recent polling. Here's a discussion on why it's a lot of crap.

Trump gaining or no?

Let's not pretend Donald Trump has been making up ground on Kamala Harris; he was always doing better than her, but the push polls are being forced to stop playing games and start reporting reality.  They have to report the truth or their integrity and validity will be challenged post-election. They are moving their polling towards the truth because they must.

State of the race: October 14th

 

Click to enlarge.

Taken from the RCP polls, and including only polls that are likely voters, with a sample size greater than 500 or more, and a margin of error less than or equal to 3.5% and polls taken on September 30th or later.

This map would lead to a Trump win with 306 electoral college votes, the same as in 2016.  I think this time around he may do better than this shows at the moment.

NOTE:  Applying the same logic to national polls, Kamala Harris appears to still be leading in the popular vote, but not by a great margin.

Why you should not panic about the polls

Rush Limbaugh used to advise his listeners (me among them), don't live and die by the polls. Sound advice in an era where most polling is designed to influence opinion rather than reflect it. If you watch the polls (and I do), you cannot blindly follow a single poll, or even a group of polls 'aggregated' without a grain handful of salt at the ready. Polls are often designed to discourage or encourage voters of a particular stripe to not vote, or vote respectively.

They often do not inform, but rather misinform. So either ignore them, or else take care in how you approach them. Steven Crowder points out that a dose of reality should be taken along with any polling you ingest:

State of the race

Here's my latest take on the race, based on polls of likely voters within the past 14 days, with at least a 500 sample size. The only state with no valid polls based on my criteria, is Georgia.

Interestingly, outside of one poll in North Carolina, there are only two pollsters with polling that qualifies, and both tend to favor Republicans in their methodology.  Is it possible there's a bias in my selection? Yes, seeing as how the included polls are clearly right-leaning.  But the problem with that conclusion is that they are the most recent polls, they do have a reasonable sample size, and they are polling likely voters, which is more informative than registered voters or just all adults.

Without getting into the crosstabs of voters and whether the sample compositions are indicative of the electorate, it's a better quick and dirty than how RealClearPolitics just does a recency and non-duplicate pollster check. I trust my averages more than that of RCP. 

Further, check out The Peoples' Pundit on Benny Johnson, who explains some more details on why Trump is very likely winning right now.

Kamala Harris is NOT WINNING! Here's why.

Here's why:

Poll Analysis

RealClear Politics does something I hate when it takes an aggregate of polls, it mixes unalike polls, and it gives all polls equal weighting. That's not realistic.  In order to do a more reasoned polling average in the swing states, it should be a weighted average of like polls.  I've taken a partial step towards filtering that way this cycle for the swing states. I haven't yet weighted the polls but what I have done is filtered the polls to include only the following in the various swing states;  Only likely voter polls with a sample size >=500 a margin of error <=4.25%,  and only polls taken since 06-Jul-24.

Not all swing states have had polls that qualify with that as a minimum criteria. But, given those criteria, here's what I am seeing:

Given these likely voter views, and assuming no other inherent bias in these polls, I have Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all looking like Trump wins. It's still not a complete picture mind you because some of these are within the average (unweighted) margin of error.

But if this holds up and all else is held equal (and yes, more work needs to be done on my analysis, and it's still only July), the electoral college would look like this:

No poll watching this year.

Every (primarily presidential) election cycle I used to track the polls that appear on RealClearPolitics to try to extrapolate a realistic result by filtering out polls that are what I would consider statistically unreliable.  Some were too small (high margin of error), some oversampled Democrats (not a truly random sample, therefore biased), some polled adults or registered voters instead of likely voters.  Some may have even defined likely voters oddly.  They needed to be filtered out  in order to get a clearer view of how race really looked.  It worked in 2016, I was seeing a Trump narrow win over Hillary Clinton.  I thought I had to be wrong and it turned out I was; I understated president Trump's electoral performance. 

In 2018 I looked at Senate races and my filtering method still did pretty well.  But in 2020 I did not see a Let's Go Brandon victory. In 2022 I didn't do that well in senate races either. I'm not convinced that my methodology was wrong, but I think the polling has changed in a way that is not clear to me. That could mean I am doing something that is wrong that perhaps used to work, I don't know.  But the point is, as a poll watcher, I do not trust my input data any longer.  

I've enjoyed looking at the What-If scenarios, and I may still do it this year. I like statistics and doing the analysis. But until I can figure out why the polls are different and my previous method of filtering out suspicious results can be fixed, I don't think it's productive to share my results here, at least for this election cycle.

Besides, I don't believe, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, poll watching is the best use of our time. I'll find another way to be productive and useful to the conservative cause. What does it matter if the polls show a close race and it turns out that hundreds of thousands of Let's Go Brandon votes appear at 2 a.m. in Pennsylvania for Let's Go Brandon, with a corresponding (and statically impossible) zero votes for Trump. 

But outrage over suspicious results won't change the results. What will change the result is a rejuvenated RNC that  does it's job properly. Let's hope the RNC's new leadership is up to the task.

Latest polls shifting? Fear not.

Recently there's been a spate of polls showing Let's Go Brandon improving versus president Trump.  These recent polls all have a leftward tilt associated with their pollsters. As a premise to count undocumented harvested ballots, it's a great way to lay the groundwork for cheating. The narrative Let's Go Brandon has been surging of late, does make a great story for the left.

Honestly, I'm fine with the narrative because it keeps Let's Go Brandon on the ballot in place of sinister Gavin Newsom.  Short of the premise for cheating, it only serves as a salve for wounded lefty hearts.   The reason not to worry at this point is simple - what has been different that has caused Let's Go Brandon to dramatically surge to within striking distance of Trump?

I'll give you a few minutes to ponder that and realize the answer is "absolutely nothing".  So no reason for a surge, ergo no real surge. Sure polls will shift, they can even change direction.  But this makes zero sense.  And then there are the state polls.

Here's why you don't need to worry just yet, according to Red Eagle Politics:

Meanwhile in Canada, conservatives continue to surge

A television channel in Canada, normally landing between far left and very far left, faces the reality on the ground in Canada.  That reality? Justin Trudeau is destroying the liberal left (the Liberal party) and as a bonus, the socialist left (NDP) and it's starting to look irreversible for the left, at least for the next federal election.

Gleeful.

Where there is smoke, there's fire

The United States can be infuriating. Here's how you fix voting, and how most civilized countries do it, or should do it if they don't:

1. Photo ID and recent proof of address for voters
2. Ballot/poll watchers from all parties present at every polling location
3. Hand counted ballots in every polling precinct
4. No calling of results in a riding until all poll watchers from parties have signed off 
5. Recourse for recounts under certain conditions

Why is that so hard in the United States?  Additionally, specific to the United States, why not make election day a national holiday? No mail-in ballots except for overseas military.  If you are a civilian out of the country, tough luck.  I know that's disenfranchising, but it's a relatively small number of people and if it were that important to you, you'd plan for it. Sorry, not sorry. Also, why do some Democrat states take a week for votes to get counted?  And in those cases there is always a Democrat surge from behind.  It's bull and everyone knows it.  In your quest for power you are destroying the democratic process and the concept of democracy itself.

The above 5 requirements are not disenfranchising, they make sure every vote is counted, once, and ghost votes are not counted. That empowers real voters.  Corruption in the voting process is the real disenfranchisement of voters. Instead, we get crap like this:

Hopefully it's not too late for America, but it is getting grim.

Polling wow!

Republican identifying voters outnumber Democrats according to Gallup? Wow.

Post debate, Trump looking even better

Polling post debate looks like president Trump's non-participation is helping, not hurting his polling.  I think at this point no one should be surprised.

RCP is getting closer

As of this morning, RealClearPolitics is edging closer to my weighted percentage interpretation of their results.  They currently are averaging the results at R+3%.  I currently have it as R +4.4% with my filters and weighted averages factored in.

My latest take on RCP polling

Previously, my take on Real Clear Politics (my rationale explained briefly here) showed Republicans up by a whopping 5.5% on the average of their polls I felt were worth inclusion.  That's slipped a little bit but still showing a healthy GOP lead in the generic congressional ballot.

Here's my latest take on the available polls, 3 new ones have been added by RCP - NPR/PBS/Marist (R +3%), CBS News Battleground Tracker (R +2%) and CNN (R+4), with the largest sample being the CBS News poll and also having the smallest Republican advantage.  All three have brought the average Republican lead down.  

Keep this grain of salt in mind: all three newly added polls are from Democrat-favoring institutions.  This could be damage control.  I actually don't mind that as long as conservatives and like-minded independents do indeed get out and vote.  Why?  Because the alternative false narrative they could provide would be worse and the Left is missing that opportunity (unless the idea is already in play on a broader scale than we realize).

Here's what they would do if they were not so blindly and bitterly partisan;  start inflating the Republican advantage in these polls to ridiculous levels (R+12%, R +9%, R+11%) and then when it inevitably comes in short of that range, say at R+5%, the narrative could become that voters wanted change but at the last minute realized that they really didn't want a Republican majority and many voters pulled back and as 'reason took over' decided to revert to their true inclination to vote Democrat.  That narrative would keep the Democrats are the true majority notion alive, whereas sayin it's R +2% and then it turns out it ends up as R +5%, they will have to admit they took a deserved drubbing.

Or of course, they could just start to blame Biden. 

Updated Generic Congressional Ballot Polling

This is pretty easy to upkeep since I've set it up, so why not update my RealClearPolitics interpretation more frequently between now and November 8th?  Here's the snapshot as of today:

As a reminder, I'm only including the latest poll from each pollster, happening the last ten days where only Likely Voters (LV) are included.  I have also excluded any polls for being revealing a sample size, and I am weighting the polls impact based on their size.  Other factors such as pollster bias or question wording have not been considered.  Nevertheless this still provides a more relevant result than how RCP average their average of polls.

You can see that the advantage has ballooned as I had predicted.  Even if I include as far back as October 11th, which I believe is probably a bit stale, the GOP still hold a +4.3% advantage.  Further if I remove supposedly Republican biased polls (Federalist, Rasmussen, and Trafalgar), I still get a Republican +3.6% advantage over the last 17 days of polls, or Republican +4.3% over the last 8 days.  I'm not trying to cherry pick, just show that the polls are showing voters moving to the right. 

Evidence of Red Wave?

 Is this evidence or an outlier poll? Nevada turning red is a big deal.

Nevada Senate:

Adam Laxalt (R) 45% (+2)

Catherine Cortez Masto (D-inc) 43%

.

Nevada Governor:

Joe Lombardo (R) 45% (+3)

Steve Sisolak (D-inc) 42%

.@OHPredictive/@TheNVIndy, 741 LV, 9/20-29 pic.twitter.com/BkAUT3xA8t

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) October 2, 2022

I'm always skeptical of polling without more information so I'm very cautiously optimistic given this news, but optimisitic nonetheless.