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| My poll averages show the race has closed to within 17 electoral votes. Click the links to the right to see the polls and the map to see the electoral college. Likely voters in blue wall and red base states are coming back to Trump. Biden is acting like a candidate in trouble because he is. Blue state changes: WI, MN, MI; red ones: IA, GA, OH. |
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Despite national and some battleground polls showing Biden with a high single digit lead, the voter turnout assumptions undergirding those leads are not only wrong but laughably so. |
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MOST ACCURATE IN 2016 |
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Most polls reflecting such leads are assuming 100% turnout among registered voters. That is what a registered voter poll is, an assumption that every registered voter will turn out, and six of the seven national polls to come out the past few days are registered voter polls. Registered voter polls almost always pad the Democrat's lead. More on that below. |
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One so-called likely voter poll assumes 98% of registered voters will turn out and vote. Because about 80% of Americans are registered to vote, this poll assumes almost an 80% turnout of the adult population. That hasn't happened since the US Civil War. Registered voter polls assume the same thing. |
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We usually get about 65-70% of registered voters and about 55% of the total eligible population. Obama only managed to squeeze out one election with a D+7 turnout and he brought just about every possible Democratic vote out. That was a turnout of 57% nationally. Getting the picture yet? The polls this week are absurd. |
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In the last nine elections, Democrats have averaged a 3.5% advantage over Republicans and that includes Obama's D+6 and D+7 years which bumped up the average. Numerous factors indicate that turnout will be down. This year new registrations for Democrats are way down from normal. |
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The Democrats will have to rely on mail-in ballots to accumulate almost half of their vote. While the mail will probably work out decently, just as a matter of statistical probability the Democrats will lose some significant portion of their vote due to lost and spoiled ballots. Reluctant voters are more likely to make mistakes. Will already reluctant voters want to go through the trouble of correcting a spoiled ballot? |
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Some ballots will be challenged for unmatched signatures or failure to meet all ballot requirements, problems that in-person voters can correct on the spot with an ID. You can't beat in-person voting if your goal is banking as many of your intended votes as possible. |
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During the primaries, 1.7% of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were rejected. In a general election, about four times as many people will vote. Primary voters are dedicated partisans so they probably are more careful with their ballots. The general election will bring out many soft voters who will not take as much care with the ballot. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume the rejection rate could rise to 3, 4 or even 5%. That puts the range between 100,000 to 300,000 rejected ballots in Pennsylvania, the majority of which would be Democrat. Trump won by 41,000 votes in 2016. |
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There is a reason Democrats knock doors and take people to the polls, because many will not vote unless physically taken to do so. Are they going to fill out their mail-in ballot application? They might try, but the much lower registration numbers suggest many voters won't be receptive to in-person assistance. |
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Mail is lost every day, and a lot of it. How much? The Post Office can't tell you. The Post Office doesn't know how much mail they lose because they don't know how much they receive. This is not a formula for a 100% vote conversion rate. |
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Only some of these problems need to arise, or all of them to a small degree, to hold voter turnout down around the average level. Even if that many people wanted to vote for Joe Biden or against Donald Trump, which they don't, everything would have to go perfectly to hit 80% of registered voters actually voting. We already know that everything won't go perfectly. So those polls showing Biden way up? Forget them. It's close or Trump is leading in the battleground states. |
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Five of the last six national polls are registered voter polls. Registered voter polls tend to inflate the Democratic share of the vote. If you don't believe me believe Nate Silver or the Pew Research Center. It's just a fact that most of the time registered voter polls inflate the Democrat's vote share. So that lead you're seeing the national polls, knock about three or four points off of it. |
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By the way, Trump does not need to win the popular vote to win the election. Here is a Tweet from Nate Silver illustrating this point. |
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If the polls tighten more I will revisit this. I'm certain we will be revisiting this. Thanks! Ref 48/50 |
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