I mean, she did beat Trump in the popular vote by about 2 points. On this day in 2020, Biden was up by about 10 in the RCP average and won by about 5. In 2012, Obama was up by 3 and won by 4. In 2008, Obama was up by 6 and won by 7. Doesn't seem like an obvious record of presidential failure to me.
On this day in 2016, 538 had Hillary up by 7 points on Trump.
Over the last eight years we've seen polls repeatedly fail, and yet I've never seen an election in which smart people have obsessed about polls, especially strange ones like this.
It may well happen, but Biden winning the popular vote in November would break a now five election streak of the national polls being "right" about the winner at this stage of the campaign by RCP average.
I really hate the poll unskewing stuff coming from Biden supporters, but I do buy that the RCP average, specifically, has been tainted by trash polls...idk
The one weird thing this year is RFK Jr. Some polls have him at 12% and some have him at 3%. He does seem to take evenly from Biden and Trump, and I think he’ll end up not being much of a factor.
Polls help campaigns identify where they can build winning coalitions, so the demographic data in polling is very valuable. (The public election modeling also bakes in higher uncertainty levels in the summer, reducing over time into the fall.)
The forlorn hope is that they were off bc people were virtue signaling that they didn’t support Trump
He has been around so long now that people feel no stigma in being like “I am a Trump guy” so we won’t see a swing towards him
*reaching*
100%. It's also worth mentioning that these were 4.5 months before the election and that they were still very close to the MOE or beat it.
Polls haven't failed.
If that was your point, I wasn't able to find it here
"Over the last eight years we've seen polls repeatedly fail, and yet I've never seen an election in which smart people have obsessed about polls, especially strange ones like this."
