imo its been a bit disingenous of elex forecasters to say that lay ppl shouldnt dig into crosstabs when they regularly mine them to write "Biden in trouble w XYZ group" articles. Presently, toplines are built on crosstabs that are telling us some wild stuff that we arent seeing in actual elections.
Like the thing is, if black voters were 88-12 Biden, and they're 10% - 15% of any given poll, you have a wide leeway for screwing up your black sample, maybe even 70-30 Biden doesn't blow up the topline, but 65-35 Biden is probably too far!
Right. Nitpicking some crosstab weirdness around the margins isnt helpful, but what we're experiencing rn in polling isnt "the numbers are a little odd but shake out in the end," they are pitching us a radically different electorate than what is actually showing up to vote. Seems like a big issue!
I've said it a million times - you either believe the polls and there's a generational realignment in nonwhite voters, or you believe there's a sampling fuckup. One of these has never happened, and one happens with some regularity, so you know, choose your own adventure.
here’s the thing: it is easy to believe a sampling fuckup with hard to reach voters (PoC, youth)
it is much harder to believe a sampling fuckup with Olds
Fwiw this probably at least allows for the possibility that the olds (who were 55 in '16) now have cell phones and habits consistent with younger folks (i.e., they might not pick up unless they're politically motivated to do so) though this is prolly bordering on conspiracy now, i dunno
I mean the options are:
1) there is a seismic shift with old voters
2) the polling is fucked, pretty consistently across different pollsters, with old voters
if you think there’s an enthusiasm gap with old voters *in a blue direction* that would explain what we’re seeing but it sounds pretty implausible to me just on the face of it