NC-PPP: Biden +1%

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Another red state going towards Biden as more workers are going towards to unemployment line. I remember Boehner who said that Dems should lose the House in 2009 due to 9.9 percent unemployment.  Yes, Trump should lose reelection due to elevated unemployment

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Partisan trends of states are not going to show up in the election, like in 2016; consequently,  partisan politics is over qs Latinos and Blacks and Arabs are gonna vote like in 2012 like manner, for Biden.  When you have 9.9 percent unemployment and a pandemic numbers and you are the governing party and you arent an Establishment R like Trump, he is out the door, in 2020

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Party ID was D+4 in the 2016 exit poll. PPP has had mixed results recently for sure, but Gallup isn’t a very good pollster these days, and quite frankly using them as a benchmark to unskew PPP is galaxy-brain stuff.  A poll that matches the party ID of both recent exit polls and high quality surveys like NYT/Siena (D+5 most recently), and the outcome of the 2016 election is probably at least in the ballpark.

1. Exit polls are not always accurate, remember the midterms AZ exit polls which had Trump approval rate at +12 ? Or the TX exit polls which had Cruz losing native Texans by double digits while winning transplants by double digits ?

2. NC exit polls from four years ago had party ID at D+4, yeah, but they also had Trump winning independent voters by 16 points ! The PPP poll has Trump losing independent voters by 4 and has Tillis losing them by 10. Obviously there is a problem somewhere.

Exit polls can definitely be off, but they are still a better benchmark for electorate composition than traditional polls, especially crummy ones like Gallup. Also, the midterm AZ exit polls showed Trump’s approval at +2, I’m literally looking at it right now. And as to native Texans preferring O’Rourke over recent arrivals, how do you know that isn’t correct? Your personal incredulity isn’t an argument. More than half of all Texans under the age of 18 are Latino.  When you realize that native-born Texans skew more urban, younger, and browner, it actually makes a lot of sense. If you google it, you can actually find other polls the find that native born Texans are currently more liberal/Democratic than Texan transplants, it isn’t a one-off result.

And re: NC, you are saying that because Trump won independents in 2016, he couldn’t possibly be losing them now?  I really don’t follow.

Concerning TX, it's just common sense. Take a look at the areas which are attracting a lot of outer state residents and look the way they're leaning (and trending). Had Cruz really won the vote of non native Texans by a double digits margin he wouldn't have lost Tarrant or Williamson.


Concerning NC, the point is simple, the 2016 exit polls had the elecorate at D+4, still Trump won NC by 3.5 points, in order to do so he won (according to exit polls) independent voters by 16 points.
Okay, so there are two possibilities
1. Exit polls overestimated the share of democratic voters and overestimated Trump popularity among indepedent voters, the electorate was probably closer to R+1 like Gallup is showing and independent voters were more equally divided
2. Exit polls were right, NC has more people who identify with the democratic party than with the republican party, but NC independents are also pretty right leaning and are far more conservative than national independents

The PPP poll has the NC electorate at D+5, but at the same time Trump is losing independent voters by 4, in other words NC independents would have swung 20 points to the left since 2016. You see ? There is a problem.

It's clear that independent voters in the PPP polls are very different from the CNN exit polls independents (and don't tell me that a group that Trump won by 16 in 2016 is now voting for Biden by 4, that wouldn't be logical).

Either the NC electorate has become more Republican as some former conservative leaning independents have become republicans (and thus, yeah it would be conceivable that Biden is winning independents by 4 points), but in this case the PPP sample is far too D friendly as the electorate is no longer at D+4, or the NC electorate has not changed much over the past four years, democrats have still a +4 advantage, but in this case independent voters that PPP has pollled are far more D friendly than in the reality.

Not gonna continue the Texas argument except to say that... the Republican governor of Texas agrees with me.

https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/gov-abbott-new-texas-voters-are-more-conservative-than-natives/article_8a250872-1c5a-11ea-9fc0-4303155b0d9d.html

Your argument about North Carolina basically boils down to "it isn't possible that North Carolina independents could swing that much from one election to another," to which I respond... why? Independents literally just swung from Trump +4 in 2016 to D+12 in the House in 2018 according to exits.  NC independents are definitely more right-leaning than independents in the US as a whole (they'd have to be since its a state with more self-identified Democrats than Republicans which nevertheless is R-leaning electorally), but I don't see why that precludes them from swinging as a group any more or less than in any other state.

Because independent voters are rarely ''true'' independents. The vast majority of them vote almost always for the candidates of a same political party.
Romney won the vote of independent voters by 3 points, Trump, despite being a very different kind of candidate won them by 4 points.
Thus, it's impossible to see how independents voters could realistically shift 20 points to the left, do you even understand what a such swing would mean ? considering that Trump won them by 4 points four years ago, a such swing would mean they would vote for Joe Biden by a 16 points margin, that's a democratic pipe dream, even in 2008 Obama won independents by ''only'' 8 points, which was already pretty impressive.

Yeah, in 2018 democrats won the independent vote by 12 points, but this is due to two factors which are not going to happen again in 2020.
1. Independents voters who lean toward the opposition/minority party, by definition tend to outvote the independents who lean toward the party of the President as they're more motivated, it helped republicans in 2014, it hurted them in 2018. But in a presidential election conservative leaning independents and progressive leaning independents tend to vote at similar rate
2. It's easier for a republican independent to cast a ballot for his democratic incumbent senator or even for a democratic house candidate who will provide some balance in DC than for the democratic presidential candidate, congressional races remain less polarized than presidential ones

2020 the unemployment has changed from 3.5 percent to an elevated unemployment level. We dont know how high it is but Trump is still at 44 percent approvals like he was in 2018