2020 Presidential Election Results & Exit Polls commentary thread

[American2020]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1327854489026650113

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

That's nothing. I wanna know how many counties Bill Clinton won in Georgia in 1996 compared to Biden this year

[GeorgiaModerate]

Speaking of Georgia:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1327860735880409089

The first eight counties are in metro Atlanta.  Chatham is Savannah.

[It's Perro Sanxe wot won it]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1327956491056279552?s=21
Trump admits Biden won the election.

[Former Crackhead Mike Lindell]

haha "bum equipment"

[Annatar]

Comparing the pre-election polls to the exit polls as well as the results, 2 things stand out in terms of what the pre-election polls, both at the state level and national level appear to have got wrong.

1. Consistently in state and national polls, the swing towards Trump among Hispanics was picked up as was his marginal gains with blacks and losses among college whites vs 2016, what the polls failed to capture was that there would be no large swing of non-college whites towards Biden, the only explanation is the polls were reaching a disproportionately anti Trump group of non-college whites.

2. The polls accurately captured how democrats would vote as well as how independents would swing to voting for Biden this year compared for Trump in 2016 what the polls missed was how many Republican defections there would be, the NYT/Siena poll in NV for example only had Trump winning Republicans by an 82% margin. For whatever reason the polls were reaching a particularly anti-Trump group of republicans.


Basically it seems the pre-election polls got two things wrong, they were sampling a disproportionately democratic leaning group of non college whites and they were sampling a disproportionately anti Trump group of Republicans, the two things can of course be related.

I guess it was something like the NYT calling random towns in PA and the non-college whites who picked up the phone were librarians who were democrats and that threw off their whole non-college white sample. Would not surprise me if pollsters oversampled the types of non-college whites who vote more democrat like librarians, teachers etc and under sampled those who vote Republican. 

[cp]

Comparing the pre-election polls to the exit polls as well as the results, 2 things stand out in terms of what the pre-election polls, both at the state level and national level appear to have got wrong.

1. Consistently in state and national polls, the swing towards Trump among Hispanics was picked up as was his marginal gains with blacks and losses among college whites vs 2016, what the polls failed to capture was that there would be no large swing of non-college whites towards Biden, the only explanation is the polls were reaching a disproportionately anti Trump group of non-college whites.

2. The polls accurately captured how democrats would vote as well as how independents would swing to voting for Biden this year compared for Trump in 2016 what the polls missed was how many Republican defections there would be, the NYT/Siena poll in NV for example only had Trump winning Republicans by an 82% margin. For whatever reason the polls were reaching a particularly anti-Trump group of republicans.


Basically it seems the pre-election polls got two things wrong, they were sampling a disproportionately democratic leaning group of non college whites and they were sampling a disproportionately anti Trump group of Republicans, the two things can of course be related.

I guess it was something like the NYT calling random towns in PA and the non-college whites who picked up the phone were librarians who were democrats and that threw off their whole non-college white sample. Would not surprise me if pollsters oversampled the types of non-college whites who vote more democrat like librarians, teachers etc and under sampled those who vote Republican. 

Interesting theory! I have a couple of questions.

Does that track state by state? The polls were off more in WI, TX, and others than in GA or AZ. Is that because there are fewer of the subgroups you identified in the latter states?

I'm curious, too, about how this theory about sampling error fares when looking at down ballot races.

[Annatar]

Comparing the pre-election polls to the exit polls as well as the results, 2 things stand out in terms of what the pre-election polls, both at the state level and national level appear to have got wrong.

1. Consistently in state and national polls, the swing towards Trump among Hispanics was picked up as was his marginal gains with blacks and losses among college whites vs 2016, what the polls failed to capture was that there would be no large swing of non-college whites towards Biden, the only explanation is the polls were reaching a disproportionately anti Trump group of non-college whites.

2. The polls accurately captured how democrats would vote as well as how independents would swing to voting for Biden this year compared for Trump in 2016 what the polls missed was how many Republican defections there would be, the NYT/Siena poll in NV for example only had Trump winning Republicans by an 82% margin. For whatever reason the polls were reaching a particularly anti-Trump group of republicans.


Basically it seems the pre-election polls got two things wrong, they were sampling a disproportionately democratic leaning group of non college whites and they were sampling a disproportionately anti Trump group of Republicans, the two things can of course be related.

I guess it was something like the NYT calling random towns in PA and the non-college whites who picked up the phone were librarians who were democrats and that threw off their whole non-college white sample. Would not surprise me if pollsters oversampled the types of non-college whites who vote more democrat like librarians, teachers etc and under sampled those who vote Republican. 

Interesting theory! I have a couple of questions.

Does that track state by state? The polls were off more in WI, TX, and others than in GA or AZ. Is that because there are fewer of the subgroups you identified in the latter states?

I'm curious, too, about how this theory about sampling error fares when looking at down ballot races.

Regarding errors by region, if you take the final 538 polling average across the 7 northern swing states, MN, WI, MI, PA, NH, IA and OH, I assume OH will end up at a 7% margin for Trump and PA at a 1% margin for Biden, the polls overestimated Biden by 5.1% on average, these are the states with a lot of non-college whites.

In the 6 southern/western swing states, NC, GA, TX, FL, AZ and NV, polls overestimated Biden by an average of 3.3%, so the polling error was roughly 2% smaller in the states with fewer non-college whites but it was still fairly large.

One thing that was present in 2016 that disappeared this year was in some swing states Clinton outperformed her polls like Nevada, this year, in all 13 swing states Trump outperformed his polls, in that sense 2020 represented a systematic failure in polling unlike 2016 where polls erred in some swing states in the other direction.

[President Johnson]

Such a triggered snowflake. What a sore LOSER!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1327978710809661440
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1327979630477922304

[Asta]

I did some digging by using FOX Exit poll for Wisconsin and NYT/Siena poll held on 10/26-10/30 in Wisconsin to gauge where the errors could have come from.

FOX (unbolded)   NYT/Siena (Bolded)

Men 53-45 +8 Trump   49-41 +8 Trump
Women 53-46 +7 Biden   56-38 +18 Biden

(13%)18-29  58-39 +19 Biden    (14%)57-36 +21 Biden
(22%)30-44  54-45 +9 Biden    (20%)54-38 +16 Biden
(40%)45-64  52-47 +5 Trump   (35%)47-47 Tie
(26%)65+    53-46 +7 Trump    (28%)54-39 +15 Biden

White  51-48 +3 Trump    51-43  +7 Biden

(44%)Democrats  97-3 +94 Biden    (30%)97-2 +95 Biden
(51%)Republicans  91-8 +83 Trump   (31%)94-4 +90 Trump
(5%)Independents  58-36 +22 Biden    (33%)59-29 +30 Biden

(35%)College degree  56-42 +14 Biden    (35%)62-34 +28 Biden
(65%)No college degree  53-46 +7 Trump    (64%)45-47 +2 Trump

I know exit polls are unreliable this year but FOX news exit poll has Wisconsin race as pretty much dead heat so it may be of some value.

-NYT overestimated women's support for Biden by 11 point margin.
-They overestimated college degree group support for Biden by 14 point margin. If Shy Trump theory is valid at all, it could be with college white women. It's also interesting that NYT did capture enough non-college group. But it could be due to picking up democratic non-college whites.
-They also somewhat under-sampled 45-64 age group by 5%, which is a Trump-friendly age group.
-They underestimated 65+ age support for Trump by an embarrassing 22 point margin. Covid-conscious seniors, the ones most upset with Trump could have been the most eager one to pick up their phone.
-Some Republican-leaning group seem to masquerade as Independents. I know people dissed Frank Luntz' focus group, but it seems like a majority of Independents are Trump supporters. So while true Independents really may be Biden supporters, a lot of Trump supporters seem to prefer to call themselves Independents. Either that or NYT is picking up disproportionately Democratic-leaning Independents. Nearly all Independents have a leaning, so pollsters always need to push respondents.

[roxas11]

When it comes to the polling the biggest thing I take away from 2020 is that if you are a candidate whose party is currently in the white house like Hillary in 2016 or a siting president like Trump 2020

you had better be at or above 50 percent approval by election day otherwise its game over

In 2024 if Harris runs and I'm seeing polling showing her consistently struggling to get to 50 percent approval like Hillary did...... I think The GOP is going to take back the whitehouse

[Person Man]

When it comes to the polling the biggest thing I take away from 2020 is that if you are a candidate whose party is currently in the white house like Hillary in 2016 or a siting president like Trump 2020

you had better be at or above 50 percent approval by election day otherwise its game over

In 2024 if Harris runs and I'm seeing polling showing her consistently struggling to get to 50 percent approval like Hillary did...... I think The GOP is going to take back the whitehouse

Obama and Bush were in the 40s too. It’s just that there wasn’t a clear majority of people that had a clear opinion about them one way or another. Obama was at 45. Bush was at 45. Their disapproval was also 45. Trump was close or at 45 but had a disapproval at 51 or 52. He only got 47% of the vote.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Comparing the pre-election polls to the exit polls as well as the results, 2 things stand out in terms of what the pre-election polls, both at the state level and national level appear to have got wrong.

1. Consistently in state and national polls, the swing towards Trump among Hispanics was picked up as was his marginal gains with blacks and losses among college whites vs 2016, what the polls failed to capture was that there would be no large swing of non-college whites towards Biden, the only explanation is the polls were reaching a disproportionately anti Trump group of non-college whites.

2. The polls accurately captured how democrats would vote as well as how independents would swing to voting for Biden this year compared for Trump in 2016 what the polls missed was how many Republican defections there would be, the NYT/Siena poll in NV for example only had Trump winning Republicans by an 82% margin. For whatever reason the polls were reaching a particularly anti-Trump group of republicans.


Basically it seems the pre-election polls got two things wrong, they were sampling a disproportionately democratic leaning group of non college whites and they were sampling a disproportionately anti Trump group of Republicans, the two things can of course be related.

I guess it was something like the NYT calling random towns in PA and the non-college whites who picked up the phone were librarians who were democrats and that threw off their whole non-college white sample. Would not surprise me if pollsters oversampled the types of non-college whites who vote more democrat like librarians, teachers etc and under sampled those who vote Republican. 

Interesting theory! I have a couple of questions.

Does that track state by state? The polls were off more in WI, TX, and others than in GA or AZ. Is that because there are fewer of the subgroups you identified in the latter states?

I'm curious, too, about how this theory about sampling error fares when looking at down ballot races.

Regarding errors by region, if you take the final 538 polling average across the 7 northern swing states, MN, WI, MI, PA, NH, IA and OH, I assume OH will end up at a 7% margin for Trump and PA at a 1% margin for Biden, the polls overestimated Biden by 5.1% on average, these are the states with a lot of non-college whites.

In the 6 southern/western swing states, NC, GA, TX, FL, AZ and NV, polls overestimated Biden by an average of 3.3%, so the polling error was roughly 2% smaller in the states with fewer non-college whites but it was still fairly large.

One thing that was present in 2016 that disappeared this year was in some swing states Clinton outperformed her polls like Nevada, this year, in all 13 swing states Trump outperformed his polls, in that sense 2020 represented a systematic failure in polling unlike 2016 where polls erred in some swing states in the other direction.

It’s worth remebering that polls have consistently for several cycles now underestimated Democrats in NV and AZ (and to a slightly lesser extent TX).  So it seems plausible to me that whatever was causing pollsters to underestimate Trump in the Midwest was also happening in the Southwest, but that this was partially counteracted by the factors that traditonally underestimate Dems in the Southwest.

[cwh2018]

I think Nate Silver hinted that possibly we are seeing a trend where when the incumbant runs the late-breakers go for the president, as Obama in 2012 beat his polls as did Trump this time.

GOP have also been  underrated in senate races in the last 4 cycles.  It seems to now be rare for dem senate candidates to overperform their polls

[roxas11]

When it comes to the polling the biggest thing I take away from 2020 is that if you are a candidate whose party is currently in the white house like Hillary in 2016 or a siting president like Trump 2020

you had better be at or above 50 percent approval by election day otherwise its game over

In 2024 if Harris runs and I'm seeing polling showing her consistently struggling to get to 50 percent approval like Hillary did...... I think The GOP is going to take back the whitehouse

Obama and Bush were in the 40s too. It’s just that there wasn’t a clear majority of people that had a clear opinion about them one way or another. Obama was at 45. Bush was at 45. Their disapproval was also 45. Trump was close or at 45 but had a disapproval at 51 or 52. He only got 47% of the vote.

by election day both bush and obama were polling at or above 50 percent.
heck in obama case he started to get above 50 percent in most polls by the time the third debate had ended

[icemanj]

Biden has received only 42K less votes in Utah than McCain in 2008.
He also has received 39K more votes in Utah than Trump in 2016.

[South Dakota Democrat]

Comparing the pre-election polls to the exit polls as well as the results, 2 things stand out in terms of what the pre-election polls, both at the state level and national level appear to have got wrong.

1. Consistently in state and national polls, the swing towards Trump among Hispanics was picked up as was his marginal gains with blacks and losses among college whites vs 2016, what the polls failed to capture was that there would be no large swing of non-college whites towards Biden, the only explanation is the polls were reaching a disproportionately anti Trump group of non-college whites.

2. The polls accurately captured how democrats would vote as well as how independents would swing to voting for Biden this year compared for Trump in 2016 what the polls missed was how many Republican defections there would be, the NYT/Siena poll in NV for example only had Trump winning Republicans by an 82% margin. For whatever reason the polls were reaching a particularly anti-Trump group of republicans.


Basically it seems the pre-election polls got two things wrong, they were sampling a disproportionately democratic leaning group of non college whites and they were sampling a disproportionately anti Trump group of Republicans, the two things can of course be related.

I guess it was something like the NYT calling random towns in PA and the non-college whites who picked up the phone were librarians who were democrats and that threw off their whole non-college white sample. Would not surprise me if pollsters oversampled the types of non-college whites who vote more democrat like librarians, teachers etc and under sampled those who vote Republican. 

I think you need to do some research into how to become a librarian, and how to become a teacher.  These would not be "non-college" folks.

[Hope For A New Era]

Georgia is just wow

College white men did a 43-point swing!



Also, supposedly Trump won college-educated voters 52-47 in Kansas. If that's true, Kansas Republicans are not even remotely close to their floor (assuming current trends continue).

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Georgia is just wow

College white men did a 43-point swing!



Also, supposedly Trump won college-educated voters 52-47 in Kansas. If that's true, Kansas Republicans are not even remotely close to their floor (assuming current trends continue).

non-college educated white women swung towards Trump in Arizona?

[Horus]

Georgia is just wow

College white men did a 43-point swing!



Also, supposedly Trump won college-educated voters 52-47 in Kansas. If that's true, Kansas Republicans are not even remotely close to their floor (assuming current trends continue).

non-college educated white women swung towards Trump in Arizona?

QAnon.

[politicallefty]

Obama and Bush were in the 40s too. It’s just that there wasn’t a clear majority of people that had a clear opinion about them one way or another. Obama was at 45. Bush was at 45. Their disapproval was also 45. Trump was close or at 45 but had a disapproval at 51 or 52. He only got 47% of the vote.

Relative to their approval ratings in the exit polls, both Bush and Obama underperformed them. They were both at 53-46 approval/disapproval. I've noted that before. A select few may approve and vote against you, but virtually no one will vote for you if they disapprove. I'm not sure what to believe about this year because I have a very hard time believing an exit poll showing that the electorate was giving Trump a net positive 50-49 approval rating. However, it is clear that his approval rating among the electorate was higher than anyone thought before.

[Bootes Void]

Georgia is just wow

College white men did a 43-point swing!



Also, supposedly Trump won college-educated voters 52-47 in Kansas. If that's true, Kansas Republicans are not even remotely close to their floor (assuming current trends continue).

This seems off

[wbrocks67]

Obama and Bush were in the 40s too. It’s just that there wasn’t a clear majority of people that had a clear opinion about them one way or another. Obama was at 45. Bush was at 45. Their disapproval was also 45. Trump was close or at 45 but had a disapproval at 51 or 52. He only got 47% of the vote.

Relative to their approval ratings in the exit polls, both Bush and Obama underperformed them. They were both at 53-46 approval/disapproval. I've noted that before. A select few may approve and vote against you, but virtually no one will vote for you if they disapprove. I'm not sure what to believe about this year because I have a very hard time believing an exit poll showing that the electorate was giving Trump a net positive 50-49 approval rating. However, it is clear that his approval rating among the electorate was higher than anyone thought before.

Yeah, the CNN exits showing Trump 50/49 seem really questionable. Highly doubt he had 50% approval but only got 46-47% of the vote. Fox's 47/51 seems much more realistic, given that's close to what the final outcome will be.

[brucejoel99]

I have to imagine that this is a wink-wink for blocking the transition:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328057941203836930

[DrScholl]

Murphy should be sued, because what she is doing is completely unacceptable.