Republicans always poll about 10% less than their final results in Safe R states.
Gov. Kobach, Sen. Morrisey, Sen. Rosendale, and Gov. Vitter agree.
Trump is leading Warren and Buttgieg by 32 points in this poll, which is definitely believable. I don’t think they’re underrating GOP support, and Biden trailing by "only" 20 points in KY isn’t that implausible considering his double-digit lead over Trump nationally.
It’s not really about red states, but polls underestimate frequently republican candidates in states along the Ohio River, just look at OH gov 2018, IN Sen 2018, IN gov 2016, IN Sen 2016, KY gov 2015.... polls greatly overestimated dems candidates
I have two main explanations.
On the one hand these states have moved sharply to the right over the past 10 years, and polls have not necessarily taken into account these shifts when doing their survey, for example in Ohio the electorate is now 40/35 R/D but many pollsters, last year, used samples where Dems were a plurality of the electorate, I remember a Suffolk University poll where Dems had a seven points advantage in term of voter identification, of course this sample was not really representative of the Ohio electorate and thus the results of this poll were skewed in favour of democratic candidates.
Another reason is probably due to the fact that in these states you have a big difference between non college white voters who are very heavily republican and and white college educated voters who are more split between R and D (even if they still lean republican overall), and like pollsters tend to oversample college educated voters, polls results end up to favourable to democrats
I think its closer to the latter.
It also hurts the GOP in areas like Texas/Nevada(especially Nevada because turnout is really weird there due to the Unions/Reid Machine)
