IA-Selzer: Trump +7

[Alben Barkley]

GAME OVER LIBS!

Biden doesn't need Iowa.

No, but this is a sign that there's likely once again a systemic polling error in the midwest. Biden is gonna really have to hope he locks down AZ, FL and NC.

How can a poll be a sign there’s a systemic polling error? Who’s to say this poll isn’t the one off this time?

[Alben Barkley]

This is the best poll for Trump in months, and it’s an outlier with a bunch of undecideds in a small state Biden does not need to win.

Sad to see even some posters who I thought had level heads are losing their minds over this. Everything that’s ever been said about how this race is not at all like 2016 has not suddenly been erased because a single poll in a single state shows  a similar margin to 2016.

I mean, Biden was up 6 in NC with 52% earlier (did NOT happen in 2016), but you didn’t see Trumpers panic and doomers concede they were wrong and Biden’s gonna win.

[Alben Barkley]

I’ll give Selzer one thing: If they were trying to scare the pants off liberals on Halloween, they sure as hell succeeded.

[Alben Barkley]

This is the best poll for Trump in months, and it’s an outlier with a bunch of undecideds in a small state Biden does not need to win.

Sad to see even some posters who I thought had level heads are losing their minds over this. Everything that’s ever been said about how this race is not at all like 2016 has not suddenly been erased because a single poll in a single state shows  a similar margin to 2016.

I mean, Biden was up 6 in NC with 52% earlier (did NOT happen in 2016), but you didn’t see Trumpers panic and doomers concede they were wrong and Biden’s gonna win.

Because the swing to Biden is obviously suburban.

Besides that nothing has changed since 2016.

That's why Iowa is still heavily Trump (it's gone people...don't know why this forum can't grasp this?) and Minnesota is close. But Biden is doing well in the sunbelt.

District polling shows that while Biden has made huge gains in the suburbs, he ALSO has made up a ton of ground with WWC/rural white Northern voters. Not quite to 2012 levels, but much higher than 2016. That’s why I don’t buy this poll, and why the same CNN poll that found Biden up 6 in NC also found him up 8 in WI and 12 in MI. And again, this ain’t 2016 where it’s like 44-36 with a ton of undecideds and third party vote. He’s consistently cracking 50 in every states he needs to win.

[Alben Barkley]

This is the best poll for Trump in months, and it’s an outlier with a bunch of undecideds in a small state Biden does not need to win.

Sad to see even some posters who I thought had level heads are losing their minds over this. Everything that’s ever been said about how this race is not at all like 2016 has not suddenly been erased because a single poll in a single state shows  a similar margin to 2016.

I mean, Biden was up 6 in NC with 52% earlier (did NOT happen in 2016), but you didn’t see Trumpers panic and doomers concede they were wrong and Biden’s gonna win.

Because the swing to Biden is obviously suburban.

Besides that nothing has changed since 2016.

That's why Iowa is still heavily Trump (it's gone people...don't know why this forum can't grasp this?) and Minnesota is close. But Biden is doing well in the sunbelt.

The biggest reason why Clinton lost in 2016 was because she basically gave the bird to blue collars in the Rust Belt. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin. Michigan. These states are in play again not because Bidenites here are blindly hopeful, it's because Biden is actually making a presence there and trying to swing that vote. Are all 3 of those states gonna flip? Are none of them going to? I don't know, but the Rust Belt is easily Biden's path to victory, and pretending that Biden's gains are just in the sunbelt and suburbs is dumb.

Biden is polling better in Arizona than Pennsylvania lol.

That is objectively untrue.

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/EScrimshaw/status/1322704822383104001

Amongst the things that are wrong about this poll is the fact that Selzer doesn’t weight by education, which I either knew and discarded because I trust Selzer or never learned, but either way, it’s bad. I suspect that this is a fairly leading cause of the error – an overly rural sample causes an error. Selzer missed in 2018 by overstating Democrats in the Governor’s race, and it is frequently the case that pollsters over adjust after a miss. The other main thing that causes alarm is that Selzer has basically given up on actual polling by letting 4% of the sample of her poll say they voted without saying who for.

Says it all, really.

[Alben Barkley]

Another laughable cross-tab: Trump is winning the youth vote!

That probably is wrong, but the general idea of Trump/Republicans doing relatively well among white midwestern youngs is less implausible than it sounds. It is normal that if a state is R-trending you can see Republicans doing better (or at least not as bad as you would think) with young voters. You can see a similar thing going back many years in other states that were at one point safe Dem or competitive as they have trended R such as West Virginia, Arkansas. This occurs because there are still some older Demosaurs in those states, whereas the young whites are more likely to be open to the GOP than the Demosaurs.

Trump won the under 18 white vote in Iowa 55-31 in the mock vote.

A vote which almost nobody showed up to. In the middle of a pandemic. Which is denied or ignored primarily by Trump supporters. It’s amazing Biden’s support was even that high given all that.

[Alben Barkley]

Another laughable cross-tab: Trump is winning the youth vote!

That probably is wrong, but the general idea of Trump/Republicans doing relatively well among white midwestern youngs is less implausible than it sounds. It is normal that if a state is R-trending you can see Republicans doing better (or at least not as bad as you would think) with young voters. You can see a similar thing going back many years in other states that were at one point safe Dem or competitive as they have trended R such as West Virginia, Arkansas. This occurs because there are still some older Demosaurs in those states, whereas the young whites are more likely to be open to the GOP than the Demosaurs.

Trump won the under 18 white vote in Iowa 55-31 in the mock vote.

A vote which almost nobody showed up to. In the middle of a pandemic. Which is denied or ignored primarily by Trump supporters. It’s amazing Biden’s support was even that high given all that.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1322686184385110016

What does this have to do with anything? I pretty much agree with his list. But the idea that Biden has made big gains with suburban voters is not somehow mutually exclusive with the idea that he has also made up ground with some rural voters. Why you seem so certain of that bizarre notion is beyond me.

[Alben Barkley]

I’d just like to remind everyone freaking out of one more thing:

Even IF we were to assume that Iowa is in fact gone for Dems, that it will continue to trend if not swing right, and even IF we were to assume that this is indicative of polling being off in the more critical midwest/rust belt states again and IF we assume that means they are very close again... That does not mean Trump will end up on the winning side of them all again. Biden only needs a swing of LESS THAN A POINT in three states from 2016 to win. Iowa is not among them. ALL indications are he is going to get that and then some. And that’s without even getting into his leads and competitiveness in sun belt states that Hillary never had, states which have effectively no correlation to midwest/rust belt states. It would be real funny if the polls do indeed turn out to have overestimated Biden’s strength with rural Northern whites, only to have ALSO underestimated his strength with Hispanics in Texas or something so he easily wins anyway. That would still be a possibility and we won’t know until it happens or doesn’t. But overall, the VAST majority of polls are still looking real good for Biden right now.

[Alben Barkley]

Q had a 6% shift to Trump
Selzer has a 7% shift to Trump.

Q shifted it to a tie because they had Biden up by 5%. Selzer had it tied previously.

This was noted before, but it got lost in the madness of this thread.

Probably the truth lies somewhere in between, meaning the state is probably “really” toss-up to Tilt R. Hardly surprising.

[Alben Barkley]

So even in Trump's best poll in recent memory, it still shows a swing away from him?

Yes and a large enough one where he would still lose the election

It is quite possibly his single best quality poll of the entire cycle. (ie. Not Trafalgar et al.)

And it’s in a must win state for him worth few EVs. With a lot of undecideds and only a 1 point improvement in his own vote share from last time.

I really don’t get the gloating from Trumpers and panic from doomers. If the national polls were tightening like they did in 2016, if Biden was losing his grip on Michigan and such with unstable/narrow leads and many undecideds like 2016, then I would get it. But none of that is happening. This is pretty much the ONLY indication so far that there is anything about this election remotely comparable to 2016 that’s favorable for Trump. And it’s from a poll that might have been the “gold standard” at one point, but has become increasingly less reliable in recent years. It was significantly off in both 2018 and this year’s primaries. It doesn’t weight for education, for god’s sake. I think it’s far more likely that this poll will lose its “gold standard” status for good after this election than that we’ll see a 2016 repeat based on all the other evidence. Or maybe this will just be dismissed as the outlier it most likely is.

[Alben Barkley]

I’m not really getting the whole “this is Trump’s best poll of the whole cycle” claim.

Trump has had several better polls in Florida than this one.  In particular, there was a WaPo poll in late September showing Trump +4 among LVs.  There have been multiple high quality polls showing the race tied or +1 either way in that state.

This poll is a much smaller and less pivotal state, and still shows a swing toward Biden.  So I don’t understand what the big deal is.

Biggest reason I say it might be is that it’s coming so late, and echoes a similar poll from Selzer in 2016. Florida has been pretty all over the place this whole time too, but Iowa was looking pretty consistent across the board recently in showing a tight race that tilted Biden if anything until now.

[Alben Barkley]

I’m not really getting the whole “this is Trump’s best poll of the whole cycle” claim.

Trump has had several better polls in Florida than this one.  In particular, there was a WaPo poll in late September showing Trump +4 among LVs.  There have been multiple high quality polls showing the race tied or +1 either way in that state.

This poll is a much smaller and less pivotal state, and still shows a swing toward Biden.  So I don’t understand what the big deal is.

Biggest reason I say it might be is that it’s coming so late, and echoes a similar poll from Selzer in 2016. Florida has been pretty all over the place this whole time too, but Iowa was looking pretty consistent across the board recently in showing a tight race that tilted Biden if anything until now.

Well now WaPo has Trump +2 just as late.  That poll seems much better for Trump than this one.

That’s a 2 point tightening from their previous FL poll. So I wouldn’t say so. This is an expansion of Trump’s lead from his previous poll here even with the same pollster, not a narrowing.

[Alben Barkley]

https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1322916712468172800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1322916712468172800%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2F2%2Ftwitter.min.html1322916712468172800

Smth seems off here.....

Yeah... I’m starting to wonder if there was some kind of organized manipulation of this poll by Trump supporters somehow.

[Alben Barkley]

So apparently this was the deleted text:

https://pastebin.com/raw/gYVALf47

I’m REALLY starting to think this poll was compromised. After a screw-up in the primaries too, Selzer is in real danger of losing “gold standard” status for good.

[Alben Barkley]

So apparently this was the deleted text:

https://pastebin.com/raw/gYVALf47

I’m REALLY starting to think this poll was compromised. After a screw-up in the primaries too, Selzer is in real danger of losing “gold standard” status for good.

The way to lose the 'gold standard' status is to not publish your outliers. Selzer has done the right thing here even if the poll is way off and should be applauded for it.

This is better than being denied the final Iowa poll (thanks to a particular Buttigieg supporter).

An outlier is one thing. A deliberately manipulated/compromised poll that you failed to catch is another.