NYT: Five Polling Results That May Change the Way You Think About Electability

[Pollster]

Great piece by the NYTimes, despite being based on polling that is a bit more Trump-friendly than most of the numbers I've seen publicly and privately.

Key findings:

1) Joe Biden has no special strength with white voters without a college degree.

2) Elizabeth Warren’s problem isn’t the white working class.

3) There is not much difference between a strategy based on turnout and persuasion.

4) The president can keep pace in a higher-turnout election.

5) The Sun Belt opportunity is real, but it is hard to see it as a safe choice.

[Orser67]

Aside from pointing out Warren's weakness/Biden's strength in their general election polling, I thought this was the key point the article made:

It’s commonly assumed that there’s a simple choice between persuasion and turnout in elections: A candidate can either aim to flip moderate voters or to rally a party’s enthusiastic base.

In a high-turnout presidential election, this choice doesn’t really exist. Virtually all of the ideologically consistent voters will be drawn to the polls, at least in these crucial states where the stakes are so high.

As a result, the voters on the sidelines are often also persuadable. With the exception of one key chunk of persuadable voters — affluent voters repelled by the left on economics — the persuadable voters wind up looking fairly similar to the low-turnout voters.

They aren’t particularly ideological. They’re a bit conservative on cultural issues, at least compared with the Democratic base. They’re less likely to be college graduates, but they don’t love the president. They’re likelier to be young and nonwhite, demographics that would ordinarily be a big Democratic advantage. But because they don’t tend to be partisan, it diminishes that advantage.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Aside from pointing out Warren's weakness/Biden's strength in their general election polling, I thought this was the key point the article made:

It’s commonly assumed that there’s a simple choice between persuasion and turnout in elections: A candidate can either aim to flip moderate voters or to rally a party’s enthusiastic base.

In a high-turnout presidential election, this choice doesn’t really exist. Virtually all of the ideologically consistent voters will be drawn to the polls, at least in these crucial states where the stakes are so high.

As a result, the voters on the sidelines are often also persuadable. With the exception of one key chunk of persuadable voters — affluent voters repelled by the left on economics — the persuadable voters wind up looking fairly similar to the low-turnout voters.

They aren’t particularly ideological. They’re a bit conservative on cultural issues, at least compared with the Democratic base. They’re less likely to be college graduates, but they don’t love the president. They’re likelier to be young and nonwhite, demographics that would ordinarily be a big Democratic advantage. But because they don’t tend to be partisan, it diminishes that advantage.

That's why I think that this election will hinge on timing and uncontrollable external factors.