Is Simple Uniform Swing + National polls >>> State Polls?

[tagimaucia]

Here's something which surprised me a bit:

In 2012, (obviously the last presidential election with an incumbent), a simple uniform swing better predicted the differences between the results in different states than the major polling aggregators.

https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1291819403512885252

Although, nerd that I am, I took the numbers in this table, played with simple linear regression a bit, and actually a blend of the 538 state estimates and the uniform swing numbers (more heavily weighted towards the latter) would have done even better.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Though my short answer is "no", I might be down for it if you had a national poll with enough respondents for various demographic subsamples and based it on those demographics.

[kireev]

2020 might be somewhat different than 2012.  I do think that the correlation between 2016 and 2020 will be much higher than between 2012 and 2016. However, between 2008 and 2012 there were no significant shifts in Obama's support among the three major groups: whites with a college degree, white without a college degree and minorities. But we do witness quite significant shifts between 2016 and 2020: Trumps is underperforming among whites (both college and non-college educated), holding his support among blacks and even polling higher among Latinos.  These shifts will inevitably lead to geographical shifts and decrease the correlation in results between 2016 and 2020.

[ProgressiveModerate]

No. In 2012 most swing states had elasticity pretty close to 1. This cycle is very different, with wide ranges of elasticity in swing states, as well as the fact that Joe Biden is targetting the rust belt much harder than Hillary, and by most standards, is a better fit for that part of the country than Hillary.