CCES/YouGov: Biden +8

[MR DARK BRANDON]

I wish the margin was larger.

So do I, this really isn't that great.

Imagine if someone told us last year we would consider an 8 point lead bad for Dems.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

If D's only tie the Senate, this is just on MSN, before the GA runoffs, Biden can still lose because Mike Pence is the tie breaking vote and will vote no on the EC college victor. When neither House agrees on the Prez it goes back to House for a delegate vote and this is how Trump will win again.

Dems must win MT, TX, AK, IA and SC as wave insurance for the Senate. Netting just 3 seats will cause Trump to win again

.This is why Trump is still acting like he is gonna get reelected, due to fact he has Leader McCarthy and Pence to back him up to win an EC vote victory again

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

So many polls report decimals, and yet this one doesn't with a sample of 72k?

[wbrocks67]

Trump winning Indies?

YouGov almost always has Trump winning Indies, so no surprise there

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I've worked with the CCES microdata before. I can't say that I am impressed with the forum's supposed expertise: most of you aren't thinking critically about this. This is not the equivalent of an exit poll in any sense: it's a poll of people who could vote, traditional exit polling, where people are interviewed after exiting a polling place, is a poll of people who have voted!

CCES is a gold standard academic source because, after the election, it can produce "voter validated weights" and can adjust the electorate to the CPS voting survey, which has an even larger sample and is an official government source. I believe that the final weights are released a year and a half after the election.

Without these weights, the 2016 CCES shows: Clinton 48%, Trump 41%. This doesn't imply that it's biased towards Democrats folks, it implies that the CCES is a poll.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Wait the CCES survey is just a big YouGov poll?? That’s disappointing.

It's a great resource for researchers because it asks many important survey questions and it features a large sample with rich demographic data. It also has very reliable weights that match the electorate. As a poll, it's no more useful than standard surveys.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

So this will end up being off by 3-4 points.  I’m very curious to see dig through the post election panel data to see if they find evidence of a last week shift toward Trump (and if so, who flipped), or if the sample was indeed biased slightly toward Biden.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

It's particularly shocking to see the CCES screw up. That will have knock-on effects in most of the post-election research.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It's particularly shocking to see the CCES screw up. That will have knock-on effects in most of the post-election research.

Except it’s not clear yet if the CCES actually did screw up.  They could very well find evidence that 2% of voters changed their mind from Biden to Trump in the last month, or that a dispropotionate number of undecideds went for Trump.  And with a >50k sample, you can actually get a good sense of who that 2% are.  

Additionally, it is not clear to me how the topline of this pre-election sample was weighted.  We need to make sure the correct weights are being used before drawing conclusions.  Fortunately, the CCES is data is very transparent, and you can see in the exact weight assigned to each respondent in the final release (though this might not be for several months).