Famed "celebrity pollster" Nate Silver just gave us all the green light to talk election polling now that Labor Day passed. How thoughtful.
Snark aside, his comments make sense as we are 9 weeks away from election day plus early voting already started in some states and will kickoff in most states within 6 weeks. Plus both Zoom addled conventions are over.
So lets talk. Most political sites identity a 7 point Biden lead. Polling or political sites average or aggregate several polls in reaching the national average. This hopefully smooths out any biased or weirdly structured polls. That said, all major polls give Biden a lead of 2 to 12 percent.
Now for the caveats:
1. Of course, we know the national results matter less than each state. The presidential election is truly 51 separate elections each offering a winner take all format save Maine and Nebraska.
2. Also, I know some folks are polling agnostics or outright atheists. They believe all polls are biased or wrong.
3. And 2016 adds weight to that argument as Trump won even though the polls had him trailing the entire general election. granted, he did lose the popular vote which fell within the margin of error.
4. Final caveat-expect Trump to out-perform the polls by 2.5-3%.
That's the national view. We will look at swing states starting tomorrow.
With this being said, We now know the election results and although Trump outperformed his polls, Biden ultimately won. Trump ended up being the runner up in an election and had more votes than every other presidential nominee besides his opposition of course. It was really cool to see an election with the numerical turnout we did. It really showed how truly meaningful this election was to alot of people.
Dr. Sullivan, I am very eager to see how this election is going to play out moving forward. We have an interesting climate, nowadays!