A new CNN poll released on the eve of the Democratic National Convention indicates that incumbent Democratic nominee Joe Biden has enjoyed everything about President Donald Trump in most national polls, but has evaporated in recent weeks. But another one that was released hours later by ABC and the Washington Post illustrated why. It is important to place each survey in context.
A poll conducted by CNN in June had Biden up by a robust 14 percentage points. But the new poll released Sunday showed its lead among a random national sample of adults slept all the way to just 4 percent – a spread almost within the polling limit of 3.7 percent of error.
“In 15 battlefield states, the poll finds that Biden has the support of 49 percent of registered voters, while Trump lands at 48 percent,” CNN’s headline of the poll said, although it does not identify which specific states in that set were included.
Some responded with surprise to the questioning that a race that Biden’s seems to be losing could suddenly be so close, especially since the coronavirus is going out of control and with the unemployment rate approaching 10 percent.
That CNN interview that Biden / Harris shows with 4 up is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen all day. That 46% think Trump deserves a second term is … disturbing
– Karoli # BidenHarris2020 (@Karoli) August 17, 2020
Others, however – like Greg Sargent of the Washington Post – soon pointed out that the CNN poll has all the benefits of an outlier.
God this website is the worst. Four good interviews have shown Biden 9, 10 and 11 points in recent days, and there is a false freakout about one interviewer who finds something else. Tell me * why * you tweet about that last question as meaningful while ignoring the others.
– Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 17, 2020
Sargent’s view was quickly confirmed. The ABC News / Washington Post poll of a random national sample of adults released Monday morning showed Biden a 12 percentage point lead over Trump (error limit 3.5 percent) – a spread more in line with polling averages like RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight which has its advantage in the range of 8 percentage points.
That Biden still appears to be favored by voters. But Trump remains in striking range considering the structural advantage that the Electoral College gives to Republicans.
Biden’s leadership has remained remarkably constant over time
Aggregations like those created by RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight are only as good as the polls they collect. But since each survey can be eliminated by three or four percentage points, the 30,000-foot interview average provides a better way to get a feel for a race than by drawing conclusions from some data points such as the CNN survey showing the race. in doubt as to the ABC / Post interview that crosses Biden after a blowout.
The truth of where the race currently stands is probably somewhere in the middle. Including both the CNN and ABC / Post polls, FiveThirtyEight’s daily polling average shifted from a Biden advantage of 8.5 on Sunday to an 8-point advantage on Monday. In short, Trump may have narrowed the gap somewhat, but Biden is still firmly ahead in the polls.
In fact, as Sargent noted with reference to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregation, what has been said so far about the Biden-Trump contest is how stable Biden’s leadership has been.
What is really remarkable is how stable this race is.
Keep in mind that Trump’s low in recent national polls averaged 41.1, and he’s only 1.8 points higher than that now, at 42.9.
That’s pretty low.
Meanwhile, Biden has raised around 50%. pic.twitter.com/CGjfnmCSZF
– Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 17, 2020
However, it would not take much to cast doubt on the race.
If Hillary Clinton can attest, Biden leading the election and perhaps not winning the popular vote does not mean he will be the next president. But as my colleague Ian Millhiser explained, if Biden ends up winning the popular vote by six points or more – which he would do if the results of election day reflect current polls – it is highly unlikely that Trump could have enough swing states and rebounds. dominates in the Electoral College.
Election day can still not reflect this summer’s polls. As my colleague Li Zhou explained, polls over time are snapshots as predictive tools – and many factors, from low turnout to post-in-vote problems, can mean that November’s results look radically different from polls on the polls. currently suggests that they will.
Trump is desperate for wins because he loses
All statements aside, the CNN poll is as close as Trump has been to a reputable poll in Biden. So the president took to Twitter to make it a key indicator of momentum, contrasting it with a Fox poll released last week that left Biden up 7 percentage points.
What’s wrong with it? @CNN POLLS increase me by 10 points in a short period of time. Maybe they want to take over from @FoxNews!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2020
Trump, of course, regularly dismisses polls more in line with polling averages, insisting that 2020 will see a surprise of the kind of “fake polls” that showed Clinton beating him in 2016.
Here we go with the Fake Polls. Just like what happened with the election against Crooked Hillary Clinton. ABC, NBC, CNN, @nytimes, @washingtonpost, they have it all wrong, on purpose. Suppression polls so early? They will never learn!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 15 July 2019
That seems unlikely. As Zhou notes, pollsters have tried to correct for mistakes they made in 2016, working to include more representative samples, and adjusting their results to account for factors – such as education differences – in ways they have not done before. .
And overall, the idea that polls in 2016 – particularly national ones, like CNNs – were far from completely accurate. For example, FiveThirtyEight’s definitive election forecast had Clinton climbed in the popular vote with a margin of 48.5 percent to 44.9 percent – a spread very close to Clinton’s actual margin (48.2 percent to 46.1 percent) .
Clinton’s largest national FiveThirtyEight lead of that cycle came in August, when she was up 49.1 percent to 41.7 percent against Trump – a spread very similar to Biden’s current lead over Trump. That there can still be a lot happening between now and November. But at the moment, at least, the idea that Trump is cutting Biden’s heels is not supported by a full accounting of the data.
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