New CBS polls show presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden 6 percentage points ahead of President Donald Trump among likely voters in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, key battlefield states that lost Hillary Clinton by less than 1 point in the 2016 election.
There is still plenty of time for things to change until the election, and city council voting must be taken with a grain of salt, but the results suggest Biden may have an advantage in the Rust Belt states that Trump helped secure his victory in 2016 – and that Trump’s botched response to the coronavirus crisis plays a key role in Biden’s ratings.
While the polls, conducted by YouGov on behalf of CBS between August 4 and 7, show Biden in the lead, it is important to note that the former vice president’s lead is within the margin of error of both polls, which means Trump can actually be polled a little better than Biden. In Pennsylvania, pollsters found Biden for Trump with 49 percent support for the president’s 43 percent. That poll has a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points, meaning Trump could have up to 46.7 percent support and Biden as little as 45.3 percent.
The Wisconsin poll – which had a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points – found Biden leading Trump 48 percent to 42 percent.
In both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, independent voters were found to favor Biden. Clinton lost this group in both states to Trump; and Biden is also better than Clinton’s vote share among white voters with and without college degrees. It should be noted, however, that the two data points are not directly comparable – while polling data in this case comes from likely voters who may or may not go to the polls, 2016 voting data comes from voters who did, in fact, show up.
Pollsters found views on the coronavirus pandemic as a strong relationship with candidate preferences – in fact, in their analysis of the survey data, CBS found that views on the pandemic were more strongly linked to voices than views on the polls. economy.
“Those who say the Wisconsin outbreak is a crisis are voting for Biden in even greater numbers than those who say the economy is very bad. The small group that thinks the outbreak is not much of a problem back Mr. Trump in larger numbers than voters who say the state’s economy is good, ”the analysis says.
Public perception of the response to the president’s pandemic is highly polarizing – and polls in recent months have shown that the public considers the nation’s most important problem to be the nation. CNN poll expert Harry Enten has claimed this is bad news for Trump, as historical poll data suggests that “whoever is most familiar with the non-economic issue is likely to win the election.”
State polling should be taken with a grain of salt
Polling in urban field states is important – especially considering the U.S. presidential election is determined by the Electoral College, not a popular vote. But state polling also has important limitations, and Biden’s constant leadership in them (including other states such as Michigan, Florida, and North Carolina) should not be seen as an insecure sign of his victory in those states and the general election.
Note that an interview with Marquette Law School in Wisconsin at the end of October 2016 had Clinton up by 6 percentage points – the same advantage that Biden has in the polls of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in CBS – but Trump eventually won the state by 0.7 points.
As Vox’s Li Zhou explained, there are many reasons why a number of state polls in 2016 were not off the mark compared to the final election results. Some of these have been corrected in this election cycle – for example, in the run-up to 2016, some polls have over-represented Clinton voters because they did not win for education, and that is no longer the case. (The CBS question is important for education.)
But there are still many obstacles. Polling is always a snapshot of a specific time, and can ultimately provide no definitive insight into the possibility that someone who shares their preference with a pollster on election day will actually appear at the polling station, nor can it necessarily the patterns of late-breaking voters deciding on their candidate in the last days before elections (something that played a crucial role in Trump’s victory).
Adding to the uncertainty is that the pandemic makes predictions based on polling particularly difficult, as Zhou explains:
Specifically, the use of voice-over-post because of the coronavirus pandemic makes predicting the composition of voters that much harder. It is unclear how closely the turnout will coincide with previous years due to public health concerns about physical polling stations and questions about the number of people who will use postal voting instead.
‘It’s hard to do a gymnastics model because you are not sure who will come out. That will be even harder in an election that has extensive vote-by-post, “said Lona Atkeson, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico.
Bottom line: the poll is promising for Biden, but interviews are not to be confused with perfect predictions of outcome.
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