August 2 Poll Report

            Good afternoon everybody.  Yesterday’s poll had a big winner, a little winner, a little loser and a big loser.   Pete Buttigieg "won" the poll in the sense of having the highest percentage, but Andrew Yang was the BIG winner, Buttigieg the little winner, Klobuchar the little loser, and O’Rourke the big loser.  This is  a summary of the poll in the form we use every day:

            Yang over-achieved by 40%, Buttigieg by 9%, Klobuchar under-achieved by 14%, O’Rourke under-achieved by 60%.  This is a kind of a classic form for a poll, the easiest to interpret.  Sometimes you have one winner and three losers; sometimes you have three little winners and one big loser.  Those are easy to interpret, too.  Sometimes everybody matches expectations based on previous polling.   Sometimes you don’t really know who won the poll or why.  

            It is pretty clear here:  Yang is on the march, Buttigieg is stable and solid and still one of the strongest candidates with my Twitter followers, Klobuchar is not dying but kind of in the doldrums, and Beto should drop out.  Soon.   The argument for him to stay in the race is that he could position himself to become secretary of education or homeland security or something, and the best way to do that is to hang in the race until he has a sense of who is going to win, and then do what he can to build a relationship with them.   But that only works if he has credibility, and that’s going fast.  

            Since yesterday:

            Andrew Yang is up 34 points,

            Pete Buttigieg is up 21 points,

            Amy Klobuchar is down 11 points, and

            Beto O’Rourke is down 53 points. 

            All of those as a result of yesterday’s poll; the poll removal from mid-June was a non-event, and there were no meaningful secondary effects.   These are the updated standings:

            The real news is that Yang has separated himself from Castro.  As recently as a week ago, eight days ago actually, Castro was ahead of Yang.  They were both moving up the standings in the wake of the first round of debates, but they were trading positions as they moved up.   Yang is now clearly ahead, in this sample.     

            I’m seeing independent signs that Yang has something going.  My son is supporting Andrew Yang.  A pretty girl in an elevator is wearing a Yang for President hat.  There are two Yang yard signs in my neighborhood.  Something’s happening; I don’t know how sustainable it is. 

            I thought I would take a minute to share my thoughts about our beloved President, in short form; I would do this on Twitter, but you know. . .too many angry people on Twitter.   So here it is, in 89 words:

1)     Trump has many personal characteristics which make him an unsuitable President,

2)     He got the support that he did in ’16 because he made valid points which remain valid,

3)     He can EASILY be defeated in 2020 by any Democrat who recognizes his valid points, but

4)     There is a real chance he will be re-elected if the Democrats fail to address his issues. 

5)     Therefore, the critical issue for a candidate, from my standpoint, is that they NOT double-down on the things that cost Hillary the election. 

Thank you all for reading.