July 10 Poll Report

            Good afternoon everybody.  Sorry I am late today with the Poll Report.  There isn’t much news.  Yesterday’s Poll went pretty much as expected; Bill de Blasio took a few points away from Andrew Yang, which will be enough to keep de Blasio on the Green List, but it’s just a few points:

            De Blasio took four points away from Yang and one from Moulton.  Removed from the relevant data was the poll of May 20, which was Castro (58%),  Ryan (22%), de Blasio (11%), and Delaney (9%).  Delaney has more support than that now, so the removal of that data from the poll boosts Delaney.  This is a complete list of the changes of six or more points since yesterday’s standings:

            John Delaney is up 14 points due to the removal of the May 20^th poll from the network of relevant scores. 

            That’s it; that’s all there is.   These are the updated standings, basically the same as yesterday’s standings:

            A total of 57 points have changed hands since yesterday, which is the lowest number since June 25. 

            In a perhaps amusing or perhaps annoying note, I made a stupid mistake in posting today’s poll.  Yesterday’s poll (above) was Yang, de Blasio, Moulton and Schultz.  Today’s poll was SUPPOSED TO BE Williamson, Delaney, Bullock and Gravel.  But, working on four hours sleep and under time pressure, I somehow posted it as Williamson, de Blasio, Moulton and Schultz—basically a repeat of yesterday’s poll   Stupid on my part.  I’ll own up to it again tomorrow.  It will cost Delaney, Bullock and Gravel a chance to be polled, but. . .I’m moving on; we’ve got to get back to polling the major candidates. 

            Speaking of moving on, I have made the decision to remove the non-candidates, Jeff Flake and Stacey Abrams, from the polling list.   I haven’t actually done it yet, because that is actual work, re-editing files and removing obsolete data, and I haven’t found the time to do it, but. . .you will not be seeing them in the polls anymore, and their names will soon disappear from the standings.  Maybe as early as tomorrow, I don’t know. 

            They’re not running, of course.  I was keeping them in the polls on the theory that they might yet announce, and, if they did, I wanted to have some sense of how much support they had.  But the problem was that I eventually became convinced that their polling numbers didn’t accurately reflect how they would do if they were candidates anyway, so. . .what was I really preserving?  Inaccurate estimates for potential candidates who probably aren’t running?    

            When you take them out of the polling, their support has to go somewhere, mathematically.  We are estimating the number of supporters per 10,000 respondents.  If you take people out of the polling—Flake and Abrams and Swalwell—there are 500 to 600 supporters who have to go somewhere else.   So all of the numbers will change a little at that point. 

            It’s accurate, though, because that is what really happens; people drop out of the race, and those who haven’t dropped out grow a little bit stronger because they survived; the Lion ate somebody else.  It’s a survival test; stay in the race as long as you can, and maybe you’ll catch a break.  Obviously Joe Biden will do a complete pratfall sometime between now and next February, and then his supporters will have to look around for somebody else.  That’s how it works.