July 14 Poll Report

            Good morning everybody.   Tom Steyer got a chilly welcome to the polling group. 

            How bad was it?   Well, I want to tell you; it was so bad that Wayne Messam called and said he wanted his position in the poll back.   It was so bad that Chris Christie asked "Man, what bridge did HE block?"  It was so bad that the Baltimore Orioles have asked him to throw out the first pitch—of the seventh inning.  They’re scouting him for their pitching staff. 

            Steyer got 7% of the vote.  It was not a strong trial heat, and not a spectacularly weak one, but Steyer finished well behind Mike Gravel.  I had penciled him in at 150, meaning 1.5% of the vote.   He got about a third of the expected support:

            The prediction for the poll was 73% accurate, but almost all of the error comes from my penciling in the wrong support level for Tom Steyer.  If I had penciled in an accurate number for Steyer, the prediction would have been 96% accurate—meaning that Inslee, Gabbard and Gravel all performed, relative to one another, as we would have expected that they would based on previous polling.  

            It’s not a death notice for Steyer’s campaign, by any means; Bill de Blasio entered the race at a similar point, and his support has grown steadily despite a generally hostile reception from the media.  Steyer was on some of the morning shows this morning, introducing himself to the public.   We’ll see whether he gains any traction.

            Since yesterday:

            Elizabeth Warren is up 33 points as a secondary adjustment.   The secondary adjustment occurs because the "space" that I had set aside for Tom Steyer to enter the list was much larger than his first actual poll result.   There is about a 100-point disparity between what I had set aside for Steyer and what he actually got—actually more than 100 points.  Those 100 points have to go somewhere.  Some of them go to Warren, some to the other leading Democratic contenders.   On the same basis and for the same reason, Joe Biden is up 15 points, Pete Buttigieg up by 13, and Kamala Harris up by 10. 

            Bill de Blasio is up 8 points as a result of the elimination from the relevant data of the poll of May 24^th.

            Tulsi Gabbard is up 6 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.

            Steve Bullock is down 6 points as a result of secondary adjustments.

            Kirsten Gillibrand is down 12 points as a result of the removal of the poll of May 24^th.  In the May 24 poll Gillibrand—who was then surging in this poll—got 55% of the vote against de Blasio, Weld and Gravel.  She’s not nearly that strong in more recent polling, so removal of that poll from the data pulls her downward.

            Julian Castro is down 14 points as a technical adjustment, which frankly I don’t quite understand, but his numbers have been moving up at a stunning pace, so. . . there’s some little wrinkle there. 

            These are the updated standings:

            Thanks for reading.