July 18 Poll Report

            Good morning everybody.  The Poll Report is being posted early this morning as a result of a series of not-too-unfortunate events.  I always set the polls to run about 24 hours, ending at 7 AM, but Twitter occasionally does weird things with the timing of polls, and, although I typed in 22 hours, it posted as a 15-hour poll anyway, ending about midnight.  This turned out to be OK, as the poll had 2,150 responses before midnight, so. . . don’t really need more than that.   Then I couldn’t sleep, got up about 2 AM, and the poll was already done, so I did my day’s work on that.   It’s all worked out.

            Anyway, the only thing that happened in yesterday’s poll was that Jay Inslee under-performed; otherwise it went according to expectations:

            The predictions for the day were 90% accurate, oddly enough the third straight day the predictions have hit 90 or better (they average about 80% accurate.) 

            We removed from the poll the data from May 28^th, which was Elizabeth Warren (50%), Kamala Harris (25%), Amy Klobuchar (20%) and Stacey Abrams (5%).  Abrams, of course, was already gone, so we removed the entries for Warren, Harris and Klobuchar, the three leading Democratic women.  It’s always interesting when a poll gives results that you could get with a low number of votes.  50%, 25%, 20%; you could have gotten that split with just 20 voters—10 voting for Warren, 5 for Harris, 4 for Klobuchar, 1 for Stacey Abrams.   There weren’t 20 voters in the poll, there were 1,586, but—just the way my mind works—I always look at a poll and wonder what the lowest number of voters is with which I could have gotten those percentages.

            Anyway, the removal of that poll from the data helps Elizabeth Warren, as I stated two or three days ago that it would, and puts her Support Score back closer to where it was a couple of weeks ago, which is the reason I have not drawn the conclusion that she was losing support.   But this is the last poll-removal that will help Warren.   We remove polls that are 50 days old, and by the time we get to the next poll involving Harris, she had reached her peak.   So if she starts slipping now, it’s a real effect. 

            Since yesterday:

            Elizabeth Warren is up 81 points as a result of the removal from the data of the poll of May 28.

            Joe Biden, often polled against Elizabeth Warren, is up 15 points as a secondary effect, drafting off of Warren’s uptick.

            Pete Buttigieg is up 12 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.

            Bernie Sanders is up 8 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.

            Steve Bullock is down 6 points as a secondary adjustment.

            Tulsi Gabbard is down 8 points as a secondary adjustment.

            Julian Castro is down 15 points as a secondary adjustment.

            Jay Inslee is down 31 points as a result of his poor performance in yesterday’s poll.  Inslee has dropped off of the Green List as a result of this poll. 

            Amy Klobuchar is down 32 points as a result of the removal of the May 28 poll from the data.  Klobuchar will be polled today, July 18, so she’ll have a chance to recover, but, being polled against weak competition, she is projected to draw 63% in that poll, so she’ll have to do very well to make much headway. 

            And Kirsten Gillibrand has moved onto the Gray List.   Gillibrand had a boomlet between May 14 and June 20, moving from a Support Score of 210 (May 14) up to 364 (June 20), but I remember somebody commented at that time that he didn’t believe it was a real phenomenon, and it looks like it wasn’t, as she has come back down as fast as she went up. 

            These are the updated standings:

            Responding to the discussion here yesterday, I appreciate the posts, it was very good to hear from you all. 

            I don’t believe in arguing.  I know this is a minority opinion and something close to a minority of one, but argument does not lead toward understanding; it leads most often to misunderstanding.  A false argument will die of its own toxins if left alone; if met with a response, it will feed off of the energy of the debate, and survive.  That’s the reason that the justice system fails as often as it does, leads to injustice as often as it does; a system based on competitive debate inevitably devolves into competitive misconstruction of the facts.  I realize that nobody except me sees the world that way.

            But argument is inevitable regardless of its futility.  Responding to the debate as best I can consistent with that philosophy, I am happy to let the outcomes of the poll speak for themselves over time.   I have drawn only four or five conclusions based on the polling.  I predict that all of those will stand the test of time.   I predicted that Bernie Sanders will never gain traction in this race and will become irrelevant to the race not too long after Vermont.   I am happy to stand by that prediction.   I have stated repeatedly that Joe Biden is not a good candidate and does not in fact enjoy the level of support that the national polls claim that he does.   I said that when he was between 32% and 39% in the national polls.  He’s already lost a third of that or a little bit more.  He will lose the rest. 

            I noted early on, months ago, that there was very strong support for Pete Buttigieg.   He was the leading Democratic fund-raiser in the last quarter.   I argued before anyone else did that Elizabeth Warren had taken control of the race.  Although the Old Fogey polls have not completely caught up with that yet, she has since surged upward in their polls, as well.  I have not argued that she will win the race; I have her at about 19, 20%.   It’s a long way from 51%.   I am happy to stand by every argument that I have made in this series.

            When I was a young baseball writer, Old Fogey baseball writers would read through my stuff, draw idiotic conclusions from it that I had never drawn and would never draw, and use their own idiotic conclusions to argue that I didn’t know what I was talking about.   Our Dear Backstop, who has been commissioning political polls for 30 years, so you would think that he would have some idea how to read them, wants to read my poll to say that Andrew Yang is now. . . .well, I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but he seems convinced that Yang is doing far too well in my polls.  I have Yang at 4%, but I have never argued, never suggested and do not believe that he is at 4% of the general public, merely that he is at 4% of my Twitter respondents.   I have always, frequently, even daily acknowledged that there is a disparity between my twitter followers and the general public.  It might be 2%, 2½% of the larger public. The result is not based on the Yang family, dipshit.  

            Another critic doesn’t see what the point is of getting accurate measurements of the difference between the support for Seth Moulton—8/10^th of 1%--and the support for John Hickenlooper, currently 2.7%.   I vividly remember when Old Fogey sportswriters didn’t see what the point was of counting stolen bases allowed by catchers, since everybody knew that you don’t steal on the catcher, you steal on the pitcher, so the data couldn’t be accurate.  I vividly remember when sportswriters didn’t see the point in knowing how many games a team could have been expected to win, the Pythagorean projection, when you knew how many games they actually won.  

            And it may turn out, in this case, that it doesn’t matter; it depends on how the race goes.  If Elizabeth Warren charges straight to victory, or if Biden or Bernie somehow staggers across the line, then the standing of the minor candidates will never have mattered very much.   But we have, at the moment, eight candidates who are on the Green List, meaning that their support is growing.  At least six of them will grow for a while and then sink back, as Kirsten Gillibrand has.  But one way that the race COULD turn out is that one of those candidates whose support is growing will just continue to grow, like Jimmy Cahtah in ’76, growing from 2% to 4%, from 4% to 8%, from 8% to 20, and eventually to victory.   If the race goes that way, then seeing it happen in the poll will be the central narrative of the campaign.   It could be that this already happening. 

            Our Dear Factstop says that we need to poll more. . .well, let me quote:

Your twitter following is not a random sample. You saying last week that your sampling is becoming more conservative due to a friend retweeting demonstrates that I am not introducing that concept to you. But you need a few black female friends to do so. And even then it is just a guess.

            As to the twitter polling not being a random sample, yes, I have stated 150 times that it isn’t.   As to saying that a "friend" was retweeting the poll; no, I haven’t said that, I don't think.  He’s a gentleman I have never met and had never heard of until he started retweeting the polls.  

            But as to the point about needing more women, or "white male voters" dominating the vote (a later comment). . . if you would actually look at the data, rather than standing in front of it and making an ass of yourself, you might notice that the actual pattern is exactly the opposite, that ALL of the women candidates are in fact doing far better in my poll than they are in the Old Fogey polls—far better.   All of them.  Without exception.   It is a very, very odd criticism of my polls to suggest that I need more female representation in the vote.   Persons of color are also doing better in my polls than in the Old Fogey polls, with the possible exception of Cory Booker.   Well, no, Booker is doing better, too.   The National Polls now have Booker at 3% of the Democratic split.  I have him at 3.2% of the TOTAL vote, Democrats and ever’body. 

            Two more points:

1)      There is no reason to believe that Massachusetts voters are significantly over-represented in my polls.  When I poll a Red Sox player against a Yankees player of similar caliber, the Yankee player is as likely to win as the Red Sox player.  I’d believe that Boston fans are over-represented in my sample, but by 5%, maybe.  Not more than that.   You would know this if you actually looked at the poll results, rather than ranting about them without making an effort to understand. 

2)     The issue of seeding is completely irrelevant here.  A person polled against Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden will get the same position point from THAT poll as he or she would get from a poll pitting them against Mike Gravel or Pippi Longstocking.   Again, you would know that this is true if you would actually take the trouble to understand what I am doing and look at the results, rather than barking at us like an abused Yorkie. 

Thank you all for reading.   I appreciate your feedback.