July 19 Poll Report

            Good morning everybody.  Amy Klobuchar, the biggest name among the four candidates being polled yesterday, had a pretty decent day, outperformed predictions a little bit.   Well, she did and she didn’t.  In order to get "expectations" for the poll, I had to pencil in a number for Tom Steyer, the California billionaire who has recently entered the race.  Since we don’t have a polling history for him, one previous poll, it was just a guess as to how he would do in this poll.   It turned out that my guess wasn’t a particularly good guess, so Steyer got less than half of the 11% vote that I had anticipated for him.  The extra 6% had to go somewhere else, so Klobuchar naturally soaked up most of them, thus "overperformed".   But she didn’t really overperform; she didn’t get any real benefit from it in terms of increasing her Support Score, and the very modest gain that she did make will almost certainly be eroded over time by secondary adjustments.   As Steyer is polled again and again, he is (we can now guess) very likely to settle in at a lower figure, which will make Klobuchar’s performance in yesterday’s poll slightly less impressive, which will lower her score.  She gained 8 points yesterday (.08 of one percent); she’ll probably lose those 1 point at a time over the following weeks as Steyer is re-evaluated, and thus, yesterday’s poll is re-evaluated by what we will now know then, later on.   I hope that makes sense.  Anyway, this is yesterday’s poll result:

            The predictions for the poll were 84% accurate, with most of the error caused by the fact that my estimate of Steyer’s starting point in the race was too high.  These are the changes in the standings which have occurred since yesterday: 

            Joe Biden is up 26 points as the result of the removal of the May 29^th poll data from the data now considered relevant.

            Beto O’Rourke is up 17 points as a result of the removal of the May 29^th poll data.   The May 29^th poll was a poll of heavyweights—Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg and O’Rourke.   O’Rourke at that time, the morning of May 29, had a Support Score of 558.   Based on that, he was projected to get 18% in that poll.  He actually got only 10%, with the remaining 8% being distributed pretty evenly among the other three candidates.   That really was the start of his serious decline in the polls—this poll and others. 

            But, while Beto has not rallied in the polls since then, he is not actually QUITE that low, so removing that poll from the data helps Beto and Biden, and hurts Sanders and Buttigieg a little bit.

            Amy Klobuchar is up 8 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.

            Steve Bullock is down 6 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.

            Bernie Sanders is down 9 points as the result of the removal of the May 29^th poll from the data. 

            And also Elizabeth Warren is up 30 points as a secondary adjustment, but I have decided that I am not going to comment on secondary adjustments anymore.   I have about 20 "position point estimates" from the various candidates, 20 for each candidate, based on where they stand relative to other candidates.  As the scores of the other candidates change, the previous polls are re-evaluated based on the best information we have about the other candidates.  This leads to constant small adjustments in the standings.  I have been commenting on these if they meet my two standards:  at least 6 points of raw movement, and at least 1% relative to where the candidate was yesterday.

            But I am going to stop commenting specifically on those adjustments.  They wash out over time, mostly.  If a candidate is making a significant movement in the polls, a meaningful movement, I can comment on that when he or she is polled or when an old poll is removed.  Elizabeth Warren moves up 30 point (0.3 percent), that’s not really anything on her scale.  Commenting on those things focuses attention on the process of the calculations rather than on the candidates, which was fine when I needed to explain daily the process of the calculations, but not really helpful at this point.  I’m not making those comments anymore. 

            These are the updated Support Scores:

            Thanks for reading, and for voting.