June 25 Poll Report

            Is there a record for nothing happening?  Probably not; all zeroes are equal.  You and I and Moonlight Graham and hundreds of millions of others are tied for the fewest number of major league hits:  zero. 

            If there was a record for nothing happening, yesterday would not quite have shattered the record, but it would be in the conversation.   The poll yesterday went essentially as expected, although Andrew Yang beat expectations by a little bit:

            Wayne Messam managed to under-achieve the astonishingly low expectations created by his previous poll performances, getting 2% whereas I would have expected 3%.   I am done with Wayne Messam; he won’t appear in the polls any more, and today is the last day that he will be included in the standings, unless something happens for him.  But I did get something out of having him in the polls:  a re-assurance that the voters were sincere and educated, and not simply (pun intended). . .not simply messam with the poll.   If voters were not actually making meaningful distinctions among the candidates—in other words, if there was a significant random element to the voting—then Messam would come in at 8, 9% sometimes just from the accidental votes.  The fact that this never happened proves to me that those people who are voting actually know who these candidates are and actually prefer one over the other.  

            Removed from the data was the poll of Cinco de Mayo, which was Buttigieg (43%), Kasich (30%), Klobuchar (16%) and Gillebrand (10%).   Kasich, of course, was already gone, and the removal of the rest of the poll hurts Buttigieg a tiny bit and helps the ladies a little bit.  Since yesterday:

            Kirsten Gillebrand is up 11 points as a result of the removal of the stale poll.  This small boost is enough to put her back on the "green list", the candidates who are highlighted in green in the daily standings because they are up 25% in the last 30 days.   Her surge occurred in mid-June, so she has another ten days or so in which she could retain "green" status if her number just stays about where it is. 

            Andrew Yang is up 6 points as a result of yesterday’s poll.   I know that Yang does have an actual following among my voters, and I have some sense that Yang does have a little bit of something going on in his campaign, but it isn’t really showing up in my polls.   He got 37% yesterday, expected 34%, but that just moves him back to 244 (below), which is exactly the same score that he had on May 29^th.   Maybe there is something going on there, but my polling is not picking it up yet.

            Wayne Messam drops another 1 point, to another record low score of 18.   Messam won’t appear here anymore, but his 0.18% vote share will continue to be there in the background data, at least for now; it just won’t be displayed.  

            Pete Buttigieg is down 12 points as a result of the removal of the old poll.  This is the least of Pete Buttigieg’s problems at the moment.   We’ll see how he comes out of this.   

            A total of 55 points have changed hands since yesterday, a very low total although there have been several days when it was even less.  These are the updated standings:

            Thank you all for reading.   The debates start tomorrow, which should start to effect the standings by the start of next week.