June 21 Poll Report

Warren Pulls Further Ahead

            Good morning everybody.   Poll Report is late this morning because I couldn’t get to sleep until 4:30 this morning, got up at 10:30 and had other things I had to do.     

            Elizabeth Warren (a) rolled three strong opponents in yesterday’s poll, and (b) also benefitted from the removal of an old poll, the combination of events adding 146 points to her standing in my system.   146 points in my system is only 1.5% of the vote, point a; Point b is that we don’t know to what extent my voters are representative of the electorate in general, Point c is that even if she is indeed far ahead and pulling further ahead, there is still a very long time to go until November of 2020, and Point d is that there was some evidence yesterday of an organized effort to lead Warren voters to my Twitter poll, thus artificially influencing the outcome.   What I am saying is, let’s not get all excited about the fact that Warren is pulling ahead in this competition; it might mean something or it might not.   If a horse is a length ahead at the quarter pole, he usually fades in the stretch, I think. 

            Anyway, this is yesterday’s poll:

            Warren took four points from Sanders and five from Biden.   The interesting thing is that this didn’t hurt Biden’s relative standing, at all.   The system looks at Biden vs. Sanders, Biden vs. Harris, and Biden vs. Warren.   Biden vs. Warren is weaker than he was yesterday, but not all that much weaker, since Warren, benefitting not only from this poll but from the removal of an old one, is way up from where she was.   Biden vs. Sanders is way up from yesterday, even though Sanders took a big hit, and Biden vs. Harris is basically the same as it was yesterday.  On balance, the system interprets this as signifying a gain for Warren, but at the expense of Sanders, not Biden.   Which is what Pat Porter has been telling me was happening, anyway; Pat Porter and others, including other pollsters.   She’s taking over the left, or has been.

            I removed from the system the poll of May 1, which was Warren (68%), Weld (16%), Howard Schultz (13%), and Wayne Messam (2%).  Warren got 68% on that day, but probably would do even better than that against those three candidates if I repeated that poll tomorrow—thus, taking it out of the system helps Warren, and hurts the three guys.   These are the updated standings; Green indicates that the candidate is up 25% in the last 30 days, and Gray indicates that he/she is down 25% in the last 30 days.  Howard Schultz, inactive following back surgery, has been added to the gray list since yesterday:

            A total of 332 points changed hands yesterday, the highest total in seven days, which is a natural occurrence given that I was asking about the strongest group of candidates.   The bigger the names involved, the more points change hands.   Since yesterday:

            Elizabeth Warren is up 146 points.   I mentioned that there was apparently an organized effort to drive Warren voters to my poll, which I had not seen before.   Warren, expected to get 42% in yesterday’s vote, was running along all day at 44, 45%, and then all of a sudden there was a one-hour period in which she surged to 53%, then gradually back to 51%--an obvious indication of voters being led to the poll.  If I start seeing a lot of that, I’ll have to stop doing the poll, but as of now it appears to be a manageable issue.   

            Pete Buttigieg is up 12 points as a secondary effect from the re-evaluation of the other candidates, specifically Warren and Sanders. 

            Wayne Messam is down another 4 points to a record low score of 19, the lowest point that anyone has reached in these standings.  He drops as a result of the removal of the May 1 poll.  He got only 2% in the May 1 poll, but getting 2% in that poll, against Elizabeth Warren, was helping him maintain his foothold.  I had decided that I would remove any candidate who drops below 20, but also that I would not remove anyone from the standings before the first debates, so I will poll Messam one more time before I probably drop him from the process. 

            Donald Trump is down 5 points since yesterday, as a secondary effect. 

            The constantly dropping Jeff Flake is down another 6 points.  He is the next name to be dropped from the list, unless he starts talking about actually becoming a candidate.    

            Stacey Abrams is down 8 points as a secondary effect.  She is the Democrats’ Jeff Flake, but she still has 3 and half percent of the support, so I’ll keep her in the poll until I am sure she is not going to run.   Same with Flake; as long as there is a chance he will run, I’ll keep him in the system. 

            Bill Weld is down 13 points as a result of the removal of the May 1 poll from the data considered relevant to the present. 

            Andrew Yang is down 13 points as a secondary adjustment.  

            Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been rising in the standings, is down 17 points since yesterday, although she is still up 40% in the last 30 days.

            Howard Schultz is down 20 points as a result of the removal of the old poll. 

            Bernie Sanders is down 41 points as a result of yesterday’s vote, and Sanders has dropped below Klobuchar in the updated standings—well below her. 

            The standard deviation of the scores has increased to a record 417, meaning that the leading candidates are pulling further ahead of the trailing candidates, as has been happening since May 27.   When I remove Messam from the data that will artificially reduce the standard deviation of the scores, so it will take a while for that number to reach another record high after that. 

            Thank you all for reading, and voting.